I heard a course public discourse recently. It included some pejorative terms thrown at a person. It may have been an example of someone policing the discourse during the pursuit of truth, with the same pejorative terms we rightly use to frame certain truths once they are found.
It left me asking myself the following if-then question. The question touches on cognitive bias and Bayesian thinking, so I thought I would share this – hopefully appearing in good faith – question I asked myself in the pursuit of being less wrong.
If the following is true,
1. The population involved in socio-sexual behaviours is massive.
2. That the subset accused of criminal behaviour over time becomes enormous.
And 3. That a subset of the already accused become a great candidate for additional specious accusation from a particular subset of accusers.
Then,
What are the implications of Bayes Theorem, and the Law of Truly Large Numbers, on our licence to call a peer naive if they advocate for agnosticism – even in cases with multiple accusers – prior to due process ?
Particularly – but not exclusively – when the accusations speak to discrete disconnected events. Especially considering that we live in a world where intentional elaborate co-conspiracy is not a prerequisite for the existence of multiple specious accusers.
Note: I considered these implications in isolation from my views on the unjustness of aggregate conviction rates.
Hi,
I heard a course public discourse recently. It included some pejorative terms thrown at a person. It may have been an example of someone policing the discourse during the pursuit of truth, with the same pejorative terms we rightly use to frame certain truths once they are found.
It left me asking myself the following if-then question. The question touches on cognitive bias and Bayesian thinking, so I thought I would share this – hopefully appearing in good faith – question I asked myself in the pursuit of being less wrong.
If the following is true,
1. The population involved in socio-sexual behaviours is massive.
2. That the subset accused of criminal behaviour over time becomes enormous.
And 3. That a subset of the already accused become a great candidate for additional specious accusation from a particular subset of accusers.
Then,
What are the implications of Bayes Theorem, and the Law of Truly Large Numbers, on our licence to call a peer naive if they advocate for agnosticism – even in cases with multiple accusers – prior to due process ?
Particularly – but not exclusively – when the accusations speak to discrete disconnected events. Especially considering that we live in a world where intentional elaborate co-conspiracy is not a prerequisite for the existence of multiple specious accusers.
Note: I considered these implications in isolation from my views on the unjustness of aggregate conviction rates.