On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
As a few other people said - rape convictions require a lot of evidence. If the counter argument to actual evidence is "well, she's promiscuous", and that let the defendant off the hook, something is seriously wrong here.
If rape convictions require a lot of evidence, then why do innocent people go to jail for it? We've had quite a few of those in Quebec in recent years and there's only 8 millions of us.
is this gonna get answered or wat
It's an imperfect system unfortunately. I'd be in favour of a system that only found guilty people guilty and only found innocent people innocent but we don't know of one yet.
However the reason innocent people found guilty was brought up was because they might potentially be beneficiaries of anything that randomly finds people (both innocent and guilty) innocent and lets them go. I do not think that is a good solution to the problem of innocent people being found guilty and therefore do not think that arguments which are clearly unsound should be used in court.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
There is a difference between being "fine with putting innocents in jail" and "let's accept bad evidence into a trial, because it will mean that more people will be freed, whether they're innocent or guilty."
Both are injust. But the latter makes a mockery of the justice system.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
At what point did my opposition to the wheel of justice in the lobby of the courthouse become support for locking innocent people in jail? You seem to be on a high horse for someone who once said <insert entirely made up thing here>.
If we can get it back on topic, you said that although you understand that the promiscuity argument does nothing to separate false rape accusations from genuine rape cases it should still be used because it randomly lets off a proportion of defendants, some of whom might be innocent. Do you stand by that?
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
He is not advocating putting innocents in jail. He is advocating punishing those who committed the crime.
A faulty argument that allows people to be released from judgment should not work.
If you want to protect innocents, then you should find an argument that is logically correct and protects innocents.
If you are unwilling to find such an argument, then you are doing exactly what Kwark said - spinning a wheel at random and letting people go.
The point of a court is to submit evidence and logical arguments to find the truth. Faulty logic does not help find the truth.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
As a few other people said - rape convictions require a lot of evidence. If the counter argument to actual evidence is "well, she's promiscuous", and that let the defendant off the hook, something is seriously wrong here.
If rape convictions require a lot of evidence, then why do innocent people go to jail for it? We've had quite a few of those in Quebec in recent years and there's only 8 millions of us.
is this gonna get answered or wat
It's an imperfect system unfortunately. I'd be in favour of a system that only found guilty people guilty and only found innocent people innocent but we don't know of one yet.
However the reason innocent people found guilty was brought up was because they might potentially be beneficiaries of anything that randomly finds people (both innocent and guilty) innocent and lets them go. I do not think that is a good solution to the problem of innocent people being found guilty and therefore do not think that arguments which are clearly unsound should be used in court.
i'm sorry, i meant to quote this
[QUOTE]On August 24 2012 03:46 NicolBolas wrote: [QUOTE]On August 24 2012 03:43 Djzapz wrote:
How many? Where? Which ones? Can you provide actual links, or are you just using selection bias?[/QUOTE]
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
Nobody is advocating abolishing all arguments within the legal system. Innocent people will still be able to plead their case, they just won't be able to claim "the sky is blue, therefore I didn't do it" without explaining a link between the two.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
On August 24 2012 03:36 Djzapz wrote: [quote] Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
I'm not pretending my position is perfect. My position is what I consider to be the more moral compromise to make given our imperfect justice system which simply can't know everything.
On August 24 2012 03:38 KwarK wrote: [quote] So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
I'm not pretending my position is perfect. My position is what I consider to be the more moral compromise to make given our imperfect justice system which simply can't know everything.
You consider letting a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case, to be the moral solution to the problem of innocent men potentially being found guilty?
On August 24 2012 03:38 KwarK wrote: [quote] So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
I'm not pretending my position is perfect. My position is what I consider to be the more moral compromise to make given our imperfect justice system which simply can't know everything.
The problem with the compromise you suggest is that it literally invalidates everything that our justice system is predicated on - you are proposing that we allow a blatantly false argument to be considered valid in court.
On August 24 2012 03:38 KwarK wrote: [quote] So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
I'm not pretending my position is perfect. My position is what I consider to be the more moral compromise to make given our imperfect justice system which simply can't know everything.
