system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does the 5th amendment work and why is it not taken as an automatic admission of guilt?
gpt
You are innocent until **proven** guilty.

Thats pretty important.  They have to prove that you're guilty. You can't be forced to implicate yourself, the government needs to actually prove their case.

It also prevents a situation where you may be forced or compelled by some reason to confess to a crime you did not commit.  If you can take the fifth, you always have the right to not confess and even just having that ability should limit someone trying to force you to take blame for not committing a crime.

One of the ideas the founding fathers had was that they would rather make guilty men go free than an innocent man go to jail. While the fifth circles around this issue without directly hitting it, you can see the ideas that to be guilty of a crime it absolutely needs to be proven, not just said.