4 ms·

Even if we don't have free will, it's better to pretend we do. There is a difference between a driver that falls asleep at the wheel and causes an accident and

by jfoutz 10y ago

Even if we don't have free will, it's better to pretend we do. There is a difference between a driver that falls asleep at the wheel and causes an accident and a driver that flies into a rage and crashes their car into another driver. It's hard to justify the distinction if neither driver has a choice. I'd argue it's better for society to maintain that distinction. Perhaps someone can reframe that in terms of types of error, and people prone to more serious types of error (road rage) face different consequences. But that gets real complicated real quick. I dunno. I suspect the majority of the time i'm on autopilot. Alarm goes off, get up, brush teeth, shower. I pretend i'm capable of not doing that. i just don't choose the other way.

jeremyjh 10y ago
There are a lot of people who will not commit crime only because they fear the consequences. So it would be rational to punish criminals regardless of your thoughts on free-will. And if you don't believe in free-will then you have to accept that you have no "free" choice about punishing criminals. Myself, I do not even know what the will is, or what it could possibly be free from. The influence of the universe?
- jfoutz 10y ago
  > There are a lot of people who will not commit crime only because they fear the consequences. Fear sounds like an implicit assertion of choice, but i think you mean something more subtle. Let my try to put it another way. People are complex systems that can be influenced. Water tends to flow downhill, we can set up troughs to control the flow of water. The flow is complex, and some water will splash out, but generally the water does follows the system. Likewise, we can set up legal troughs to guide people to the behavior we want. (I know argument by analogy is crappy, i'm just hoping we can agree on this point, and i think we do.) There's a whole other argument about why we would set up those legal rules, but i'd like to set that aside for a moment (if it's a big deal, or fundamental in some way, i'd like to hear your side. I'm not sure i can meaningfully engage that point) It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. > Myself, I do not even know what the will is, or what it could possibly be free from. The influence of the universe? My personal interpretation (which is probably wrong, but something i'm willing to go back and forth on to come to consensus) Free will the mind having a choice in taking action, rather than the body just doing whatever, and the mind rationalizing it after the fact. Perhaps every action we take is just like a heartbeat. I have no control over that. Perhaps when i hold my breath, i'm not actually choosing to hold my breath, but the complex system that is my body holds it's breath and my mind is claims that it was responsible for that holding of breath. Or typing this comment, or whatever. I don't think there's any way i can know. It feels like my mind is in control, but my mind gets all of its information from (and the software runs on!) my body. my mind seems to control the hardware, but maybe i'm just rationalizing after the fact.
  - pitay 10y ago
    > I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. That doesn't require the concept of free will. Because for manslaughter and murder the reasons are different for the death. One is deliberate, one isn't. > It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. You would also want to calculate predicted future costs from that person, mainly from the point of view of harm to other people. If someone like them is likely to kill on average one or more people in the rest of their life then they aren't going to be allowed to interact with general society again. This doesn't need the concept of free will to implement. It only needs a sufficiently sophisticated way of determining of what harm a person like them will likely cause. This is in addition to the harm they have already caused, so there is no reason for someone to become a one time killer. And yes, getting the predictions right may be really tricky, and the way the courts currently sentence people may be a good as or better than trying to predict what people do on average. But the way courts sentence at the moment doesn't require the concept of free will anyway, because people do what they do because of reasons, human reasons, and they can differentiate there.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    You can easily resolve the dilemma without invoking free choice. In both cases you want the person not to run over any more people. The guy who slept at the wheel will be very unlikely to repeat the act, since he didn't pursue it on purpose. We will benefit from giving him a lighter fine and maybe having him spend time with a psychiatrist to correct his behaviour. The second guy will probably not be corrected by gentle persuasion and needs a different mental patch. We will cause him pain and suffering greater than his enjoyment of the act so that next time his utility function will prefer not running people over. If they have free will, the conversation is exactly the same. You want to achieve behavioural modification and recuperate property damage.
  - devishard 10y ago
