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[Shinra]

There can be not enough proof for a conviction without calling the presumed victim a liar.

If you are presuming there is a victim, you are presuming there is a guilty party. The word you should be using is alleged.

[Thad]

Moved over here because I think we've gone somewhat afield of "cheerful news".

That's great for him, but seeing a high profile case that seems to provide grist for the "women just make up rape allegations for fun" defence making the news doesn't exactly set me walking on sunshine.

Considering that that's actually what happened in this case

Well, no, I don't think she made it up "for fun"; as I said, I think there's probably something chemically wrong with her.

Rape victims experience horrific emotional trauma that they will live with for the rest of their lives. I'm not trying to diminish that.

Well, and having people say "I don't believe you" is a big part of that trauma.  Approaching it from the standpoint of actually calling an accuser a liar is a nasty business; if she's not lying that's tremendously hurtful, and even if she is lying, a defense attorney who says as much risks losing the jury's sympathy.

I think Classic is right -- generally speaking, saying "There is no evidence" is a much more neutral proposition than saying "She's lying."

In this specific case, though, yes the accuser was lying and I find it very hard to believe they couldn't have handled this better.

There can be not enough proof for a conviction without calling the presumed victim a liar.

If you are presuming there is a victim, you are presuming there is a guilty party. The word you should be using is alleged.

That's a fair semantic point under the circumstances.  Personally I'd go with "accuser" over "alleged victim" simply because the latter creates a weird kind of circular passive voice -- who's "alleging" in "alleged victim"?  The "alleged victim" herself.

[Classic]

Speaking of semantic points:
You can presume a guilty party while presuming that any defendant is innocent.

The justice system (and most civil machinery, come to think of it) needs to assume that its users come in good faith and that those who don't (or in the case of this woman, maybe can't) are the exception.

[Thad]

Took a couple readings for me to get what you're saying, but you're right: assuming the defendant is innocent is not inherently the same as assuming no crime occurred.

Again, that doesn't really wash in this specific case (or probably in rape cases in general, as the vast majority ARE committed by someone the victim knows), but speaking of crime in general, yeah, people get accused of crimes that were actually committed by somebody else all the time.

[Rico]

The justice system (and most civil machinery, come to think of it) needs to assume that its users come in good faith and that those who don't (or in the case of this woman, maybe can't) are the exception.

I don't see why this needs to be the case. Plenty of people currently and willfully attempt to abuse all parts of the legal system. Why shouldn't there be checks to deal with this?

[Classic]

There are checks, but if public services are going to assume that (all, not some) people come to them in bad faith then you're constructing an authority that is expressly antagonistic toward its charges/benefactors.
This is why we presume defendants innocent until proven guilty, for starters.

I don't see why this needs to be the case.

I guess it's not strictly a necessity, per se, but in the extreme you're left with services that won't do their jobs. An emergency line that assumes all calls for service are fake has no hope of directing first responders to where they're needed.

[Rico]

This is why we presume defendants innocent until proven guilty, for starters.

That's not true. It's a natural side effect of the burden of proof being on the accuser. Now, some parts of the system have been refined because of the assumption that the majority aren't criminals, but the meat of the presumption of innocence is because of burden of proof and not because of any optimism about the quality of the defendant.

I guess it's not strictly a necessity, per se, but in the extreme you're left with services that won't do their jobs. An emergency line that assumes all calls for service are fake has no hope of directing first responders to where they're needed.

... If you assume all calls are fake but still direct first responders, you direct the calls EXACTLY how you would if you assume all calls are legitimate. In each case the false calls still muck up the system in the same way.

[Brentai]

Remember, the court system exists for the specific purpose of protecting the defendent from the prosecution.  Without it we'd still have law, it'd just be a law where the defendant has no voice and sentencing is carried out on the spot.

This is not incompatible with the assumption that the plaintiff and/or the prosecutor is honest; it simply means that the plaintiff or prosecutor must provide irrefutable proof of their claims.  Basically, it's "show your work" for law enforcement.

[Classic]

Thanks for stopping me from posting an inept explanation Brentai.

I guess it's not strictly a necessity, per se, but in the extreme you're left with services that won't do their jobs. An emergency line that assumes all calls for service are fake has no hope of directing first responders to where they're needed.

If you assume all calls are fake but still direct first responders, you direct the calls EXACTLY how you would if you assume all calls are legitimate.

Then how can you tell if the emergency line is assuming a call as being in bad faith or false? If the assumption doesn't effect policy or function of the public services then it's an assumption of good faith.
Does that make sense?

[Rico]

No, it doesn't.

If you assume everyone is truthful, you assign respondent resources based on priority, and some of them will be wasted.

If you assume most people are truthful but have some checks in place, you presumably waste fewer resources (possibly in exchange for an occasional low response to a real incident, but this is basically a slider you can adjust).

If you assume most people are false, you're farther on the low-reponse-to-real-incident slider.

If you assume everyone is false, but you still assign resources at all, presumably you still assign them on the priority system. I mean, you could have a system where you assume everyone's false and just stab your dick at a dartboard to assign resources, but....

What I'm saying is that your extreme example doesn't work because the opposite end of the spectrum works exactly the same (Hey, it's like politics!), and that a system which does not assume everyone is telling the truth can still save resources with effectively 0 consequences. Unscientifically, from reading the news, I get the sense that in almost all tragic incidents where respondents were assigned late release of the 911 tapes reveal it to be gross individual incompetence rather than borderline cases or a systematic failure. While an "everyone is good" system will technically fix this specific human incompetence, the tradeoff is that wasted resource allocation will also occasionally result in the same scenario.

[Classic]

We're a little off topic here but when I say:

There are checks

Before proposing the ad absurdum case it's clear that we're not talking about the two middle-of-the-road/on-a-continuum cases that I've crossed out.

If you assume everyone is truthful, you assign respondent resources based on priority, and some of them will be wasted.

If you assume most people are truthful but have some checks in place, you presumably waste fewer resources (possibly in exchange for an occasional low response to a real incident, but this is basically a slider you can adjust).

If you assume most people are false, you're farther on the low-reponse-to-real-incident slider.

If you assume everyone is false, but you still assign resources at all, presumably you still assign them on the priority system. I mean, you could have a system where you assume everyone's false and just stab your dick at a dartboard to assign resources, but....

But if you're assuming that every caller is false, why allocate resources at all? If you're assuming every caller is false and must allocate resources, by what priority system do you allocate them?

By assuming all incoming information is false, our thought experiment call center has no way of reliably distributing resources.
By assuming all incoming information is true, our call center wastes resources at exactly the rate of bad calls.

I get the sense that in almost all tragic incidents where respondents were assigned late release of the 911 tapes reveal it to be gross individual incompetence

Me too.

I specifically chose emergency response call centers because the cost of false positives (i.e. sending to scenes that aren't emergencies) is low when compared to the cost of false negatives. I think that we agree also that the most tragic cases are due to individual failures suggests that we expect our calls to emergency services to be presumed honest, or in good faith.
It's an "easy" (and more insidiously, emotional) example of a public service that functions in our society because we presume good faith.

Are you willing to agree that at least some civil services presume* "good faith" to function and move on to arguing over a different example or something else entirely?
Maybe we should define exactly what it means to presume good faith.



*I realize now that I've been using "presume" and "assume" interchangeably, when in this context the difference between the two terms may be critical. For starters, I think my original assertion was mistakenly, "assume good faith" rather than "presume good faith," and I think I've already tacitly conceded the former.

[Brentai]

Really, we're talking about hypotheticals here; actual emergency response teams have had from decades to centuries to figure out how to deal with that kind of stuff, so what they do is probably not relevant to this Epimenides Paradox thing we've got going on here.  Or maybe it is, since I suspect the correct and actual policy is similar to the legal one: "Assume all parties are in good faith at all times, but make the system difficult or impossible to use without a showing of it."

For emergency response this basically means that all calls are assumed to be in earnest but are subject to standard triage rules which must, especially in situations of dire circumstance, account for most people's natural tendency to overestimate their own distress.

[Classic]

I also think Rico and I are talking past each other a little.

