7 ms·

The Brain on Trial

114 points by sajid 15y ago

olliesaunders 15y ago
The not guilty verdict of Kenneth, the sleepwalk killer, bothers me. It doesn’t seem likely to me that they jury was in any doubt whether he committed the crime. And, in that case, our legal system says you should find the defendant guilty. I guess the jury gave the not guilty verdict because they felt it would be wrong for the defendant to be punished for a crime he committed while sleepwalking. This suggests to me that there’s insufficient separation in our legal system between whether someone committed a crime and what should be done about it. The assumption, you committed a crime therefore you should be punished, is deeply flawed and deserves serious reconsideration.
- olliesaunders 15y ago
  OK just realized what people are probably going to say in response to that: it’s the judge’s job to make that call. OK, fair enough. But that seems like a lot of power for a single individual.
- latch 15y ago
  "[there's no doubt that] he committed the crime. And, in that case, our legal system says you should find the defendant guilty" And what legal system is that? Grade 11 law class: both actus reas and mens rea are fundamental (and equally important) elements of guilt.
  - sukuriant 15y ago
    For the others that didn't know what "actus reas" and "mens rea" mean: actus rea: the actual guilty act mens rea: the guilty mind. (knowing they did something wrong, I suppose?) I used Wikipedia for the citation. A useful quote from the Actus reus article to help expound on what I think latch was saying: "The terms actus reus and mens rea developed in English Law, are derived from the principle stated by Edward Coke, namely, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea,[1] which means: "an act does not make a person guilty unless (their) mind is also guilty"; hence, the general test of guilt is one that requires proof of fault, culpability or blameworthiness both in behaviour and mind." (Actus Reus. Wikipedia. Entymology Section)
- randallsquared 15y ago
  It doesn’t seem likely to me that they jury was in any doubt whether he committed the crime. Well, it hinges on exactly what "he" means, doesn't it? Clearly his body and brain took the criminal actions, but apparently the jury believed that the "person" wasn't responsible for what the body and brain did. If we based the consequences to the criminal of crime on restitution, taking the considerations of deterrence (including rehabilitation) and punishment out of the legal system proper, I think these problems would be clearer. If my brakes fail and I hit someone, I would still be on the hook for the consequences, without regard to whether I was blameworthy, and instances where a person's brain "fails" seem similar to me. Of course, killing is a problem area for restitution-based legal systems...
keiferski 15y ago
Reminds me of an argument Plato (or was it Socrates?) made 2300 years ago. Essentially, he thought that all "unjust" people believe their actions to be "just" - they themselves thought they did the right thing. As such, these unjust people should not be punished for their lack of knowledge, but instead educated or rehabilited, as their unjust actions were simply a result of not knowing what the "just" really is. A modern metaphor for this might replace "knowledge of the just" with "biology that can resist impulse," or something similar. The problem, which was just as valid in Greece as it is now, is the question of "What is just?," or "Is a non-impulsive brain chemistry desirable?".
- gaius 15y ago
  Hmm, do you really think most criminals believe themselves to be acting justly? I think they know full well that what they do is "wrong" but since they can get away with it, they figure why not?
  - keiferski 15y ago
    Actually, now that you mention it, I believe Plato was (consciously or unconsciously, due to his aristocratic background) referring to the unjust in positions of power, maybe not so much criminals. As in, unjust men with long-term planning. In that case, it is a convincing argument. Consider that most dictators and despots seem to think they are in the right (Ww2, etc.) Compare this to "normal" criminals, who seem to have poor impulse control (lack of long-term planning. ) Of course, that has nothing to do with the article. I've brought up an argument and then dismissed it just as quickly :)
    - jgroch 15y ago
      I'm not sure I'd dismiss your argument so quickly. If one considers the "just" to be the best decision, given the circumstances, then most criminals are trying to be just. They may badly need money for their family. Or perhaps to feed a drug habit (In which case, as you said, perhaps they are ignorant of what really is just.) If they didn't think it was the best decision, for some good, why would they do it?
rednum 15y ago
What struck me while reading this article, is thought that modern society will be seen as barbarian 100 years from now - it seems very likely to me that people will see imprisoning (of person with brain problems) as something cruel, similarly that we are disgusted by concept of cutting off thieves' hands. Also this implies that there are many behaviours in our society that will turn out immoral some years later, which is rather uncomfortable thought.
- kristofferR 15y ago
  I've thought about this topic a lot lately. The issue with this is that in one way or another, all violent criminals have some sort of problem with their brain. They may not have a tumor or dementia, but something is wrong outside of their control. Should we punish them for that? And what is the alternative? Well, I live in Norway, where the maximum sentence is 21 years. There are no life-sentences and certainly no death penalty. Even the top-security prisons are not too bad ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.... ). The focus is on rehabilitation instead of punishment, and it seems to work quite good. The inmates can get an education and participate in social activites. Our crime rate is quite low and while that probably is a result of our welfare system, there are no indications that humane prisons negatively impact crime rates at all. And the thing is that even our so-called "luxury prisons" ends up being cheaper than the American hellholes because we keep our inmates in for much shorter periods of time and focus on making them productive members of society instead of cage-animals.
