JUDGES AND THE INESCAPABLE PULL OF SOCIAL LEARNING

Judges are excellent at social learning. They learned well in the classroom to become judges. Their job is to read and summarize what judges said in other cases. My argument is that judges use their discretion to make the socially popular narrative play out in the courtroom. So that the outcome matches the spread or betting line. They primarily do this by allowing testimony and accepting it as true, based on social consensus.

I have never lost a football bet. Over the maybe 10 years I followed mostly college football, I bet money around 10 times and won every time. Back then I could have told you every bet. Today the only three I remember are betting on Vince Young at Texas to beat USC, betting on Michigan State to beat some team when Nick Saban was coach and Plaxico Burress was a receiver, and picking the winner of every NFL game in an office pool.

I don’t know what a “Tampa 2” defense is. I don’t know if anyone still uses the zone blitz. I probably would be the wrong person to ask what a trap block is. It is a little hard to believe I have some freak talent for knowing the outcome of football games, when I don’t even know what the plays are. The way I understood it at the time, is what I saw was obvious if you actually watched the games. Rather than listening to people talk about them.

The guy I won the Michigan State bet against was a star football player in high school, who knew all the plays. He read every sports magazine. Once during halftime someone changed the channel to UFC fighting, and he got mad that he missed the halftime show which was crucial to him learning what happened in all the other games. The way he knew the plays was the same way he knew what happened in each game, by having strong social learning skills.

People’s ability to listen to what other people say and repeat it is apparently a lot better than their ability to look at the physical layout and movements of objects and remember it. It is very efficient. One way requires watching 35 hours of football games and remembering every play. The other way requires remembering 30 minutes of commentary. So even a guy who can watch the plays and tell you their names, will have his mind dominated by what people say.

So its not that I am so gifted at analyzing football or remembering that a team gets beat on long passing plays. It is that I am so bad at social learning, which is so powerful at spreading like a virus and dominating people’s minds. Social learning explodes so that people all believe the same thing, and the dominant social narrative overwhelms betting on one side or the other. It shows the power of people to ignore their own eyes and repeat what they hear.

Like suppose someone said 6-foot-five quarterbacks always win, and that resonated with people. A website that had an article which said 6-5 quarterbacks win would find that article gets the most clicks and move it to the top, as would search engines. People who make money writing about football would have some talent for knowing that is what people would click on. So they would crank out stories that 6-5 quarterbacks win.

People cannot help themselves. By the end of the week, all the lines would move to the side of 6-5 quarterbacks winning. Something like that happened a few weeks ago when UCF played Colorado. The line started out somewhat reasonable, I think UCF was a small favorite. Then all week the theme of UCF having the best running game in all of football and Colorado not being able to stop the run exploded socially. Until the line made no sense if you actually saw each team play.

If it was a court case, the judge would have allowed UCF to run the ball. One side would go up there on direct examination, and say to the witness “You are running the ball down the field, aren’t you?” The other side would say “Objection. UCF’s running stats came entirely against FCS teams.” The judge would say “Objection overruled. Everyone knows UCF can run and Colorado can’t stop it. Continue talking about UCF running the ball.”

Whether a killer acted justifiably in self defense, is probably the court outcome most determined by social consensus. The second most, is probably whether a family member is responsible for a death. At the first trial of the Menendez brothers, they said how their father constantly raped them and got a hung jury. At the second trial, the judge prohibited that defense, and let the prosecution say they killed their parents for money and they got convicted.

The prosecutor said there was zero evidence they were ever raped by their father, and brazen evidence they did it to inherit their parents’ money. The Menendez brothers were the actual witnesses of their motive, they were there. If they say they were raped by their father and they didn’t do it for money, that is the evidence. But socially everyone was like them doing it for money is like UCF running the ball, and that is the only testimony the judge will allow.

I saw this in the Dollhouse robbery hoax. The prosecution narrative was impossible if you actually looked at the evidence. But the jury never did. They never saw a floor plan of the apartment. They never saw the half codeine pill with the cocaine. They never saw a clear picture of anything, just blurry printouts which they were told the contents of. Judge Recksiedler allowed the prosecution to say their narrative, and prohibited the defense to say theirs.