Comment by eru

Comment by eru 4 days ago

6 replies

Why? Different fora have different standards of proof. For example, in civil cases (even in America) the standard of proof is 'preponderance of evidence', not 'innocent until proven guilty'.

Why should internet comments follow criminal law, and not eg civil law, or some other standard?

qualeed 4 days ago

The options are you assume people are innocent unless proven guilty, or guilty unless proven innocent.

Going through life treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent sounds like an exhausting and negative way to treat everyone, and harms more people overall.

  • burkaman 4 days ago

    Those are not the only options, those are the two extremes of a spectrum. Most people fall in the middle with something like "assume people are innocent unless you see convincing evidence of guilt". This is a reasonable philosophy unless you have power over someone, in which case proof is much more important.

    • qualeed 4 days ago

      >"assume people are innocent unless you see convincing evidence of guilt".

      So... base assumption is innocent.

      That's all I was saying.

      • burkaman 4 days ago

        Ok, I think you may have misinterpreted some other comments then. The argument was that "proven" in "innocent until proven guilt" is too high a bar for a low-stakes internet discussion.

      • eru 4 days ago

        No. Base assumption doesn't have to be binary.

        Just get some background rates, and assume that people are guilty with eg 0.1% probability. (Just a made a up number. Real priors should depend on a lot more context.)

busterarm 4 days ago

Because the report only contains statements of fact related to the police report and the police interaction.

There's no actual confirmation in that report that her arm was actually broken or that she was actually beaten. There's no medical examination that happened here that is cited.

That would still be required in a civil trial with preponderance of evidence. What if she was on drugs and did it to herself? (Not saying that's what happened). We don't know what happened from this document and that has nothing to do with this charge or his appeal.