Comment by burkaman

Comment by burkaman 4 days ago

3 replies

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.)