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It only matters in matters of free will and ethics. One actual scenario where it's relavant would be the discussion around the criminal justice system. If the u

It only matters in matters of free will and ethics. One actual scenario where it's relavant would be the discussion around the criminal justice system. If the universe is deterministic, how can punitive justice be justified?

brutusborn 3y ago
It can be justified in a deterministic universe because it makes criminals less likely to commit crime in future. As a recipient of punitive justice myself, being punished had a tangible effect on how I thought about crime and thus how I behaved post-punishment. Whether you believe that was deterministic or due to my own free will doesn’t change the outcome.
- tchaffee 3y ago
  Punishment is not effective for most people in reducing crime. One thing that is effective is increasing the perceived risk of getting caught. People rarely commit crimes when they are sure they will be caught.
  - murderfs 3y ago
    For the sake of argument, let's assume that punishment has absolutely no effect on whether someone will commit a crime. Even so, there's still a benefit to imprisonment: it separates criminals from society for a period of time, during which they won't be committing crimes against it.
    - tchaffee 3y ago
      Sure but separation can be a harsh punishment or a caring and comfortable place. Some countries do the latter and have lower recidivism rates.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Even in the worst case, recidivism rates only reach around 2/3. That means punishment (incarceration) reforms criminals 1/3 the time. When you consider all of the problems with prisons in the U.S., and all of the hurdles offenders have to pass in order to successfully reintegrate into society, it’s quite remarkable that so many manage to do so. There are plenty of medical interventions, particularly for mental illnesses, that would dream of 1/3 effectiveness. Now consider the fact that recidivism rates are often much lower than 2/3, and in many cases are closer to 1/3. That tells me that punishment actually is quite effective at reducing crime.
    - tchaffee 3y ago
      Correlation is not causation. If punishment is causing the recidivism then you'd expect an increase in punishment to increase recidivism. It doesn't. You also need to compare prevention with recidivism. Optimal approaches prevent the crime in the first place.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    I hear this often but don't see much evidence of it. Do you know of any good studies to support the idea that punishment isn't effective?
    - tchaffee 3y ago
      To be clearer, it's not that some form of punishment isn't effective. It's that more severe punishment is not more effective. And prevention is the most effective. There are plenty of studies. A search doesn't surface any for you? What search terms have you tried?
- zappchance 3y ago
  I am a firm believer in deterrence, which you seem to be describing. It's a seperate thing from punitive justice which has a focus on retribution. The method is similar but the aim is different (deterrence focuses on making the cost-benefit ratio for crimes very high, while retribution is mainly to satisfy the human need for fairness through punishment).
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    Is there any real practical difference? Sounds like the only real change is how you frame the ‘punishment’/‘deterrance’
    - vidarh 3y ago
      It has a difference because if your goal is deterrence, then if it can be shown that other means of deterrence are better, then it is logical to apply those even if they reduce the apparent punishment, while if your goal is punishment you might want to keep punishing people even if it is shown to not be effective. See e.g. the debates over lenient prisons in Scandinavia such as Bastøy Prison, where the lenient treatment is seen as justified on a deterrence and recidivism basis but which would be seen as negative if you see the goal of the sentencing to be harsh in order to punish.
d-cc 3y ago
The free will "debate", as most consider it, is an utter joke. A tumor or large amount of kinetic energy to the right parts of your, or anybody else's, brain can turn them into an unredeemable monster.
- b1daly 3y ago
  doesn’t your example make clear the existence and nature of free will? it’s obvious in its absence
  - d-cc 3y ago
    I'd argue that it's not obvious in it's absence, see: the philosophical zombie thought experiment The secret is that we are all philosophical zombies to begin with.
  - d-cc 3y ago
    Recently, I've dealt with behavioral issues with my aging mother brought about by a series of different factors, but most significantly age-related cognitive decline. Trying to determine if she was acting in a certain way intentionally or unintentionally was fundamentally impossible. In the past, I mistreated her thinking she was choosing to behave in certain ways whenever she really didn't have much of a choice, but then later I realized that to some extent and in some situations, she was. It's an extremely murky line, what decisions were being made due to other influences and what decisions were being made by her, that line never existed to begin with as who her consciousness is fundamentally is determined exclusively by 'outside' influences. Separating her identity as an entity from her material manifestation is likely nonsensical.
