For a while I have been thinking about how one can best come to useful truth with respect to controversial subjects. I have developed a theoretical framework that I need to write up in detail, but for now here’s the short version:
There is no executive which can deal out punishment or fine to pay for damages, so neither the accuser nor the accused have sufficient motivation to unravel the truth; instead most of the value will have to come from informing the community, and we suffer a commons problem because each community member is not sufficiently motivated.
Different parties have different questions that they are most interested in. One of the biggest jobs of the court is to distinguish all of the relevant questions so that things don’t get falsely generalized.
Most people do not have time to work through the details, so the court needs to provide an easy-to-digest summary.
The court needs to dig up novel evidence, because most evidence is not publicly available, and it needs to come up with novel theory of social interactions to understand the significance of the events, making use of rationalist skills.
I’m of course open to input for how to do things differently than this, though you should expect some pushback because I do currently have some theory and observations backing the above strategy, so the discussion will have to clarify the alternatives.
Ah.
I briefly mentioned this in the discord: