I see. If this critical-thinking curriculum raised the fallacy/bias-spotting abilities of ordinary folks, and did not raise the sophism-spinning abilities of lawyers, then the jurors' abilities would rise relative to the lawyers', which would improve juries' chances of reaching the correct verdict. I think I agree with this.
But why should we assume that lawyes' abilities will not rise as well? You write that this training would not "significantly improve the toolkit available to the sorts of people who become lawyers." But surely lawyers will play to their audience, and learn to present whatever fallacies the jurors will be susceptible to.
Thus I agree that such training might "change the sorts of arguments that are effective in courtrooms," but I don't think it would improve outcomes more.
it probably wouldn't work, though not for the reason you describe
Why do you think it wouldn't work?
But why should we assume that lawyes' abilities will not rise as well?
I expect that the sorts of people who become lawyers today are already better acquainted with critical thinking techniques than the sorts of people who become jurors. Also, I expect an across-the-board training curriculum for subject X to have more of an impact on people who know little about X than it does on people who know a lot about X -- that is, I expect it to raise the floor more than the ceiling.
Therefore, I expect an across-the-board critical thinking curriculum to reduce the...
I'm interested in how courts and juries might use rational techniques to arrive at correct decisions on guilt.
In a complex case, it would seem to sensible to assess each component of the prosecution and defence case, and estimate the relative likelihood. If the prosecution case is (say) 100 times more likely than the defence case, then you can say the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
I never heard of this being done though. I recently made an analysis of the Massei report into the Amanda Knox case. It looked like this ( see http://massei-report-analysis.wikispaces.com/ for the entire analysis and some insight into the numbers below ).
This is perhaps a bit vague. It's not a great example, because in the end I didn't find any credible prosecution evidence. It's not entirely clear what the "probability" numbers here actually are, and whether two columns are needed. But hopefully it shows that the Massei's account of the murder is quite improbable, and there is considerable doubt.
I'm interested in possibly devising a more complete framework for how such an assessment should be done, the pitfalls that need to be guarded against (how uncertain are the probability estimates?), and even views as to how "reasonable doubt" should be quantified.
Perhaps readers would like to make an assessment of other interesting cases, to explore the issues.
Or how would you approach this problem?