When I see juries in American movies it always seems like a bit of an joke and manipulating them is a common plot theme. Just very random, the opposite of what I expect from an justice system. Many non-authoritarian states don't use them. Most of Europe and India for instance.
When I see juries in American courts, for example when I've served on one, it seemed like a group of people who take their job quite seriously. You are correct in that what a jury gets is a very curated set of information. The intention being to keep the jury focused on the details of a very specific situation with evidence that is processed in such a way as to be as "reliable" as possible.
It is by no means an accurate or incorruptible system. When we design and prove out a better, more robust alternative, I'll be eager to learn about it.
Juries are a kangaroo courts and should be abolished. One screaming example is Emmett Till case (1955). Just this case should cause immediate abolition of that circus.
"joke and manipulating them is a common plot theme"
Much more difficult to manipulate a bunch of jurors than pay off one judge. This is why it's mostly in the movies.
"Most of Europe and India for instance."
India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Scammers with lots of money running call centers and diploma mills regularly get off completely by paying off judges.
Having judges only does make me feel better. I can just pay them off when I don't want to go to jail.
I'm sure you don't mean it this way. But this comment happens to mirror the 2025 standard argument against democracy. We focus on some imperfection in democracy. The next step is we say "It's broken. Let's junk it."
It’s a silly bit of theater and American exceptionalism.
Infamously, “grand juries” are supposed to be a check against bringing frivolous charges, but they’ve never done this: there’s a famous quote about a prosecutor being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They’re also used to kill trials which are politically inconvenient but which the government doesn’t want to take the blame for burying, usually for killer cops: just tell the grand jury not to indict and then say “welp, nothing we could do.”
All the romantic stories about jury nullification being a check against government overreach are also crap. Historically the most common use in practice, by far, was when juries would exonerate people who’d been caught dead-to-rights lynching black men.
Ironically, grand juries refusing to indict frivolous political charges has been in the news quite a lot in the past couple of months.
It's true that jury trials have a less than perfect history of applying justice (though of course I think it's fair to say that the judges presiding over those trials exhibited similar trials so the counterfactual of a bench trial may have been the same outcome). That said, my understanding is that jury trials are just generally favorable to defendants compared to bench trials.
FWIW jury trials are arguably less vulnerable to corruption, which is a benefit. Would be hard to pull off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal#Criminal... (which wrongly put thousands of children in jail for the financial benefit of judges) with juries.
I think calling it 'American exceptionalism" is a little reductive. The idea that a jury trial is a protector of civil rights in a system that upholds the law as something no-one is above literally dates back to Magna Carta. Suggesting that this throughline of civil liberty is "silly theater' is not a serious proposition.
If you’re in tech in us you’re also compensated based of that, it’s not exactly the same math everywhere/anywhere. Also we’re at a site which is the Mecca of meritocracy and it’s useful to remember that part too.
So far it's screwed up my wifi and directed me through malicious link's I've blindly followed even if I take full responsibility ofc. And that's from less than 80h usage just on my home computer.
I think that’s the article but tl;dr that’s only part of the problem and already widly adopted with mutexes in say dynamo or whatever flavor you chose. This is about not having global locks or 10 arbitary random locks per subdomain but rather figuring out the exact resources affected and locking only those.
If you see life as some game to optimize only for yourself not the people around you then for sure as very high earners, easy to move somewhere else, and some do. But from my point of view that’s a sad outlook on life and it’s not all one sided, that professor payed nothing for top of the line education, or child care, or 9 months parental leave, or medical etc etc. The high earners put away some money instead and enjoy lower taxes than us on that part.
But mostly it’s the idea of people deserving a decent life and high base life quality anyway. Most of my colleagues instead come here from other countries.
Fun read, from a Swedish background "Uncertainty is weakness" seems so very American though and the opposite of both how we operate and what TheRightWay (tm) should be. As a senior dev working as a consultant for the past 8 years coming in and questioning how things work and recognizing what's unknown or doesn't make sense on a daily/weekly basis sometimes feels like my biggest contribution to the team and usually starts many interesting and productive sessions.
Worked for a similar company with similar clients at the time. Making the data usefull in innovative ways was a big part of it so in a way sure part of it data science related. At the same time I’d say it’s broader than that.
reply