G*d I hope we can’t reduce all human interaction to “math” that would make an awful sad world. ;-( and aren’t they trying to make computers more human?
Math is beautiful and magical and has the potential to explain the mysteries of universe. Even with my extremely limited skills, I understand that.
I’m not sure I want everything in the world reduced to an explanation 
probably because i grew up in a family where I was the only non-engineer…some things are best left to the imagination
@dstark I’m sure both Adam and Paul are going to say something very soon. This story is far from finished.
I think it’s time for me to leave this conversation permanently. Too many people writing too many disturbing
things for my taste. We’ve had people arguing that forced an*l sex isn’t “brutal” rape. Now we’ve got people
openly cheering that some poor kid (Adam) was sexually assaulted so that this Emma person can emerge
as some kind of heroine to symbolize a movement. I only hope that whatever true facts exists that can emerge will actually emerge.
Before making two final points, I’ll openly state my biases - I think Emma is quite probably telling the truth
and I commend her bravery in reporting her (alleged) rape to the authorities, but I think her current behavior
is very bad and it makes me not want to support her.
- I would be cautious about putting too much weight on the use of probability math. As Dr. Fang apparently
alluded to, doing it right is very complicated and a proper Bayesian treatment requires knowing prior and
conditional probabilities that nobody knows. Everyone’s common sense tells them that an additional
independent accusation probably means Paul is guilty, and fancy math won’t tell you much more than that. Multiplying 1/2 by itself a few times ain’t the right way to do it.
Arguments like “the fact that she sent friendly text messages means that she must be lying” can certainly
be recast in conditional Bayes probability terms … and trust me, you won’t like the result. Over 1100
college students each year have large enough mental health challenges that they kill themselves. Given that
well established statistic about the mental health of college students, think about the following question:
In the age of Kim Kardashian, what are the odds that some college student, somewhere in the US,
sometime in the last few years, would stage a false accusation so that they could achieve revenge or fame? They ain’t zero.
- Your zeal for justice for victims of sexual assault is admirable. But I would be extremely cautious about
ignoring centuries of painfully learned lessons about the need for due process and protecting the rights
of all parties, particularly the accused. Without a doubt our systems can be improved. “Cutting down the laws” to “get after the devil” may feel good; however, people in responsibility can’t succumb to that temptation, legally or otherwise.
It may help win a battle or two. I’m not a historian, but I can assure you of one thing that history teaches us -
getting rid of due process protections will not redound to the benefit of the weak and the less powerful.
I guarantee that women will end up in a worse place.
Oh I think the story is finished regardless of the new person to the media fray and how he/she self identifies. Mainstream media would be afraid to touch this one until it’s adjudicated with a ten foot pole.
@al2simon I think you make good points. But what is bad about Emma’s current behavior?
ilovethecity: Here’s what I wrote in previous posts:
From my vantage point, I’d say Emma had at least some deliberate calculation behind her strategy.
I believe she deliberately publicized his name. Here’s why …
I can’t say I blame her for being smart about it if Paul in fact raped her, but I’ve heard lawyers discuss employing strategies like this and it’s really not something a 19 year old would think of on her own. It was a calculated way to leak his name while avoiding a lawsuit.
Not quite as bad as deliberately leaking the name of a rape victim, but it’s still pretty bad behavior, and it’s despicable behavior if the guy is innocent (as he has been judged to be, at least so far).
Alsimon2, If you are talking about me, I do not want to get rid of due process. I have said that many times.
Other than that, thanks for your post.
I read this and wondered how to answer it, then realized there is only one way. And that is to point out that obviously you think everyone lives and interprets everything like you do, which is not even remotely close to useful in these situations. I am not kidding either.
There is a reason things, such as the 50 Shades of Grey, are popular and that is because a lot of people do some weird stuff, and they consent to weird stuff. Yes, even college students consent and do weird stuff, even if done stupidly.
