Working on databases from prison

From your link:

> The defendant, Preston Thorpe, appeals his conviction for possession of a controlled drug with intent to sell

He may have done other things, but his conviction was for possession with intent, and that seems to be why he's locked up. It doesn't make anything else he's done acceptable, but in America he's innocent until proven guilty, and it doesn't seem he was found guilty of assault.

We're allowed to form judgments about people based on evidence that wouldn't be sufficient to convict them of a crime. The consequences of me forming the opinion that this guy is a domestic abuser are far lower than the consequences of a court doing so. And of course, even courts use a much lower evidential standard than 'innocent until proven guilty' when deciding civil cases. Making a derogatory comment about someone on the internet is much more analogous to a civil court finding against the plaintiff than it is to a criminal court giving someone a jail sentence.

In any case, HN is very selective about this high evidential standard. People will make a lot of effort to give probable domestic abusers the benefit of the doubt, but pick one of HN's official enemies and suddenly any little scrap of evidence is considered quite sufficient!

I agree with this sentiment but I'm also willing to explore/consider the possibility that "innocent until proven guilty" isn't strictly only useful as an esoteric legal construct, but a philosophy that could potentially have applicability to an individual's worldview.

That being said I wouldn't have much patience for a "merely" accused murderer or child predator in my personal life, just as I also don't have much patience for a doctor who refuses to prescribe me antibiotics because the chance they could help me is "only" 1%. I don't really care that it's socially irresponsible when it comes to my personal assessment of risk.

I agree that it is nice to keep in mind as a general philosophy, however I also think it's important to keep in mind that the people who originally wrote "innocent until proven guilty" were all treasonous sepratists, and their philosophy may or may not always align with my own.

Yes, violent insurrection against the lawful authority of the Crown is no laughing matter. (And many of them were slaveowners, so they did not have moral authority neither by the standards of their day nor by ours.)