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your equation doesn't consider the ethical costs of locking people away for long periods of time. This is just my kind of off-the-cuff theorizing, but I had th

by cb18 11y ago

your equation doesn't consider the ethical costs of locking people away for long periods of time. This is just my kind of off-the-cuff theorizing, but I had that factored in to the cost column as well. I wasn't speaking about a purely monetary cost. Things like the cost to society of having the person locked away, the cost or not of a society looking at itself and knowing it is a society that locks people away for offense X for Y years. Another cost to consider outside the above cost column is that crimes of many sorts incur huge costs, both monetarily and through things like social cohesion to a society. And it is in mitigating these potential costs that the benefits come from in the above cost-benefit analysis. I don't particularly think of myself as an über-rationalist, but ethics more or less comes down to cost-benefit as well. How do you arrive at your ethics, by weighing certain things against other things[1], or do you just go with your gut? The question of reform is surely one that pulls at the heartstrings if your prone to having your emotions played on. How can reform be adequately determined? I have no answers for that. Do you believe that sentences are levied with the expectation that minimal reform will occur or do you think that judges take that into consideration? I'm going to leave this one to the people that devote their lives to it, judges. I have heard of people released early for 'good behavior,' so this is not an unheard of thing. It's understandable that as you move up the offence ladder, the possibility of a commuted sentence on the grounds of 'good behavior' or 'reform' would become more and more remote. [1]here is something of an ethical brain teaser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

jolux 11y ago
I'd first like to nitpick your use of your vs you're because you're still doing it but it's really of small importance. I think you're generalizing a bit. Utilitarian ethics come down to cost-benefit analysis, but that's only for people who are perfectly rational. Even then, this really only works for a definition of rational that comes down to essentially evaluating mathematically the costs and benefits of things without accounting for inherent irrationality. To complicate the (overplayed) trolley car problem and perhaps see what I'm thinking on this subject, consider it likes this: If instead of one person you had push two skinnier people instead of one fat person onto the tracks to save the other four, would it change the decision you made? If you do nothing, the trolley driver is responsible for the involuntary manslaughter of four people but you are innocent. If you push two people, you are guilty of the voluntary manslaughter of two people and will serve 50 years in prison. If there was only one person to push, you would serve 25 years in prison for their voluntary manslaughter. But does this affect whether or not you push people? I doubt it. From a selfish point of view, the best course of action is to not do anything. However, I suspect that for people who are willing to kill fewer people to save more, the number killed does not matter so long as more are saved. Applying the law to an ethical thought experiment is inherently fraught and I don't mean to imply that this is an academically defensible suggestion however I hope it serves to illustrate why I don't agree with you.

by cb18 11y ago

jolux 11y ago

I'd first like to nitpick your use of your vs you're because you're still doing it but it's really of small importance. I think you're generalizing a bit. Utilitarian ethics come down to cost-benefit analysis, but that's only for people who are perfectly rational. Even then, this really only works for a definition of rational that comes down to essentially evaluating mathematically the costs and benefits of things without accounting for inherent irrationality. To complicate the (overplayed) trolley car problem and perhaps see what I'm thinking on this subject, consider it likes this: If instead of one person you had push two skinnier people instead of one fat person onto the tracks to save the other four, would it change the decision you made? If you do nothing, the trolley driver is responsible for the involuntary manslaughter of four people but you are innocent. If you push two people, you are guilty of the voluntary manslaughter of two people and will serve 50 years in prison. If there was only one person to push, you would serve 25 years in prison for their voluntary manslaughter. But does this affect whether or not you push people? I doubt it. From a selfish point of view, the best course of action is to not do anything. However, I suspect that for people who are willing to kill fewer people to save more, the number killed does not matter so long as more are saved. Applying the law to an ethical thought experiment is inherently fraught and I don't mean to imply that this is an academically defensible suggestion however I hope it serves to illustrate why I don't agree with you.