As for the holding down and crying, you conveniently look over the fact that at the time, even the accuser did not see these as non-consenual acts and as a signal of her being non-consenual. The accuser admits this by clearly stating that she reached that determination “months later.” You are projecting feelings and thoughts to Accuser #2’s actions that even she said she did not have at the time. That is a rather revisionist history of Accuser #2 to get to your position that she was non-consenual at that time, something even she said she did not view as such at the time.
Even more interesting is this concept of what someone says and does somehow comes with a “Let me think about if I really mean this in this way date” where the person can then change their minds as to what he interprets as his own actions. The only end result would be that people will not trust what another is saying and doing with them because in the future the other party can get a free conversion card of sorts to think differently and then accuse the other of something, which both did voluntarily. Now, that would be a really weird world.
Your argument that she consented to some acts is that sometimes some people consent to them? That’s worse than your usual argument. I guess there’s no such thing as rape at all.
Yes, some people consent to X. Other people do not.
People say, “If you REALLY believed it was rape, you’d go to the police, you slut.” So she goes to the police. And now people get to say, “You scheming ■■■■■, you only went to the police to get his name out there.” She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.
Oh, the same Bayesian treatment that undercounted polar bears by 25%, when all they had to do was go airborne and actually count them. It was the Bayesian models that indicated a shrinking, unstable population in parts of Canada, only to be wrong. And we actually had supposedly good conditional probabilities for these and were still wrong. Cannot imagine the result in this case when the conditionals are just made up; guess, then you get the answer you want. Hint - no one will trust any of the calculations.
If there are two independent allegations, the guy is guilty. The odds of a second independent allegation are so low and then for the second allegation to be false…To be that unlucky…
You can be 25 percent off…and the guy is still in trouble.
CF - I understand your point. You haven’t heard a peep of complaint from me about students like the Stanford girl, the Vanderbilt girl, etc. who went to the police. I truly think they deserve praise. And I’d feel the same way if Emma had just gone to the police and the college. It’s the mattress performance art piece and the associated PR she’s engaged in, *after the guy’s been found not guilty, that I object to.
I’d ask you the following: Scout’s honor, how would you view it if a guy who was judged guilty of rape by a college (51% preponderance standard) and thought he was wronged had engaged in the same stunts? Leaking a rape victim’s name is despicable; persecuting her on campus would be despicable as well. I would be outraged. I really think I’m being very consistent here.
dstark - I don’t object to your conclusion about multiple accusations, but I do object to giving the illusion of a scientific basis for the analysis based on an misleading approach. Statistics / econometrics is my own field of study; and like CF’s husband I can also put 3 letters after my name / 2 letters before it.
Awc, you don’t need complicated probabilistic calculations to demonstrate that two independent accusations means he is almost certain to be guilty. All you need to do is think about the likelihood that two different accusers independently would pick your guy, maliciously or by poor memory, to falsely accuse. False accusations may or may not be unlikely, but two false accusations on the same innocent guy? Unlikely.
Dr. Fang and I like to play with math because it’s fun, but as al2simon says, "Everyone’s common sense tells them that an additional independent accusation probably means Paul is guilty, and fancy math won’t tell you much more than that. "
al2simon: I hope you don’t leave the thread.
Either Emma was raped, in which case the mattress project is very brave. imho, or she was not raped and Paul has had his life seriously and negatively impacted for no reason. I don’t want to ever say any young person’s life is destroyed. I don’t believe that.
If Emma was raped by Paul, and others were raped or sexually assaulted in some way by Paul, and Emma’s media attention encourages those other survivors to come forward, that would seem to me a good thing. I do not hope anyone was raped or assaulted. If Adam exists and his story is true, I think it would be an excellent thing to have verification. Then we have more evidence for the possibility Emma is not lying.
People have said this is all “he said, she said” but if there are independent reports about the same person that becomes much less likely.
I believe Emma has started a discussion among her peers about rape that may not have existed before and that is a very good thing. She provides a very strong role model, in my opinion. However, if Paul is innocent and she made this up, that is evil.
