It's literally just modern gaslighting.

Like the machinegun isn't just another musket.

Consider the progress of technology in the field of lying, bullshit and propaganda.

We've been developing that stuff for literally thousands of years. It has surely been refined to such a height as to be nigh-perfectly secret, invisible and powerful.

This is one reason among many why it is a serious question to ask whether a confession increases or actually rather decreases the likelihood that the culprit commited the crime.

Because this greater good thing sounds earily similar like the end justifies the means, which could argue for decimating a whole village to catch criminals as long as "overall social order of a larger group is contained".

That would rely on the participants believing that truth is the major consideration, right?

If I knew that I would have to prove my innocence, that would lead to a lot of overhead for self surveillance and documentation.

Ie. If the custom of just accepting false confessions becomes a widely accepted practice it could potentially lead to reduction of social order.

so in their system of belief, they are truthfully guilty.

the question I am asking is whether you can divorce truth from confession.

if the society cannot believe that a confessing person is indeed guilty, then it will not uphold societal order.

You'd be surprised how little people care about innocence and justice. They care more about the entertainment value and reddit drama of discussing the convictions than actual justice or truth.

People want to hear that bad things are being done to "bad people", and won't interrogate that label too deeply.

I agree that it takes just little to believe anything. But my point is that we can not divorce the belief

https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/justice-antonin-scalias-rebuke-of-...

It definitely is horrific. It looks like further Supreme Court cases allowed actual innocence claims under other standards, or for specific types of evidence. All of these were close decisions though, and I fear what a more 'conservative' court will allow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_v._Bell

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/schlup-v...

> Although this is a correct ruling, the Court's opinion is not likely to significantly protect innocent people from being executed. First, the Court failed to recognize key points of distinction between the evidence of innocence that Schlup presented and the evidence of innocence presented in Herrera v. Collins. Because Schlup's evidence was much stronger, the Court should not have ruled on the issue of whether the Constitution bars the execution of a factually innocent person. The implication of the Court's silence is that full habeas hearings are unavailable on straight-forward constitutional claims of actual innocence. Second, the Court's analysis of the fundamental miscarriage of justice exception does not appear to contradict the argument that the exception is a rule of permission. Thus, after Schlup, Federal courts will likely be free to dismiss the habeas petitions of State prisoners even where new evidence of innocence makes it "more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted."

Here's what the ideal interrogation looks like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6RoKvC1qcEY