A reasonable person is not a random (or more sensibly, the average) person though. I think a reasonable person would agree with my explanation. I'm not sure the average person would.

Edit: Apparently multiple people are misreading and assuming I'm trying to flatter myself here. "A reasonable person" is a pre-defined legal term that I have little choice but to use verbatim here. It's essentially a proper noun, but without capitalization. Specifically, I'm _not_ describing my own rationality when I say "a reasonable person" would agree with me. What I'm saying is that I think the legal "a reasonable person" would reason the same way I just reasoned. If you still don't get what I'm saying: had the legal term instead been "a stupid monkey", then my sentence would have read "a stupid monkey would agree with me".

Oh, get off your high horse.

I'm not sure you read the article. The whole point of a "reasonable person" is that it represents an "average person".

> this person is seen to represent a composite of a relevant community's judgement as to how a typical member of said community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm (through action or inaction) to the public

This is why we have a jury of our peers picked at random. The randomness is not random.

> Oh, get off your high horse.

That sort of personal swipe will get you banned here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not do this kind of thing on HN, we'd appreciate it.

> Oh, get off your high horse. I'm not sure you read the article. The whole point of a "reasonable person" is that it represents an "average person".

Er, pardon? This isn't my high horse. This is literally your own article's text, which you yourself apparently didn't read:

> As a legal fiction, the "reasonable person" is not an average person or a typical person, leading to great difficulties in applying the concept in some criminal cases, especially in regards to the partial defence of provocation.

HN guidelines:

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.*

I also use _underscores_ sometimes. Does just as good a job at emphasising, but without seeming so shouty.

Ah, gotcha. It's an old habit from my writing style.

Far more disturbing than these for me was the parent's assumption of bad faith on my part... :\

Sure. But it's necessary to follow all the guidelines, not just some of them. Also, you responded to incivility with incivility ("which you yourself apparently didn't read"). Please don't do that, even when provoked.

Tough, but I'll try. Thanks.