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Just today I finished being in a sequestered jury. We were sequestered for several days in a case where the main count was for attempted first degree murder. While interesting, it was also very depressing. Both the defendant and the victim (who was shot in the calf and then chased through a convenience store while being shot at 5 more times*) had a criminal record and were poor black people living in a poo poo part of the city. The victim had actually gone to the law office of the defendant's lawyer and requested not to prosecute, largely because he didn't want to have to come down to the courts and testify (or ruin the defendant's life). He was clearly very unhappy to be there as a witness. The only evidence that the defendant was the shooter was that the victim pointed him out on a panel of 6 faces (he had only known the shooter by his street name, not his full name). Granted, it was pretty convincing and I couldn't think of any reason for the witness to be lying (he didn't seem to know the defendant well and didn't even want to prosecute in the first place), but it's still stressful when you're talking about basically the rest of the defendant's (who was 40-something) life being spent in jail. After all court proceedings, right before deliberations began, I was chosen as one of the two alternates (14 are chosen for the jury, with 2 randomly being chosen as alternates after the court proceedings and right before deliberations). In a way I'm kind of relieved that I won't potentially be involved in ruined this guy's life, even if he is guilty. On the other hand, I'll be really upset if the defendant ends up being convicted of attempted first degree murder, when I definitely wouldn't have settled for anything above attempted second degree murder (there was basically nothing proving that the shooter wasn't intoxicated or acting in the passion of the moment or something). At the end, I'm left just feeling sort of empty about the whole thing. Even if the defendant was the shooter (which he probably was), the victim had specifically said that he didn't want to ruin his life or anything, or even prosecute in the first place. So given that prison isn't really rehabilitative, what is him being convicted of this crime going to accomplish? I guess it might prevent him from committing some other crime, but I have a strong feeling from watching the video that the defendant (if he was the shooter) was drunk or under the influence of something when he shot the victim. Everything considered, being on a sequestered jury was a very unique experience. You end up talking with a bunch of strangers a whole lot when you don't have any internet access or TV. We got a lot of free food and the hotel they kept us at was nice. I'm still pretty relieved it's over, though. *We were shown a video that showed everything that happened pretty clearly, but there was no sound and you couldn't make out the face of anyone, so it couldn't really ID the shooter. edit: As a side note, I was kind of amazed at how similar the court proceedings were to the sort of stuff you see on TV and in major cases. Not in terms of having DNA evidence and stuff (our case only had the video and 4 witnesses - the victim + 3 police officers involved in the investigation), but in terms of the defense and prosecution giving these really involved speeches and objecting to things and what have you.
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Feb 28, 2015 02:26
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prussian advisor posted:What were your impressions of the defense attorney and the prosecutor? Was there anything they said in particular that you found particularly persuasive? How did you feel about the constant objections and the dramatic speechifying? What was the defense's argument--that the shooter was someone else? I was kind of mixed about the "speech-ifying." I understand that both sides are trying to give their view of what happened and using tools of persuasion to try to convince the jury. While it felt a little bit like I was being sold a used car or something, it wasn't that bad. That being said, your average juror might be a lot more susceptible to believing a prosecutor/defense attorney just because they give a pretty speech, so it might be more harmful than I think. The objections weren't really "constant"; I was just surprised that they weren't super rare. Every single one was done by the defense and all were also pretty valid and upheld by the judge (the prosecutor did a lot of questioning where she'd go "So you're saying ______ said/did ______?" to witnesses, particularly the victim, basically suggesting stuff to them). The defense's argument was more just trying to create doubt about anything and everything. Like, the defense attorney would talk about how there's no evidence but the victim that the defendant was the shooter, but then also point out that, even if the defendant was the shooter, there was nothing showing it was premeditated. A lot of the stuff he said was kind of dumb and grasping at straws (like the defense claiming that he only fired the bullet that hit the defendant and the bullet that you could see hit a code bottle, when it's pretty obvious he fired 6 shots in the video), but it doesn't bother me as much when the defense does that; it's their job to give you some sliver of doubt. Ultimately, since the defense was pleading "Not Guilty", I guess that the argument was that the shooter was someone else entirely (with no specific person in mind). But I think the defense understood that there was a pretty high chance that the jury would think the shooter was the defendant, so he also spent some time addressing the issue of pre-meditation (which I found pretty persuasive; the prosecution was just sort of blindly claiming that the defendant acted with premeditation and didn't have any evidence).
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Mar 2, 2015 23:13
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I'm interested in why you feel this way. Do you feel like being intoxicated diminishes his responsibility for his actions? Should society at large (via the State) not seek punishment if the victim is uninterested in cooperating with police? Is there something to be said for removing the notably shooty members of our society, if just temporarily, to someplace where they can't get drunk and pop off a few rounds in a convenience store? I can see why you got that impression from my post, but I'm not saying that he should have been found not guilty. It's more that I can't really feel good about sending him to prison, since it's only very slightly better than doing nothing at all (if that). As for the intoxication, I only think that it means he shouldn't have been found guilty of attempted first degree murder, but instead should have been charged with a lesser offence, probably attempted second degree murder.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:12
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FRINGE posted:Its definitely hero-hour all around! As an addict, I can't even imagine being in withdrawal while in jail. Not only are you having to deal with withdrawal, which is hellish and torture in and of itself, but you're also having to deal with the stress of being in jail and not being given access to what little can help or ease the withdrawal. Like, just the thought of being in that situation makes me feel sick, and I cannot even imagine what sort of person could see someone going through that level of suffering and show no empathy. And that's not even mentioning the whole "letting a person die (likely related to dehydration from the withdrawal)" thing. I can't even comprehend what would make someone such a bad person.
