4 ms·

Always assume those with power over you are lying to you. It's sort of a reverse Pascal's wager.

by oldmanjay 10y ago

crusso 10y ago
Then we should get rid of all police?
- eropple 10y ago
  "Get rid of all police" is the sort of reductio ad absurdum silliness that brings this discussion down. Don't do that. But, for an example of how we can counteract the likelihood of those in power lying to the people they serve? In urban and suburban areas at least (rural policing is a little bit of a different thing), consider a twofold approach: 1) Provide body cameras that cannot be turned off while in uniform under any circumstances (sew them into the uniform top?), with draconian penalties in any case where they're disabled or obscured in the field. Multiple battery slots to allow hot-swapping, a low-battery warning informs dispatch, all of that. Allowing your camera to go offline is a strict-liability federal offense; the only disproof is another officer's video evidence that an assailant removed the camera from the officer. (This is not a cheap tool, and it does imply that officers should be dispatched in pairs or more. I am OK with that. We should be willing to spend money for better policing.) 2) Remove all weapons that are not less-lethal from beat police. Batons, tasers, OC spray. You can kill someone with these weapons, but it takes a hell of a lot more work (and it's harder to obfuscate when a suspect has surrendered and is complying than when you can shoot them to death at range). If you need someone with a gun, you should be calling in backup dispatched directly from a station.
  - crusso 10y ago
    "Get rid of all police" is the sort of reductio ad absurdum silliness that brings this discussion down. Don't do that. Fair enough. I felt that I was responding to something that was absurd on the face of it, but I appreciate that you offered suggestions to try to keep it from being absurd. That said, if we assume that all people in authority are lying to us, we have a really poor system of governance that relies on putting people into authority positions who we assume are all lying. For your suggestions: 1) Strict liability if a piece of electronics fails in a way that the officer can't prove was a technical malfunction? I would never ever accept that kind of liability for myself without a great deal of compensation and some form of insurance to protect myself from the inevitable glitch. While I expect LEO to be held to a strict standard, it has to be reasonable. 2) I've seen that suggestion. I don't know how well it would work given the prevalence of guns in the USA, but I'd be interested in some form of experiment being conducted in a metropolitan area to see what kind of statistics could be drawn from it. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to be police officer in the USA. If you'd want to send me out there unarmed, you'd need to triple my salary.
    - eropple 10y ago
      > That said, if we assume that all people in authority are lying to us, we have a really poor system of governance that relies on putting people into authority positions who we assume are all lying. Sure. But that's basically the heart of every non-autocratic (and even some autocratic!) system of government in the history of the world, though. Having the people with the levers of power lie to the populace goes back to Greece. > Strict liability if a piece of electronics fails in a way that the officer can't prove was a technical malfunction? This is the one thing that gives me pause about that approach, to be fair. And I'd be willing to flex on the details, but any unrecorded police interaction with the populace that must trust them must be strictly proscribed. There must be eyes on the police at all times, and they must be impartial. How we get there, we can discuss, but that's the goal. > Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to be police officer in the USA. If you'd want to send me out there unarmed, you'd need to triple my salary. That's a fair way to feel. I wouldn't want to be a police officer under any circumstances, because I understand that I could be tempted by that power. To that end, I feel that we need to remove the attraction of policing from the bullies and power-trippers of the world. Policing should not be a glamorous job (and I don't really feel it should be well-respected, except insofar as any profession should be), but in turn it should be well-compensated.
      - crusso 10y ago
        Some distrust of those in power is not always assuming that everyone with authority is lying. That's the absurd part, although I do admit that approaching it as though lying by authorities is common is a good way to build the system -- similar to designing your internal network assuming that attackers have already breached your firewall. because I understand that I could be tempted by that power Interesting. I don't look at it that way at all. I don't really want more power in my life except for the power to live without people messing with me. Power over others has little appeal or temptation to me. Policing just looks to be a dangerous, thankless, under-compensated job to me. Imagine having to walk up to someone's car to give them a ticket. Your job is to be "that guy" who pisses on someone's day because they were speeding, had a tail light out, whatever. Then add to that mix the probability that they'll try to manipulate you, possibly by insulting you and taking their frustration out on you. Finally, that person may have a gun and be waiting for you to get into the right position to blow a hole in you. Makes me happy that I earn my living by programming in my house. I'm torn on your comment about respect. I think that there are some jobs in the world that are more deserving than others of respect. Doctors who save lives, for example. Most jobs that involve a lot of physical risk for little pay like the military and policing, for another. Sitting on my butt writing software is not really one of them and I'm okay with that.

