Good Judge, Bad Judge
I read this story from my friend's blog (I have to translate it from Chinese to English):
A long time ago there was a farmer. One day when he was heading home after a long day of hard work, he found a bag of 10 gold coins. He originally wanted to keep the coins for himself, but then he thought of the despair of the owner of the gold if he came back to look for it and found nothing. The farmer sat on the side of the road and waited.
It did not take long before a merchant came looking for the gold. The merchant was extremely happy when the farmer handed the bag of gold back to him, but then his smile froze, and he said angrily, "there were 20 gold coins in the bag! Where are the rest of the 10 coins?"
Being wrongfully accused, the farmer reacted, "you were making this up! That's all the coins there were in the bag when I found it. If I had taken the coins, why the hell would I stay here and wait for you to come back?"
Indeed the merchant was lying. There were only 10 coins in the bag when he lost it, but he saw that the honest farmer was so gullible that he could not resist the temptation to push for more.
While they were arguing, an officer passed by, heard the incident and then took them to the local court.
The magistrate asked the farmer, "did you really pick up the bag of gold coins on the road?"
The farmer replied, "yes, your honour, I wouldn't dare to lie to you, I really found the bag on the road."
The magistrate then asked, "and there were really just 10 coins in there? You didn't take the other 10 coins?"
The farmer then said, "I am telling the truth, your honour. If I had taken his gold, why would I wait for his return? In fact, 10 gold coins would be really useful for my poor family, but I couldn't bear the thought of how much despair the owner of the gold would be in if he couldn't find his lost gold. So I waited by the side of the road and if no one came back to look for it, I was going to take it to Lost Property".
"So have you told anyone that you found a bag of gold coins? Did you show them to anyone?" asked the magistrate.
"No, your honour, I was the only person there until he came" said the farmer while pointing to the merchant.
"OK, I have no further questions for you", said the magistrate to the farmer, then looking at the merchant, "Are you absolutely sure that there were 20 gold coins in the bag, not 10 coins?"
"Yes, absolutely sure, your honour, because I need the 20 coins for my business dealing, and 10 coins are certainly not enough for that.
Finally, the magistrate announced, "I now have my judgement "...
Then my friend's blog asked the readers to guess what kind of verdict the magistrate would give. If you haven't heard this story before, then do take a moment to think about a verdict; however, this article/blog is really about my analysis of the replies my friend got on her blog.
Apparently, most people's replies agree with the "official" answer:
if I were the judge, I would tell the merchant that the bag is probably not his, because his bag should have 20 coins. As for the farmer, he would get the bag of 10 gold coins, because it was on the road, and no one came back to claim it!!
However, I myself have a different answer:
The judge would say the merchant needs to provide evidence that the bag contains 20 gold coins to start with, and because he can't, there is no claim against the farmer for the "missing" 10 coins. He would just award the 10 coins to the merchant since no one else was claiming gold.
Before analysing the difference of the two "answers", we should first look at the "question". The story tells you the truth of the events and then asks you what kind of verdict the magistrate would give. If its aim is to test how good a judge the reader would be, then it is badly worded. For if one sees the event from the eyes of the magistrate, all he had were the words of the merchant against those from the farmer - he would not have know who was lying.
Telling the reader the "truth" that the merchant was the lying one would in fact lead the reader to a biased judgement. I think my own answer is the judgement the magistrate would have given if he did not know who was lying. If there is no obvious fault in their statements, even if they are contradicting each other (i.e.one of them must be lying), the best he could/should do is not to disadvantage either side, and not use his "intuition" to "judge" one to be lying. Especially in this case, it would be unfair to conclude that the bag of gold does not belong to the merchant, because he might be telling the truth and someone else might have come along before the farmer and stolen 10 gold coins from the bag. However, in order for the merchant to ask for "compensation" from the farmer, he must be able to prove that not only the bag had 20 gold coins to start with, but also that the farmer had stolen it. On the other hand, the farmer did not claim that he owned the bag of golds, so the judge should only award the gold to the farmer if no one else comes forward to claim the gold. The magistrate should therefore award the 10 coins to the merchant because he was the only one claiming the gold.
But that's not what most people think the aim of the story is. They either interpret the story as implicitly asking them to invent a creative way to "bend" the laws so that they can award the gold to the "honest" farmer and punish the "greedy" merchant, in a FAIRY TALE kind of way; and/or they do not actually assume the magistrate knows the truth, but they are just trying to make up an ending for the story that would satisfy their moral/ethic, which is: being good/honest should be awarded and dishonest/greedy men need to be punished.
Firstly, I think it is interesting to see whether people do realise that they have given their "verdict" base on that aforementioned moral/ethic rule (and how many of them could defend this rule as the right rule to follow). This could be a subject of another blog entry (which I am not going to write): whether this rule should still be applicable in this world of capitalism (should greed for more money be a bad deed that needs to be punished?), and/or why people are still believing in it.