Many times it is impossible to ever know the truth. In this case, it seems it may be possible, if Adam exists and if he comes forward with an accusation that can be substantiated in some way. If there is a record of him making a complaint of sexual assault against Paul to a group to which they both belonged a year before Emma claims she was assaulted, that is very important in my mind.
I believe we have already agreed survivors coming forward are heroic.
If Paul were my son, I’d be moving heaven and earth to protect him. If I believed him innocent, he would have been following the best legal advice I could find to clear his name since the mattress project began.
If Adam were my son, I would be concerned only for his well-being and not encouraging him to report unless I felt it was in HIS best interests.
Bad examples. Neither of them went to the police. The two grad students called the police while the Stanford victim was still unconscious, and the Vanderbilt victim didn’t even realize she had been raped until the police convinced her by, IIRC, showing her the video.
He wouldn’t be able to do it on campus because he’d be gone. But if he’d been held responsible for a lesser offense, so he was still there? This is a tough one for me. I don’t think the cases are parallel, because we convict a person of a crime because we believe they did it, but we exonerate someone either if we believe they didn’t do it, or we don’t have enough evidence to know that they did it but we believe it’s possible they did it. Intuitively I’d say I’d stop the guy. But that’s inconsistent, and I don’t want to be inconsistent.
Alsimon2, my approach… Multiplying 50% over and over. It was wrong. I was too conservative.
Because unlike flipping coins, I did not take into account the odds of a second event occuring. Right?
I also used 50/50. The FBI says 8 percent of the women lie. I didn’t make up that 8 percent number.
I used 50/50.
I like to be conservative.
I am listening. I always listen.
You aren’t comfortable with any numbers?
Or you are more concerned becsuse this guy can be the outlier?
You work in economics? How precise can you get?
CF - Actually I was referring to the Stanford girl from Alaska, who I believe went to the police in Alaska. You’re right about the Vanderbilt girl, but she did help prosecute her attackers. She’s really very brave. Anyway, regardless of the specific facts I think it’s fair to say that you’ve never seen me complain about a woman filing a police report other than in this case.
As to the hypothetical, perhaps you can imagine he’s suspended for a semester and returns back to campus. Perhaps he was put on probation for a lesser offense but “knows” he was railroaded. Doesn’t really matter anyway; somehow he’s back on campus.
As I’m sure you know, with the 50% standard the distinction between innocent and not guilty is pretty small, theoretically speaking at least.
How important is it to be consistent? Well, you could take Emerson’s view “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but I think we’d all like to be better than that. I think the analogies are pretty close. I feel passionately about a school needing to protect an “innocent” (at least so far) guy from being persecuted for the same reason I feel passionately about a school needing to protecting students from sexual assault independently of the court system. The underlying duty for those in positions of responsibility to protect our young people is the same to me.
(Having said all this, please please know that I think Paul is probably guilty. But there are other important principles at stake too.)
alh - I agree with much of what you’ve written, other than the part about the mattress project. If I somehow had a crystal ball and was 100% sure that Paul was guilty then of course I’m human and I’d overlook Emma’s bad behavior. But since he’s been judged not guilty I don’t think what’s she’s doing is right, whether it’s brave or not.
What would I do if Paul were my son and I was pretty sure he was guilty? I can’t answer that one. May God save me from ever being in that position.
dstark - several flaws with your analysis. Here’s a large and amusing one - what are the prior odds that some college student, somewhere in the US, sometime in the last few years, would stage a set of false accusations so that they could achieve revenge or fame? If Emma were a random student handed to you a priori, then the prior odds of her doing this would be very tiny. Instead, you are scanning the national headlines looking for a sensational case that occurred over the the past few years. You could easily be off by three, four, or five orders of magnitude in your prior odds estimate of this alternative. You should also condition on the fact that Columbia found him innocent, that she’s a performance artist, etc.
awcntb - regarding your polar bear thing - it’s possible you may know this, but as my advisor would say, all rational people are Bayesians. (That’s a dig at frequentists; it’s what passes for humor among statisticians). The problem isn’t Bayesian statistics. It’s people using bad models and bad data to arrive at the results they want to arrive at.