[{"id":447,"title":"Bayesian verdicts","sha":"c09a8265991caca80dfcb890abedf208","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Why do juries emit binary verdicts, i.e. guilty or not guilty? Why not allow each juror to emit a \"Bayesian vote\" reflecting his/her subjective degree of belief in the probability of the defendant’s guilt? Under this alternative method of Bayesian voting, jurors would \"score\" the evidence presented by the parties at trial on a scale of 0 to 1 or some other scale. (Whatever scale is used, the higher one’s score, the greater the one’s subjective degree of belief in the defendant’s guilt, while a midpoint score, such as 0.5, means the juror is undecided about the question of guilt.) Such a simple system of scoring would then produce a numerical verdict, a Bayesian verdict, consisting of an average value or sum total of the jurors’ individual scores. Under this method of voting, the moving party would prevail only if the average value or sum total, as the case may be, of the jury’s collective score exceeds some critical threshold value.","created_at":"2018-03-01T05:34:51.418Z","updated_at":"2020-07-29T00:57:45.655Z","zenodo_id":1186977,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1186977","subject":null,"tags":["degree of belief","probability","juries","voting","bayes"],"vote_count":2,"view_count":1,"score":2.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":634,"title":"Bayesian Judges","sha":"84f00f5c7a87ced32e5784f89eb7caae","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Building on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s valuable insights about the Bayesian nature of the judicial process (see their paper \"The Votes of Other Judges\"), I propose a simple method for improving judicial decision-making, a method I have previously christened \"Bayesian voting\" in honor of Frank Ramsey and Bruno de Finetti. Under this method of voting, judges would not only state the reasons for their decisions; they would also express their degrees of belief in their decisions by \"scoring\" the strength of the moving party's legal arguments, i.e. by assigning a numerical score reflecting their relative degrees of belief in what the proper outcome of an issue or case should be (depending on whether the judge is engaged in outcome-voting or issue-voting). By way of example, a judge’s degree of belief could be expressed in numerical terms anywhere in the range from 0 to 1 or some other uniform scale, such as 0 to 10. The higher the judge's score, the greater the judge’s degree of belief. A score below 0.5 would mean that the party with the burden of persuasion is not expected to prevail; a score above 0.5, by contrast, would indicate that the party is expected to prevail; while a score of 0.5 means the judge is undecided about which party should prevail.","created_at":"2019-12-28T01:44:25.392Z","updated_at":"2021-11-17T23:31:52.243Z","zenodo_id":3660057,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3660057","subject":null,"tags":["bayesian voting","judges","law"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":868,"title":"Betting on Conspiracies?","sha":"ae5f59dc540377721c4f6c0deca10f73","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Was 9/11 an inside job? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Was the U.S. presidential election of 2020 stolen? I propose a Conspiracy Theory Betting Market to resolve these questions. That is, instead of trying to censor social media platforms or otherwise suppress the spread of conspiracy theories, why not allow such theories to flourish and invite people to bet on them? Among other things, an open betting market in \"fake news\" and conspiracy theories would aggregate disparate sources of information (cf. Hayek), provide financial and reputational incentives to place winning bets (cf. Tetlock), and scale well with the number of people and opinions. How would this \"retrodiction\" market work? People would buy or sell \"conspiracy theory contracts,\" and each contract would be structured as a simple yes/no question (e.g. Did Oswald act alone?) and would settle to some sum if one's answer turned out to be right; 0 otherwise. To resolve these contracts, this market could fund special-purpose “conspiracy-theory courts,” which could hold open hearings and allow anyone to make arguments or present evidence. Using the preponderance of the evidence standard that is routinely used in civil cases, the court would then decide whether a given conspiracy theory (e.g. JFK, 9/11, 2020 election) satisfies the well-established elements of conspiracy law.","created_at":"2021-07-17T06:03:31.526Z","updated_at":"2021-10-18T16:58:01.271Z","zenodo_id":5502184,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5502184","subject":null,"tags":["prediction markets","conspiracy theories","f. a. hayek","philip tetlock","reverse forecasting"],"vote_count":2,"view_count":1,"score":2.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null}]