I also found it very interesting that most people choose that interpretation. Why interesting? If we think about it carefully, they "instinctively" interpret the question as asking them how BAD a judge they could be. Why a BAD judge? Because their judgements were not based only on the evidence presented to them, but the judge's own subjective "knowledge" of who was right or wrong.
"If the judge knows the truth, but is just lacking the evidence, why shouldn't he bend the laws to serve justice?" I think this type of thought merits caution (if not alarm!), because this is exactly how people/places cross over from being "under the rule of law (法治)" to "under the rule of people(人治)". To put it in perspective, if you were a merchant who need to travel around carrying bags of gold and occasionally dropping them on the floor as careless mistake, would you rather live/visit a place where the judges bend the laws to fit their "intuition" of who is right or wrong without evidence (you dropped 20 coins, someone stole 10 coins and returned you 10 coins only, and the judge awards those 10 coins to the theft instead, because he thinks you are a liar), or be in place where laws are executed base on evidence only?
A long time ago there was a farmer. One day when he was heading home after a long day of hard work, he found a bag of 10 gold coins. He originally wanted to keep the coins for himself, but then he thought of the despair of the owner of the gold if he came back to look for it and found nothing. The farmer sat on the side of the road and waited.
It did not take long before a merchant came looking for the gold. The merchant was extremely happy when the farmer handed the bag of gold back to him, but then his smile froze, and he said angrily, "there were 20 gold coins in the bag! Where are the rest of the 10 coins?"
Being wrongfully accused, the farmer reacted, "you were making this up! That's all the coins there were in the bag when I found it. If I had taken the coins, why the hell would I stay here and wait for you to come back?"
Indeed the merchant was lying. There were only 10 coins in the bag when he lost it, but he saw that the honest farmer was so gullible that he could not resist the temptation to push for more.
While they were arguing, an officer passed by, heard the incident and then took them to the local court.
The magistrate asked the farmer, "did you really pick up the bag of gold coins on the road?"
The farmer replied, "yes, your honour, I wouldn't dare to lie to you, I really found the bag on the road."
The magistrate then asked, "and there were really just 10 coins in there? You didn't take the other 10 coins?"
The farmer then said, "I am telling the truth, your honour. If I had taken his gold, why would I wait for his return? In fact, 10 gold coins would be really useful for my poor family, but I couldn't bear the thought of how much despair the owner of the gold would be in if he couldn't find his lost gold. So I waited by the side of the road and if no one came back to look for it, I was going to take it to Lost Property".
"So have you told anyone that you found a bag of gold coins? Did you show them to anyone?" asked the magistrate.
"No, your honour, I was the only person there until he came" said the farmer while pointing to the merchant.
"OK, I have no further questions for you", said the magistrate to the farmer, then looking at the merchant, "Are you absolutely sure that there were 20 gold coins in the bag, not 10 coins?"
"Yes, absolutely sure, your honour, because I need the 20 coins for my business dealing, and 10 coins are certainly not enough for that.
Finally, the magistrate announced, "I now have my judgement "...
Then my friend's blog asked the readers to guess what kind of verdict the magistrate would give. If you haven't heard this story before, then do take a moment to think about a verdict; however, this article/blog is really about my analysis of the replies my friend got on her blog.
Apparently, most people's replies agree with the "official" answer:
if I were the judge, I would tell the merchant that the bag is probably not his, because his bag should have 20 coins. As for the farmer, he would get the bag of 10 gold coins, because it was on the road, and no one came back to claim it!!
However, I myself have a different answer:
The judge would say the merchant needs to provide evidence that the bag contains 20 gold coins to start with, and because he can't, there is no claim against the farmer for the "missing" 10 coins. He would just award the 10 coins to the merchant since no one else was claiming gold.
Before analysing the difference of the two "answers", we should first look at the "question". The story tells you the truth of the events and then asks you what kind of verdict the magistrate would give. If its aim is to test how good a judge the reader would be, then it is badly worded. For if one sees the event from the eyes of the magistrate, all he had were the words of the merchant against those from the farmer - he would not have know who was lying.
Telling the reader the "truth" that the merchant was the lying one would in fact lead the reader to a biased judgement. I think my own answer is the judgement the magistrate would have given if he did not know who was lying. If there is no obvious fault in their statements, even if they are contradicting each other (i.e.one of them must be lying), the best he could/should do is not to disadvantage either side, and not use his "intuition" to "judge" one to be lying. Especially in this case, it would be unfair to conclude that the bag of gold does not belong to the merchant, because he might be telling the truth and someone else might have come along before the farmer and stolen 10 gold coins from the bag. However, in order for the merchant to ask for "compensation" from the farmer, he must be able to prove that not only the bag had 20 gold coins to start with, but also that the farmer had stolen it. On the other hand, the farmer did not claim that he owned the bag of golds, so the judge should only award the gold to the farmer if no one else comes forward to claim the gold. The magistrate should therefore award the 10 coins to the merchant because he was the only one claiming the gold.
But that's not what most people think the aim of the story is. They either interpret the story as implicitly asking them to invent a creative way to "bend" the laws so that they can award the gold to the "honest" farmer and punish the "greedy" merchant, in a FAIRY TALE kind of way; and/or they do not actually assume the magistrate knows the truth, but they are just trying to make up an ending for the story that would satisfy their moral/ethic, which is: being good/honest should be awarded and dishonest/greedy men need to be punished.
Firstly, I think it is interesting to see whether people do realise that they have given their "verdict" base on that aforementioned moral/ethic rule (and how many of them could defend this rule as the right rule to follow). This could be a subject of another blog entry (which I am not going to write): whether this rule should still be applicable in this world of capitalism (should greed for more money be a bad deed that needs to be punished?), and/or why people are still believing in it.
I also found it very interesting that most people choose that interpretation. Why interesting? If we think about it carefully, they "instinctively" interpret the question as asking them how BAD a judge they could be. Why a BAD judge? Because their judgements were not based only on the evidence presented to them, but the judge's own subjective "knowledge" of who was right or wrong.
"If the judge knows the truth, but is just lacking the evidence, why shouldn't he bend the laws to serve justice?" I think this type of thought merits caution (if not alarm!), because this is exactly how people/places cross over from being "under the rule of law (法治)" to "under the rule of people(人治)". To put it in perspective, if you were a merchant who need to travel around carrying bags of gold and occasionally dropping them on the floor as careless mistake, would you rather live/visit a place where the judges bend the laws to fit their "intuition" of who is right or wrong without evidence (you dropped 20 coins, someone stole 10 coins and returned you 10 coins only, and the judge awards those 10 coins to the theft instead, because he thinks you are a liar), or be in place where laws are executed base on evidence only?
posted by Deity at
1:53 AM
2 Comments:
wait...
i haven't read the whole of your answer, but i have something to say. according to you, 10 gold should be awarded to the merchant (if he could prove that the bag contained 20 gold to start with) and because no one else is claiming gold.
"merchant proving bag has 20 gold" - are you trying to also say that he has to prove that the actual bag was his, and that it originally has 10? merely proving that bag has 20 gold doesn't necessarily mean that that was his bag
"no one else is claiming gold" - doesn't matter - maybe there was really another person who has lost 10 gold and hasn't come to claim yet
basically, awarding the merchant with the 10 gold by just proving that "bag has 20 gold" and "no one else is claiming" is also dangerous
i must reiterate that i haven't read the whole of your explanation yet...
- sylvia judge
By
mausekopf, at 3:45 AM
Welcome to the first person who left comment on my blog :-)
> "merchant proving bag has 20 gold" - are you trying to also say that he has to prove that the actual bag was his, and that it originally has 10? merely proving that bag has 20 gold doesn't necessarily mean that that was his bag
NO, I meant the neccasary conditions that must be satisify IF the judge were to award the merchant the bag of 10 coins AND order the farmer to compensate another 10 coins to the merchant to make up of the total of 20 coins are:
1) merchant needed to provide evidence that the bag contained 20 gold coins to start with
2) also merchant needed to provide evidence that the farmer had stolen it.
>basically, awarding the merchant with the 10 gold by just proving that "bag has 20 gold" and "no one else is claiming" is also dangerous
Whether the merchant needed to provide evidence that the bag belonged to him originally is a vague area in the story.
How does the Lost and Found system noramlly work (in mordern world?)
Say if you lost someting in the park, you normally just go to the lost properties department. The lost properties department may ask you a few questions to test your knowledge of the lost item (like what brand, shape, colour, any marker on it, etc. or just give it to the first person who came to claim it.
It is sort of implicit that if you lost something, you acccept the fact/faith that everyone could come forward and claim the lost object.
May be S can tell us the exact legal procedure to due with lost and found properties but I think this aspect can be gross over in the story becasue only one person (the merchant) is caliming the bag of gold. IT IS LIKE if you lost your wallet and when you try to claim it in the lost properties department, they said all the cash inside it was gone.... (or only 10 coins are left), you are not seriously suggesting that you therefore should not be allowed to claim back your wallet (let's assume that there is no ID card, etc. in it to identify you, but it is a LV wallet, etc. so that it in itself is worth getting back ;-) )!!?
By
Deity, at 11:58 AM
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