Beyond reasonable doubt

January 21, 2012

It's not often that I agree with Richard Dawkins, but his article in today's New Statesman on “reasonable doubt” is interesting. He speculates that in a two jury system you would not get a coincidence of verdict and that in consequence the assumption of “beyond reasonable doubt” cannot be sustained in consequence. Now running a two jury experiment over a series of trials and seeing what happens would be an interesting experiment. He suggests that running a parallel experiment with two judges might produce a better correlation. The experiment would be interesting and there is good reason to apply scientific method in social systems when we can.  

Of course, if we take the basic principles of distributed cognition (I remain uncomfortable with the more popular but inaccurate Wisdom of Crowds) then it would be better if the twelve good men and true (apologies for sexism but I am quoting) were say five pods of three each optimised for diversity making decisions independently of each other. Pods would allow for some discussion, but not the entrained patterns of discussion so well portrayed in many a film. Of course we could go with Sid James in Hancock's Half Hour and cut the cards: anything under 7 and he's guilty.

anything under 7 and he's guilty

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

Architecture not application: an opportunity

Around two decades ago I was arguing that object orientation was not just a way ...

More posts

Next >

Half way down the Thames

We passed the half way mark today on our journey from the source to the ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram