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My point has to do with the notion of retributive justice i.e. that punishment should be inflicted because the criminal deserves it - in a quasi-religious sense

My point has to do with the notion of retributive justice i.e. that punishment should be inflicted because the criminal deserves it - in a quasi-religious sense i.e. he is evil or deserving of hell. This usually carries along notions of moral good and evil that are almost never grounded in measurements to give them real meanings. Conversely, I think people should think about crime in a more reinforcement learning approach i.e. rehabilitative. I view humans as machines essentially. If a machine breaks you fix it, but there is no emotional garbage attached. That's the concept I was trying to get across.

s73ver_ 9y ago
Humans are not machines, so trying to look at them that way is going to be flawed. Furthermore, there is no excuse for what they did. They knew it was wrong. They knew it was against the law. It was not an accident; it was a deliberate act. There's not really any rehabilitation that can take place here.
geofft 9y ago
I agree that punishment as retribution is a poor way to run a civilized society. But punishment as incentive structure fits the framework of "deserving" just fine - full participation in human society is a privilege, not a right, and extending that privilege to people who will hurt society is a poor use of resources. And credibly threatening not to extend that privilege will cause people to try to be the sort of person who "deserves" not to be punished. Viewing humans as machines doesn't work precisely because humans have agency. A machine generally does not decide to break, and a machine generally can be properly fixed (or if it can't, it's obvious). Attempting to convince a machine that it will suffer some negative consequence for misbehavior is unlikely to have any results at all. Meanwhile, especially for humans making decisions about corporate strategy (which means that they're in a culture that's pretty firmly incentivized towards "is this profitable"), credibly convincing them that they will suffer punishment is a great way to change their behavior and prevent them from deciding to do something unwanted. And one way to credibly convince people that they will suffer punishment for an action is to actually punish people who do the same thing. It's very unlikely this executive will make the same mistake again, punishment or no punishment. Rehabilitation isn't the point. But we need to make an example of them, and I say that without the slightest shred of emotion.
- jfaucett 9y ago
  Basically, I don't accept what you and most people accept - that humans have free will, we could have made a choice X instead of Y, etc, etc. I know its not a popular opinion, and I don't expect to convince you of my views in a couple sentences, but generally speaking I think the notion of punishment should always be viewed in the context of societal functioning. If we do as you suggest and punish an executive, does that actually lead to decreased occurances? If so by how much? What about the next time it occurs? Can we completely prevent another occurance? Can we decrease its probability? At what costs to the person and society? What caused it in the first place? These are all much more important questions to mold a system of punishment than our current focus which almost completely lacks any measurements and analyses and is still steeped in vague moralities derived from historical accident and our own intuitions which are perforated with biases and flaws.
  - geofft 9y ago
    > Basically, I don't accept what you and most people accept - that humans have free will, we could have made a choice X instead of Y, etc, etc. My argument does not rely on free will at all. (If you notice, I have made the argument that the same thing would apply to AIs, and I am certainly not arguing that AIs have free will.) My argument simply relies on two assumptions: first, that the agent in question sorta-rationally responds to incentives, and second, that the agent in question believes that punishment applied to other, similar agents after certain actions also could apply to them, if they take the same action. If a human believes that they can make a better outcome themselves by doing action A instead of not doing action A, they will likely do so. Concretely, if an employee believes that they will cause a better outcome for the company and get rewarded for it personally by taking an action, with little risk, they will likely do so. This is borne out by evidence almost as plenteous as evidence that humans require food to live; it needs no controlled study. This happens all the time and essentially all productivity under capitalism requires this to hold up. If a human believes that action A brings significant risk to themselves, they will probably refrain from doing so. And the convincing threat of prison time does actually cause humans to refrain from actions. fThis is also borne out by everyday life; there are plenty of outright illegal things you can do to make your company significantly more profitable, like poisoning your competitors, that happen extremely rarely. So I don't understand why you are questioning "Does punishment as deterrent work?" from first principles, as if it is not settled. Do you disagree with the arguments above? I have to say that if you do, I feel like I am arguing with someone who disagrees that food is required for humans to live. I certainly can defend that position logically, I would just feel ridiculous doing so. Nothing about changing incentives requires free will - it is a simple if statement to say, if risk outweighs reward, refrain, else proceed. You do not need any free will to potentially act contrary to the if statement. I would think if you believe people don't have free will, it makes this argument easier. (In terms of morality, I am the sort of Christian who believes that every prisoner should be set free and that Christ has redeemed every last human, regardless of what they did, and that if every last murderer and rapist went to heaven, I would join them in singing praises because I wouldn't deserve to be there one bit more than they would. If you go just a week or two back in my comments on this site, you'll find me asking if I am morally/religiously compelled to work for the end of prisons. But I am not making a moral argument in this thread, and I hope it's clear that the argument I'm making is wildly divorced from my morality - I am trying to acknowledge that it is rational to imprison people as punishment, even as I believe that it is immoral to do so.)

