So we shouldn't prosecute insurance fraud, because it will put off people who file real claims?
Nonsense.
Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse?
There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought.
The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.
> The claim was a descriptive one: "This policy has this bad side effect."
That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.
> You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."
That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.
My claim is that when it's proven that people lie (i.e. fraudster, as I said), ignoring those lies is corrupting the justice system.
The thing is, perjury is a criminal offence. I don't think you'd disagree.
The mistake you're making is assuming that because I say some people are proven to lie, you think I'm claiming that all people lie. That's a logical fallacy, and basically assumes I'm an asshole or an idiot.
Your claim seems to be that we should never prosecute liars, because it will dissuade real victims from coming forward. I think that claim is horrific, for reasons I explained.
To counter your next comment.. no, I don't think claimants should be charged when their claims cannot be proven to be true. Again, making an unsubstantiated claim is not legally perjury, and is not a criminal offence.
My claim is that provably false claims should be punished.
I'm not interested in talking about your claim. I'm talking about how you replied to someone else's claim.
> That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.
No you didn't. You gave some examples where the proposed policy would not have the side effect. You didn't show that it would never have the side effect.
> That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.
"The exact opposite of this policy", in context, would be letting people off for false accusations. Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?
> You didn't show that it would never have the side effect.
I used the example of insurance fraud. Please pay attention.
Do we prosecute insurance fraud? Yes. Do such prosecutions dissuade victims from making real claims? No.
Or maybe you think that sexual assault is somehow magic. That prosecuting proven fraudsters in that case will somehow dissuade real victims from making claims. If so, you have to prove your position.
I've already proven that no such correlation exists in other situations.
> Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?
He did implicitly. If he's against charging fraudsters (for whatever reason), he's for letting them off.
Dropping the "proven" thread because it's not what I want to focus on.
> Or maybe you think
I'm deliberately avoiding taking an object-level position.
> If he's against charging fraudsters
You're still turning a descriptive statement into a prescriptive one. peteretep did not advocate any policy in the comment you replied to. Among the policies he did not advocate is "we should never charge any fraudster". Another policy he did not advocate is "we should be extremely careful which fraudsters we prosecute, to avoid of chilling effects".
He did not advocate a policy, but you took his comment as advocating an extreme policy.
> He did not advocate a policy, but you took his comment as advocating an extreme policy.
That's pedantically true, and more honestly false.
Are you honestly going to claim that his description of "putting off victims" advocates for no position? That's ridiculous. He explicitly said ... which is generally thought to be not a good thing.
Are you next going to claim that he thinks putting off victims is not a good thing... but he isn't really advocating against punishing fraudsters even if it "puts off" victims?
And this is all ignoring the point that his claim was false.
Honestly, I find this nit-picking to be utterly ludicrous, to the point of irrational.
> Are you honestly going to claim that his description of "putting off victims" advocates for no position?
No specific policy, certainly. There are many policies consistent with what he said. I gave one already; another would be we should punish false accusations of sexual assault, but not as severely as sexual assault itself.
But you leapt to the most indefensible one. And you didn't even seem to notice that you were making this leap. I don't think it's nitpicking of me to point this out.
> His position was that any punishment of false claims was "putting off" victims from making real claims.
Not true. He was replying to a post that said "False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent." He said "This has the side-effect..." The referent of "this" is clearly not "any punishment of false claims".
And even if true, that is still not a policy proposal. I've given two alternative interpretations of the original comment. Here's a third: I have no particular policy proposal myself, but I wonder whether you've thought through the implications of yours?
> downvotes
Not that it matters, but right now my comments are all upvoted/neutral.
> Your insistence on taking me at an extreme position
I don't think we disagree on what your position is? We just disagree about whether or not you're correct.
That is, I'm accusing you of accusing peteretep of making a specific policy proposal. You insist that your accusation is correct. So I don't think I'm taking you at a position that you'd call extreme; I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold. If you disagree then we're wildly talking past each other.
> I don't think we disagree on what your position is?
Yes, we do. Go back and read the history. I started off with a particular position, that you then misconstrued, and mis-characterized.
> I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold
No, you're not. You've managed to twist what I say, and my defense of my position, to an extreme position.
My position is that people should be punished for breaking the law. And, that saying such punishment (whatever the form) somehow "puts off" innocent people from making claims is wrong.