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May 16, 2015 01:24
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tezcat posted:Well if reading TCC is your only contact with people who do hard stuff then I can see that opinion being valid sort of. In my experience most addicts want to break the cycle and just need help in doing so. When given a chance to change their lifestyle, they do and its common for me to hear "its my 10th anniversary of being clean and sober". Reason being usually something lovely in their life seems to be the trigger for abuse to start and when you nullify that they get better. Which is why I agree with treating addiction as a healthcare issue. Yeah; the only reason I ever started using was because I had a period of unemployment following graduating college which, combined with depression and no social life, lead to me seeking out any avenue by which I could feel happiness/pleasure. That being said, even if someone starts using for some stupid reason, years of mental and physical suffering and anguish are hardly a reasonable punishment for being stupid. I would literally pay any amount of money to suddenly be clean and back to feeling like I did before this ever started, and I'm confident that I would never use again if such a thing happened. The problem is that after you've been using an opiate for years there's this thing called PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome) that basically makes you continue to feeling bad 24/7 even after acute withdrawals (which, while terrible, is relatively short) has passed and can last years. I've gotten clean before, but would always break down after several weeks of getting no sleep and being in a state of constant physical discomfort and depression. And that's not even to mention the fact that there's no way I would be able to keep my job (programmer) while suffering from the constant mental fog and insomnia from PAWS. I truly believe that, given the current pitiful state of addiction treatment, there is no workable solution. There's a reason why you hardly ever hear about people breaking long-term addictions without them finding religion or something. It's probably worth noting that the substance I used was entirely legal and I never once did anything illegal while using. I've been on suboxone for several years, but it is every bit as difficult to discontinue (if not harder) than other opiates and is not something I would recommend as a long-term solution. That being said, I do not think that there is any real difference between using what I did and using heroine and do not think that I am better in any way. It's just useful to mention due to the fact that many people conflate addiction with breaking the law.
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May 20, 2015 22:28
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nm posted:And yes, that was straight up voluntary manslaughter and the fact that the LA DAs office cleared him shows why you should actually pay attention on those elections. Out of curiosity, what makes it voluntary manslaughter instead of, say, second degree murder? From a quick google it sounds like voluntary manslaughter requires "circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed," but the cop in that video obviously did not have any legitimate reason to flip his poo poo and want to shoot the guy in question. Like, I was sitting on the jury for a case where this guy shot this other guy that he didn't really know, with a video of it happening. The prosecutor was pushing for attempted first degree murder (with it seeming like second degree to me since there was zero proof of premeditation). How is what that guy did a greater crime than what this police officer did?
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Jul 15, 2015 20:59
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nm posted:Voluntary Manslaughter in California includes imperfect self-defense which is self-defense when the fear of death or gbi was unreasonable. Ah, thanks. Overall I'd rather err on the side of giving people lesser sentences, so I don't really have a problem with this. This makes me wonder if the most correct verdict for the case I was serving on might have been voluntary manslaughter. All the information we had was: 1. He almost certainly* shot the guy and then chased him around a store for a minute before leaving. This was caught on video, but with no sound. 2. Both the victim and shooter claim they barely knew each other, with no motive asserted by either side (the victim had actually voluntarily gone to the defendant's lawyer's office and asked not to prosecute) I know that there's no 100% right or wrong for these things, but what do you think would have been the best verdict based upon this? My feeling was that there was no way to prove that the defendant didn't commit the crime while under the influence of alcohol or some other drug. Given what you said about voluntary manslaughter, it sounds like that would have been the best verdict to go with. I'm somewhat relieved that I ended up being chosen as an alternate before deliberations, because I was under the impression that most of the rest of the jury would have just gone with what the prosecutor said and found him guilty of attempted first degree murder. There was this one redneck guy who kept saying "heh, we'll be out of deliberations in 15 minutes!" On the other hand, it's possible that I could have saved a person from being given an unjust punishment.  *The only evidence it was the defendant is the word of the victim and the fact that the guy in the video doing the shooting seemed to be of similar build to the defendant. I was still inclined to believe the defendant was the shooter, since the victim didn't seek to prosecute him and as a result didn't seem to have any motive in lying about him committing the crime.
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Jul 16, 2015 00:09
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Zarkov Cortez posted:Isn't that then an aggravated assault? (or whatever an assault is called in a given state with serious injuries) To expand upon what nm said, I think that shooting a person (and them not dying) would generally be considered attempted murder/manslaughter because shooting someone is an action that can be generally expected to kill them. So shooting a person is, in an of itself, evidence of an intent to kill. Even if they happen to survive, there's no way that anyone would (reasonably) shoot someone else with the intent/expectation of them not dying. Let me know if I'm wrong about this, but this is the impression I got from the explanation they gave at my trial. Also, yeah, I meant to say "attempted voluntary manslaughter" in my post, not just "voluntary manslaughter." As a side question, I wonder if the common existence of TV procedurals/police dramas has had a significant influence on the way juries behave. From my limited anecdotal experience, it seemed like my jury had a far more positive default opinion of the prosecution than the defense. Like, they seemed to hang onto every word the prosecutor said, while some of the jurors visibly didn't care much for the defense's arguments. Given how immensely popular procedurals are, combined with the fact that they are nearly always from the perspective of the prosecution and end in a guilty verdict of some sort, I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people had gained a strong bias in favor of the prosecution. That being said, since it only takes one juror who doesn't carry this bias to prevent a guilty verdict I could see how this wouldn't effectively make much of a difference. It's also possible (if not probable) that most people have always been more sympathetic to the prosecution, even before the existence of television.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:28
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ActusRhesus posted:Seriously. The reason you find so many people on both sides of "the system" (eg both cops, prosecutors AND PDs) in disagreement with you is because a lot of what is posted here shows a huge lack of understanding about how the system functions. See eg the shitstorm over whether or not the state should need a sponsoring witness to introduce video evidence. Now, the problem there was that for whatever reason there was not an independent witness available and that is worth looking at...but that doesn't mean the prosecutor was gunning for an acquittal. If you actually want a deeper understanding of how the system works, there's a thread for that in AT. But a lot of people in here post things that are simply wrong. You and similar posters kind of remind me of the way many people in high finance try and counter attacks against financial institutions. The fact that most people may not be fully acquainted with the methodology used in, for example, pricing exotic derivatives, does not mean that they can't complain when they see said financial institutions doing things that are clearly wrong. Just like them, you have this feeling that, because you are more closely acquainted with the system in question, no one else has the ability or right to criticize it. It isn't a coincidence that this exact same logic can be used to defend literally any corrupt system. It isn't even necessary to understand exactly what changes need to be made to fix a problem in order to protest that it exists. Just like it's really obvious that the behavior of financial institutions lead to the recent recession, it's really obvious that our justice system/police do a bunch of really terrible things that they don't need to be doing. While it's certainly an added bonus when someone has the expertise to know the best way of fixing a problem, it accomplishes nothing at all to try and silence anyone else who is upset about it. So why is it that you feel such a need to argue against the people that are upset about these issues? What do you think you're accomplishing? If a serious problem really exists (and I believe that you've said that you believe one does), it can only help if a greater number of people are upset about it. People with expertise in the field can then try and enact beneficial changes, but they sure as hell won't have any pressure to do so if you attempt to silence everyone who doesn't possess intimidate knowledge of the workings of the system in question. To use the finance analogy again, do you truly believe that only those with the expertise to know exactly what laws need to be drafted to prevent financial corruption should be allowed to protest such corruption? Do you realize how ridiculous and counterproductive it is to try and silence or ignore anyone who lacks that expertise? It's entirely possible to know that a system is bad without also personally knowing the best way of fixing it. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 17:28
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ActusRhesus posted:The problem is "people are (often) alleging illegal or unethical behavior, when in fact it isn't" or "people are demanding we make changes that will actually, on average, work to the detriment of the people they claim they want to help." First off, whether behavior is illegal is completely irrelevant (aside from the fact that the laws making unethical behavior legal should be changed). Secondly, I've been reading this thread and you have completely failed to demonstrate that the changes people have mentioned "on average, work to the detriment of the people they claim they want to help." You just keep claiming that people are wrong without anything to back you up.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:36
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Cole posted:Yeah, swell. But d&d has an unbelievably dumb definition of racism a lot of the times. I know you're probated, but for your sake and the sake of anyone else with similar views I'm going to try to explain the problem with your attitude towards this issue. Unless someone explicitly says "man, I really HATE black people!" or uses racial slurs, it's generally impossible to completely prove they have racist feelings. Despite this, we have been informed through the current and past state of society (through statistics, etc) that racism is a huge societal problem and very prevalent. So we know that a pretty significant portion of the country has racist feelings and act upon those feelings (in ways like being less likely to hire people with stereotypical "black" names, etc), even if they aren't in the KKK. So you're left with two choices. You can either try and attack attitudes and behaviors that are either racist or help to perpetuate racism in some way, or you can err on the side of assuming anyone who isn't explicitly racist is not racist. Now, here's the key point: If you're wrong sometimes in thinking that people/behavior are racist, the worst case scenario is that you hurt someone's feelings. If, on the other hand, you wrongly choose to assume people aren't being racist when they actually are, you are literally helping to perpetuate systemic racism. False positives are vastly more harmful with one of these assumptions than they are with the other. And even if they weren't, the fact that we definitely know that a huge portion of society is racist from various statistics/metrics suggests that you're probably also going to have fewer false positives with the "this person saying/doing a potentially racist thing is probably a racist" assumption. To add to the above point, remember that we are not a judge and are not punishing anyone for this stuff. When people accuse others of saying racist things they are not being fined or imprisoned. We do not need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is definitely racist before we can point out that stuff they said/did is probably racist or helps to perpetuate racism in some way.