Working on databases from prison

> ...in America he's innocent until proven guilty...

...in a court of law. Innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments.

>Innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments.

That's not a good thing.

Edit: I cannot really believe that this, of all comments, is controversial. Living life treating everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent is... just shitty, let alone exhausting. Do people forget about how many times reddit and other ruined innocent people's lives?

Sometimes HN amazes me with new technology, interesting conversations, etc. Sometimes it amazes me when people are arguing that we should go through life treating people as guilty first, until they are proven innocent. I think I'll go back to not participating for awhile.

Yes, it is. The courts are flawed, the courts get things wrong all the time. Many innocent people are found guilty. If we must apply the legal standard to internet comments, must we condemn people we believe to be innocent? The legal standards exist for the system, not for people. Saying that the standard of "innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy and avoiding making decisions for yourself about how you treat people.

People proven guilty are not necessarily guilty. People proven not guilty are not necessarily innocent. The legal standard exists because a system needs standards.

>The courts are flawed, the courts get things wrong all the time.

Is your assertion that random internet commenters get it right more than the courts...?

>"innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy

How is guilty until proven innocent less "lazy"?

My assertion is that "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal standard that applies to the courts because a system needs standards. People have the luxury of being able to use their judgement. My assertion is that choosing to defer to a legal standard (not proven guilty therefore innocent) is choosing to opt-out of your wonderful human ability to form a judgement based on a lot more than just one single data point.

The person you love comes to you and tells you that they've been attacked by your shady friend. Do you defend your friend from the accusation because "they're innocent until proven guilty" or do you use your judgement and decide that the person you love is telling the truth because you have a lifetime of trust in them?

"People proven guilty are not necessarily guilty. People proven not guilty are not necessarily innocent. The legal standard exists because a system needs standards."

so you saying that court is useless because its not perfet???? its easy to complaint about something but give NOTHING to improve it

You would not do better than people in charge because EASY to say something is wrong but you dont have ANSWER that improve this current standards

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?

> Saying that the standard of "innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy and avoiding making decisions for yourself about how you treat people.

Then how do you explain laws against slander and libel?

You can't label someone guilty of a crime just because you feel it to be true.

I'm saying that the judgement of a court is useless when making a personal judgement because what a court sets out to do is different to what a human sets out to do. The court system is a collection of complicated and convoluted standards and rules and regulations designed specifically to support a system responsible for depriving people of their rights. A court judgement is not "better" than a human judgement, quite the opposite, a court judgement is often worse, because court judgements are formed without access to all information. A jury for example will often have very important information withheld from them because it doesn't satisfy some esoteric court standard. A person would use that information to form a judgement.

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.

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.

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.

The point is that people should be able to use their own judgement on a wide variety of issues and not be forced to delegate their decision making power to the courts/third parties.

There's a difference between "we want to lock this person up and take away their liberty, so we should be basically certain" versus "look man he's been done for drugs and she ended up with a broken arm, I don't trust this person".

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

So... base assumption is innocent.

That's all I was saying.

>not be forced to delegate their decision making power to the courts/third parties.

That's not close to what I was saying, and I don't know how people are interpreting it this way.

unfortunately the average quality of thought process of hn when it comes to life and common sense is the opposite of its technical knowledge

>Living life treating everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent is... just shitty

There's no scenario here where this guy is innocent. The distinction here is whether he's a wife-beating drug dealer or just a drug dealer. There's some evidence to suggest the former but not really enough that you can definitely state it.

Personally, I'd give a convicted drug dealer less benefit of the doubt than the average person.

>There's no scenario here where this guy is innocent.

The conservation expanded past this specific case when we started talking generally about internet comments.

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.)

That is the point of saying "innocent until proven guilty"? Who does the proving? How can it not be interpreted in this way?

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.

On one hand, I agree that internet comments tend to judge people unfairly, and “treating people as guilty first” probably leads to an unhealthy society (considered “unhealthy” by its own members).

On the other hand, GP is objectively right ("innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments"). I also think that it’s better for random people to be able to post their terrible judgements than any feasible alternative, because such an alternative probably leads to good judgements also censored. We can mitigate (not eliminate) bad judgements, e.g. by educating people better and shaming those who shame others more; and we can minimize mob justice’s effect on critical government functions like welfare and prison sentencing, e.g. by running them on mostly objective procedures and with staff who aren’t influenced by mob opinion.

Targeted harassment and doxxing (and swatting, getting people fired/divorced/ruined when they don’t deserve to be, etc.) is different (and to be clear, IMO very bad). People posting opinions in a way that the target can block (which they can usually do with blocklists and word filters) is fine. The main point I’m trying to make is: if opinions in random internet comments lead to targeted harassment and real-world consequences even when the opinions are “bad” (e.g. bigoted, hypocritical), it's less effective to try and prevent the internet comments' existence, than to reduce the factors causing them to influence the real world and create factors preventing influence.

this is dunning kruger effect