s73ver_ 9y ago

Humans are not machines, so trying to look at them that way is going to be flawed. Furthermore, there is no excuse for what they did. They knew it was wrong. They knew it was against the law. It was not an accident; it was a deliberate act. There's not really any rehabilitation that can take place here.

geofft 9y ago

I agree that punishment as retribution is a poor way to run a civilized society. But punishment as incentive structure fits the framework of "deserving" just fine - full participation in human society is a privilege, not a right, and extending that privilege to people who will hurt society is a poor use of resources. And credibly threatening not to extend that privilege will cause people to try to be the sort of person who "deserves" not to be punished. Viewing humans as machines doesn't work precisely because humans have agency. A machine generally does not decide to break, and a machine generally can be properly fixed (or if it can't, it's obvious). Attempting to convince a machine that it will suffer some negative consequence for misbehavior is unlikely to have any results at all. Meanwhile, especially for humans making decisions about corporate strategy (which means that they're in a culture that's pretty firmly incentivized towards "is this profitable"), credibly convincing them that they will suffer punishment is a great way to change their behavior and prevent them from deciding to do something unwanted. And one way to credibly convince people that they will suffer punishment for an action is to actually punish people who do the same thing. It's very unlikely this executive will make the same mistake again, punishment or no punishment. Rehabilitation isn't the point. But we need to make an example of them, and I say that without the slightest shred of emotion.

jfaucett 9y ago
Basically, I don't accept what you and most people accept - that humans have free will, we could have made a choice X instead of Y, etc, etc. I know its not a popular opinion, and I don't expect to convince you of my views in a couple sentences, but generally speaking I think the notion of punishment should always be viewed in the context of societal functioning. If we do as you suggest and punish an executive, does that actually lead to decreased occurances? If so by how much? What about the next time it occurs? Can we completely prevent another occurance? Can we decrease its probability? At what costs to the person and society? What caused it in the first place? These are all much more important questions to mold a system of punishment than our current focus which almost completely lacks any measurements and analyses and is still steeped in vague moralities derived from historical accident and our own intuitions which are perforated with biases and flaws.
- geofft 9y ago
  > Basically, I don't accept what you and most people accept - that humans have free will, we could have made a choice X instead of Y, etc, etc. My argument does not rely on free will at all. (If you notice, I have made the argument that the same thing would apply to AIs, and I am certainly not arguing that AIs have free will.) My argument simply relies on two assumptions: first, that the agent in question sorta-rationally responds to incentives, and second, that the agent in question believes that punishment applied to other, similar agents after certain actions also could apply to them, if they take the same action. If a human believes that they can make a better outcome themselves by doing action A instead of not doing action A, they will likely do so. Concretely, if an employee believes that they will cause a better outcome for the company and get rewarded for it personally by taking an action, with little risk, they will likely do so. This is borne out by evidence almost as plenteous as evidence that humans require food to live; it needs no controlled study. This happens all the time and essentially all productivity under capitalism requires this to hold up. If a human believes that action A brings significant risk to themselves, they will probably refrain from doing so. And the convincing threat of prison time does actually cause humans to refrain from actions. fThis is also borne out by everyday life; there are plenty of outright illegal things you can do to make your company significantly more profitable, like poisoning your competitors, that happen extremely rarely. So I don't understand why you are questioning "Does punishment as deterrent work?" from first principles, as if it is not settled. Do you disagree with the arguments above? I have to say that if you do, I feel like I am arguing with someone who disagrees that food is required for humans to live. I certainly can defend that position logically, I would just feel ridiculous doing so. Nothing about changing incentives requires free will - it is a simple if statement to say, if risk outweighs reward, refrain, else proceed. You do not need any free will to potentially act contrary to the if statement. I would think if you believe people don't have free will, it makes this argument easier. (In terms of morality, I am the sort of Christian who believes that every prisoner should be set free and that Christ has redeemed every last human, regardless of what they did, and that if every last murderer and rapist went to heaven, I would join them in singing praises because I wouldn't deserve to be there one bit more than they would. If you go just a week or two back in my comments on this site, you'll find me asking if I am morally/religiously compelled to work for the end of prisons. But I am not making a moral argument in this thread, and I hope it's clear that the argument I'm making is wildly divorced from my morality - I am trying to acknowledge that it is rational to imprison people as punishment, even as I believe that it is immoral to do so.)