    > It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. I don't think so. I think determinism makes "punishment" as a concept, completely nonsensical--you can't punish someone for something they didn't choose to do. I think determinism pushes the focus to rehabilitation rather than punishment, which for many types of crimes (i.e. drug use, computer hacking, nonviolent robbery) is clearly more effective in preventing recidivism (and I'd argue that for crimes where it's not effective, that we haven't really explored rehabilititation because of the widespread belief in free will). > I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. Agreed. But does this highlight a problem with a deterministic world view, or does it highlight a problem with the distinction between manslaughter and murder?
- peteretep 10y ago
  > There are a lot of people > who will not commit crime > only because they fear the > consequences Really? I'd say both crime rate and severity of consequences have taken a plunge over the last few centuries.
peteretep 10y ago
I used to feel this way too - I remember writing up drunken notes when I was at college saying exactly the same thing. Punishments from crime have decreased substantially - nobody gets transported or hung for sheep theft anymore. The world has never been a safer place. States with the death penalty are no safer than those without. Fewer people genuinely believe in a Christian (or whatever) hell than in years past. At the same time, religion has faltered as a source in many people's lives. I would argue this means that circumstances that lead people in to crime have decreased rather than a suggestion that people are making choices to commit crime but don't based on deterrence. I appreciate there exist counter arguments to this too, but also feel that if we treated crime as a function of situation rather than morality, we'd find ways to decrease it more cheaply.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  I guess i'd ask the same question i asked of jeremyjh. With no notion of free will, how do we distinguish between manslaughter and murder? When someone dies, the cost to society is the same either way. A consequence of no free will seems to be it's a distinction without difference. I disagree, but it might just be deeply embedded beliefs that are wrong.
  - devishard 10y ago
    > With no notion of free will, how do we distinguish between manslaughter and murder? I'd argue that the distinction is not indicative of a phenomenon that exists. I think a much better model would be predictive and preventive rather than punitive--the level assignment to rehabilitation should be based on the probability and severity of recidivism, rather than the level of punishment being based on the severity of the crime.
devishard 10y ago
> Even if we don't have free will, it's better to pretend we do. There is a difference between a driver that falls asleep at the wheel and causes an accident and a driver that flies into a rage and crashes their car into another driver. It's hard to justify the distinction if neither driver has a choice. I'd argue it's better for society to maintain that distinction. The distinction still matters without free will, because it's still a predictor of future behavior. A driver who crashes because of a preventable cause shouldn't be allowed to drive until the problem is resolved. If the problem is falling asleep, the solution may be simple (get more sleep?) or hard (narcolepsy), while anger issues are probably pretty difficult to provably solve. Belief in free will has some seriously harmful effects on the way we deal with these situations. Most notably, it's the basis for a focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Deterrents don't work, largely because they don't fix the causes for bad behavior. Rehabilitation is the only sensible approach if you don't believe in free will, whereas punishment makes a bit more sense if you believe that people have free will. > Perhaps someone can reframe that in terms of types of error, and people prone to more serious types of error (road rage) face different consequences. But that gets real complicated real quick. This is fundamentally a free-will-based way of seeing the problem. "Consequences" are completely irrelevant in a deterministic worldview unless you can prove that they act as a deterrent (that is, that they are part of the cause). Since consequences are provably not significant deterrents for many crimes, I don't think that works. Your argument basically that "this idea of punishment/consequences (which only makes sense in a free-will-based ideology) doesn't work in a deterministic ideology, and punishment/consequences are good in my free-will-based ideology, therefore deterministic ideologies are wrong". But you have to hold a free-will-based ideology for the preconditions of your argument to make sense.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  Yes, i see that now. The distinction depends on free will, so isn't a good test. Very insightful. Thank you.
  - DigitalPhysics 10y ago
    Your talk of punishment vs rehabilitation is spot on, and very relevant to the "Doesn't the whole justice system collapse if there is no free will?" question. Have you ever heard of how some South American prisons are treating inmates with Ayahuasca, in order to rehabilitate their mind? Very interesting stuff considering the success rate.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
You cannot derive is from ought.

by jfoutz 10y ago

jeremyjh 10y ago

There are a lot of people who will not commit crime only because they fear the consequences. So it would be rational to punish criminals regardless of your thoughts on free-will. And if you don't believe in free-will then you have to accept that you have no "free" choice about punishing criminals. Myself, I do not even know what the will is, or what it could possibly be free from. The influence of the universe?

jfoutz 10y ago
> There are a lot of people who will not commit crime only because they fear the consequences. Fear sounds like an implicit assertion of choice, but i think you mean something more subtle. Let my try to put it another way. People are complex systems that can be influenced. Water tends to flow downhill, we can set up troughs to control the flow of water. The flow is complex, and some water will splash out, but generally the water does follows the system. Likewise, we can set up legal troughs to guide people to the behavior we want. (I know argument by analogy is crappy, i'm just hoping we can agree on this point, and i think we do.) There's a whole other argument about why we would set up those legal rules, but i'd like to set that aside for a moment (if it's a big deal, or fundamental in some way, i'd like to hear your side. I'm not sure i can meaningfully engage that point) It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. > Myself, I do not even know what the will is, or what it could possibly be free from. The influence of the universe? My personal interpretation (which is probably wrong, but something i'm willing to go back and forth on to come to consensus) Free will the mind having a choice in taking action, rather than the body just doing whatever, and the mind rationalizing it after the fact. Perhaps every action we take is just like a heartbeat. I have no control over that. Perhaps when i hold my breath, i'm not actually choosing to hold my breath, but the complex system that is my body holds it's breath and my mind is claims that it was responsible for that holding of breath. Or typing this comment, or whatever. I don't think there's any way i can know. It feels like my mind is in control, but my mind gets all of its information from (and the software runs on!) my body. my mind seems to control the hardware, but maybe i'm just rationalizing after the fact.
- pitay 10y ago
  > I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. That doesn't require the concept of free will. Because for manslaughter and murder the reasons are different for the death. One is deliberate, one isn't. > It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. You would also want to calculate predicted future costs from that person, mainly from the point of view of harm to other people. If someone like them is likely to kill on average one or more people in the rest of their life then they aren't going to be allowed to interact with general society again. This doesn't need the concept of free will to implement. It only needs a sufficiently sophisticated way of determining of what harm a person like them will likely cause. This is in addition to the harm they have already caused, so there is no reason for someone to become a one time killer. And yes, getting the predictions right may be really tricky, and the way the courts currently sentence people may be a good as or better than trying to predict what people do on average. But the way courts sentence at the moment doesn't require the concept of free will anyway, because people do what they do because of reasons, human reasons, and they can differentiate there.
- Asooka 10y ago
  You can easily resolve the dilemma without invoking free choice. In both cases you want the person not to run over any more people. The guy who slept at the wheel will be very unlikely to repeat the act, since he didn't pursue it on purpose. We will benefit from giving him a lighter fine and maybe having him spend time with a psychiatrist to correct his behaviour. The second guy will probably not be corrected by gentle persuasion and needs a different mental patch. We will cause him pain and suffering greater than his enjoyment of the act so that next time his utility function will prefer not running people over. If they have free will, the conversation is exactly the same. You want to achieve behavioural modification and recuperate property damage.
- devishard 10y ago
  > It seems like, punishment would need to be interpreted purely as societal cost. So you tally up the wreckage from the car accident example above, say $25,000 and 2 lives. I don't think so. I think determinism makes "punishment" as a concept, completely nonsensical--you can't punish someone for something they didn't choose to do. I think determinism pushes the focus to rehabilitation rather than punishment, which for many types of crimes (i.e. drug use, computer hacking, nonviolent robbery) is clearly more effective in preventing recidivism (and I'd argue that for crimes where it's not effective, that we haven't really explored rehabilititation because of the widespread belief in free will). > I don't really see how we can have both manslaughter and murder, without free will. What extra thing did the angry guy do? He didn't make a choice, because (for the sake of argument) he has no free will. What is the characteristic that makes what he did worse? The cost to society is the same. Agreed. But does this highlight a problem with a deterministic world view, or does it highlight a problem with the distinction between manslaughter and murder?
peteretep 10y ago
> There are a lot of people > who will not commit crime > only because they fear the > consequences Really? I'd say both crime rate and severity of consequences have taken a plunge over the last few centuries.

peteretep 10y ago

I used to feel this way too - I remember writing up drunken notes when I was at college saying exactly the same thing. Punishments from crime have decreased substantially - nobody gets transported or hung for sheep theft anymore. The world has never been a safer place. States with the death penalty are no safer than those without. Fewer people genuinely believe in a Christian (or whatever) hell than in years past. At the same time, religion has faltered as a source in many people's lives. I would argue this means that circumstances that lead people in to crime have decreased rather than a suggestion that people are making choices to commit crime but don't based on deterrence. I appreciate there exist counter arguments to this too, but also feel that if we treated crime as a function of situation rather than morality, we'd find ways to decrease it more cheaply.

jfoutz 10y ago
I guess i'd ask the same question i asked of jeremyjh. With no notion of free will, how do we distinguish between manslaughter and murder? When someone dies, the cost to society is the same either way. A consequence of no free will seems to be it's a distinction without difference. I disagree, but it might just be deeply embedded beliefs that are wrong.
- devishard 10y ago
  > With no notion of free will, how do we distinguish between manslaughter and murder? I'd argue that the distinction is not indicative of a phenomenon that exists. I think a much better model would be predictive and preventive rather than punitive--the level assignment to rehabilitation should be based on the probability and severity of recidivism, rather than the level of punishment being based on the severity of the crime.

devishard 10y ago

> Even if we don't have free will, it's better to pretend we do. There is a difference between a driver that falls asleep at the wheel and causes an accident and a driver that flies into a rage and crashes their car into another driver. It's hard to justify the distinction if neither driver has a choice. I'd argue it's better for society to maintain that distinction. The distinction still matters without free will, because it's still a predictor of future behavior. A driver who crashes because of a preventable cause shouldn't be allowed to drive until the problem is resolved. If the problem is falling asleep, the solution may be simple (get more sleep?) or hard (narcolepsy), while anger issues are probably pretty difficult to provably solve. Belief in free will has some seriously harmful effects on the way we deal with these situations. Most notably, it's the basis for a focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Deterrents don't work, largely because they don't fix the causes for bad behavior. Rehabilitation is the only sensible approach if you don't believe in free will, whereas punishment makes a bit more sense if you believe that people have free will. > Perhaps someone can reframe that in terms of types of error, and people prone to more serious types of error (road rage) face different consequences. But that gets real complicated real quick. This is fundamentally a free-will-based way of seeing the problem. "Consequences" are completely irrelevant in a deterministic worldview unless you can prove that they act as a deterrent (that is, that they are part of the cause). Since consequences are provably not significant deterrents for many crimes, I don't think that works. Your argument basically that "this idea of punishment/consequences (which only makes sense in a free-will-based ideology) doesn't work in a deterministic ideology, and punishment/consequences are good in my free-will-based ideology, therefore deterministic ideologies are wrong". But you have to hold a free-will-based ideology for the preconditions of your argument to make sense.

jfoutz 10y ago
Yes, i see that now. The distinction depends on free will, so isn't a good test. Very insightful. Thank you.
- DigitalPhysics 10y ago
  Your talk of punishment vs rehabilitation is spot on, and very relevant to the "Doesn't the whole justice system collapse if there is no free will?" question. Have you ever heard of how some South American prisons are treating inmates with Ayahuasca, in order to rehabilitate their mind? Very interesting stuff considering the success rate.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

You cannot derive is from ought.