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MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

innocenceproject.org

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Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#31

Post by pehtis »

mlindner wrote: post #10
walrus01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solv…

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

About your first point, MAD was actually developed by John von Neumann and there is nothing accidental about it. 'He also "moved heaven and earth" to bring MAD about.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Mutual_assure...

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#32

Post by dghughes »

mlindner wrote: post #5

This reminds me of how people get angry at me whenever I poke holes in the science of movies. Movies affect people's ideas of what is possible and what is impossible. This is why I'm also quite against, in the general case, post-apocalyptic movies that predict a future based on non-science impossible things happening. Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a…

I find explosions are the worst specifically the sound of them. Far away exploding things don't make a sound the instant the explosive explodes there's a delay. What funny is the delay makes it dramatic it's intuitive to humans far away means delay.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#33

Post by klyrs »

mlindner wrote: post #10
walrus01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solv…

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

> The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear that made many of the things in the tv series possible.

Assuming you're talking about the Epstein Drive and not the protomolecule... it didn't suddenly appear, it was invented. And, surprisingly enough, it's way closer to realistic than most scifi.

http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-expanses-epstein-dri...

> The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining scene).

What labor laws cover the asteroid belt today? Or, closer to home, the moon? If an earthly nation claims some territory out there its own and seeks to enforce the law, that's one thing. But what if a private company sends workers out there in unclaimed space? Humanity hasn't had access to such a lawless frontier in centuries, but we've got a lot of ugly history to look back on. Civil rights are not won by optimists, they're won through bloody and protracted fights. Look no further than Apple to see that companies in today's economy are still fully on board with slavery and sweatshops, and Apple is one of the "good guys" known for holding vendors' feet to the fire over human rights abuses.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#34

Post by dghughes »

Curb Your Enthusiasm was filming an episode during a baseball game. A man accused of killing someone walked into frame as part of the crowd and that was proof of his location at the time of the crime.

YouTube video of 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V5Cj8d43Yw

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#35

Post by pkrotich »

What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many cases of ineffective representation when the accused cannot afford a high powered attorney.

Yes - you should be scared of ordinary prosectutors in suits doing their "best" job more than a gang member for example! They want are motivated to win at all cost... short of obviously illegal ways.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#36

Post by pstuart »

hanniabu wrote: post #15

> Deceptive tactics — like offering leniency in exchange for a confession or falsely telling children they can go home if they confess — have been identified as risk factors for false confessions, and young people are especially vulnerable to falsely confessing as a result of these tactics. The great american justice system

The American Legal System. Justice is for sale.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#37

Post by Izkata »

mlindner wrote: post #10
walrus01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solv…

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

> The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create the situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an accident of historical happenstance and now that we know about it, we wouldn't try to re-create it.

I haven't seen The Expanse, but "try" doesn't seem to come into it: We are very close to that situation right now with NATO and Russia.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#39

Post by caminante »

pkrotich wrote: post #35

What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many cases of ineffective representation w…

False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the analysis.

Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#40

Post by gridspy »

pehtis wrote: post #31
mlindner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

About your first point, MAD was actually developed by John von Neumann and there is nothing accidental about it. 'He also "moved heaven and earth" to bring MAD about.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Mutual_assure...

Yes, but in response to the soviet threat.

> [The Soviets] believed that whoever had superiority in these weapons would take over the world, without necessarily using them. He was afraid of a "missile gap" and took several more steps to achieve his goal of keeping up with the Soviets

(This is an except from the parent's wikipedia link)

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