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No, I do not say that it's a hierarchy, in fact, that is almost the opposite of what I am saying. What I am saying is that one should not treat information giv
by impossiblefork 4y ago
No, I do not say that it's a hierarchy, in fact, that is almost the opposite of what I am saying.
What I am saying is that one should not treat information given for a socially useful purpose so as to discourage anyone from offering the information for that purpose.
If someone volunteers his DNA for research, you do not look for crimes using that information. If someone volunteers his DNA for a rape inquiry, you do no search for burglaries. If someone volunteers his DNA for a burglary, you do not use it in rape inquiries.
The goal is to treat information in a limited way in order to ensure that as much useful information as possible can be volunteered.
- robertlagrant 4y agoFair enough. That's not what I understood from your initial post, so I appreciate the clarification. I got the hierarchy idea from your example that catching a rapist is better than catching a knife slasher and extrapolated from there.
- impossiblefork 4y agoNo, the core idea is that you want the incentives to be right even in bad situations. So if your enemy has medics who he lets tend the wounded, even if they're your wounded, then you stay away from them. You want surrender and truces to be respected, so you don't make use of false surrender or truces as ruses. But even though you respect such things, your enemy is still your enemy. Similarly, in this case Sally is still a criminal, but you want her to report crimes if she happens to be willing to do so for some reasons, so you don't exploit people's reports of crimes in order to go after those people themselves, unless the report itself is malicious or deceptive and is therefore not a report at all.