* All this being said, I can't really think of many situations outside of bad tumblr posts where people wrongly accuse others of being racist. There is almost always some legitimate reason why someone is widely accused of racism. I think part of the issue is that many people (and maybe you?) have a kind of skewed idea of what racism is. It is not necessary that you dislike black people and think that they're inferior to white people to have racist thoughts. Stereotyping a race is another way of being racist, and I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of Americans stereotype black people (and other minorities) in various ways. Also, having racist thoughts does not mean you are a terrible person; people (usually) react poorly in threads like these to the fact that people are being dishonest rather than the fact that they happened to think something racist in the first place. * edit: I felt the need to mention this because I'm pretty certain that many people would respond to my previous paragraph with "Are you saying we should presume that people are guilty?!?" Suggesting to someone that they said/did something that is offensive/harmful is not even remotely the same as finding someone guilty of a crime. I think that this is possibly the most common misconception regarding this topic that I see people make. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 07:42
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semper wifi posted:She was arrested for assaulting him which seems pretty fair given her behavior. Like most "victims" of the police she probably should have avoided physically resisting and assaulting the police, also behaving like something other than a massive prick would have helped her case significantly. Wait, I thought she was just verbally rude to the officer, not that she actually attacked him? If you're referring to her physically resisting after the officer already laid hands on her, that is a different issue and one entirely caused by the officer's inappropriate decision to be physical with her in the first place. You really need to understand that there is a huge difference between "it is not prudent to do ______" and "it is morally wrong to do _______." I don't think anyone here is arguing that it is a good idea to be disrespectful to the police. Of course it will greatly increase the chances of an officer doing terrible things to you. This doesn't change the fact that being rude to a police officer is not an action that even remotely warrants the way many people are treated as a result. Being an rear end in a top hat is not an offense that should be punished by being slammed into the ground and/or sent to jail. It seems like many people have this bizarre black/white view where "the police officer did a terrible thing" also implies "the person the police officer did a terrible thing to was a perfect person." It doesn't matter if some does something dumb; if that dumb thing is not actually a threat to the officer it does not warrant the sort of treatment frequently given in response. It does not matter if the victim is a totally dumb person with a bad attitude. Being a dumb person with a bad attitude does not mean it is okay to beat them up or send them to jail. Popular Thug Drink posted:the cop reaches in and drags bland out of her car because she wouldn't put out her cigarette, because she was upset that he was grilling her over a moving violation. the cop continually escalated this situation in a completely aggressive and unprofessional manner, so it's odd to me that you would side with the white man who was bullying a black woman for no reason There seems to be this super common belief that if someone acts in a way that isn't prudent that they deserve almost any imaginable punishment or consequence. See stuff like the Darwin Awards, where people laugh about people dying because they did dumb things (though this is obviously even worse since "being rude to a police officer in response to him inappropriately grilling you" isn't inherently dumb; it's just a bad idea in light of the fact that many officers will send you to jail for it). I honestly find it super bizarre. Like, I understand where feelings like racism come from, even if they're wrong. But this "people deserve terrible punishment/consequences for doing dumb/unwise things" view is just totally alien to me. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 08:01
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Popular Thug Drink posted:hm yes, it seems like the woman being given a traffic ticket is the unruly and aggressive party in this scenario. this is just more proof that nobody should ever speak to the police, ever, lest they start having a bad day and end up beating and arresting you because they got triggered by your lack of supreme deference This sort of reminds me of this time I got pulled over (my registration had expired). I was getting out my wallet to get my license and insurance card and the officer was like "what's taking so long? Give me your license" and I very sarcastically went "Alright, alright, here it is" in a "dude, chill the gently caress out" sort of tone of voice. Fortunately he did not seem to detect or respond to my tone, though I realized immediately after that it was not smart of me to act like that. Many people just naturally react poorly to being spoken to in the way that officer was speaking to me. Even if it may not be wise to "act disrespectful" towards a cop, it's often a natural reaction to someone treating you like poo poo for no reason. For the record, that was the only time I've ever had a cop act like an rear end in a top hat towards me, but I'm also a white man so I imagine that helps.
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Jul 23, 2015 08:14
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semper wifi posted:I see things like this as a two way street. Yeah, the cop should have kept his ego in check, handed her her ticket and walked away. That's what should have happened. The police should be better than the people they police. At the same time - he didn't do anything wrong as I understand things. It's easy to say "well the cop should've done X, Y, Z" but all that was required from Bland was some civility. He didn't do anything illegal, but her having an attitude and smoking a cigarette wasn't illegal either. He was a dick towards her and she responded negatively towards it. This was not smart of her, but at the end of the day the officer is the one that actually did something really bad/wrong - sending her to jail. Her antagonizing the cop may have been stupid (ignoring the fact that the cop was acting like an rear end as well), but it is not even remotely the same magnitude of wrong as what the cop did. semper wifi posted:I also find it extremely hard to empathize with someone who opens up a traffic stop with angry poo poo-talking. If you go around in a rage causing problems and someone ruins your day because of it I really just don't feel too badly for you, especially when your'e the one who invited the police into your life by not signalling a lane change (there's a cop behind you just turn your blinker on goddamn lady) ...and that's pretty much the gist of the problem. It seems like you can't empathize with people if you see them do something stupid/wrong (though for some reason this doesn't extend to the police). This is bad. People deserve empathy even if they do dumb poo poo. Maybe she was stressed out or something. Who knows (and honestly, who cares)? At the end of the day, nothing she did warranted the treatment she received. The only person involved who actually caused significant harm to another person is the cop. semper wifi posted:also i think in this case we should remember he took her into custody with basically no real consequence for either of them, had she not killed herself she would have pled to some misdemeanor and been on probation or something. Being taken into custody for a few days is not some insignificant punishment, especially if it's completely unnecessary. Going to jail is not a pleasant experience, and effectively sentencing someone to several lovely days is a really bad thing to do.
