Oh, not this bollocks again about whether someone knows what they think. I apologise if my idiom was too impenetrable for you, but please don’t be precious. When I say “buggered if I know” I mean I don’t know whether he did it or not - not that I don’t know whether I think he did it or not. Are you like this all the time?
The logical conclusion is that if no-one’s got anything except some flimsy story or other which wouldn’t last five minutes in court, then I’m happy to conclude what a court would conclude under such circumstances, which is that he didn’t do it and I’m not going to convict him of it, even informally, as long as no-one’s got anything better than that to bring to the table. Make it an actual formal accusation, and produce some evidence that actually bears a little examination, and I might actually revise my opinion in accordance with the facts, which hopefully any reasonable person would consider doing. Meanwhile, what I’m seeing is that in certain quarters there are people who really, really want this to be rape, and even if it did come to an acquittal in court they would be taking the view that he is a rapist and has got away with it.
So only convicted rapists are worth discussing? Given the nature of rape and the difficulty of making a conviction, you’ve pretty much cut talking about rape out of society. Rapists everywhere thank you!
Indeed, but that includes you and apparently jtgain, and what’s weird is that you appear misleading yourselves. It is very basic error you appear to be making.
The first thing you have to establish in any such argument is that there is a statistically significant correlation between the sets of data. You have provided nothing of the sort, even though you seem to think you have.
You have only proven the trivial, that given X consensual sexual encounters and Y nonconsensual sexual encounters, and given X >> Y, the probability is great that any sexual encounter chosen at random will be consensual. But that’s not the claim you are attempting to prove, as it equally applies to the situation if we replace sex with money.
You are not only mistaking correlation for causation, but you have yet to establish correlation in the first place. Arguments like yours are used all the time to cause people to stumble.
But, to be honest, it doesn’t bother me as much if you do it. But I believe jtgain is a trial lawyer. And I hope he isn’t making arguments like that, or he’s part of the problem.
Forgot to add:
And, yes, if you think I’m the one being stupid, I invite you to prove me wrong. Start with proving that the number of times I have willingly given money to someone makes it more likely that, when I claim I’ve been robbed, I really haven’t.
Sure, if you randomly pick all from a list of all the times the amount of money I have has decreased, you are overwhelmingly likely to find that it was consensual. But that has no statistically significant bearing on whether or not this current situation is a robbery.
You cannot willy-nilly take a claim based on multiple trials and apply it to a specific trial. That’s a basic statistical error.
Even if it is granted that a random prostitute-involved sexual encounter is more likely to be consensual than a random virgin-involved sexual encounter, it does not follow from this (not even a little bit) that a prostitute who accuses a man of rape is more likely to be lying than a virgin accusing a man of rape. The fact of the accusation obviates the applicability of generalizations from the base rate just described. The appropriate reference class isn’t “sexual encounters involving such a person” but “rape accusations by such a person.”
Okay, then. Cosby appears to have raped at least one woman, due to the number of independent allegations. Is putting “appears to have” in from of one’s opinion enough to make it factual?
TSS may be getting hysterical, but I think adhering to the legal standard of reasonable doubt is untenable, too. There are too many allegations for me to dismiss it, just like TSS said in the original thread.
And I will say that adhering to the legal standard of reasonable doubt does not make you a “decent person.” It’s a legal standard because what the law can do is harsh. What I or you can do is not very harsh, so we need not be held to that standard. We work with less certain information all the time.
I think, if TSS would calm down, he’d realize that most of us agree with what he thinks, even if you don’t.
Dudes and Dudettes, you are welcome to imagine me frothing at the mouth if it floats your boat in any way. But “hysterical” is politically incorrect because of the feminine root. I think I’m being offensive. In this thread I’m deliberately trying to be offensive. Monty seems to get that.
Adhering to the legal standard of criminal reasonable doubt when the only case that was ever brought was a civil “preponderance of the evidence” (more than half) and there are no cases on the horizon is a gesture that avoids all social responsibility to denounce the truly disgusting past conduct of Bill Cosby. When that is combined with calling all the women with such accusations “liars” that reaches the level of a despicable defender or apologist.
Me calling out those despicable defenders is just that. Mere words. It does not rise to anywhere near the level of what Bill Cosby has done. (Perhaps my giving Monty some of the shit he has been dishing out isn’t fair, but he is a chief Cosby defender here, so take a chill pill and relax, s’all good. He has it coming and he will be no worse for the wear. And if he is permanently damaged, well then, figuratively, fuck him, like what he is saying about the Cosby victims: too bad.)
We did the same thing a month or two ago when the Israelis were bombing the shit out of Gaza civilian apartment buildings and I pointed out that those actions and others committed by the Israelis towards Gazans and Palestinians were against the conventions against genocide, a position widely held throughout the world outside the United States and Israel, but one that draws deep condemnation in the US and draws out the sophists, propagandists and fact waivers. Motherducking scum genocide deniers. And yes, I still consider that poster to be the lowest poster on the SDMB and a denier of a genocide just like David Irving. An ongoing genocide, so the denial helps it continue.
In both instances, you don’t get your own facts. The facts in the real world are the ones that exist. You don’t get your own “American expectionalist” or celebrity get-out-of-morality-free-card for genocide or drugging and raping.
If my words are so clearly more offensive and definitive to someone than the real violent facts of the world based on a mountain of evidence and the deep immorality of such acts, then I’m glad that my words offended you so much. I’m stunned that my words on a message board can offend so much more than these real monstrous repeated crimes in the real world, that you waive away the facts and redefine morality and law, but if you guys really hold the opinion that Gaza isn’t a crime and Cosby didn’t rape, then you truly do live in a fantasy world that gives my mere words on a message board more power than criminal acts. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
These crimes disgust and sicken me because of the harm they cause real live human beings. They do not deserve to suffer in silence. They do not deserve to have the fact of their crimes denied, or redefined.
And if you sons-of-bitches can’t see that, then I’ll enjoy, figuratively speaking of course, kicking you in the crotch, taking your hair, smashing your smirking face onto the pavement again and again and insulting your stupidity and cruelty because you have the opinions of the kinds of assholes who ignore violent crimes.
And I don’t do it because I wanna get laid, I’ll do it because I enjoy insulting dishonest shit-stains like Monty and that other propagandist. I really enjoy it. I won’t be silent. I will accuse the propagandists of mealy mouthed pettifogging in the face of violence.
And never the twain shall meet… because it seems you really think that once someone’s been accused, then they’re either going to be a convicted rapist or a rapist who got away with it, which doesn’t suggest any possibility that you and I can reach any kind of a consensus.
Also I don’t believe I said anything about what was and wasn’t worth discussing, so hysterical nitwits everywhere thank you!
There are plenty of accusations that don’t, IMHO, hold water. But by looking at available information and using my own judgement, I think it’s pretty likely that his accusers are telling the truth.
What is dishonest is that you spent a hour writing your true feelings in several paragraphs and then edited them out because they exposed what you really felt and only gave us one sentence of crap. I didn’t get to see it, and you only let it exist on the internet for a few moments, but that was a true picture of your projecting ugly rape defending heart.
It’s really simple and you are trying to use sophistry to deny the obvious.
Forget the labels. If we have two people, one who has historically consented to sex 99+% of the time it is offered, and the second, nearly 0% of the time it is offered, which one was more likely to consent to a particular sexual act than the other?**
If the “99%” person claims that she was raped, isn’t it somewhat fair to point out that she normally consents to sex with anyone and wonder why this time was different?
If the “0%” person claims that she was raped, given her track record, isn’t it likely that she didn’t consent this time given that she has never consented before?
Would you concede it is more likely for the 0% er? If you say that they are equally likely, then my point is proven: you are dedicated to your cause, no matter how silly it looks.
The “transfer of money” analogy is horribly flawed. Nearly every single person transfers money with any willing provider of goods or services that the first person wants. No moral implications or no hesitation on anyone’s part.
Sex is not like that. Most people aren’t having sex in mercantile establishments. Most people have sex with their spouse or significant others. Some will have casual sex, but even in those scenarios, there is a sort of a vetting process where there is mutual attraction, no existing relationship that would make such a thing unlikely, an empty house to do it in, no early work in the morning, etc.
It’s not an “I think you are attractive. I think you are attractive as well. Sex happens” transaction like buying and selling goods and services. So the baseline level of consent is different. With money transactions, I will consent whenever I think the deal is good. For sex, most people will consent with some hesitation. (And keep in mind that this consent is the lynchpin of what we are trying to prove).
When you have a person who consents, above and beyond what a typical person would consent, then her allegation of no consent would likely be viewed with skepticism. If you have a person who consents far, far less than a typical person, you view her allegation of a lack of consent with more belief.
In a robbery situation, the baseline for belief is that everyone will make exchanges based upon mutual agreement. Everyone. Nuns, prostitutes, sinners and saints alike.
I suppose if you could amend your hypothetical to include groups of people who avoided any type of purchases or bartering, then I would admit that those people were less likely to be involved in a consensual transaction. Likewise if you could show a group of people who usually threw their money around with reckless abandon, paying thousands of dollars for packs of chewing gum and then claimed that they were robbed because they claimed they didn’t get value for their money, then I would be less likely to believe that group.
Otherwise, the analogy fails.
**No you can’t use the standard of “a sexual act where rape is claimed.” The rape allegation is part of the credibility of the accuser, which is what we are trying to prove. By including it in the statistic, you are purposely overfitting the data.
You claim to be a lawyer, but your debating skills seem to leave much to be desired.
May I ask where you got your law degree from?
Also, since you seem to feel so passionately about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, perhaps you could tell us why you referred to “the Gazans and the Palestinians”?
You do realize the Gazans are Palestinians don’t you?