Hmmm, well there is an endogeneity problem in that the believability of the police commissioner’s statement depends on the degree to which it constitutes legal evidence. To the extent it constitutes legal evidence, it may be less believable precisely because this give police commissioners power that they may be exercising in corrupt and power-hungry ways. A statement that cannot be seen to potentially provide some personal gain to the person making it presumably has greater credibility.
Although it is almost always the case, I can imagine legal evidence that is not necessarily scientific. The problem in my mind is precisely this bad memory of witnesses problem. I guess we have to say that an eye witness account, under oath, is “scientific.” It certain is legal evidence, although potentially challangeable by countervailing testimony or evidence. However, a scientist might be more willing to be skeptical, e.g. all those alien encounter accounts that are being discussed in other postings.
BTW, in regard to an earlier thread by Eliezer, of course “norm” does have various mathematical meanings, including the length of a vector (or multi-dimensional equivalent of “absolute value”), and there is the process of “renormalization” in algebra, which has some importance in several theories of physics. However, I remain unconvinced that any of these play an important role in establishing the earlier argument.
Hmmm, well there is an endogeneity problem in that the believability of the police commissioner’s statement depends on the degree to which it constitutes legal evidence. To the extent it constitutes legal evidence, it may be less believable precisely because this give police commissioners power that they may be exercising in corrupt and power-hungry ways. A statement that cannot be seen to potentially provide some personal gain to the person making it presumably has greater credibility.
Although it is almost always the case, I can imagine legal evidence that is not necessarily scientific. The problem in my mind is precisely this bad memory of witnesses problem. I guess we have to say that an eye witness account, under oath, is “scientific.” It certain is legal evidence, although potentially challangeable by countervailing testimony or evidence. However, a scientist might be more willing to be skeptical, e.g. all those alien encounter accounts that are being discussed in other postings.
BTW, in regard to an earlier thread by Eliezer, of course “norm” does have various mathematical meanings, including the length of a vector (or multi-dimensional equivalent of “absolute value”), and there is the process of “renormalization” in algebra, which has some importance in several theories of physics. However, I remain unconvinced that any of these play an important role in establishing the earlier argument.