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Jul 23, 2015 08:24
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^^^ I think he (Hot Dog Day) just said that it's possible that he's powertripping but that we can't know for sure. There seems to be the implication that we should assume that the cop wasn't powertripping if we can't prove that he was. Let me know if I'm wrong about this, but it seems like his view is "the cop may have been a powertripping rear end in a top hat, but we can't know for sure so we shouldn't treat him like he was", which is quite different from thinking that what this cop did is definitely wrong. I really think that the core reason for peoples' bad attitude regarding the sort of incidents discussed in this thread is that there is this super prevalent view that (as I mentioned in some earlier post) if someone does something dumb, rude, or unwise that they instantly can't be empathized with and thus deserve almost any potential punishment/consequence for their actions/behavior. Like, even if they were to try, many people literally can't empathize with someone if they see the do something rude/unwise/whatever (or did so at any point in the past). There's this view of "I can't understand why this person would do something that I know to be dumb/wrong" and I think that on some level they enjoy seeing people get their "comeuppance" for doing dumb things, even if that comeuppance is getting shot in the face by a cop. I think part of the reason this is the case is that most people do not like to think of themselves as being dumb/rude/whatever, and as a result they have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of someone who they perceive to have done something bad. Like, there's this view that "I would never do what this person did" and as a result they simply cannot empathize with them at all and sometimes even seem to view them as being subhuman. I think that racism contributes to this in the sense that many people are more likely to view a black person's actions in a negative light, but that the core problem can just as freely be applied against white people. I honestly have no clue how to combat this. It seems like it must be at least partly the result of how a person is raised and whether their parents have instilled in them the importance of understanding and forgiveness towards others. It also takes at least some intelligence and imagination to be able to put yourself into the shoes of someone in very different circumstances from your own. edit: The caveat is that, for some reason, this same standard is rarely applied to the police. If a cop does something dumb or mean these same people don't seem to react in the same "this person is an idiot and I can't empathize with them" way. I guess this is due to authoritarianism or something. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 18:18
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Darko posted:You're touching on it, but the core, as mentioned earlier, is making them an "other" because it's too scary to think that it could be you. If you focus on what they did wrong or how they are different, then you don't feel like you could be in that situation and you feel safer. I definitely think that's a big part of it, but I think it goes beyond that. Even if you ignore the "you want to feel safe from being in that same situation" aspect, people still tend to respond with apathy (or, even worse, outright glee) at the prospect of people suffering dire consequences for doing something perceived as stupid/rude/whatever. I think that, at least in some cases, people derive actual pleasure from the act of being callous towards the suffering of those they view as being inferior to them in some way. It's a sort of twisted shadenfreude.
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Jul 23, 2015 18:29
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Solkanar512 posted:I see this anytime there is a story about a lawsuit or conflict as well. If the "victim" isn't perfectly polite and demure and anticipated all I think that the "truth in the middle" thing is actually a separate issue from the "can't empathize with 'bad' people and get schadenfreude from them suffering" mindset. The "well, both sides must be equally bad in some way" people at least don't seem to completely side with the police (though in practice their actions end up supporting the status quo), while the sort of people I'm talking about do (because the victim was so stupid and totally deserved to be arrested/shot/whatever). Whether the actions of the cop are good or bad isn't really relevant to the sort of person I'm talking about; these people just think "this person was so loving stupid to insult an officer and totally deserved to get their poo poo kicked in*". The officer doesn't even really have agency from their perspective - he's just a force of nature that the victim was stupid enough to provoke. The viewpoint you describe I think is more common with people who want to think of themselves as being "rational" and "unbiased" but are kind of dumb and don't understand why their reasoning is flawed. While their views are harmful in the sense that they end up supporting the status quo, they don't seem quite as, well, "hosed up" as the people who jack off about stupid/inferior people suffering. I guess the thing that just really surprises and upsets me is how incredibly common this attitude is. Because it's based in a gut feeling, there's no way to using reasoning to combat it. It stems from the basic desire for revenge - to see people who do bad/stupid things suffer for their actions. The only solution is to try and teach people to better empathize with others, but this is difficult to do with adults who are already heavily entrenched in their mindset. *I'm actually using the words of another poster here 
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Jul 23, 2015 21:49
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Obdicut posted:That's a horrible comparison. My dad used to work in a trauma center, and he said patients would attack them and spit in their faces and stuff all the time. Regarding the "is it okay to lie sometimes on official documents" topic, I think Dead Reckoning may have revealed a bit more about his perspective than he intended in that exchange. VitalSigns posted:If you sassed a doctor and he responded by murdering you on the operating table, you wouldn't see anyone lining up to go "well it sure wasn't smart to sass a doctor, they're only human too, expect to get your life wrecked if you do that, black people" ...actually I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be completely fine with that. There are many people who would think "well it was super stupid for that person to have been an rear end in a top hat to the person holding their life in their hands! Maybe they should have been more polite to the doctor!" I'm not joking in the least. There are many, many people who think that there is nothing wrong with stupidity (or at least the appearance of stupidity) resulting in "punishments" as bad as death. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 16:30
