E23: How Logical is the Law? – Dr. Bartosz Wojciechowski on Quantum Cognition in the Courtroom
From Superposed · 00:58:34
Show by Aidan Lewis
Same case file. Same evidence. Change only the order it's presented in, and the estimated probability that a suspect is guilty moves by about 10%. The legal system assumes a judge can read the truth out of the facts like an instrument reads a dial. Forensic psychologist and attorney Dr. Bartosz Wojciechowski has spent a decade showing that the act of judging changes what's being judged.=================================Links: 📖Substack: https://superposeddecisions.substack.com/ 📺YouTube: @Superposed_Decisions 🤝LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidan-m-lewis/=================================Dr. Wojciechowski’s path into quantum cognition started with a puzzle. Trained forensic psychologists rating witness statements for truthfulness, item by item, ended up exactly where they started: the scoring criteria didn't determine the verdict, and the tools carried error rates of 35–40%. Searching for a model that could explain this led him to Busemeyer and Wang's work on quantum probability. Since then he has tested judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and laypeople on real Polish criminal case files, and recently tested GPT models on the same cases.=================================We run the courtroom's core fallacies through quantum cognition. Superposition explains why raters don't read out a pre-existing judgment of veracity; the judgment is formed at the moment of decision. The quantum Zeno effect shows up in pretrial detention: when judges re-decide the same case every three months, each repetition makes them less likely to change their mind. Non-commutative order effects mean guilt-then-innocence evidence produces a different verdict than innocence-then-guilt, with recency winning. =================================What you'll take away:Why the order of evidence, not just its content, can shift a guilt judgment by roughly 10%, and why the last word in court carries outsized weightHow repeated review turns a provisional detention decision into a locked-in one, and why changing the decision-maker may matter more than reviewing more oftenWhy laypeople fall for the conjunction fallacy on multiple charges while trained lawyers don't, and why AI trained on human text inherits the same procedural biases=================================Primary Sources:Wojciechowski, White, Allefeld & Pothos (2025). “Order Effects and the Evaluation Bias in Legal Decision Making.” Decision 12(3), 246–267. DOI · Open-access versionWojciechowski (2023/2024). Quantum Probability Theory, Psychology and Law: Modelling Legal Decision Making with Quantum Principles. Routledge. Taylor & Francis page (eBook DOI) · Chapter list. The DOI resolves to the T&F book page, but the site blocked my check of its content.Wojciechowski & Pothos (2018). “Is There a Conjunction Fallacy in Legal Probabilistic Decision Making?” Frontiers in Psychology 9:391. DOI · Open accessWojciechowski, Gräns & Lidén (2018). “A true denial or a false confession? Assessing veracity of suspects’ statements using MASAM and SVA.” PLOS ONE 13(6). Open accessWojciechowski (2014). “Psychologiczna analiza treści zeznań” [Psychological content analysis of testimony]. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Psychologica 18. DOIWojciechowski (2014). “Content analysis algorithms: an innovative and accurate approach to statement veracity assessment.” European Polygraph 8(3). No link verified.Wojciechowski et al. (2021/2022). “Constructive biases in clinical judgment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. DOIWaddup, Błasiak, Yearsley, Wojciechowski & Pothos (2021). “Sensitivity to context in human interactions.” Mathematics 9. DOIGallus, Pothos, Błasiak, Yearsley & Wojciechowski (2023). “Bell correlations outside physics.” Scientific Reports 13, 4394. DOI=================================Secondary Sources:Jagiellonian University staff page: dr Bartosz Wojciechowski, Institute of Applied PsychologyDr. Wojciechowski’s legal practice: ip.land
More episodes
- E25: Has Fear Beaten Hope? – The 2026 Midterms' Anti-Trump Wave Seen Through Quantum Cognition
- E24: Science & Philosophy United – Dr. Peter Bruza on Quantum Cognition, and Reaching Your Potential
- E22: Should You Trust AI or Humans? – AI’s Government Hacks Seen Through Quantum Cognition
- E21: Who Are You Voting For? – Texas & Maine's Senate Toss-Ups Seen Through Quantum Cognition
- E20: Was War the Only Option? – Bush's Decisions Post-9/11 as Seen Through Quantum Cognition
- E19: What Makes a Killer? – Luigi Mangione's CEO Killing Seen Through Quantum Cognition
- E18: Can AI Make Decisions? – Quantum Cognition Explains Rogue AI
- E17: Lindsay Clancy's Trial Explained Through Quantum Cognition
- E0: Introduction to Superposed & Quantum Cognition
- E1: Why Did Trump Choose War With Iran? A Quantum Cognition Breakdown
PodSearch is a free, independent podcast search engine. Read about PodSearch, the privacy policy or contact us.