So your solution is to give everyone, the innocent and the guilty, a small random chance to be aquitted. Just like Kwark described?
I honestly don't understand what your position is.
On August 24 2012 03:38 KwarK wrote: [quote] So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
I'm sorry, I don't see myself taking a position at all here (please quote me where I stated one that would seem to suggest this if I did); I don't think that's anyone's position in fact.
I'm not pretending my position is perfect. My position is what I consider to be the more moral compromise to make given our imperfect justice system which simply can't know everything.
So your solution to imperfect knowledge is to introduce additional variance in the form of giving credence to a line of argument you yourself have said is irrelevant? That's only going to worsen the imperfect knowledge problem by inducing additional variance.
On August 24 2012 03:30 KwarK wrote: Okay, Djzapz, I'm going to explain how an argument works. If you wish to stand up in a room full of people and say "there is this one thing and that means this other thing" then you need a middle step where they are connected. For example if you wish to claim "she has sex and that means she lies about rape" then you need a middle step where you prove that people who have sex lie about rape. Otherwise you might as well say "she has brown hair, therefore she lies about rape, therefore the defendant is innocent".
If a lawyer successfully uses the promiscuity argument without explaining why it is that he wishes the jurors to believe that promiscuous people are more likely to lie about rape then it is a nonsense. If a man who would otherwise have been convicted of rape escapes based upon that nonsense then that is not a victory for justice, that's an argument in favour of abolishing trial by jury.
Well fine, it's a poor argument by the defense that seems to work. But then again weak evidence of rape seems to be enough for a conviction a lot of the time. So what choice do they get?
If I get a 1 night stand with a girl and it's perfectly consensual, and yet she comes after me for rape, my first reaction will be that she does that all the time. It's circumstantial evidence. Don't try to school me on whether or not it constitutes solid evidence, I know it's not - but again nothing is in rape trials.
Even semen and DNA tests only confirm that there was intercourse, not necessarily rape.
So you concede the utter irrelevance of promiscuity and yet still feel it has a place in the justice system because sometimes it gets people found not guilty, regardless of whether their guilty or not. We could cut out the middle man, stop dragging the sexual history of victims into the court and just let off every defendant whose surname begins with the letters A-K. Justice high five anyone?
I will in fact concede the irrelevance of promiscuity, as a global failure of the justice system, which simply does not have the tools necessary to properly prosecute rape. That is, we can't read minds.
A lot of rape cases are clear cut, I'd guess that a majority aren't. And innocent men are in prison for rapes they haven't committed. You guys are going after a bad but effective argument that I'm sure saved a few innocent men from undeserved years of jail.
I'm glad you acknowledge the irrelevance of promoscuity.
But your last paragraph is a bit silly. The argument is good because it keeps innocent men from undeserved jail time, is what you seem to be saying. Surely it also puts guilty men back on the street to continue their raping ways. More importantly, following the same logic, should we just never convict anyone? That would surely keep some innocent men out of jail too.
No, unsound arguments should be ''gone after'', always.
Innocent people shouldn't be "gone after" either but they are.
Would you be in favour of a giant wheel that people span that with 16 segments on it, 2 labelled "let go" and 14 labelled "proceed to court" that you have in the lobby of the courthouses? That is essentially what you are advocating. A system which lets a portion of defendants go free, regardless of the circumstances of their case.
You're talking to me as if I were immoral. You certainly are on a high horse for someone who's fine with putting innocents in jail.
The justice system has (tragically) some non-zero amount of Type 1 error: that is, false imprisonment. Due to this fact, we should increase the amount of Type 2 error: that is, wrongful acquittal by allowing an irrelevant argument to acquit people (in the hopes that it will decrease the type 1 error, I guess).
I'm not sure why this makes sense, and as far as I can tell seems to be your position.
Meanwhile your position is "prosecute everything" and suddenly the non-zero false imprisonment goes up and that's fine with you.
Makes a lot more sense.
By this logic we should abolish the justice system entirely under fear of possibly ever convicting an innocent person.
You are arguing for a completely impotent, ineffective justice system. I have no idea why. Maybe in Canada there aren't the same issues as America. Perhaps Canada doesn't have as pervasive a rape culture as America does.
EPT
