26 Oct 05
Originally posted by zeeblebotWhat coffin? Haven't you seen him out and about in the forums? He's come back to life!!! It's a miracle...
B.S., try 3-5% error rate for DP, higher for non-DP penalties ...
as an alternative, try appying six-sigma quality principles to the current legal reform and see what comes out of it ... you'd have no1marauder spinning in his coffin ....
26 Oct 05
Originally posted by ivangriceTrue.
...than one innocent man be found guilty.
True or false?
And that leads to the next question I have to ask myself. Where's my cut off line?
How about 1000 guilty men? 10,000? How difficult should we make it to convict someone in order to protect the innocent?
26 Oct 05
Originally posted by wibWhy is the statement true? Imagine the havoc 100 rapists could have on society. Is this outweighed by the social ill of having one innocent man locked up?
True.
And that leads to the next question I have to ask myself. Where's my cut off line?
How about 1000 guilty men? 10,000? How difficult should we make it to convict someone in order to protect the innocent?
26 Oct 05
Originally posted by wibIt depends on the crime.
True.
And that leads to the next question I have to ask myself. Where's my cut off line?
How about 1000 guilty men? 10,000? How difficult should we make it to convict someone in order to protect the innocent?
Obviously if an innocent man is put to death for a crime he did not commit, freeing him is rather difficult.
But a posthumous pardon normally makes everyone feel a lot better (apart from the dead one).
27 Oct 05
Originally posted by ivangriceI can assure you that if YOU were that one innocent man you'd have an entirely different outlook on that situation.
Why is the statement true? Imagine the havoc 100 rapists could have on society. Is this outweighed by the social ill of having one innocent man locked up?
27 Oct 05
This is a really tricky situation. Obviously the goal is to get the smallest margin of error in either direction. So I would hope we could manage less than 100 guilty going free, but I would agree with the saying. Better to let the guilty escape than to punish the innocent. People seem to have forgotten what innocent until proven guilty and reasonable doubt mean.
27 Oct 05
Originally posted by LordOfTheChessboardAgreed. Therein lies my dilemma.
The real question is:
-do you want to be 100% sure no one innocent gets convited and live in a wild west.
or
-do you prefer to keep society save at the risk of convicting innocents.(including yourself)
I don't know the answer to that. Obviously there's a percentage of innocent people that are convicted of crimes. If we make it easier to convict the guilty we also make it easier to convict the innocent.
What percentage are we willing to tolerate of innocent people going to jail in order to to preserve law and order in our lives?
D@mned if I know.
27 Oct 05
Originally posted by wibBut the question remains: Would Ivan's outlook be right or wrong under those circumstances? Perhaps is outlook might be biased under them, not more rational.
I can assure you that if YOU were that one innocent man you'd have an entirely different outlook on that situation.
Are you assuming that he only holds his current view only because he has insufficient sympathy with the falsely accused?
He might counter that you hold yours only because you have insufficient appreciation of the enormity of crimes perpetrated by the rapists.
The moral question is difficult precisely because it presents a dilemma in which two goods cannot be simultaneously realized, and in which one must be prioritized.
What's interesting is that, oftentimes, proponents on either side of an issue like this just keep mentioning one good rather than another, neither facing the fact that some choice has to be made.
Interestingly too, it is nearly always possible to construct an extreme scenario where people will grudgingly admit that their normally preferred good is not preferable to the competing good.
Hence, I think everyone really does have some implicit tradeoff point on questions like this, even if they feel it is bad form, or mathematically difficult, to articulate it explicitly.