It seems like he takes offense (and I kind of do also) to the idea that our systems can't be improved and/or that they are "routinely" exploited.

I'm arguing that presuming good faith is (an essential) part of our existing systems.

But I like our hypothetical emergency response center. So, who cares?

[Rico]

But if you're assuming that every caller is false, why allocate resources at all? If you're assuming every caller is false and must allocate resources, by what priority system do you allocate them?

If you assume every caller is false and don't assign resources, then you don't have a center. If you assume every caller is false and do assign resources, why would you not assign them based on the same triage system? The difference between all-true and all-false is only in the attitude of the workers. The only opportunity for difference is in the middle.

I specifically chose emergency response call centers because the cost of false positives (i.e. sending to scenes that aren't emergencies) is low when compared to the cost of false negatives.

This is not necessarily true. If you've assigned all your resources there's nothing saying you are any more or less likely to have your next call (which you can't handle) be trivial or a 3,000-person building explosion (this is true whether all units are distributed to true calls or if some are distributed to false). There's also nothing saying the false negative is more or less likely to be trivial or tragic.

My issue in this particular topic has nothing to do, really, with the functioning of our current system, though I do have plenty of opinions about it. This specifically sprung out of your unsupported claim that "The justice system (and most civil machinery, come to think of it) needs to assume that its users come in good faith and that those who don't (or in the case of this woman, maybe can't) are the exception." I disagree that it needs to or ought to. You've brought the claim forward and I'm interested in whether it's supportable.

I think the specific counterfactual you've brought up doesn't really address it that well. There's all sorts of problems with the assumptions, and the extremes at the end don't really help prove anything (and you seem unwilling to discuss the middle).

[Classic]

If you assume every caller is false and do assign resources, why would you not assign them based on the same triage system?

Because if you assume every caller is false then you don't have enough (or maybe any) information to implement a triage system.
If you do enact a triage system based on information the calls are giving you, then you're not assuming the calls are false. Get what I'm saying? Your still-making-a-triage-from-the-calls emergency center is more a facility that dislikes its callers than one which has a policy of believing its callers false.

If you've assigned all your resources there's nothing saying you are any more or less likely to have your next call (which you can't handle) be trivial or a 3,000-person building explosion (this is true whether all units are distributed to true calls or if some are distributed to false). There's also nothing saying the false negative is more or less likely to be trivial or tragic.

If the emergency call is "trivial" (i.e. doesn't actually call for emergency intervention) then it's not a "false negative," now is it?
While I appreciate your counterexample, I don't think it's applicable.
First, because our hypothetical presumes-callers-false center has no reason to allocate resources to that emergency.
Second, because the presumes-callers-true center, while naive, has no special reason to waste resources or massively over-allocate to a call. In fact, I've been assuming that the call centers make optimally intelligent allocations based upon what they consider true about their information (the calls for service).
Also, an emergency response center, by its nature, can't predict future emergencies. What emergency response policy ignores known emergencies to instead be ready for an unknown future emergency? If all of the center's resources are allocated it doesn't make logical sense to blame false positives over true positives or to malign an aggressive response strategy.

There's all sorts of problems with the assumptions, and the extremes at the end don't really help prove anything.

I'm assuming that we have: call centers with finite resources; that can optimally allocate to reported calls; receive only information about the readiness of their resources and the incoming calls requesting service; and that their assumptions about incoming calls actually effects policy.

If the presumption of good or bad faith as part of policy doesn't otherwise effect policy or outcomes then how can we tell the difference?

Anyway, I think I mentioned that I might have been using presume and assume interchangeably.

The justice system (and most civil machinery, come to think of it) needs to assume presume that its users come in good faith

Presume in good faith until proven in bad faith.

Anyway-

I suspect the correct and actual policy is similar to the legal one: "Assume all parties are in good faith at all times, but make the system difficult or impossible to use without a showing of it."

This is essentially what I think occurs.
If you're going to presume people come to you in bad faith, by what machinery could a request for service prove that it is in good faith?

We should probably also decide what we mean by "good faith" vs. "bad faith" at some point. It feels pretty freaking vague right now. I know what I want it to mean, but I'd rather make sure we have a sensible consensus about it.


