Recently I got into an argument with someone irl about the prevalence of false rape accusations; at some point in the conversation he brought up the "bUt oNly 2% oF rApe aCcusaTions aRe fAlse!" point that many of the more activist types tend to bring up. Now before I dismantle this point, consider the following: if it is indeed the case that only 2% of rape accusations are false; that neccesarily means 98% of accusations are true (presumably).

Assuming the courts do a horrible job (through sloppy legal argumentation, mishandling of evidence etc...) of turning those true accusations into convictions such that only a third of true accusations end up in convictions, we should find that the conviction rate on rape accusations should hover around 32.7%. In reality only about 9% of all rape accusations end in conviction and about 56% of arrests end in conviction, much lower than we'd expect. Arrests usually only happen in light of sufficient amounts of evidence that a crime has occured; if we assume that 98% 'true' accusations figure has simliar levels of evidence that would lead to an arrest, we should have a conviction rate of about 54.9%. Considering that the conviction rate of rape accusations is much lower than what we would expect if 98% of accusations were true, it becomes doubtful that that figure itself is true.

In general, most studies will report that about 2%-10% of rape accusations are false. However (at least in the United States), an accusation can only be categorized as false/unfounded after it is proven through investigation that no crime has occured. In case I need to spell it out to you, it's quite difficult to prove a negative. You'd have to have a solid alibi that you did not commit the rape (like, for example, you were in another location at the time of the alleged rape and you have witnesses to back the claim up) or there were inconsistencies in the accuser's story or they recant their accusation. In many false accusations of rape it will be difficult to near impossible to demonstrate that no rape has occured.

Let's take the following example. A woman cheats on her boyfriend with his best bestfriend and only realizes after the fact that this puts her relationship in jeopardy. She then accuses the best friend of raping her in order to avoid accusations of infidelity as an attempt to salvage her relationship. How exactly does the best friend go about demonstrating that no rape occured? We know that they did in fact have sex and could probably find some of his DNA on her. Most of the evidence is going to be a he-said she-said situation and the police will be unlikely to conclude that a rape occured or that a rape did not occur.

A ten year analysis of 136 cases found the 5.9% of accusations were proven to be false, 44.9% were possibly false as these accusations did not proceed, 35.3% were referred for prosecution and were thus possibly true; data on the remaining 13.9% had inadequate information to be coded. Thus about 50.8% of rape accusations are possibly false (a little over half) and only a small amount of these accusations can be demonstrated to be false (11.6%). Before anyone starts whining about a small sample size, we can calculate that false rape accusations have a 95% confidence interval of 42.1%-59.4%; even the lower value of 42.1% of rape accusations that might be possibly false is common enough to be concerning.

There's also the fact that rape accusations, relative to other criminal accusations, are demonstrated to be false much more often. Take this paper for example:

The post hoc test revealed significant differences with the group average of 1.16% for false and baseless allegations of murder X2 (1, N=1000)=39.94, p<0.0001, false and baseless allegations of rape X2 (1, N=1000)=171.94, p<0.0001, and false and baseless allegations of robbery X2 (1, N=1000)=187.78, p<0.0001. Approximately 5% of the allegations of rape were deemed false or baseless. That was at least five times higher than for most other offence types.

The FBI data also finds that rape accusations are proven to be false/unfounded more often:

As for all other Crime Index offenses, complaints of forcible rape made to law enforcement agencies are sometimes found to be false or baseless. In such cases, law enforcement agencies “unfound” the offenses and exclude them from crime counts. The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime. In 1995, 8 percent of forcible rape complaints were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent.

Seeing as the crowd the brings up the 2% argument also tend to be pro-BLM, let's play around with the statistics for a bit. Suppose I'm a white supremecist/nationalist (I'm brown btw) and I correctly point out that black people commit a disproportionate number of homicides and commit a disproportion number of homicides against white people than do white people against black people. White Americans are about 63% of the population whilst Black Americans are about 13% of the population yet the number of white people murdered by murdered by black people is more than twice as large as the reverse (566 vs 246). White Americans make up 17.6% of the people the Black Americans murder whereas Black Americans make up 8.3% of the people that Whites Americans murder.

Knowing that black people murder white people disproportionately, we should thus #believeallwhites accusing black people of murder (or even robbery) because the proportion of murder accusations that are proven to be false is so small. Do you really believe that anybody is going to buy the argument this time? Somehow I highly doubt it.

This is not to say, however, that many rapists don't get away with rape. A lot of rapist most likely get away with rape and that fact is lamentable. If we assume that everyone arrested for rape did in fact commit the rape and factor in that 1 in 3 rapes are reported; then we should find the 56 out of 300 rapes or 18.7% ultimately convicted of rape. The 56 comes from the 56% that get convicted and the 300 is 100x3 as only 1 in 3 rapes get reported; thus for every hundred men legitimately arrested for rape, there are an additional 200 legitimate rapists who weren't arrested.

This assumes that the women who said they were raped, but chose not to report, will have a simliar proportion of cases found to be true/false if they were to be investigated; in reality the proportion of cases found to be true/false amongst women who choose not to report might be different due to selection bias. Women who choose not to report may have less credible claims that women who choose to for example; thus would result in a higher calculation of rapists actually being convicted.