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    The issue with this is that in one way or another, all violent criminals have some sort of problem with their brain. They may not have a tumor or dementia, but something is wrong outside of their control. You are saying that no healthy human being would ever commit a violent crime -- that nothing involving incentives or circumstances could prompt someone to make a decision to be violent? It seems to believe this you have to assume that in most eras most humans had some problem with their brain.
tokenadult 15y ago
From the article, referring to recidivism rates in sex crimes: "But among the strongest predictors of recidivism are prior sexual offenses and sexual interest in children. When you compare the predictive power of the actuarial approach with that of the parole boards and psychiatrists, there is no contest: numbers beat intuition." One of the best changes in the administration of criminal justice in the United States during my lifetime has been use of standardized sentencing guidelines, pioneered in the state of Minnesota, http://www.msgc.state.mn.us/msgc5/guidelines.htm http://www.msgc.state.mn.us/msgc5/guidelines.htm to reduce the variance among different judges in how convicted criminals are sentenced. By taking into account the severity of the most recent offense for which a defendant is convicted, along with the defendant's history of previous convictions, Minnesota can imprison many fewer criminals than most states--diverting less dangerous criminals to community-based rehabilitation programs--and actually spend more per prisoner (for more humane imprisonment) while spending less per taxpayer on its prison system than most other states. The most dangerous criminals are kept away from potential victims, so that my neighborhood and most neighborhoods in Minnesota are perfectly safe for children to go out in alone. Youthful offenders who make one minor mistake are set straight and continue to be productive members of society. By contrast, the "three strikes and you're out" rule of California, promoted as a make-work program by the prison guard trade union, needlessly imprisons tens of thousands of California convicts in degrading conditions that result in more recidivism when convicts are eventually released, and endangers the solvency of the whole state government.
henrikschroder 15y ago
"A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble" Well, it's a blow to the foundations of revenge-based justice systems, like the US one. In rehabilitation-based justice systems like the ones in Europe, this is not a problem. It's simply more tools to diagnose and rehabilitate prisoners.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Care to expand on the differences? I'm not sure if you have an insightful point here or if you're just making a glib anti-American remark.
  - henrikschroder 15y ago
    It was a generalization, there are big differences between the various states in the US, and there are big differences between various countries in Europe, but generally, criminal punishments are less severe over here, and more severe in the US. Some states in the US have the capital punishment, and some even allow the victims to witness the execution. "To ensure justice was done" is the official explanation, but in reality, it's to satisfy the victim's desire for revenge. Over here, the victims of a crime are part of the process only as witnesses, and then they're out. There are no juries to sway with emotion, all sentence lengths are standardized by law, and "life in prison" means 20 years, max. There is no public opinion that we should be "tougher on crime", no political parties are campaigning with the promise to increase sentence lengths or be harder on criminals, some want more resources and money to the police, but that's it. There's a general awareness that prisons actually harden criminals, that the more time they spend with each other, the more likley they are to return to a life of crime when they get out. We try not to mix people serving a sentence for the first time, with people who are return criminals. The primary purposes of prisons is of course to lock people up, to remove them from society, to ensure they can't move freely or do work or business, but there is a secondary explicit purpose, and that is to rehabilitate as effectively as possible, to give the prisoners as much help and support as possible, to make sure they don't commit crimes again. It is very common over here that people who commit murder are sentenced to forced psychiatric rehabilitation instead of prison, and you do psychiatric evaluations of everyone accused of violent crimes, so there's an underlying general sentiment that criminals are sick, not evil. Of course a lot of people mistrust former convicts, of course a lot of people think criminals deserve to be put away, but there's a lot less of those sentiments over here, compared to the US. Our prison population per capita here in Sweden is also 1/10th of the US average. So, given all this, the news that a lot of criminal behaviour can be explained by brain malfunction isn't devastating at all. Quite the opposite, it means that you suddenly have more ways to rehabilitate criminals, if you can remove a tumor or fix a chemical inbalance, that's good! It means even less people in jail, and less violent crime. But if the primary purpose of your justice system is to ensure the victims get their revenge, then it's not helpful, it's not good, because it will "rob" victims of their revenge.
ZoFreX 15y ago
