I agree that legal standards and standards upheld in day-to-day life shouldn’t be the same, but some of the ‘willingness to believe bad things happened’ I’m seeing in the social groups that EA draws from seems a bit immoderate, so I’m cautious of straying too far from those stricter standards (and straying too far also has a risk of undermining them).
To answer your other question (which you have now deleted), I downvoted your first comment instead of disagree-voting because it appeared to me that you were concentrating on instances where we evaluate accusations made by friends, to the exclusion of the vast majority of situations where we evaluate accusations made by individuals who are not friends (fyi, just so it’s less confusing—I make a distinction between friends and acquaintances, and EA seems big enough that not everyone can be considered a friend). That made your comment potentially misleading. However, I do I agree with your comment in that I should believe a friend’s accusations (unless it turns out I’m a poor judge of character).
I now realize that by asking about what I meant by “the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends,” you indicate that you did not make that distinction as I did.
I agree that legal standards and standards upheld in day-to-day life shouldn’t be the same, but some of the ‘willingness to believe bad things happened’ I’m seeing in the social groups that EA draws from seems a bit immoderate, so I’m cautious of straying too far from those stricter standards (and straying too far also has a risk of undermining them).
To answer your other question (which you have now deleted), I downvoted your first comment instead of disagree-voting because it appeared to me that you were concentrating on instances where we evaluate accusations made by friends, to the exclusion of the vast majority of situations where we evaluate accusations made by individuals who are not friends (fyi, just so it’s less confusing—I make a distinction between friends and acquaintances, and EA seems big enough that not everyone can be considered a friend). That made your comment potentially misleading. However, I do I agree with your comment in that I should believe a friend’s accusations (unless it turns out I’m a poor judge of character).
I now realize that by asking about what I meant by “the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends,” you indicate that you did not make that distinction as I did.