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semper wifi posted:You know for a guy hyper-focused on forgiveness, love and kumbaya poo poo you seem to spend a suspiciously large amount of your posting time pontificating about how anyone who feels actions should have consequences is dumb and bad. If you believe that someone deserves to suffer consequences as terrible as literally dying for doing dumb things, then yes - you are a bad person. Pretty much the only thing that I find unforgivable is people who, as their general mindset, believe that other people are worse than them and should suffer as a result. Though even then I would be completely willing to forgive someone for such a terrible attitude if they realized it was terrible and changed, and most importantly I don't think that they should be punished for it (beyond other people shunning them or whatever). Thinking someone is a bad person (in a way that isn't actively committing a dangerous crime) and thinking that someone should suffer dire consequences for it are completely different things. The part that you seem to have trouble understanding is that there is a huge difference between "actions do have consequences" and "actions should have consequences." You are mixing up "doing X is likely to result in Y" with "doing X should result in Y."* You also seem to fail to understand that the consequences of a bunch of these actions are not some immutable fact of reality. It is not some law of nature that police have to kill or beat the poo poo out of people who are rude to them (or even do some minor physical action like kicking them in the shin or whatever). The police should be held to a higher standard than wild animals. And there are plenty of other professions where people are treated poorly and do not respond in kind (trauma medical personnel are the most obvious option; not only are they often treated terribly and even with violence, but they also have great power over their patients). Actually, I think police might be the only profession where there's this assumption that you'll have "your day ruined" if you treat them badly. That says something bad about no one but the police themselves. No one in this thread (or at least very few people) are actually arguing that it is prudent to do the sort of things that are causing people to be shot/whatever. They are only arguing that the things these people did should (again, the key word) not result in the punishments they received. I feel like you and a couple other posters in this thread are arguing against some strawman that thinks it's a good idea to mouth off to police or whatever, but no one is actually saying that. This really shouldn't be complex. If you ask yourself "would it be okay for what this person did to be punishable by _____ in a court of law" and the answer is "no", then it is wrong and shouldn't happen. *I think this is called the is-ought fallacy or something. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 17:03
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nm posted:It was a stupid derail, but it took two to tango. It also is also counter productive because we spent 20 pages discussing an issue that was a non-issue: admissablity when we should have been discussing the lying rear end cop. Lawyers are not going to be apologize for being pedantic assholes, its in our job discription. Somehow correcting people as to what the law is made people bootlickers. This thread would be way better if people assumed that withvthe exception of the obvious trolls (and the racist), most people are approaching things here with good intentions. Attacking someone who disagrees with you or my favorite, generally agrees with you but is pointing out something wrong, is an automatic jackbooted thug lover is extremely counter productive. While I understand what you're saying here, the reason why people get so angry with ActusRhesus *is* mostly because of her tone. Her posts are almost all extremely condescending (despite not being in a position where she has access to any special expertise that couldn't be easily explained or linked to on wikipedia or something; a prosecutor isn't exactly equal to being a professor). There's also the fact that what a person chooses to talk about reveals a lot about where their underlying sympathies and opinions lie. If a person chooses to talk about literally nothing but the way people on one side of an argument are wrong*, you can be pretty sure that they are either more sympathetic to the opposing argument and/or otherwise don't mind the status quo. It's like if someone hung around in a thread about racism and posted nothing at all other than minor nitpicks about other posters making mistakes (plus a large helping of condescension); even if nothing they said was technically wrong, they've still revealed that, at the very least they have some really twisted priorities. It also crosses a line from mere condescension to flat out dishonesty when you repeatedly claim that everyone else is making a dumb argument, despite said argument having not been made for a very long time and having only been made by a couple posters. I don't even really participate much in this thread, but I have to actively resist the urge to respond to some of her posts (which I kind of wish others would do as well) just because they're so incredibly lovely and mean. Your posts manage to accomplish the same thing without being a huge rear end in a top hat. *I think she finally gave a couple things she would be okay with changing, but only after being repeatedly prodded. Also, I can only thing of one instance in this thread where people were arguing for something that wasn't constitutional, and the topic ended up being dropped.
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Aug 4, 2015 03:45
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Jarmak posted:People arguing without a hint of irony that we should judge individual people and events based on generalizations, statistics, and trends instead of examining the actual facts of the incident in a thread about racism is the best thing ever. No one is judging and convicting these people of the crime of "racism" in a court of law, dude. There is nothing wrong with people seeing something that is likely racist and saying "that's probably racist," even if they can't prove it; it's not like their statements are going to send the guy to prison. I find that this is something you and some other posters are repeatedly confused about. The worst case scenario if you call someone racist in a situation where they aren't is that you hurt their feelings (if it's at all uncertain, it's very doubtful someone would be fired for it, especially if it's someone like a police officer), while the worst case scenario if you just choose to ignore everything that isn't explicitly racist (which is effectively what you're arguing for!*) is that you are literally helping to perpetuate systemic racism. With respect to serious societal issues like racism (and other forms of bigotry) - issues that we know to exist and be widespread - the benefit to actively seeking to condemn such actions greatly outweighs whatever harm might be caused by doing so. Again, people aren't sending anyone to prison when they say "that guy is racist." That being said, I find that situations where people are wrongfully widely accused of being racist are extremely rare. I know you think you're making some hardcore zinger with posts like this, but it just makes you look silly. * I want to make it really clear that this is the effect of what you and others with similar views are arguing for. If you can never address individual racist acts that can't be 100% proved (which in the modern world represents a very large portion of overall racism), you're basically just saying "welp, nothing that can be done! we certainly don't want to risk offending someone that wasn't a legitimate racist!" And just to repeat this again (and avoid a potential pointless "rebuttal"), when I say "address individual racist acts" I am not referring to sending people to prison for doing racist things; I'm referring to societal censure. edit: ActusRhesus posted:I would probably be a lot "nicer" if I weren't constantly dog piled on. I actually do have an interest in helping people understand things without being lovely, hence the creation of the ask/tell. But saying *i* am mean and ignoring the mountains of poo poo hurled at me is disingenuous at best. Especially when it's not just me, people here do it to blarzgh too. Unless it happened at some point in the distant past of this thread that I missed, most posters never dogpiled on you for no reason (though there have been a couple posters that did seem to kind of irrationally focus on you). I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single post I've seen you make (that again wasn't the result of people demanding that you admit something is wrong and can be improved) has been along the lines of condescending one-liners - often snidely referring to how the hive mind keeps probating you or whatever. Such posts are not useful and are likely the reason why you keep getting probated. It isn't hard to avoid this; if you criticize people while acknowledging their concerns and giving your opinion on how to address them, I can assure you that the reaction would be more pleasant. Like I mentioned in the post I made, what one chooses to talk about reflects upon where their opinions lie. Even if you think that