The way society treats recidivism, with a series of escalating time-outs, is very similar to how we treat questionable behavior in computer security with rate-l

The way society treats recidivism, with a series of escalating time-outs, is very similar to how we treat questionable behavior in computer security with rate-limiting. It's not a binary choice where you either drop all pretense of security or have an oracle to always know exactly who should be kept locked away. Rather, there are benefits and trade-offs balanced in the design of each system, including the understanding that there is limited knowledge to go on at each enforcement point. I think it is interesting to find such parallels in the design features of such a wide range of systems as courts, prisons, network firewalls, and authentication systems. One can imagine various interpretations in response to these parallels: on one extreme, the designs could demonstrate common cognitive biases of the humans designing them; on the other, the functioning systems could be illustrating natural truths that have been discovered through the evolution of these systems...