> If you replace “sexual harassment” with any other accusation, do you still feel the same way?
Yes, I do.
The reason I mention sexual harassment is that a lot of people are making accusations of sexual harassment. To believe that the accused are all innocent until I hear evidence otherwise until proven (i.e., to treat the accusations themselves and their consistency as having no information value) is to believe that all the accusers are lying. Very few people are making accusations of, say, piracy on the high seas, so I don't feel like I'm really believing that anyone is lying by holding the belief that piracy on the high seas is rare or that the average person is not guilty of piracy on the high seas.
There are a couple of other accusations I hear regularly. Some of them are things like "Police can murder citizens with impunity" and "The NSA is spying on us." I do think that those accusations should be heard and understood, and not dismissed in the court of public opinion on the grounds that the police and the NSA are innocent until proven guilty.
There are other accusations like "A pizza shop in DC is running a child-trafficking ring under its basement" or "Antifa poured concrete on Amtrak rails, causing the derailment earlier this week." For those I don't believe in holding the accusers guilty until proven innocent, either; a small amount of research can demonstrate to public opinion that the accusations are false on the merits and the accusers are guilty because of specific reasons. (Or, perhaps, the court of opinion can find that the accusers are generally people who make up stories, which still avoids applying a standard of guilty until proven innocent to similar accusations in general.)
For those I don't believe in holding the accusers guilty until proven innocent...
You've used this kind of phrasing a few times, but strictly speaking, not believing the accuser is not the same as accusing them of any crime -- being wrong is a not a crime.
It seems to me that you are saying, that practically speaking we either hold the accused guilty-until-proven-innocent, or we hold the accusers guilty-until-proven-innocent -- we have have to make a choice, in the absence of proof. Is my understanding correct?
Yes, I do.
The reason I mention sexual harassment is that a lot of people are making accusations of sexual harassment. To believe that the accused are all innocent until I hear evidence otherwise until proven (i.e., to treat the accusations themselves and their consistency as having no information value) is to believe that all the accusers are lying. Very few people are making accusations of, say, piracy on the high seas, so I don't feel like I'm really believing that anyone is lying by holding the belief that piracy on the high seas is rare or that the average person is not guilty of piracy on the high seas.
There are a couple of other accusations I hear regularly. Some of them are things like "Police can murder citizens with impunity" and "The NSA is spying on us." I do think that those accusations should be heard and understood, and not dismissed in the court of public opinion on the grounds that the police and the NSA are innocent until proven guilty.
There are other accusations like "A pizza shop in DC is running a child-trafficking ring under its basement" or "Antifa poured concrete on Amtrak rails, causing the derailment earlier this week." For those I don't believe in holding the accusers guilty until proven innocent, either; a small amount of research can demonstrate to public opinion that the accusations are false on the merits and the accusers are guilty because of specific reasons. (Or, perhaps, the court of opinion can find that the accusers are generally people who make up stories, which still avoids applying a standard of guilty until proven innocent to similar accusations in general.)