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>we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus I don’t see how that’s true. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say, the system was encoded based on wha

>we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus I don’t see how that’s true. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say, the system was encoded based on what the designers knew about motivation and desires at the time? The fact that what they knew was based on their own motivations seems incidental. I doubt if they had the perfect formula evidenced and understandable to them at the time, that they would have intentionally ignored it to still encode it in their own image. So we can really boil it down to, people didn’t understand human nature as well when these systems were created. Then, even as better understanding evolved and continues to improve, the problem of inertia and entrenched thinking works against change. From that we can conclude one of the biggest problems with the criminal justice system is, simply that it’s impeded in the exact same way so many other systems are. edit after comment: Point is the description of the problem seems to imply pretentious motivations, when the simplest explanation is they just didn’t know how things worked at the time.

dsacco 9y ago
> The fact that what they knew was based on their own motivations seems incidental. I doubt if they had the perfect formula evidenced and understandable to them at the time, that they would have intentionally ignored it to still encode it in their own image. My understanding of the comment you’re responding to is that the nature of human experience precludes that ideal understanding, not that people would purposely ignore it. The point appears to be that humans encounter intrinsic difficulty in understanding the myriad idiosyncratic motivations of others in the species, not that they deliberately don’t want to understand it. In other words: I don’t think you and the parent commenter are disagreeing.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  I certainly disagree the nature of human experience precludes ideal understanding. My point is the comment suggests almost an egocentric process, i.e. modeling a system in our own image, when actually it’s explained by simple ignorance.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    Right, I follow what you’re saying. My followup to that is that I think (personally, and what the commenter is saying) that ignorance in the modeling of human behavior both causes and is caused by egocentrism in a feedback loop. In any case, you disagree with that, so I suppose you are disagreeing with the parent; my interpretation of the parent commenter’s point was that this ignorance you speak of is pretty tightly coupled with innate egocentrism. I don’t think they’d consider that necessarily malicious if they consider it from that framework, whereas you might consider it malicious if the process is egocentric because you disagree with the same relationship; vis-a-vis ignorance and egocentrism.
bradknowles 9y ago
Okay, so they didn’t understand. Does that preclude us from trying to fix the problem?
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  On the contrary, it should add to our motivation. It’s just usually most productive to target outrage as accurately as possible. Not just because it’s fair, but because outrage is a scarce resource. To fight institutional injustice requires wasting as little energy as possible on the wrong targets.

dsacco 9y ago

> The fact that what they knew was based on their own motivations seems incidental. I doubt if they had the perfect formula evidenced and understandable to them at the time, that they would have intentionally ignored it to still encode it in their own image. My understanding of the comment you’re responding to is that the nature of human experience precludes that ideal understanding, not that people would purposely ignore it. The point appears to be that humans encounter intrinsic difficulty in understanding the myriad idiosyncratic motivations of others in the species, not that they deliberately don’t want to understand it. In other words: I don’t think you and the parent commenter are disagreeing.

WhitneyLand 9y ago
I certainly disagree the nature of human experience precludes ideal understanding. My point is the comment suggests almost an egocentric process, i.e. modeling a system in our own image, when actually it’s explained by simple ignorance.
- dsacco 9y ago
  Right, I follow what you’re saying. My followup to that is that I think (personally, and what the commenter is saying) that ignorance in the modeling of human behavior both causes and is caused by egocentrism in a feedback loop. In any case, you disagree with that, so I suppose you are disagreeing with the parent; my interpretation of the parent commenter’s point was that this ignorance you speak of is pretty tightly coupled with innate egocentrism. I don’t think they’d consider that necessarily malicious if they consider it from that framework, whereas you might consider it malicious if the process is egocentric because you disagree with the same relationship; vis-a-vis ignorance and egocentrism.

bradknowles 9y ago

Okay, so they didn’t understand. Does that preclude us from trying to fix the problem?

WhitneyLand 9y ago
On the contrary, it should add to our motivation. It’s just usually most productive to target outrage as accurately as possible. Not just because it’s fair, but because outrage is a scarce resource. To fight institutional injustice requires wasting as little energy as possible on the wrong targets.