Always assume those with power over you are lying to you. It's sort of a reverse Pascal's wager.

crusso 10y ago

Then we should get rid of all police?

eropple 10y ago
"Get rid of all police" is the sort of reductio ad absurdum silliness that brings this discussion down. Don't do that. But, for an example of how we can counteract the likelihood of those in power lying to the people they serve? In urban and suburban areas at least (rural policing is a little bit of a different thing), consider a twofold approach: 1) Provide body cameras that cannot be turned off while in uniform under any circumstances (sew them into the uniform top?), with draconian penalties in any case where they're disabled or obscured in the field. Multiple battery slots to allow hot-swapping, a low-battery warning informs dispatch, all of that. Allowing your camera to go offline is a strict-liability federal offense; the only disproof is another officer's video evidence that an assailant removed the camera from the officer. (This is not a cheap tool, and it does imply that officers should be dispatched in pairs or more. I am OK with that. We should be willing to spend money for better policing.) 2) Remove all weapons that are not less-lethal from beat police. Batons, tasers, OC spray. You can kill someone with these weapons, but it takes a hell of a lot more work (and it's harder to obfuscate when a suspect has surrendered and is complying than when you can shoot them to death at range). If you need someone with a gun, you should be calling in backup dispatched directly from a station.
- crusso 10y ago
  "Get rid of all police" is the sort of reductio ad absurdum silliness that brings this discussion down. Don't do that. Fair enough. I felt that I was responding to something that was absurd on the face of it, but I appreciate that you offered suggestions to try to keep it from being absurd. That said, if we assume that all people in authority are lying to us, we have a really poor system of governance that relies on putting people into authority positions who we assume are all lying. For your suggestions: 1) Strict liability if a piece of electronics fails in a way that the officer can't prove was a technical malfunction? I would never ever accept that kind of liability for myself without a great deal of compensation and some form of insurance to protect myself from the inevitable glitch. While I expect LEO to be held to a strict standard, it has to be reasonable. 2) I've seen that suggestion. I don't know how well it would work given the prevalence of guns in the USA, but I'd be interested in some form of experiment being conducted in a metropolitan area to see what kind of statistics could be drawn from it. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to be police officer in the USA. If you'd want to send me out there unarmed, you'd need to triple my salary.
  - eropple 10y ago
    > That said, if we assume that all people in authority are lying to us, we have a really poor system of governance that relies on putting people into authority positions who we assume are all lying. Sure. But that's basically the heart of every non-autocratic (and even some autocratic!) system of government in the history of the world, though. Having the people with the levers of power lie to the populace goes back to Greece. > Strict liability if a piece of electronics fails in a way that the officer can't prove was a technical malfunction? This is the one thing that gives me pause about that approach, to be fair. And I'd be willing to flex on the details, but any unrecorded police interaction with the populace that must trust them must be strictly proscribed. There must be eyes on the police at all times, and they must be impartial. How we get there, we can discuss, but that's the goal. > Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to be police officer in the USA. If you'd want to send me out there unarmed, you'd need to triple my salary. That's a fair way to feel. I wouldn't want to be a police officer under any circumstances, because I understand that I could be tempted by that power. To that end, I feel that we need to remove the attraction of policing from the bullies and power-trippers of the world. Policing should not be a glamorous job (and I don't really feel it should be well-respected, except insofar as any profession should be), but in turn it should be well-compensated.
    - crusso 10y ago
      Some distrust of those in power is not always assuming that everyone with authority is lying. That's the absurd part, although I do admit that approaching it as though lying by authorities is common is a good way to build the system -- similar to designing your internal network assuming that attackers have already breached your firewall. because I understand that I could be tempted by that power Interesting. I don't look at it that way at all. I don't really want more power in my life except for the power to live without people messing with me. Power over others has little appeal or temptation to me. Policing just looks to be a dangerous, thankless, under-compensated job to me. Imagine having to walk up to someone's car to give them a ticket. Your job is to be "that guy" who pisses on someone's day because they were speeding, had a tail light out, whatever. Then add to that mix the probability that they'll try to manipulate you, possibly by insulting you and taking their frustration out on you. Finally, that person may have a gun and be waiting for you to get into the right position to blow a hole in you. Makes me happy that I earn my living by programming in my house. I'm torn on your comment about respect. I think that there are some jobs in the world that are more deserving than others of respect. Doctors who save lives, for example. Most jobs that involve a lot of physical risk for little pay like the military and policing, for another. Sitting on my butt writing software is not really one of them and I'm okay with that.