Legend2440 3y ago
The point of punishment is to discourage you (and other people) from doing that action in the future. You don't need free will for that.
- tchaffee 3y ago
  If you don't have free will then how would something discourage you from doing something that is already determined you will do? That doesn't make any sense.
  - MrScruff 3y ago
    Not the commenter you're replying to, and I'm sure you already realise this, but crime/punishment in a fully deterministic universe could be seen as a 'self correction' mechanism of the whole system. One could imagine an impossibly vast cellular automata system which develops individual cellular 'agents'. Over time the agents develop some means of reproduction/death/reward system and become more and more complex. Then the agents that evolve with cooperative behaviours start to dominate. One might imagine that the system as a whole would also evolve these kind of 'self corrective' behaviours for anti-cooperative behaviours of the individual agents. This is ignoring the whole philosophical ethics discussion and consciousness of course.
    - tchaffee 3y ago
      That does ignore a lot of the important factors but it's a useful analogy.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Because the punishment is part of the input that determines what you will do. In fact, if free will were absolute, punishment wouldn't make any sense because it wouldn't have any effect on your will.
    - tchaffee 3y ago
      Neither of your claims make sense. If everything is predetermined, you don't need inputs. If you have absolute free will you are free to disregard or consider inputs.
tchaffee 3y ago
Why would you need to justify a punishment that was already predetermined? If you are going to excuse crime with the no free will argument you can excuse the punishers with that argument too.
- trashtester 3y ago
  I'm in favor of punishing crimes. I don't think I have a choice about the matter.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Prisoners don't have free will, nor do judges and police. All is well!
- zappchance 3y ago
  To clarify my position, I do believe in free will; specifically a compatibilistic view of free will. If you read my other replies, you can see that I do advocate for a criminal justice sustem, just not a retributive one (or a restorative one, for that matter). I do not excuse any crime, nor do I excuse any punishment. Every individual is responsible for their own actions, regardless of the circumstances. However, I see little use in revenge from a legal standpoint. Instead our main motivations should be deterrence and incarceration.
mo_42 3y ago
> If the universe is deterministic, how can punitive justice be justified? Determinism doesn't necessarily mean that organisms always act in the same way. They act in the same way given the exact configuration of them and the world. Obviously, justice changes the configuration of an organism (fines, prison, ...). To me it boils down to the question whether justice decreases the likelihood to commit crimes again. Given that our systems of justice have evolved over a long time, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago
  Our justice systems have evolved over a long time, and thus include many remnants of earlier times when prevailing values were much different than they are today. I'd be wary about giving them the benefit of the doubt.
  - trashtester 3y ago
    If you try to do some semi-random change to large body of code that you don't understand, chances are much higher that you break the system than of you making it significantly better. The same goes for culture. Most changes tend to have unexpected consequences, and if you try to change everything at once, society tends to collapse.
- b1daly 3y ago
  this is my pet peeve with discussions of ‘free will’ they have an implicit definition—everything being exactly the same at a different time or place—that is non-sensical as far as we know. I’m still disturbed by peoples confidence in a deterministic universe—I suppose such confidence is based on the success of inductive reasoning but inductive reasoning is a phenomenon based on how our minds work. As far as I know the philosophical problem of causation is not considered solved? In any case, elements of randomness seem likely to play a role in human intelligence but what that role is, who knows?
zappchance 3y ago
I didn't realize I would need to define the meaning of punitive justice to this crowd, but it's the idea that "the punishment must fit the crime". The idea behind it is to hurt the criminal in order to satisfy the human desire for justice. The other goals of justice include rehabilitation (re-intgation of the criminal into civil society), deterrence (using the threat of punishment as a means to scare would be criminals), incapacitation (remove dangerous people from society to protect public order), and denunciation (public shaming).