Nice article overall but the free will arguments towards the end were a little shaky. I also took issue with: > No amount of threatening will chase away depression, but a little pill called fluoxetine often does the trick. Isn't therapy more effective than fluoxetine? Sugar pills certainly are.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  Don't mistake a lack of medicine in the pill with a lack of effect on the brain. Yes, the brain may be just as good as (or better than) some psychotropic drug, but that pill is still an impetus. To the best of my research (Google-style, not journal-style :), therapy is not more effective (I believe it is about equal, though I don't know if there is a differentiation between types of illness each may help), but therapy combined with medication is far more effective than either alone.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  Clinical depression has different causes. Even when it is neurochemical it could be an imbalance of dopamine or serotonin or norepinephrine or something else entirely. There's no one pill that works for everyone, or even most everyone.
logicchop 15y ago
This just rehashes an old (and fallacious) argument under the guise of neuroscience. Bobert Blatchford tried to push the same view 100 years ago (see his article "Defense of the Bottom Dog"). He didn't convince many, though. There are some puzzles about the concept of "deserved punishment" (what do we say in cases of brain tumors?? omg!), but it isn't clear that we can reconceive of criminal justice on the model of putting someone in quarantine (where we don't blame them, but force them into a room for public safety; we also give them goodies to compensate for how we treat them..)
- Symmetry 15y ago
  To the extent that our modern justice system is based on rehabilitation I think we're already pretty close to the model you seem to be saying is untenable. I only skimmed Blachford's article just now, but he seems to be saying that no criminal is responsible for his actions, which is very different from the tack taken by by this article, which distinguishes criminals who are responsible for their actions and those who aren't.
ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
"Imagine that you’d like to quit smoking cigarettes…" This sentence alone is enough to tell me that this "game changing" technique of "prefrontal workouts" is misguided. As a former smoker, I can tell you that there is definitely a mental rivalry going on in the head of someone who would like to quit cigarettes. However, I want to emphasize the "someone who would like to quit cigarettes" part because it makes an important distinction. Smokers who have no desire to quit don't have the tug-of-war that the author speaks of. When I first started smoking I never once gave thought to quitting because, in my mind, I didn't have a problem. Only when I realized I was hooked and WANTED to quit did I start to have the mental rivalry he speaks of. What does this have to do with criminals? The same rules apply. Let's rework that sentence a bit: "Imagine that you’d like to quit crime…" Huh??? How many criminals enter the penal system with such lofty goals? My guess would be not many. I can see this being useful for someone who has already been reformed to some degree, because that person actually does possess a desire to change. That being said, it still isn't THAT useful because, despite the fact that you may know which camp your thoughts fall into, you still need to deal with the day-to-day task of actualizing that knowledge. As anyone who has ever tried to make a significant change can likely attest, knowledge is only half the battle- and the easiest half at that.
khookie 15y ago
Wow, this is the reason I read Hacker News day by day rather than the gibberish most of mass media produces.
gruseom 15y ago
This article is glib. It begins with a tragic anecdote that would soften anyone up - it certainly did me, no doubt triggering a brain reaction that caused me to read on. The author raises matters of great moral and social gravity. But what are his actual points? 1. That the biology of brain function affects behavior. Well, duh. 2. That this has legal implications. Double duh. 3. That our present legal system is one-size-fits-all. No it isn't. It may in aggregate be crude and stupid, but not that crude and stupid, as everybody knows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extenuating_circumstances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extenuating_circumstances) and as the article itself shows (cf the Parks story). 4. That society's concepts of guilt change over time. 5. That scientific findings are relevant here. Who is arguing against any of this? How about particular scientific findings with particular legal consequences? Well, "This research is just beginning"... "but if it works well, it will be a game changer." Today, "neuroimaging is a crude technology", but "within the coming decades" we "will be better able to say why people are predisposed to act the way they do". And that's it. The grandeur-to-substance ratio approaches that of strong AI. Yes, the brain is important and people are not ideal atoms of free will. It does not follow that brain imaging has turned centuries of jurisprudence on their head.
- mike_h 15y ago
  "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" is the Gibson quote that often gets applied to technology, but it applies as well to knowledge in general. Who is arguing against any of this? Maybe not anyone at a certain level of academic discourse, but US society and law continue to argue against it: the average person would attempt to make an explicit argument, and laws on the whole reflect an implicit discipline-and-punish philosophy more than the rehab hypothesis. There's a long way to go before this is democratically-actionable knowledge, and I think he does a good job of presenting some easily-digestible food for thought.
Symmetry 15y ago
I thought this was an excellent article, and it brought to mind another excellent article on the same topic by from a more general perspective. http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_questions_about/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_que...

114 points by sajid 15y ago

The not guilty verdict of Kenneth, the sleepwalk killer, bothers me. It doesn’t seem likely to me that they jury was in any doubt whether he committed the crime. And, in that case, our legal system says you should find the defendant guilty. I guess the jury gave the not guilty verdict because they felt it would be wrong for the defendant to be punished for a crime he committed while sleepwalking. This suggests to me that there’s insufficient separation in our legal system between whether someone committed a crime and what should be done about it. The assumption, you committed a crime therefore you should be punished, is deeply flawed and deserves serious reconsideration.

olliesaunders 15y ago
OK just realized what people are probably going to say in response to that: it’s the judge’s job to make that call. OK, fair enough. But that seems like a lot of power for a single individual.
latch 15y ago
"[there's no doubt that] he committed the crime. And, in that case, our legal system says you should find the defendant guilty" And what legal system is that? Grade 11 law class: both actus reas and mens rea are fundamental (and equally important) elements of guilt.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  For the others that didn't know what "actus reas" and "mens rea" mean: actus rea: the actual guilty act mens rea: the guilty mind. (knowing they did something wrong, I suppose?) I used Wikipedia for the citation. A useful quote from the Actus reus article to help expound on what I think latch was saying: "The terms actus reus and mens rea developed in English Law, are derived from the principle stated by Edward Coke, namely, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea,[1] which means: "an act does not make a person guilty unless (their) mind is also guilty"; hence, the general test of guilt is one that requires proof of fault, culpability or blameworthiness both in behaviour and mind." (Actus Reus. Wikipedia. Entymology Section)
randallsquared 15y ago
It doesn’t seem likely to me that they jury was in any doubt whether he committed the crime. Well, it hinges on exactly what "he" means, doesn't it? Clearly his body and brain took the criminal actions, but apparently the jury believed that the "person" wasn't responsible for what the body and brain did. If we based the consequences to the criminal of crime on restitution, taking the considerations of deterrence (including rehabilitation) and punishment out of the legal system proper, I think these problems would be clearer. If my brakes fail and I hit someone, I would still be on the hook for the consequences, without regard to whether I was blameworthy, and instances where a person's brain "fails" seem similar to me. Of course, killing is a problem area for restitution-based legal systems...