So I think I've been pretty clear that I've been taking about what peteretep originally said versus what you think he originally said. E.g. "I'm accusing you of accusing peteretep of..."
And I think you've been pretty explicitly talking about what he originally said. E.g. "His position was that..."
But now you seem to be denying that you said anything about what he originally said, or you seem to think that what you said about what he said isn't relevant, or... I don't know. Your comment does not make sense to me. All I can think is that you seem to be mixing meta-levels.
Anyway, I'm not exactly proud of how easily I get sucked into crap like this, so I'm going to try to tap out after this comment.
> My position is that people should be punished for breaking the law. And, that saying such punishment (whatever the form) somehow "puts off" innocent people from making claims is wrong.
So long as enforcement does not perfectly avoid false positives even in beginning prosecution (even if no false convictions occur) it increases the expected cost of a true report, and is a rational disincentive.
It may be that the particular punishment regime minimizes this cost and/or has benefits that offset the cost, but it's implausible that any real punishment scheme could avoid it altogether.
I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness.
What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims.
FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims. So false sexual assault charges are, in fact, entirely equivalent to false insurance claims. Both are false. Both do not involve real victims.
Your reaction comes across as an un-thinking knee-jerk "OMFG sexual assault is bad"... to the point where we can't have a rational discussion about anything related to the subject.
Look, there are fraudsters. See "Jackie" at the University of Virginia. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. In both situations, "wishful thinking" people came damned close to lynching the accused, facts be damned. And in both cases, every single aspect of the claimants story turned out to be provably false.
You have an implicit claim that sexual assault is somehow magical, and deserving of different standards than insurance fraud. All possible evidence shows that this attitude is not just wrong, it is actively dangerous. It denies reality. It denies justice. It hurts innocent people.
The issue that you're missing is that "sexual assault fraud" can be claimed in cases where there is actual sexual assault, but it is a he-said/she-said situation. That is where the "chilling-effect" comes in. Sexual assault cases are many times he-said/she-said situations, so any victim reporting runs the risk of getting accused of (and needing to defend themselves from) "sexual assault fraud" in addition to trying to pursue actual charges (where the defence will spend a lot of time trying to assault the victim's character, basically calling them a "slut" in open court).
Perjury would apply to testimony given under oath, which happens at a trial. But most cases don't go to trial, of course. You could also get nailed on "filing a false police report", which is earlier in the process.
But for matters adjudicated by universities, it's possible that neither of these apply, since official police reports are not necessarily filed, and testimony is not given in a courtroom, under oath.
More generally, you could claim defamation. This is not a crime though — it is a civil matter. If the defamer has no assets, it would be an expensive way to make a point ("I didn't do it!") and could lead to the Streisand Effect.
Thanks for breaking that down. Do you think the safeguards (filing a false police report or perjury if in court) are enough? And, if not, do you see any way to implement a law that would not harm sexual abuse victims as a byproduct?
I think it's probably easiest to ignore the inchoate name calling and focus on where we can agree, specifically:
> You have an implicit claim
> that sexual assault is
> somehow magical, and
> deserving of different
> standards than insurance
> fraud
Yes I do.
Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported, and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.
Taking those back-to-front, an insurance claim that's unreported doesn't endanger wider society, where a serial rapist abusing his position of power does.
As to under-reporting of sexual crimes, evidence is easily Googleable. But even if it wasn't, one looks at cases like Jimmy Saville where alleged victims didn't come out until others did; largely due to their feeling they wouldn't be believed.
> I think it's probably easiest to ignore the inchoate name calling
Because it didn't happen. But you're free to feel superior to me based on lies about what I said.
> Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported,
Yes... look at the numbers from Statistics Canada for one. In interviews, people claim sexual assault rates that are about 10x the rate of police reports.
Why are those crimes not reported? Statistics Canada asked... the #1 answer is "because the assault was too minor to bother with".
i.e. grabbing an ass in a bar is legally sexual assault. But few people are going to file a police report about it.
> and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.
No such evidence exists.
There is evidence that there are massive programs to encourage people to report sexual assault. All such programs have not increased the reporting rate to police.
Which makes it look like the rate of police reports of serious crimes is pretty close to the real rate of serious crimes.
Nonsense.
Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse?
There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.