some things are bad and should be changed, for whatever reason you felt it more important/desirable to do nothing but attempt to cut down other peoples' arguments without even attempting to sympathize with their perspective (and it's this latter part that I think caused the most resentment and made people immediately assume you were defending the status quo). It's no different than someone popping into a thread about sexism and doing nothing but pointing out when feminists are using bad statistics; you would assume such a person was likely an MRA rear end in a top hat if all they did was attempt to cut down feminist arguments, right? Even if every argument they made was factually correct, you would still (hopefully) think they're an rear end in a top hat for spending 100% of their effort attempting to cut down arguments against sexism. Also, not all "tone arguments" are created equally. When people talk about tone arguments being a bad thing, they're generally referring to situations where someone has a legitimate reason to be really angry/upset and is being criticized by people who are in a position to benefit from the status quo in some way. It does not mean that you can just be a condescending rear end in a top hat without repercussions. Oh, and regarding the professor thing I was a little unclear; I wasn't saying that a law professor would be better equipped to assert their authority on this issue. I was more referring to the fact that the general topic doesn't require such a high level of knowledge and expertise that it makes sense to put more faith in someone's words just because of their profession (as opposed to, say, chemistry or something where it would make sense to assume that the general consensus of PhDs in the field was correct/the best guess). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2015 20:47
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Genocide Tendency posted:Ah yes. Dude, people have already posted evidence in this thread that the police disproportionately target minorities even after accounting for crime rates. These other problems you mention also exist and have also been repeatedly mentioned in this thread. The only reason the racism thing keeps being brought up is that there are people (well, mostly you at this point) who are still denying it. Because very few, if any, people are denying the fact that police training needs to be improved, there is no real room for discussion on that front. I actually see this debate "strategy" used a lot by intellectually dishonest people like you, where "why are you all talking about (controversial thing) instead of (uncontroversial thing)" is used as an argument despite the fact that the person making the argument is the main reason why the controversial thing keeps entering the discussion. Genocide Tendency posted:Hmmm... Maybe.. Just maybe statistics with out context doesn't tell the whole story. Actually, relevant statistics absolutely can tell the whole story. Something like "after accounting for crime rates, black people are arrested more frequently and punished more harshly" is incontrovertible proof that the criminal justice system is racist/has many racist components. The fact that many people use misleading statistics to lie doesn't change the fact that statistics can be used correctly to prove things. Also, just to make things even more clear, in many cases the racist part isn't that a black person was shot for carjacking/whatever; it's that a white person committing the same crime is much less likely to be shot under the same circumstances (as well as likely to receive a more lenient sentence if arrested).
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Aug 11, 2015 04:51
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:You can't prove things with statistics, this is like something you learn in stats 101. Google "type I/II errors" for more info. It's kind of implied that when I say "proved" I mean "the chance of this pattern occurring due to random chance is trivial." I mean, yeah, technically science rarely ever proves anything; it just shows that the chance of certain things not being the case is negligible. edit: I'll actually change what I initially said somewhat - if someone can explain what extra, uncontrolled for factor could result in the disproportionate sentencing/conviction of minorities, I would be very interested to hear it. I also acknowledge the infinitesimally small chance that minorities have been treated more poorly entirely due to chance. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Aug 11, 2015 |
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Aug 11, 2015 05:20
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^^^ You're just arguing semantics at this point; the general point is obviously "statistics can tell you useful things about a set of data."TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:No, that's not a good analogy; not being able to prove things is utterly fundamental to statistics as a science. Also it's not like we're talking about the higgs boson with a 6 sigma pval, social science studies are extremely noisy. Also it's not like there's a list of "controls", no study controls for everything- again this is why stats 101 drills it into your head you aren't proving things. Again, you can still show that things are extremely likely with statistics. And it is possible to do this with certain topics under the banner of "social sciences." Actually, some scientific topics are possibly even noisier than many social ones; trying to associate complex phenotypes with gene expression comes to mind. "You can't prove anything with statistics!" in response to people using statistics to support their position is about up there with people who take Econ 101 and think that increasing the minimum wage will automatically cause massive inflation or something. People take some point that is technically true and then misapply it. If there is something wrong with a study's methodology, it should be possible to explain what that is. Speaking of which, I would also like for whatever the study was to be posted again so we could look at it. I remember it being convincing, but I can't expect anyone else to be convinced without seeing/evaluating it themselves.
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Aug 11, 2015 05:39
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ActusRhesus posted:I'm surprised no one has yet pointed out that a news article reporting that someone is suing for allegations of whistleblower retaliation is not the same as an article saying said lawsuit was successful. While a single accusation certainly isn't proof, if you have a large number of accusations of the same nature you can be pretty certain that the thing in question is, in fact, happening. Also, not all accusations/crimes are created equal in terms of how likely they are to be true. If a woman accuses a man of rape, it is more likely that she is telling the truth than that she isn't (of course, this alone shouldn't be enough to get the accused convicted). I imagine people accusing their employers of wrongful firing is also a thing where justified/true accusations are more common than false ones (I'm open to evidence that this isn't the case, but I find it unlikely that people would frequently lie about retaliatory firing/punishment by their employers*). As an analogy to the situation in question, if you have a very large number of women claiming to have been raped, then you can be quite certain that a lot of women were raped, even if some of those women might be lying. (This is actually a kind of obvious logical thing; you would be right if someone were speaking of a single incident, but when you extrapolate out to multiple incidents it is extremely likely that many/most will be true.) *As a side note to this, I believe that it's generally better as a rule of thumb to default to siding with employees over employers, since they usually have far less power in the relationship. It's not like the employer would be going to prison if found guilty, so there's no need for some extremely high burden of proof. The worst case scenario would almost always hurt the employee (who is losing his job) than the employer (who might be forced to retain a bad employee or provide some financial compensation).
