4 ms·

I'm sure the "shock value" in this headline is the assumption that most people have in their heads: criminals in jail = bad people. One factor to note in this,

by smtddr 12y ago

I'm sure the "shock value" in this headline is the assumption that most people have in their heads: criminals in jail = bad people. One factor to note in this, is that there are a lot of people in jail who arguably shouldn't be there. People who are, in fact, not much different from you or I. I suspect on average, the people in jail aren't that different from the people outside of it in terms of morals & ethics.... on average.

pessimizer 12y ago
>I'm sure the "shock value" in this headline is the assumption that most people have in their heads: criminals in jail = bad people. Not for me. For me, criminals in jail = on average worse than average unjailed people.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- baddox 12y ago
  The average person in prison would be worse than the average person not in prison, at least if we assume a naive model whereby most violent criminals are caught and imprisoned for some extended period of time. But it could also be true that most people in prison are not worse than the average person not in prison. Of course, this is also assuming away the vague and subjective task of determining "how bad" a person is.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    We don't have to assume anything. It's self-determined.
    - baddox 12y ago
      I'm not talking about how people respond. I'm talking about whether we consider the responses to be accurate. Usually, the implication is that people are overestimating their own merit.
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        It sounds as if you're talking about the difference between the average or the median. The prisoners were asked about the average unjailed person, and the findings are from the average response. There might be more data that asked prisoners to say if they are better than most people, and from the data collected, I'm sure that you could determine if most prisoners thought they were better than the average person. As it is, I'm assuming that prisoners answered from a list of characteristics about themselves, average prisoners, and average unjailed people on some linear scale.
        baddox 12y ago
        > It sounds as if you're talking about the difference between the average or the median. It's more subtle than that. Both average and median refer to a number, so you have to decide how to turn "driving ability" or "moralness" into a number. Two ways of doing that are to simply sort all people, and then use their ordinal as the number. In that case, average and median would be the same. Another way is to actually assign a meaningful number to each person, but there's not an obvious way to do that. You could choose an arbitrary proxy stat, like how many traffic accidents you've been in or how many people you've murdered, but then you're going to end up with a massively uneven distribution such that a large majority of people are tied for "the best" and thus the majority of people can accurately say they are above average.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
"...surveyed 85 incarcerated offenders at a prison in South East England about their prosocial traits. The inmates were aged 18 to 34 and the majority had been jailed for acts of violence and robbery..." That tends to support the claim that these are "bad people" in the ordinary sense of the term. It is pretty well documented that almost no one thinks they are a bad person: http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413487046&sr=8-1&keywords=evil http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/... (I cannot recommend this book enough if you're interested in understanding evil.)
- smtddr 12y ago
  I'd agree with you more if the "robbery" part wasn't in the quote. Too many factors are involved with the event of robbery; I can still envision a bunch of one-off people who had a lapse in judgement and/or fell on hardtimes not needing jail-time. Violence is something I'm much more incline to condemn someone for when it wasn't clearly self-defense with no pre-emptive way to avoid the situation. >>That tends to support the claim that these are "bad people" in the ordinary sense of the term. I feel like I'm getting needlessly pedantic now. The ordinary sense of the term, imho, is actually wrong and comes from the media(and religion?) vilifying a bunch of things to skew the public's calibration of good & evil. I have a feeling I'm about to fall into a deep rabbit hole of disagreements so I'll just concede that you're right given the mainstream's perception of good & evil.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    Whether or not jail time is the best solution is a tangential point, but people convicted of "robbery" under UK law have been proven guilty of using force or threats to steal (as opposed to less specific legal definitions of theft), whilst living in a society which usually provides adequate benefits (including medical care) for those with little or no source of legal earned income. Whilst some people's circumstances might influence or pressurise them into acting in this way, it's not exactly an inadvertent, victimless or no-real-alternative type of crime. One doesn't need to have a particularly hardline attitude towards criminal offenders to assume that those guilty of robbery must have hugely transformed their outlook on life if their stated beliefs that they're more moral, kind, compassionate etc. than the average person aren't totally delusional. (Actually, they'd probably have a stronger argument for claiming to be as "law abiding" as everyone else since few people aren't technically guilty of breaching some law) There are former criminals who are shining examples of people who are not only able to turn their own lives around but are also willing to dedicate huge amounts of time to convince others not to make the same mistakes; one might say showing more kindness, compassion or morals than average. But there are also plenty who think their only real mistake was getting caught.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jobu 12y ago
People are also remarkably adept at rationalizing their actions to fit their self perception. Dale Carnegie talked about this in "How to Win Friends and Influence People": http://books.google.com/books?id=1rW-QpIAs8UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=1rW-QpIAs8UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3... TL;DR; - A hardened criminal and cop killer felt that he was constantly being persecuted by the police and was only defending himself.