brutusborn 3y ago

It can be justified in a deterministic universe because it makes criminals less likely to commit crime in future. As a recipient of punitive justice myself, being punished had a tangible effect on how I thought about crime and thus how I behaved post-punishment. Whether you believe that was deterministic or due to my own free will doesn’t change the outcome.

tchaffee 3y ago
Punishment is not effective for most people in reducing crime. One thing that is effective is increasing the perceived risk of getting caught. People rarely commit crimes when they are sure they will be caught.
- murderfs 3y ago
  For the sake of argument, let's assume that punishment has absolutely no effect on whether someone will commit a crime. Even so, there's still a benefit to imprisonment: it separates criminals from society for a period of time, during which they won't be committing crimes against it.
  - tchaffee 3y ago
    Sure but separation can be a harsh punishment or a caring and comfortable place. Some countries do the latter and have lower recidivism rates.
- chongli 3y ago
  Even in the worst case, recidivism rates only reach around 2/3. That means punishment (incarceration) reforms criminals 1/3 the time. When you consider all of the problems with prisons in the U.S., and all of the hurdles offenders have to pass in order to successfully reintegrate into society, it’s quite remarkable that so many manage to do so. There are plenty of medical interventions, particularly for mental illnesses, that would dream of 1/3 effectiveness. Now consider the fact that recidivism rates are often much lower than 2/3, and in many cases are closer to 1/3. That tells me that punishment actually is quite effective at reducing crime.
  - tchaffee 3y ago
    Correlation is not causation. If punishment is causing the recidivism then you'd expect an increase in punishment to increase recidivism. It doesn't. You also need to compare prevention with recidivism. Optimal approaches prevent the crime in the first place.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I hear this often but don't see much evidence of it. Do you know of any good studies to support the idea that punishment isn't effective?
  - tchaffee 3y ago
    To be clearer, it's not that some form of punishment isn't effective. It's that more severe punishment is not more effective. And prevention is the most effective. There are plenty of studies. A search doesn't surface any for you? What search terms have you tried?
zappchance 3y ago
I am a firm believer in deterrence, which you seem to be describing. It's a seperate thing from punitive justice which has a focus on retribution. The method is similar but the aim is different (deterrence focuses on making the cost-benefit ratio for crimes very high, while retribution is mainly to satisfy the human need for fairness through punishment).
- brutusborn 3y ago
  Is there any real practical difference? Sounds like the only real change is how you frame the ‘punishment’/‘deterrance’
  - vidarh 3y ago
    It has a difference because if your goal is deterrence, then if it can be shown that other means of deterrence are better, then it is logical to apply those even if they reduce the apparent punishment, while if your goal is punishment you might want to keep punishing people even if it is shown to not be effective. See e.g. the debates over lenient prisons in Scandinavia such as Bastøy Prison, where the lenient treatment is seen as justified on a deterrence and recidivism basis but which would be seen as negative if you see the goal of the sentencing to be harsh in order to punish.

d-cc 3y ago

The free will "debate", as most consider it, is an utter joke. A tumor or large amount of kinetic energy to the right parts of your, or anybody else's, brain can turn them into an unredeemable monster.

b1daly 3y ago
doesn’t your example make clear the existence and nature of free will? it’s obvious in its absence
- d-cc 3y ago
  I'd argue that it's not obvious in it's absence, see: the philosophical zombie thought experiment The secret is that we are all philosophical zombies to begin with.
- d-cc 3y ago
  Recently, I've dealt with behavioral issues with my aging mother brought about by a series of different factors, but most significantly age-related cognitive decline. Trying to determine if she was acting in a certain way intentionally or unintentionally was fundamentally impossible. In the past, I mistreated her thinking she was choosing to behave in certain ways whenever she really didn't have much of a choice, but then later I realized that to some extent and in some situations, she was. It's an extremely murky line, what decisions were being made due to other influences and what decisions were being made by her, that line never existed to begin with as who her consciousness is fundamentally is determined exclusively by 'outside' influences. Separating her identity as an entity from her material manifestation is likely nonsensical.