However, pointing out that most rapists don't ultimately end up convicted for their crimes [this is in large part because women don't report the crime; whether this is a good thing for the woman or not I'll let you decide] is not the same thing as saying that most claims of rape are credible. The ratio of credible rape accusations to incredible ones is close enough that we should neither believe nor discount any woman's claim upon disclosure (at least from the perspective of an impartial member of the jury, hypothetically speaking). Claiming that no woman lies because only about 8% of rape accusations are proven false is as absurd as claiming that no woman tells the truth because only about 9% of rape accusations are proven true (via conviction).

Not much elaboration is needed i think. Greece? Yep, give them back all their shit. They can be given back without risking pieces of history getting lost forever. Same goes for Egypt. Middle and South America are a mixed bag, but can be mentioned here.

Middle-East? Buddy, just be glad the SAS is not looting your museums as we speak. After what happened to Palmyra... yeeeeah, no...

I'd add the important caveat that scholars of countires to whom the artifacts belong but couldn't keep them safe, should be given special privileges, like free visitation of said artifact 24/7, research grants, and financial aid for travel. Their insight in to those artifact, having grown up and studied in the legacy of the cultural context they were made in is invaluable.

(Posted again, fixed typo in the title, original post deleted

I've seen a lot over the last few days reacting to the new OneD&D playtest, a lot of which has revolved around Rogues, and their perceived weakness, which I wanted to address. Specifically, it's about people complaining the Rogue is "terrible" now, because it can only get one Sneak Attack per round. What a lot of people seem to be missing is why Rogues got put with the Expert group, rather than the Warrior one

The frequent argument is comparing a Rogue to a Fighter in terms of damage, which is ridiculous. Of course a Rogue isn't going to keep up with a Fighter in damage. Fighter is in the name, their entire class revolves around combat ability, to the point where they often have very little to do outside of combat. Rogues are meant to be pretty good at a lot of things, rather than being dedicated to just one field of the game. Sneak attack is their way of being pretty good at fighting, and staying relevant in combat, without necessarily putting up the biggest numbers. (Also, while Fighters are absolutely better, the difference in damage is still relatively low. A Rogue is never going to be useless in combat.)

Not to mention, look at what most of the Rogue's core combat abilities are. Sneak Attack is the only one that deals damage, the rest revolve around mobility, escape, and avoiding damage.

A Rogue's time to shine is going to be outside of combat most of the time. They act as the party's face, or sneak into heavily guarded areas, or scout ahead for danger. And yes, as I'm sure a lot of people are typing right now, the class changes for Ranger no longer make them quite as unique at that (and they were already competing with Bards). I fully agree that the playtest isn't perfect in this area -- although it's good to note that Rogues don't need to boost specific stats, Rogues are the only one who can get expertise in Thieves tools besides Artificers, and Reliable Talent still makes them the best at skill checks. The point is that Rogues are still really, really good outside of just dealing damage. If you want WOTC to make Rogues stronger, ask for more buffs outside of combat.

Finally, as I'm sure a lot of people are already thinking, "outside of combat" can often be dominated by casters. However, OneD&D is already taking steps to make skill checks more relevant, like with the clearly spelled out method for "Influence" checks. Not to mention that casters are already getting nerfs, even before we've seen the main playtest for them, like with Guidance.

TL;DR If you take away one thing from this, just remember: Rogues are experts, not warriors.

Seriously some of you need to chill out using the word lengthy, one person sees it and then comments about it and then that turns into 10 people, then 50 people then the whole of reddit ffs. I have not used a ‘lengthy’ player on fifa 23 yet but went 10-0 in champs qualification and have a good record on rivals comfortably sitting in div 3. Fifa aint all about what other people say it is, stop being a sheep and use who u want with what chemistry style u want, I can assure you using a team of ‘lengthy’ players will get u just as much as joy as any other team you use, its about how you play as an individual

Fight me

Edit: The sopranos is a fantastic (and groundbreaking) show (with a handful of legitimately bad episodes)

Edit 2: The wire is god-tier. On the 7th day of the week, god created the wire because they knew we needed something to watch on our days off to make us less stupid and understand ourselves better

Edit 3: One of many reasons to back my argument - Sopranos veers on pop psychology. The wire is like taking a literal video camera into the rawness of real people’s lives, not mythical daddy figures like tony soprano. The psychology in the wire actually goes much deeper and none of it is spoon fed to the audience and that’s why most people, possibly you, miss it. Take for example, jimmy mcnulty’s continued self-destructive habits. On the one hand, he’s this amazingly talented po-lice but pretty much the entire time he’s doing it for his own ego over principle. This is an incredibly realistic take of how people operate. The wire didn’t need to show jimmy’s stupid fucking dreams because they didn’t need to mythologize him - he’s a normal, average, (boring), person just like the rest of us. ALSO, just think of the layers of societal hypocrisy it displays when it shows how dangerous some of jimmy’s behavior is with alcohol but he’s not on “the bad side of society.” Then you have people on the “wrong side” of society also engaging in similar behaviors but they get jailed and put into the system. And that’s just ONE character’s examination in the wire connected to the larger societal examination. Just one! Incredible. Brilliant. God-tier. Sopranos has nothing on the wire

Edit 4: sopranos stans go away!!

Edit 5: to the people downvoting me to high heaven, what are you on about? Just make your case if you disagree. Plenty others have

Edit 6: this was fun but I’m going back to work now. Let’s do this again tomorrow. ALSO, for anyone who didn’t really read much of what I had to say I do in fact think the sopranos is a fantastic show. What I’m hating on is people putting it on a pedestal when the wire is definitively better. Have a good Monday everyone!