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Aug 15, 2015 07:51
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ActusRhesus posted:Actually, while I don't buy the "false accusation epidemic" touted by the men's rights lobby, false rape allegations are not uncommon at all, especially in the military and college environments where you have trainings that literally teach "one drink of alcohol = no consent" and people who enter into ill-advised consensual sexual encounters now incorrectly believe it was "rape" because they had consumed 2 zimas. This does't mean they were lying. they probably do feel victimized. And maybe on a moral level they were, but it's not rape. Ergo false report. What in the world are you talking about? No one is saying that allegation is proof of guilt in individual instances. It is just simply extremely likely (barring some really unusual influence/motivation) that if a bunch of accusations for a particular crime/action exist that the crime is happening to some of those people. The chance that 500 people who make rape accusations are all (or even most) lying is negligible, and the same applies to accusations of workplace/hiring discrimination. The fact that false accusations occur is completely irrelevant to the claim that "the crime/action in question is occurring," unless you can give some reason why large numbers of people would all be lying about something. When many accusations of something exist, the burden of proof is far stronger on the person who is claiming that the accused action isn't happen (or is happening to a negligible extent). It's also important to take into account he expected outcomes of assuming the crime/action is taking place vs assuming it isn't. If wrong about the former, the worst case is that maybe some people waste some time/money trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. If wrong about the latter, you're allowing things like workplace discrimination and retaliatory firing to continue. A world where people wrongly assume that retaliatory firing is taking place isn't nearly as bad as a world where people wrongly assume that it never takes place. Again - no one is going to prison just because you assume that - broadly speaking - a crime is taking place. No one is assuming that specific people are guilty on this basis (well, I guess some people might, but at least not me or most of the other people in this thread). I also noticed in this post that you seem to have a really easy time imagining dishonest people filing false accusations of workplace discrimination/wrongful firing, while being unable or unwilling to take seriously the alternative. Have you considered that *gasp* you might actually be biased in favor of the sort of people you work with and associate with on a regular basis? Everyone has bias; the problem is when people refuse to acknowledge their own.
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Aug 15, 2015 20:50
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VitalSigns posted:So what do you think we should do with a kid who doesn't realize he can end his interrogation at any time by demanding a lawyer before it continues? As a good faith gesture I will assume "convict him because he's so goddamned stupid" is not your true opinion and was just a lighthearted joke to relieve the mood This kind of gets at the core of disagreement here and is why these arguments will never go anywhere. The more "pro-police/justice system" (for lack of a better term) posters in this thread hold a view that many people are just bad (or stupid) people and that if someone is bad/stupid then they deserve pretty much anything; after all, it's easy to not be a bad person (from their point of view, at least), so they don't have an excuse! My view is that, with rare exceptions (like people who are actually sociopaths), some people are not just randomly worse than others and spontaneously decide to do bad things. People are the product of the environments they grow up in. The fact that we see increased crime rates among the poor is just further evidence that this is the case. It seems inherently immoral to be enthusiastically (this is pretty clear from a lot of the language used by people, like the ActusRhesus post VitalSigns is referring to) in favor of punishing these people. The only possible argument that would still make this view justified is "even though it's due to their circumstances, we still must give them harsh punishments to reduce crime", but it seems like all the evidence I've seen does not point towards this being the case (more rehabilitative justice systems seem to result in lower recidivism*), and at the very least the burden should be on the people advocating harsher punishment to justify why it is necessary. While I believe that this "some people are bad and deserve pretty much any punishment in light of them being bad" view is morally reprehensible, it's not really one that you can convince anyone to change in an argument like this. *Just to add to this, you could argue "they don't have lower recidivism due to their rehabilitative justice system, but instead due to other factors (lower overall poverty, etc)," but in that case you still know that more rehabilitative and less punitive justice systems don't result in more crime, so why in the world would you still not prefer them over more punitive ones? (The answer is that you don't care if "bad people" are punished for being "bad people.")
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Aug 28, 2015 17:04
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Shukaro posted:Yeah there's not much benefit to starting a discussion when one side is just posting "I hate cops let's waive due process," strawmen, gotcha's, and anecdotes no matter what gets said or how civil everyone tries to remain. The problem you (and a bunch of other posters) seem to have is that, on a public internet forum, many people will post things and, as a result, some of those things will be dumb or incorrect. There's this one useful tip that I think might greatly improve your forum experience: ignore bad posts and respond to good ones! There are only few posters in this thread who post or have posted dumb/wrong things, but it seems like you and others see those posts and use them as an excuse to not address the better posts. Hell, even if there were only one or two good posters, that would still be enough to have a discussion. Instead, you seem content to just point at the bad ones and go "heh look at these dummies, if only they had correct opinions like me." I mean, if you don't feel like having your beliefs about a certain topic challenged (or don't feel like having an argument) that is totally fine, but if that's the case you just shouldn't post in a thread about that topic.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:04
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