Imagine if you could defend yourself in court by saying "but other people have committed the same crime!".
I and others have recently and repeatedly noticed the same behavior that Gunzo is describing by the same characters and similar remarkable ensuing coincidences after a multi-sector flight by the guy in question. Color me unsurprised.
Two very good points.
You mention defending in court, and the number of remarkable coincidences.
A real problem is that many people just don’t know how to evaluate coincidences, they tend to give them far less value than they deserve. They also don’t know how proof works or the important part played by those remarkable coincidences. Coincidence and uncertainty needs to be accounted for in any kind of proof.
That begs the question, what constitutes proof, how sure do you need to be?
The USA has one of the best legal systems in the world and that system has a number of standards for the burden of proof, most people have heard of some of these phrases: “reasonable articulable suspicion”, “preponderance of the evidence” and “beyond a reasonable doubt” but those terms may seem a bit vague to some people.
Can we be any more precise?
Yes, 124 judges, with an average of 11 years on the bench, were able quantify it. It turns out that 40% of those judges caseloads were criminal, the remainder civil, family or mixed cases. The study quantified the burden of proof, here they are in ascending order.
- Reasonable articulable suspicion 42% sure.
- Probable Cause 50% sure.
- Preponderance of the evidence 54% sure.
- Substantial probability 55% sure.
- Clear and convincing evidence 73% sure.
- Beyond a reasonable doubt 90% sure.
When are they used:
- Beyond a reasonable doubt: Used in criminal law.
- Clear and convincing evidence: Used in fraud and in will disputes.
- Preponderance of the evidence: Used in most civil cases.
What happens when there is a lot of evidence, but none of it appears to be very strong?
Drawing conclusions from multiple pieces of evidence is very unintuitive particularly when no single piece of evidence seems conclusive by itself. Many people would look at each piece of evidence and conclude that there was no single piece of conclusive proof, and that the accused was therefore innocent. The feeling is that the evidence is just a whole lot of nothing and that adds up to nothing. But evidence always has some weight, no matter how small and you can't overlook how unlikely it would be for a large body of evidence to accumulate just by coincidence.
Here is a brief example of how this works in a criminal trial for example:
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In a burglary trial there were three main pieces of evidence, an eye witness, a shoe print and an item recovered from the suspect. The eye witness identified the suspect from a line up. The police asked him how certain he was that it was the same person and the eye witness said he was 80% sure.
The police found a partial shoe print at the scene that matched the shoes the suspect was wearing when arrested and later the stolen item was recovered from the suspect’s residence.
Now let’s consider each piece of evidence in isolation. For each piece of evidence we can ask how likely it is that the suspect is guilty.
Firstly, the eye witness was only 80% sure. That would not meet the “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” burden of proof by itself, so if this had been the only piece of evidence at the criminal trial it would have been insufficient to prove guilt.
Secondly, the shoe print had no unique features, but was the same type and size as that of the suspect. A forensics expert also testified that the depth of the print matched the depth that would be produced by someone of the suspect’s weight. The shoe was handmade in another state and not at all common so the expert was able testify that this evidence was clear and convincing with 73% certainty. This would not meet the burden of proof, so by itself would also have been insufficient.
Thirdly, the suspect claimed he purchased the recovered item from someone he met in a bar sometime after the crime had been committed. This was considered suspicious with only a 42% probability of guilt. Again, entirely insufficient by itself.
You can see, that in isolation, each of these pieces of evidence suggest innocence.
However, when you combine the probabilities, using the kind of simple math most teenagers learn in the 11th grade, the combined probabilities come to 97% and well above the threshold to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Many people would look at each piece of evidence and conclude that there was no single piece of conclusive proof, and that the accused was therefore innocent. But that overlooks how unlikely it would be for an innocent person to have been identified at the scene, have a matching footprint and body weight and be found in possession of the stolen item. The unlikely coincidence can’t be ignored, the evidence must be viewed as a whole.
At the trial the judge instructed the jury to consider the “Totality of Evidence” and explained that they should consider all the evidence presented in the case and to evaluate it collectively. He explained that this includes both direct and circumstantial evidence and that even if individual pieces of evidence are not strong on their own, adding that the cumulative effect of multiple pieces could be significant.
After deliberation the jury found that the evidence amounted to proof beyond a reasonable doubt and returned a guilty verdict.
I’m guessing they understood the Judge’s instructions.
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So what about the video evidence in the original post, can we do something similar?
Well of course there are no laws involved here, but we can apply similar principles. In a trial, there are always charges (formal accusations). We can reformulate observations from the video into hypothetical charges for the purpose of estimating the likelihood of innocence for each one in an imaginary legal system where these things were considered unlawful, just for the sake of argument. Here is what the observations might look like if written as hypothetical charges:
- That Skyyr & Flippz split countries so as to observe and hunt the intended target.
- That Skyyr flew five sectors, ignoring many closer contacts to find the intended target.
- That Flippz misdirected the intended target to assist Skyyr in achieving a favourable intercept.
- That Skyyr performed two intercepts on the same target within minutes.
- That Skyyr and flippz were using 3rd party comm’s to share information more effectively.
- That they were using that information specifically to hunt the intended target.
In each case considered individually, what is the likelihood of innocence stated in the form of the percentages determined by the 124 judges cited earlier?
- The timing of this country change was suspicious, supported by the apparent attempts to tease the alleged target to lower altitude. Even so, not particularly strong by itself so a reasonable person might claim innocence beyond any reasonable doubt, so a 90% probability of innocence.
- This was also suspicious but the benefit of the doubt is again warranted. Because so many fights had to be passed up to get there, not as much doubt as before. A reasonable person might claim clear and convincing likelihood of innocence. So a 73% probability of innocence for this one.
- Giving advice that seemed more favourable to his squad mate than to his wingman is more difficult to dismiss, but a reasonable person would still give the benefit of doubt so a substantial likelihood of innocence at 55% for this one.
- This first intercept was as good as it gets, almost perfect. Hard to imagine how it could have been achieved by pure luck. The second intercept was achieved at lower than ideal altitude, but that is outweighed by how unlikely it is to intercept the same target twice among eleven other potential targets only minutes apart. However taken in isolation, the benefit of the doubt would still fall on the side of innocence at a 55% probability of innocence.
- There is still a need to allow the benefit of the doubt here, but it is common knowledge that they do this so a substantial probability of innocence at 55%.
- No doubt that this has happened in the past, but in this case the benefit of the doubt is again appropriate at a substantial probability of innocence at 55%.
So again, if any one of those things occurred in isolation, an overall conclusion of innocence would be inescapable. As already pointed out, most people's gut reaction would be to feel that if you can discount each item as innocent, then overall innocence is assured. That isn’t how it works. More evidence increases the likelihood of guilt. That is why judges often instruct juries to consider the totality of the evidence as in the previous example.
When we combine the chances of all of these things occurring together we should also combine them with the occurrence of almost identical events experienced by other players, such as those we have seen cited in this thread by Simon and Trogdor.
If we do that and allow conservatively for a total of only four such occurrences, the probability of guilt comes out at a staggering 99.999%
That’s well above the threshold required by the burden of proof for “Beyond a reasonable doubt” and would lead to a very safe verdict of guilty in our imaginary legal system.
Remember, this is simple 11th grade math here. It means that the odds of Skyyr being innocent are one hundred thousand to one against.
Just saying
Gunzo
