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by JoshTriplett 1038 days ago
Absolutely true (civil cases are "preponderance of the evidence"), but the same principle still applies, just with lower numbers. 51% likely might be enough for a verdict against someone in a civil case and a legally enforceable monetary judgement. But if you have someone 30% likely to have done something (where the baseline should be close to 0%), that's still enough that reasonable risk-averse organizations may reasonably choose to not associate with them.

A court that can render legally enforceable judgements against someone should absolutely have a higher bar of certainty than an organization that is simply excluding someone from participation in that organization.
2 comments
mbg721 1038 days ago
The problem with that is that if the accused is only 30% likely to have done something, then there may be an equal or greater likelihood that the accuser is maliciously lying (allowing for some likelihood of genuine misunderstanding).
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atakan_gurkan 1031 days ago
Not necessarily. Unless the presence of the accusation already was used to get that 30% number, you also need to take into account the a priori probability of someone maliciously lying (or better yet, the particular accuser to be lying in this case) and apply Bayes's theorem.
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mbg721 1031 days ago
I should have expected Simpson's Paradox here. Nevertheless, I think the possibility of witch-hunting is high.
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paulddraper 1038 days ago
The problem is that 30% is not a good estimate in the first place, because the organization doesn't have the same skills/resources/judgements to make an accurate assessment.
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JoshTriplett 1038 days ago
It might well have substantial uncertainty, in either direction. Suppose it's 30% plus or minus 20%, a huge amount of uncertainty. That's still absolutely a reasonable threshold someone could use as the basis for a decision.

The exact numbers here are examples, not the determining factor here, nor do most organizations express them quantitatively.

The important point is that organizations can and do have a different threshold for action. You could absolutely argue about whether an organization has the right threshold, but I don't think there's a case for a deontological requirement that every organization's threshold for taking any action at all must be the same as the threshold for conviction in a court. (Leaving aside that that would utterly invalidate freedom of association.)

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