Legend2440 3y ago

The point of punishment is to discourage you (and other people) from doing that action in the future. You don't need free will for that.

tchaffee 3y ago
If you don't have free will then how would something discourage you from doing something that is already determined you will do? That doesn't make any sense.
- MrScruff 3y ago
  Not the commenter you're replying to, and I'm sure you already realise this, but crime/punishment in a fully deterministic universe could be seen as a 'self correction' mechanism of the whole system. One could imagine an impossibly vast cellular automata system which develops individual cellular 'agents'. Over time the agents develop some means of reproduction/death/reward system and become more and more complex. Then the agents that evolve with cooperative behaviours start to dominate. One might imagine that the system as a whole would also evolve these kind of 'self corrective' behaviours for anti-cooperative behaviours of the individual agents. This is ignoring the whole philosophical ethics discussion and consciousness of course.
  - tchaffee 3y ago
    That does ignore a lot of the important factors but it's a useful analogy.
- layer8 3y ago
  Because the punishment is part of the input that determines what you will do. In fact, if free will were absolute, punishment wouldn't make any sense because it wouldn't have any effect on your will.
  - tchaffee 3y ago
    Neither of your claims make sense. If everything is predetermined, you don't need inputs. If you have absolute free will you are free to disregard or consider inputs.

tchaffee 3y ago

Why would you need to justify a punishment that was already predetermined? If you are going to excuse crime with the no free will argument you can excuse the punishers with that argument too.

trashtester 3y ago
I'm in favor of punishing crimes. I don't think I have a choice about the matter.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Prisoners don't have free will, nor do judges and police. All is well!
zappchance 3y ago
To clarify my position, I do believe in free will; specifically a compatibilistic view of free will. If you read my other replies, you can see that I do advocate for a criminal justice sustem, just not a retributive one (or a restorative one, for that matter). I do not excuse any crime, nor do I excuse any punishment. Every individual is responsible for their own actions, regardless of the circumstances. However, I see little use in revenge from a legal standpoint. Instead our main motivations should be deterrence and incarceration.

mo_42 3y ago

> If the universe is deterministic, how can punitive justice be justified? Determinism doesn't necessarily mean that organisms always act in the same way. They act in the same way given the exact configuration of them and the world. Obviously, justice changes the configuration of an organism (fines, prison, ...). To me it boils down to the question whether justice decreases the likelihood to commit crimes again. Given that our systems of justice have evolved over a long time, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
Our justice systems have evolved over a long time, and thus include many remnants of earlier times when prevailing values were much different than they are today. I'd be wary about giving them the benefit of the doubt.
- trashtester 3y ago
  If you try to do some semi-random change to large body of code that you don't understand, chances are much higher that you break the system than of you making it significantly better. The same goes for culture. Most changes tend to have unexpected consequences, and if you try to change everything at once, society tends to collapse.
b1daly 3y ago
this is my pet peeve with discussions of ‘free will’ they have an implicit definition—everything being exactly the same at a different time or place—that is non-sensical as far as we know. I’m still disturbed by peoples confidence in a deterministic universe—I suppose such confidence is based on the success of inductive reasoning but inductive reasoning is a phenomenon based on how our minds work. As far as I know the philosophical problem of causation is not considered solved? In any case, elements of randomness seem likely to play a role in human intelligence but what that role is, who knows?

zappchance 3y ago

I didn't realize I would need to define the meaning of punitive justice to this crowd, but it's the idea that "the punishment must fit the crime". The idea behind it is to hurt the criminal in order to satisfy the human desire for justice. The other goals of justice include rehabilitation (re-intgation of the criminal into civil society), deterrence (using the threat of punishment as a means to scare would be criminals), incapacitation (remove dangerous people from society to protect public order), and denunciation (public shaming).