On Wednesday, June 26, 2013, Fool wrote: > > Goethe's arguments: > >> Was thinking about this, it's interesting that this win attempt goes >> along with our earlier discussion on legal versus mathematical. In a >> mathematical sense, one could say that it was "equally likely or >> unlikely" that omd sent the message based applying the principle of >> indifference to omd's claim. But in a legal sense, one must establish >> where the burden of proof lies. So far, the default assumption has >> been "assume each new email address is from a different person". Omd >> questions the default assumption, but with testimony that does not >> sufficiently establish a preponderance of evidence. Therefore, stick >> with the default assumption (that the message came from someone other >> than omd). >> > > Clearly the presumption is of course that the Undead is not a Voter. >
Although there are no appeals, I do strenuously object to this judgement. The default assumption is the default because it is usually accurate. Unless you believe that my brother and I are not in control of the theagoranundead Gmail account, something which I could verify if necessary but which I thought would be fairly obvious, you should agree that it is clear (>95% chance, since we're talking Bayesian) I made a random-ish mental determination of whether to send the message myself or ask my brother to do it. Although the chance of each option was probably not exactly 50%, as it depended on my mental state, the availability of my brother, etc., and I admit I did not actually flip a coin, still you should agree that there is a substantial chance of each option which, based on the information you have, is not more than 10 or 20 percent away from 50%. Therefore, from a Bayesian perspective, there is not enough information for you to establish a reasonably high likelihood of either option. >From a legal perspective - well, that's different, but although it is within reason that a court could distort a determination of the truth (who sent the message) into a hard rule to be applied in lieu of absolute proof to the contrary, designed to prioritize having some answer over correctness, I question whether we should do so (or have done so) in Agora. I suppose we do make such assumptions about mail sent from a particular email address, but that's a much narrower case and involves the definition of the sender of a message, and hasn't been tested in any case.