keiferski 15y ago

Reminds me of an argument Plato (or was it Socrates?) made 2300 years ago. Essentially, he thought that all "unjust" people believe their actions to be "just" - they themselves thought they did the right thing. As such, these unjust people should not be punished for their lack of knowledge, but instead educated or rehabilited, as their unjust actions were simply a result of not knowing what the "just" really is. A modern metaphor for this might replace "knowledge of the just" with "biology that can resist impulse," or something similar. The problem, which was just as valid in Greece as it is now, is the question of "What is just?," or "Is a non-impulsive brain chemistry desirable?".

gaius 15y ago
Hmm, do you really think most criminals believe themselves to be acting justly? I think they know full well that what they do is "wrong" but since they can get away with it, they figure why not?
- keiferski 15y ago
  Actually, now that you mention it, I believe Plato was (consciously or unconsciously, due to his aristocratic background) referring to the unjust in positions of power, maybe not so much criminals. As in, unjust men with long-term planning. In that case, it is a convincing argument. Consider that most dictators and despots seem to think they are in the right (Ww2, etc.) Compare this to "normal" criminals, who seem to have poor impulse control (lack of long-term planning. ) Of course, that has nothing to do with the article. I've brought up an argument and then dismissed it just as quickly :)
  - jgroch 15y ago
    I'm not sure I'd dismiss your argument so quickly. If one considers the "just" to be the best decision, given the circumstances, then most criminals are trying to be just. They may badly need money for their family. Or perhaps to feed a drug habit (In which case, as you said, perhaps they are ignorant of what really is just.) If they didn't think it was the best decision, for some good, why would they do it?

rednum 15y ago

What struck me while reading this article, is thought that modern society will be seen as barbarian 100 years from now - it seems very likely to me that people will see imprisoning (of person with brain problems) as something cruel, similarly that we are disgusted by concept of cutting off thieves' hands. Also this implies that there are many behaviours in our society that will turn out immoral some years later, which is rather uncomfortable thought.

kristofferR 15y ago
I've thought about this topic a lot lately. The issue with this is that in one way or another, all violent criminals have some sort of problem with their brain. They may not have a tumor or dementia, but something is wrong outside of their control. Should we punish them for that? And what is the alternative? Well, I live in Norway, where the maximum sentence is 21 years. There are no life-sentences and certainly no death penalty. Even the top-security prisons are not too bad ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.... ). The focus is on rehabilitation instead of punishment, and it seems to work quite good. The inmates can get an education and participate in social activites. Our crime rate is quite low and while that probably is a result of our welfare system, there are no indications that humane prisons negatively impact crime rates at all. And the thing is that even our so-called "luxury prisons" ends up being cheaper than the American hellholes because we keep our inmates in for much shorter periods of time and focus on making them productive members of society instead of cage-animals.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  The issue with this is that in one way or another, all violent criminals have some sort of problem with their brain. They may not have a tumor or dementia, but something is wrong outside of their control. You are saying that no healthy human being would ever commit a violent crime -- that nothing involving incentives or circumstances could prompt someone to make a decision to be violent? It seems to believe this you have to assume that in most eras most humans had some problem with their brain.

