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It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. The justice system mostly works (rela
by jstummbillig 5y ago
It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work.
The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place.
Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard – but realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do without any system at all.
So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a) there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we learn from those failures and correct them at all. As far as I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries.
The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed.
I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems, keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.
- rabboRubble 5y agothe issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in secret without official record to cover up their error, and left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
- jstummbillig 5y agoAgreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
- pas 5y agoThis happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts president. Obama was big on cracking down on whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for that.)
- RIMR 5y agoThey failed him repeatedly. This wasn't a one-time screwup, this was a systemic failure across multiple organizations. And when they realized they had wronged this man, they did whatever they could to sweep it under the rug and avoid consequences, or reparations for their actions. The system doesn't just "look abhorrently cruel", it IS abhorrently cruel, and this incident is a clear example of that.
- majormajor 5y agoSo let's look at this. There were people who screwed up. Then they covered it up. The key question is "what sort of system makes it harder to cover things up?" because the people element of people not wanting to get in trouble or have their mistakes visible isn't going to go anywhere. You also need to have the non-mistake, non-cruel cases visible, to see if things are changing for the better or worse, rate-wise. A "less cruel" system isn't a particularly specific or well-defined thing to strive for if it's not specifically trying to address those human failings, since people can still be cruel.
- Retric 5y agoThe US uniquely shields officials in these cases which promotes coverups. That’s a specific, systematic, and correctable failing of the US justice system not simply normal human issues. How hard it is for the coverup to work is largely irrelevant IMO.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his cheap internet virtue points depend on his not understanding it.
- bendbro 5y ago> It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work I think this is my largest hatred. People's first action after something bad happens is not to discover why it happened, but rather to express outrage that it happened. In my ideal society they would be excluded.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]