Why people committed suicide ? That is always a mystery when they were already dead. Though we live in a world that this kind of drama do happen, and certainly boosted by media coverage early this week when it was unveiled that the three prisoners hanged themselves at the Guantanamo bay detention center. It is an act of war cause, the Washington official said. Well, too late to prove it is really an act of Jihad, or rather it is an act out of desperation or mental illness. They were not charged or convicted before they killed themselves. Now it seems we can inteprete what prompted this in whatever way we want to, after all, dead people don' t talk.
One thing, I realize recently, is that we are facing a choice between "innocent until proved guilty" or "guilty until proved innocent". This famous hypothesis , which I learned also in school how to use statistical model to project its probability. But mathematics itself doesn't give us answers, the fact even the probability of danger is small, like the recent police raid (which proved to be led by faulty intelligence later on) in London, we still have to pursue it, because the potential damage could be huge. Living in a world troubled by certain conflicts for which we don't have a total solution, we simply can't afford to take chances.
But is this approach "Guilty unless proved innocent" the right thing to do?
Well, the question is, is there a better approach?
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3 comments:
Errr - it is very hard for someone to commit suicide if they are dead already !! You might consider rewording the sentence. Reminds me of a story in a Nigerian newspaper about a car crash which read - "the car in which the dead man was travelling...."
"It is a rather odd thing to guess why people committed suicide when they are already dead."
"we are facing a choice between "innocent until proved guilty" or "guilty until proved innocent".
An unusual question to hypothesis for you to have learned in a Chinese school - where guilty is predetermined.
Thanks for the correction on the grammar!
We Chinese didn't invent this hypothesis, I think it was some genius western mathematician who discovered how this model works. And unfortunately predetermined guilty is not a Chinese thing. It is our very human nature that we feel threatened and insecure, we tend to choose "Guilty until proved innocent." And that is what is happening now.
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