tokenadult 15y ago

From the article, referring to recidivism rates in sex crimes: "But among the strongest predictors of recidivism are prior sexual offenses and sexual interest in children. When you compare the predictive power of the actuarial approach with that of the parole boards and psychiatrists, there is no contest: numbers beat intuition." One of the best changes in the administration of criminal justice in the United States during my lifetime has been use of standardized sentencing guidelines, pioneered in the state of Minnesota, http://www.msgc.state.mn.us/msgc5/guidelines.htm http://www.msgc.state.mn.us/msgc5/guidelines.htm to reduce the variance among different judges in how convicted criminals are sentenced. By taking into account the severity of the most recent offense for which a defendant is convicted, along with the defendant's history of previous convictions, Minnesota can imprison many fewer criminals than most states--diverting less dangerous criminals to community-based rehabilitation programs--and actually spend more per prisoner (for more humane imprisonment) while spending less per taxpayer on its prison system than most other states. The most dangerous criminals are kept away from potential victims, so that my neighborhood and most neighborhoods in Minnesota are perfectly safe for children to go out in alone. Youthful offenders who make one minor mistake are set straight and continue to be productive members of society. By contrast, the "three strikes and you're out" rule of California, promoted as a make-work program by the prison guard trade union, needlessly imprisons tens of thousands of California convicts in degrading conditions that result in more recidivism when convicts are eventually released, and endangers the solvency of the whole state government.

henrikschroder 15y ago

"A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble" Well, it's a blow to the foundations of revenge-based justice systems, like the US one. In rehabilitation-based justice systems like the ones in Europe, this is not a problem. It's simply more tools to diagnose and rehabilitate prisoners.

philwelch 15y ago
Care to expand on the differences? I'm not sure if you have an insightful point here or if you're just making a glib anti-American remark.
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  It was a generalization, there are big differences between the various states in the US, and there are big differences between various countries in Europe, but generally, criminal punishments are less severe over here, and more severe in the US. Some states in the US have the capital punishment, and some even allow the victims to witness the execution. "To ensure justice was done" is the official explanation, but in reality, it's to satisfy the victim's desire for revenge. Over here, the victims of a crime are part of the process only as witnesses, and then they're out. There are no juries to sway with emotion, all sentence lengths are standardized by law, and "life in prison" means 20 years, max. There is no public opinion that we should be "tougher on crime", no political parties are campaigning with the promise to increase sentence lengths or be harder on criminals, some want more resources and money to the police, but that's it. There's a general awareness that prisons actually harden criminals, that the more time they spend with each other, the more likley they are to return to a life of crime when they get out. We try not to mix people serving a sentence for the first time, with people who are return criminals. The primary purposes of prisons is of course to lock people up, to remove them from society, to ensure they can't move freely or do work or business, but there is a secondary explicit purpose, and that is to rehabilitate as effectively as possible, to give the prisoners as much help and support as possible, to make sure they don't commit crimes again. It is very common over here that people who commit murder are sentenced to forced psychiatric rehabilitation instead of prison, and you do psychiatric evaluations of everyone accused of violent crimes, so there's an underlying general sentiment that criminals are sick, not evil. Of course a lot of people mistrust former convicts, of course a lot of people think criminals deserve to be put away, but there's a lot less of those sentiments over here, compared to the US. Our prison population per capita here in Sweden is also 1/10th of the US average. So, given all this, the news that a lot of criminal behaviour can be explained by brain malfunction isn't devastating at all. Quite the opposite, it means that you suddenly have more ways to rehabilitate criminals, if you can remove a tumor or fix a chemical inbalance, that's good! It means even less people in jail, and less violent crime. But if the primary purpose of your justice system is to ensure the victims get their revenge, then it's not helpful, it's not good, because it will "rob" victims of their revenge.

ZoFreX 15y ago

Nice article overall but the free will arguments towards the end were a little shaky. I also took issue with: > No amount of threatening will chase away depression, but a little pill called fluoxetine often does the trick. Isn't therapy more effective than fluoxetine? Sugar pills certainly are.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Don't mistake a lack of medicine in the pill with a lack of effect on the brain. Yes, the brain may be just as good as (or better than) some psychotropic drug, but that pill is still an impetus. To the best of my research (Google-style, not journal-style :), therapy is not more effective (I believe it is about equal, though I don't know if there is a differentiation between types of illness each may help), but therapy combined with medication is far more effective than either alone.
jamesbritt 15y ago
Clinical depression has different causes. Even when it is neurochemical it could be an imbalance of dopamine or serotonin or norepinephrine or something else entirely. There's no one pill that works for everyone, or even most everyone.

