Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

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I appreciate the genuineness of your response, but again, I think you may continue to misinterpret Paul's stance. I'm also not clear if Paul is the "other billionaire" you refer to? I presume he's financially successful but I don't know the degree. I should also be clear that I don't know him personally, don't know his politics beyond broad strokes that he has written about, and am interpreting based on what is written rather than inside knowledge.

Personally, I'm not against the death penalty in theory. In certain cases, executing criminals may be the best course of action. But I'd like it to be reserved for cases where the guilt is certain and the debate is about the severity of the punishment, rather than ones like this where the guilt itself may be in doubt. My statement that juries are likely to occasionally sentence innocent people to die does not necessarily mean that this is not the least bad of the available bad options. I don't know enough about this particular case to know whether this applies here.

  > Supposing Glossip is innocent -- which doesn't seem
  > terribly likely once we read the piece above, which is far
  > more detailed and down-to-earth than the emotional appeals
  > that triggered pg.

You're stretching here. I'd hope we would both agree that neither article should be taken as proof of either guilt or innocence? And that neither of us knows what other details Paul has or has not read? You started with a legitimate question (has he read counter-articles) but now seem to be presuming your conclusion, and then using that to make further unwarranted logical leaps.

> What would your response have been?

I probably don't understand your question --- I think you are asking my opinion on whether we should deport illegal aliens who are convicted of violent crimes? If so, then yes. But more importantly I think we should realign the rules we have on the books with the enforcement of those laws. I generally have a stronger belief in rule-of-law as a principle than I have belief that any particular law is or is not correct. I could be happy either with stricter enforcement of current law, or movement toward something like Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism

The other billionaire is Trump, of course.

My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan

Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year. And I mean certainly innocent lives, not conceivably innocent lives (like Glossip's).

Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.

Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the general concern for Glossip, what is?

  > The other billionaire is Trump, of course.

I understood that you were referring to Trump. I was (and still am) uncertain if you were referring to Paul Graham as the (other) "other billionaire", or whether this role was being played by a third party. I haven't previously seen Paul referred to as a billionaire on this site, although I suppose he might be one.

  > For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:

Whether a good or bad idea, I don't think there is a reasonable mechanism for switching our justice system in a wholesale manner. Alex Kozinsky (a US 9th circuit judge) has an excellent paper (mentioned in another comment and previously discussed here) on possible ways to improve rather than replace the system: http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...

  > Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably
  > save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year.

There is a great deal of confounding between societal norms and criminal behavior. I'd expect (for example) that if we somehow transplanted the US system to Japan, that crime rates would remain low. I don't know what the effect would be if we somehow switched the US to a Japanese system of justice while leaving the other elements of US society in place.

  > Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the
  > opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is
  > suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.

I think you underestimate the degree of diversity of opinion on HN, and that your sense of "you and everyone" is misguided. Consider your own example of serving on a jury: the visible average opinion may not adequately reflect the individual views. I'm also surprised that you would feel that posting this under a throwaway account is necessary.

  > Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of 
  > innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the
  > general concern for Glossip, what is?

I don't have a particular concern for Glossip, and had not heard of him before reading the parent article and the counter-article that you posted (which I appreciated). My concern is not for preserving the lives of murderers (if they are) but for preserving societal faith in the expectation of an impartial and fair system of justice.

Having such an expectation is today commonly considered naivetee, but I think a lot of the progress made in America in previous generations was because there was a belief that such a system was possible. I'd like to try to restore some of that faith, and avoiding high profile miscarriages of justice (I don't know if this is one) is an important part of that restoration.

Consider your objective of "restoring faith" and the means you (and many in society who seem to agree with you) adopt to bring it about: propagating the idea that miscarriages of justice frequently occur. Even if this isn't a miscarriage. Even if Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Ahmed Mohamed, etc, aren't miscarriages.

You could say: our means of increasing faith in justice is to tell everyone that miscarriages occur all the time, even if they maybe don't, so that good ordinary Americans will become more and more concerned and prevent miscarriages, which will increase faith etc.

This is a very complicated and indirect way of purportedly getting the result you want.

However, if you wanted exactly the opposite result - that is, you wanted to decrease faith in the criminal justice system - what would you do? Answer: give as much publicity as possible to miscarriages of justice, purported or real.

Which is exactly what you're doing, right? Have you ever heard the thing about what to do when you're in a hole?

Also, I'm quite aware that Americans aren't Japanese. On the other hand, I seldom hear that awareness from people who point out how much better urban life is in, say, Reykjavik rather than Detroit. And appear to believe that the problems of Detroit can be solved by adopting the ideology and/or governance structures of Reykjavik. (Which, in fact, has pretty much already happened - if anything, the flow is in the other direction.)

As for throwaways: stay on the reservation, and you'll have nothing to fear. Duck under the barbed wire, and you'll find out...

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