6 ms·

In the broadest possible interpretation, lots of things are social constructs, but I would imagine that any functional society would generally agree that murder

In the broadest possible interpretation, lots of things are social constructs, but I would imagine that any functional society would generally agree that murder, rape, assault, and theft should be discouraged.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tehwebguy 5y ago
Police agree with you on 3 out of 4
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  Yeah, the amount of "revenue collection" they do borders on theft I suppose.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  That’s unreasonably generous to cops, IMO. They have a pretty long track record of doing all of those and getting away with it.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    To be fair, I'm _reasonably_ sure most cops don't do those things. Most cops just let it slide while their "bad apple" colleagues do those thing. And are therefore complicit in perpetuating them. So you're still right about it being unreasonably generous to all cops, even if not all of them do that shit.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      It’s hard to say given that the stats are poorly kept, but it’s currently estimated that 40% of cops commit domestic abuse. Given that that’s a crime, a serious one at that, it wouldn’t surprise me if over half of them commit more petty crimes like theft.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  And even for the most obvious ones that police agree with, how much of their resources and effort go towards investigating and actively preventing those crimes? Detective shows are popular, but isn't that sort of police work a vanishingly small portion of police budgets?
ashtonkem 5y ago
Yes, in the broadest sense we want to discourage crimes like murder, rape, assault, and theft. I don’t think anyone reasonable disagrees with this concept. The issue I’m raising is that what the definition of things like “rape” and “murder” is where problems start. My cynical point is that socially we tend to define “real crimes” in such a way to reinforce existing power hierarchies. Steal from the register and face prosecution, steal from your employee and maybe be forced to pay it back (maybe). Shoot your neighbor and get executed by the state, poison the river and face a civil case, starve foreign infants and face no consequences whatsoever. Morally all of these are awful things, but which ones get criminalized and prosecuted is extremely selective. The rich and powerful often not only get selective treatment when prosecuted, but the kind of violence that can bring is often not even criminalized at all. My most horrifying example is the fact that until the 1990s it wasn’t legally possible for a man to be charged with raping his wife in some states. 13 states still treat marital rape as a lesser crime than rape of a non-spouse. I think we’d all agree that punishing rape is a good thing for the justice system to be doing, but that’s hardly sufficient when the law has such obvious holes in it.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  I agree with you, but I do think that as a society we need to think about mechanisms to prevent false accusations and wrongful convictions. Both sexes can have immoral motivations [1]. In general, people are more likely to believe the word of a woman over the word of a man. So if a woman accuses a man of something, unless he can prove his innocence, he's got I would estimate a 3/4 chance of being found guilty of whatever the crime is. I think we need some way to rebalance that. All laws and prosecutorial systems should be designed with misuse in mind, because misuse will happen. We should always think, "if I felt wronged by some person and wanted to get revenge, using the system as a weapon and being willing to lie, could I successfully use the system to get my revenge?" And I think in many cases in our current systems the answer is yes, misuse is very much possible. I won't even bother to describe any scenarios, because I'm sure we can all imagine them. Well, here's one [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpvwWWzJuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpvwWWzJuk [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLowHT_ytBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLowHT_ytBs Other links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGE-3ioAlmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGE-3ioAlmQ
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> murder, rape, assault, and theft Lots of people have lots of opinions on what those things even are. Most of those opinions are utterly ridiculous.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tehwebguy 5y ago

Police agree with you on 3 out of 4

epicureanideal 5y ago
Yeah, the amount of "revenue collection" they do borders on theft I suppose.
ashtonkem 5y ago
That’s unreasonably generous to cops, IMO. They have a pretty long track record of doing all of those and getting away with it.
- bigiain 5y ago
  To be fair, I'm _reasonably_ sure most cops don't do those things. Most cops just let it slide while their "bad apple" colleagues do those thing. And are therefore complicit in perpetuating them. So you're still right about it being unreasonably generous to all cops, even if not all of them do that shit.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    It’s hard to say given that the stats are poorly kept, but it’s currently estimated that 40% of cops commit domestic abuse. Given that that’s a crime, a serious one at that, it wouldn’t surprise me if over half of them commit more petty crimes like theft.
tshaddox 5y ago
And even for the most obvious ones that police agree with, how much of their resources and effort go towards investigating and actively preventing those crimes? Detective shows are popular, but isn't that sort of police work a vanishingly small portion of police budgets?

ashtonkem 5y ago

Yes, in the broadest sense we want to discourage crimes like murder, rape, assault, and theft. I don’t think anyone reasonable disagrees with this concept. The issue I’m raising is that what the definition of things like “rape” and “murder” is where problems start. My cynical point is that socially we tend to define “real crimes” in such a way to reinforce existing power hierarchies. Steal from the register and face prosecution, steal from your employee and maybe be forced to pay it back (maybe). Shoot your neighbor and get executed by the state, poison the river and face a civil case, starve foreign infants and face no consequences whatsoever. Morally all of these are awful things, but which ones get criminalized and prosecuted is extremely selective. The rich and powerful often not only get selective treatment when prosecuted, but the kind of violence that can bring is often not even criminalized at all. My most horrifying example is the fact that until the 1990s it wasn’t legally possible for a man to be charged with raping his wife in some states. 13 states still treat marital rape as a lesser crime than rape of a non-spouse. I think we’d all agree that punishing rape is a good thing for the justice system to be doing, but that’s hardly sufficient when the law has such obvious holes in it.

epicureanideal 5y ago
I agree with you, but I do think that as a society we need to think about mechanisms to prevent false accusations and wrongful convictions. Both sexes can have immoral motivations [1]. In general, people are more likely to believe the word of a woman over the word of a man. So if a woman accuses a man of something, unless he can prove his innocence, he's got I would estimate a 3/4 chance of being found guilty of whatever the crime is. I think we need some way to rebalance that. All laws and prosecutorial systems should be designed with misuse in mind, because misuse will happen. We should always think, "if I felt wronged by some person and wanted to get revenge, using the system as a weapon and being willing to lie, could I successfully use the system to get my revenge?" And I think in many cases in our current systems the answer is yes, misuse is very much possible. I won't even bother to describe any scenarios, because I'm sure we can all imagine them. Well, here's one [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpvwWWzJuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpvwWWzJuk [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLowHT_ytBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLowHT_ytBs Other links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGE-3ioAlmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGE-3ioAlmQ

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> murder, rape, assault, and theft Lots of people have lots of opinions on what those things even are. Most of those opinions are utterly ridiculous.