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The curse of arrogance

From the comments on Wired News’ Hans Reiser article today:

but in all seriousness, the reason so many of us are motivated about this trial is because we can project ourselves into the defense seat. watching as 12 hopelessly irrational commoners convict us super-brights on nothing but a pool of circumstantial evidence. its a scary thought.

Working in the world of software development you see this kind of arrogance frequently.


2 Comments

Arrogance? That goes well beyond just plain arrogance. That comment’s author almost definitely has some severe sociopathic tendencies.

Posted by Keith Gaughan on 8 July 2008 @ 2pm

Yeah. It’s also someone who hasn’t sat on a jury. Before I served through a trial I was willing to dismiss some results, afterwards I was extremely impressed at the thoughtfulness, intelligence and reasoning abilities of my fellow jurors.

Granted, I served in Marin County, California, which isn’t exactly, say, some poor place in Louisiana, but while I can blame lots of stuff on out of control prosecutors and incompetent defense attorneys, and even, occasionally, judges, I’m amazed at how right juries tend to get things.

Posted by Dan Lyke on 8 July 2008 @ 8pm

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