These questions are about the legal system. You are a king, and legislator and Judiciary. How would you act given the below premise. You have a sample of people n in number. Of that n people X are guilty and Y(n-X) are innocent. You do not know who the guilty or the innocent are. X, Y: 1 <= X <= n, 1 <= Y <= n. X, Y and n are all whole numbers. You can either acquit all the people or convict all the people. Scenario 1: X > Y Do you acquit or convict? Scenario 2: X = Y Do you acquit or convict? Scenario 3: X < Y Do you acquit or convict? EDIT: You can only acquit or convict. There's no way for you to gain more information. These two are your ONLY choices. POLL: How to vote on the poll. Acquit = A. Convict = C. All poll options would be given in the form: (i, j, k). Your choice for scenario 1 is i. Your choice for scenario 2 is j. Your choice for scenario 3 is k. For example (A, A, A) means you choose to acquit all 3 scenarios. (A, C, A) means you choose to acquit for scenario 1 and 3, but convict for scenario 2. (A, C, C) means you choose to acquit for scenario 1, and convict for the remaining two scenarios. You can change your vote at any time. Any questions?
For anyone confused by all the variables and comparisons, it's pretty much: Scenario 1: More guilty people than innocent Scenario 2: Even number of both Scenario 3: Fewer guilty people than innocent ...and if your answer is anything other than A, A, A, you're an anti-hero xuanhuan protagonist who kills people that annoy him.
AAA Blackstone Formulation. "It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished.... when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, 'it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever" - John Adams
I don't like having innocent pay for guilty, neither allow guilty to walk away scot free, so come this scenario I'd just change the laws to study innocence case-by-case.
God, at first I thought you were gonna ask what you would choose when randomly filling out a scantron test... Almost like you were stuck taking a pop quiz in class and left it up to the community what your grade would turn out to be
To be fair, this actually does work in small groups. If an entire group of people is always held responsible for the actions of any individual member of the group, the individuals are much less likely to do anything troublesome. Both because of the pressure and because the other members will actively try to prevent them from doing so. In larger numbers, though, pretty meaningless. 'cause there's always gonna be some dick who doesn't care that his actions harm others.
I wouldn't do this. The crime committed should not matter. It's whether or not you'll convict innocent and guilty people, and how you'll do so. Thanks. I'll add this to the OP.
I saw this and I was like, are you serious? this seems like a probability problem, and then I saw your profile picture
If I was king, and legislator and Judiciary, I would have more options. Especially when dealing with the punishment. I tend to believe that harsher punishment as a deterrent works out well. India is an example of low crime rate + high punishment + high population density. Or at least it was a few years ago. But punishing innocents for the crimes of others also depends on the type of government. You could do that with a dictatorship, or communism, but not with a democracy. So too many unknown factors for me to make a choice. Nope, I take it all back.... I would have to live with myself. I could never sleep at night knowing innocents were slaughtered cause of me
Well, everyone is innocent except if the crime is: Mass murdering with number of people dead> n , in this case everyone die
The way most legal systems in the world is "innocent until proven guilty". If it is not possible to prove that an individual is guilty, they are acquitted, so the way it is in reality is generally speaking (A, A, A).
This is a fabulous argument and one I didn't fully account for. I would raise the stakes though. @Auryjhine @LightOrNot @BabaNovac @Westeller @Hacalyhd @Ignus The crime is terrorism. You have a 100 people X of these are responsible for the detonation of a nuclear bomb that annihilated a city. How do you decide?