EDIT:
Fuck, I hit post instead of preview.
Giving it the once-over.

EDIT EDIT:
It probably deserved a few more minutes on the drawing board, but going back and editing it now is probably unfair if I caught someone in the middle of reading it.

[Brentai]

Honestly I think you would do well to give your posts fewer minutes on the drawing board, and fewer everything in general.

[Classic]

Generally, when revising stuff, I edit down. So, point taken?


...
Brentai, did you just make a long ?

[Joxam]

I think all rico is saying is that in order to make the system work properly everyone, from first responder on up, should be tasked with going into it with an open mind. That's not to say that we don't believe everyone who says they've been raped, just that you subjectively look at every case and you don't make your mind up until all facts are put forth, you know, like its supposed to work.

[Rico]

If you do enact a triage system based on information the calls are giving you, then you're not assuming the calls are false. Get what I'm saying? Your still-making-a-triage-from-the-calls emergency center is more a facility that dislikes its callers than one which has a policy of believing its callers false.

That's been more or less my entire point the whole time, yes.

If the emergency call is "trivial" (i.e. doesn't actually call for emergency intervention) then it's not a "false negative," now is it?

Given no other qualifications in your original example, I assumed our fictional center responded to the same breadth of calls that our real-life center responds to. If you'd like to restrict it to solely true emergency situations I suppose we can all go back and do that, but I'm not sure it accomplishes anything different.

First, because our hypothetical presumes-callers-false center has no reason to allocate resources to that emergency.

You keep throwing this out there, and I keep not believing it.

Second, because the presumes-callers-true center, while naive, has no special reason to waste resources or massively over-allocate to a call.

True, but I've also never said otherwise.

What emergency response policy ignores known emergencies to instead be ready for an unknown future emergency?

It's a good question. I recommend watching the Justice League episode "Patriot Act", which is entertaining and partially addresses the scenario!

If all of the center's resources are allocated it doesn't make logical sense to blame false positives over true positives or to malign an aggressive response strategy.

Wasn't maligning, just pointing out that it happens either way.

If the presumption of good or bad faith as part of policy doesn't otherwise effect policy or outcomes then how can we tell the difference?

Again, that's what I've been saying the whole time

[Classic]

If the emergency call is "trivial" (i.e. doesn't actually call for emergency intervention) then it's not a "false negative," now is it?

Given no other qualifications in your original example, I assumed our fictional center responded to the same breadth of calls that our real-life center responds to.

They do, but when the center responds to a situation that doesn't call for intervention, that's the definition of a "false positive". You constructed a scenario where the a center gives (at least immediately) a "true negative".

What emergency response policy ignores known emergencies to instead be ready for an unknown future emergency?

It's a good question. I recommend watching the Justice League episode "Patriot Act", which is entertaining and partially addresses the scenario!

I keep hearing great things about Justice League, but can't seem to ever work up the will to actually watch it. For the sake of the argument, maybe you could recap what's relevant about the episode?

If all of the center's resources are allocated it doesn't make logical sense to blame false positives over true positives or to malign an aggressive response strategy.

Wasn't maligning, just pointing out that it happens either way.

If the presumption of good or bad faith as part of policy doesn't otherwise effect policy or outcomes then how can we tell the difference?

Again, that's what I've been saying the whole time

First, because our hypothetical presumes-callers-false center has no reason to allocate resources to that emergency.

You keep throwing this out there, and I keep not believing it.

OK. I think I get the crux of your argument now. You're claiming that there's not a functional difference in these strategies, and I am presuming there is without making my justification explicit. Which is key, since the point of  this comparison is to highlight their differences.
But before I summon that up maybe you could respond to this: If you assume there's no policy difference, you're implicitly saying the presumes-bad-faith call center's allocation is irrational or insane. On what grounds, if you're assuming these calls are inaccurate and\or in bad faith, how can you use them to construct a rational resource distribution triage?

It seems like you're either making one emergency center irrational, or you're making it a pretends-good-faith emergency center, which is something else, and a different (and maybe more interesting and valuable) scenario on the "trust continuum" that we can discuss.