by smtddr 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

>I'm sure the "shock value" in this headline is the assumption that most people have in their heads: criminals in jail = bad people. Not for me. For me, criminals in jail = on average worse than average unjailed people.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
baddox 12y ago
The average person in prison would be worse than the average person not in prison, at least if we assume a naive model whereby most violent criminals are caught and imprisoned for some extended period of time. But it could also be true that most people in prison are not worse than the average person not in prison. Of course, this is also assuming away the vague and subjective task of determining "how bad" a person is.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  We don't have to assume anything. It's self-determined.
  - baddox 12y ago
    I'm not talking about how people respond. I'm talking about whether we consider the responses to be accurate. Usually, the implication is that people are overestimating their own merit.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      It sounds as if you're talking about the difference between the average or the median. The prisoners were asked about the average unjailed person, and the findings are from the average response. There might be more data that asked prisoners to say if they are better than most people, and from the data collected, I'm sure that you could determine if most prisoners thought they were better than the average person. As it is, I'm assuming that prisoners answered from a list of characteristics about themselves, average prisoners, and average unjailed people on some linear scale.
      - baddox 12y ago
        > It sounds as if you're talking about the difference between the average or the median. It's more subtle than that. Both average and median refer to a number, so you have to decide how to turn "driving ability" or "moralness" into a number. Two ways of doing that are to simply sort all people, and then use their ordinal as the number. In that case, average and median would be the same. Another way is to actually assign a meaningful number to each person, but there's not an obvious way to do that. You could choose an arbitrary proxy stat, like how many traffic accidents you've been in or how many people you've murdered, but then you're going to end up with a massively uneven distribution such that a large majority of people are tied for "the best" and thus the majority of people can accurately say they are above average.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

"...surveyed 85 incarcerated offenders at a prison in South East England about their prosocial traits. The inmates were aged 18 to 34 and the majority had been jailed for acts of violence and robbery..." That tends to support the claim that these are "bad people" in the ordinary sense of the term. It is pretty well documented that almost no one thinks they are a bad person: http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413487046&sr=8-1&keywords=evil http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/... (I cannot recommend this book enough if you're interested in understanding evil.)

smtddr 12y ago
I'd agree with you more if the "robbery" part wasn't in the quote. Too many factors are involved with the event of robbery; I can still envision a bunch of one-off people who had a lapse in judgement and/or fell on hardtimes not needing jail-time. Violence is something I'm much more incline to condemn someone for when it wasn't clearly self-defense with no pre-emptive way to avoid the situation. >>That tends to support the claim that these are "bad people" in the ordinary sense of the term. I feel like I'm getting needlessly pedantic now. The ordinary sense of the term, imho, is actually wrong and comes from the media(and religion?) vilifying a bunch of things to skew the public's calibration of good & evil. I have a feeling I'm about to fall into a deep rabbit hole of disagreements so I'll just concede that you're right given the mainstream's perception of good & evil.
- notahacker 12y ago
  Whether or not jail time is the best solution is a tangential point, but people convicted of "robbery" under UK law have been proven guilty of using force or threats to steal (as opposed to less specific legal definitions of theft), whilst living in a society which usually provides adequate benefits (including medical care) for those with little or no source of legal earned income. Whilst some people's circumstances might influence or pressurise them into acting in this way, it's not exactly an inadvertent, victimless or no-real-alternative type of crime. One doesn't need to have a particularly hardline attitude towards criminal offenders to assume that those guilty of robbery must have hugely transformed their outlook on life if their stated beliefs that they're more moral, kind, compassionate etc. than the average person aren't totally delusional. (Actually, they'd probably have a stronger argument for claiming to be as "law abiding" as everyone else since few people aren't technically guilty of breaching some law) There are former criminals who are shining examples of people who are not only able to turn their own lives around but are also willing to dedicate huge amounts of time to convince others not to make the same mistakes; one might say showing more kindness, compassion or morals than average. But there are also plenty who think their only real mistake was getting caught.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jobu 12y ago

People are also remarkably adept at rationalizing their actions to fit their self perception. Dale Carnegie talked about this in "How to Win Friends and Influence People": http://books.google.com/books?id=1rW-QpIAs8UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=1rW-QpIAs8UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3... TL;DR; - A hardened criminal and cop killer felt that he was constantly being persecuted by the police and was only defending himself.