logicchop 15y ago

This just rehashes an old (and fallacious) argument under the guise of neuroscience. Bobert Blatchford tried to push the same view 100 years ago (see his article "Defense of the Bottom Dog"). He didn't convince many, though. There are some puzzles about the concept of "deserved punishment" (what do we say in cases of brain tumors?? omg!), but it isn't clear that we can reconceive of criminal justice on the model of putting someone in quarantine (where we don't blame them, but force them into a room for public safety; we also give them goodies to compensate for how we treat them..)

Symmetry 15y ago
To the extent that our modern justice system is based on rehabilitation I think we're already pretty close to the model you seem to be saying is untenable. I only skimmed Blachford's article just now, but he seems to be saying that no criminal is responsible for his actions, which is very different from the tack taken by by this article, which distinguishes criminals who are responsible for their actions and those who aren't.

ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago

"Imagine that you’d like to quit smoking cigarettes…" This sentence alone is enough to tell me that this "game changing" technique of "prefrontal workouts" is misguided. As a former smoker, I can tell you that there is definitely a mental rivalry going on in the head of someone who would like to quit cigarettes. However, I want to emphasize the "someone who would like to quit cigarettes" part because it makes an important distinction. Smokers who have no desire to quit don't have the tug-of-war that the author speaks of. When I first started smoking I never once gave thought to quitting because, in my mind, I didn't have a problem. Only when I realized I was hooked and WANTED to quit did I start to have the mental rivalry he speaks of. What does this have to do with criminals? The same rules apply. Let's rework that sentence a bit: "Imagine that you’d like to quit crime…" Huh??? How many criminals enter the penal system with such lofty goals? My guess would be not many. I can see this being useful for someone who has already been reformed to some degree, because that person actually does possess a desire to change. That being said, it still isn't THAT useful because, despite the fact that you may know which camp your thoughts fall into, you still need to deal with the day-to-day task of actualizing that knowledge. As anyone who has ever tried to make a significant change can likely attest, knowledge is only half the battle- and the easiest half at that.

khookie 15y ago

Wow, this is the reason I read Hacker News day by day rather than the gibberish most of mass media produces.

gruseom 15y ago

This article is glib. It begins with a tragic anecdote that would soften anyone up - it certainly did me, no doubt triggering a brain reaction that caused me to read on. The author raises matters of great moral and social gravity. But what are his actual points? 1. That the biology of brain function affects behavior. Well, duh. 2. That this has legal implications. Double duh. 3. That our present legal system is one-size-fits-all. No it isn't. It may in aggregate be crude and stupid, but not that crude and stupid, as everybody knows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extenuating_circumstances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extenuating_circumstances) and as the article itself shows (cf the Parks story). 4. That society's concepts of guilt change over time. 5. That scientific findings are relevant here. Who is arguing against any of this? How about particular scientific findings with particular legal consequences? Well, "This research is just beginning"... "but if it works well, it will be a game changer." Today, "neuroimaging is a crude technology", but "within the coming decades" we "will be better able to say why people are predisposed to act the way they do". And that's it. The grandeur-to-substance ratio approaches that of strong AI. Yes, the brain is important and people are not ideal atoms of free will. It does not follow that brain imaging has turned centuries of jurisprudence on their head.

mike_h 15y ago
"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" is the Gibson quote that often gets applied to technology, but it applies as well to knowledge in general. Who is arguing against any of this? Maybe not anyone at a certain level of academic discourse, but US society and law continue to argue against it: the average person would attempt to make an explicit argument, and laws on the whole reflect an implicit discipline-and-punish philosophy more than the rehab hypothesis. There's a long way to go before this is democratically-actionable knowledge, and I think he does a good job of presenting some easily-digestible food for thought.

Symmetry 15y ago

I thought this was an excellent article, and it brought to mind another excellent article on the same topic by from a more general perspective. http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_questions_about/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_que...