91–100 of 184 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Deception leads to false convictions." How?
I can't tell if you're being willfully dense or serious. If you're deceiving people and pressuring them to lie in order to close a case, they will say anything to be released, potentially not knowing the implications.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't care about reducing false negatives, then the ideal policy is simply to abolish prisons because that results in zero falsely imprisoned people.
They said they don't think it's essential to reduce false negatives, presumably from current levels. That's quite different than your reducto ad absurdum.
They laid out two scenarios with 5 people stealing candy.
A. 0% false positive; 40% false negative
B. 20% false positive; 20% false negative (or maybe 4 people convicted with 1 innocent.)
Either way, the false negative % decreased, and it seemed like the point was that they viewed A as morally superior (at the expense of higher false negatives).
Overall, sure. You don't have to necessarily decrease the false negative rate, however, it's something that ideally doesn't go up, all else equal.
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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_...
This doesn’t show what the false positive number is from African Americans or Latinos.
If police brutality numbers are higher against black and brown persons, I’d assume the false positive number for convictions is awful especially in the Southern US.
Bias against the poor and minorities isn’t limited to police but extends to juries, judges and prosecutors sadly.
What you need is for the cigarette to have enough time in contact with right concentration of vapours (2% to 8% by volume). Too little but also too much and you will not get it ignited.
Here is a handy table listing necessary concentrations: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-l...
Now, if you just drop the cigarette into a bucket of gasoline it will not ignite. This is because on a typical small pool/bucket of gasoline the layer with the right concentration of vapours is very thin and the cigarette does not fly long enough through it to ignite it before it reaches the surface and gets completely doused.
There is couple of ways this can be prevented, the easiest is if you let the cigarette lay close to the pool of gasoline but not exactly within it. Drop it on the part of ground that only has very little gasoline on it so that the cigarette will not immediately get doused with it and can lay there waiting for the right concentration of vapours to happen. Bonus points if part of the cigarette get damp with gasoline.
Another way is if the ground is hot and there is a lot of vapours. Or if there is very little wind. Or if the pool is somehow enclosed so that a fairly thick layer of vapour can form before it gets blown.
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Deception can lead to false confessions (people's memories are very malleable) or plea bargains (accept 2 years vs risking 15 years).
Aren't those false confessions usually the result of the other tactics (long interrogations, intimidation, etc)? I'm wondering if there's some data on deception without these other factors. Even plea bargains aren't a bad thing except if they're abused.
That is definitely not required for a false confession. I don't have stats handy, but for another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33146157) I was reading up on the Dutch Wikipedia article on false confessions. Reasons for false confessions given there (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valse_bekentenis) are:
- Feeling guilty for what happened, even if it's not your fault
- To protect the actual perpetrator
- To receive benefits such as contact with one's family, stopping the interrogation, sentence reduction, or to prevent a loved one from also being (further) prosecuted
- Due to a pathological need for attention or sensationalism
- Thinking you are guilty due to memory problems or other psychological issues such as delusions
In one case I heard in de podcast Napleiten, someone gave a false confession because the interviewers said they had video evidence, saying something along the lines of "if you have it on video then I guess I must have done it". She was a teenager, been interviewed for hours on end, and had barely slept the night before in the cell (after she came to the police the day before, expecting to clear up this apparent mix-up where she appeared on some wanted list). The public prosecutor brought a signed confession before the court.
The Wikipedia article lists as measures that can lead to further pressure for a false confession: long interrogations, interrogations at unexpected moments, preventing rest or sleep, providing gruesome footage of the event, raising one's voice, saying they can prove it anyway so it is useless to deny it, and obviously things like actual torture (which I'd say sleep deprivation should also count as) or threats thereof. Some of these things might happen inadvertently, such as if someone is already dead on their feet due to no fault of the police's, or if they don't know/realize that discussing gruesome footage is a risk factor for a false confession.
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Cigarette , not a match, which is an important detail. Gasoline absolutely will ignite if you drop a burning match on it (assuming the match doesn't go out as it's falling). If a movie shows a close-up slow motion shot of a match hitting the ground+igniting gasoline, it's probably "real", but the larger shot of the building or whatever going up is filmed separately. They usually use propane/natural gas for large fire…
Ah yes, good point. So what is it different about a match and a cigarette? Is the latter always successful?
So, what happened to the police officers that tortured multiple suspects across multiple cases?
A couple things misleading about the title. 1) Mythbusters wasn’t aware of this case 2) His confession under duress was the major factor in the release > In 2019, the appellate court granted John post-conviction relief on the grounds of actual innocence — a rarity in Illinois — largely based on the abuse used to coerce a false confession from John.
The insulin inventor wasn't aware of millions of diabetic people either. MythBusters's episode was the starting point for him. The title is okay.
He already had an attorney helping appeal his case when he saw the episode. It's making a tiny part of his lengthy story the main theme, but that's not a huge issue.
> In 2021, Illinois and Oregon became the first states to ban the use of deception during interrogations of minors ... Is there any other modern democracy that allows deception as a method of interrogation to the same extent as the US? In my country, Germany, deception during interrogations is forbitten even for adults. There exist only some minor exceptions, for example, that prior wrong ideas of the suspects may be…