How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix the Prison System | Hacker News Reader

How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix the Prison System

maneatingrobot.com

49 pointsedward56 comments

For an article about "lateral thinking" and "going back to first principles", the basic tenet of locking people in a room hasn't really been questioned - this whole thing is thinking within the box, almost literally.

Geofencing, tagging and monitoring all play a role today in people serving time in the community: the only reason we don't go further is society's need for safety. If behaviour analysis could reliably predict someone going off the rails, if biochemical analysis could measure an addict's ability to kick their drug of choice, etc. etc. then you don't need the box in the first place.

Agree. And there's lots of research to show this:

https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=1225...

I have an idea, maybe totally crazy, but what if we forced the communities that sentence someone to bear the entire cost for incarcerating the individuals. This would force those communities to rethink where they are allocating money because they would not be able to afford to imprison so many people.

Basically, lock 'em up and throw away the key wouldn't be an option. On top of that, it might encourage pushing money to the deeper root issues which is fair education opportunities for everyon, and sustainable living situations that allow children to thrive.

Back to this article, no matter how awesome, I don't think VR can out perform real human interaction, but it might actually be better than the current situation.

Edit: agree with the problem that this would punish the very community that needs more help. But, what I want to figure out is, what should be the method to discourage prison and encourage in-community rehabilitation? (Under the assumption that this is both more cost and rehab effective, and less disruptive to already stressed families)

So poor communities--where crime is naturally higher in the first place--should be less well-equipped to incarcerate their own bad actors? I don't think that logic holds.

Perhaps it would look that way initially, but wouldn't we then be forced to really confront the issue?

I'm open to other ideas, but right now the way I see it is there is no negative impact on the courts today when they sentence people. There is nothing for one the judge to think about the total cost to the community when putting people in jail for 20 years.

You would be punishing communities that need help the most. Crime is usually (but not always) a result of poor broken communities, schools, etc.

While the author links approvingly to this article[1] which shows that treating prisoners like humans is pretty effective at rehabilitating them, he nevertheless proposes treating them like doped-up battery chickens.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-pri...

This reminds me of this post from a couple weeks ago called

"The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems" -

Key quote: "The “reductive seduction” is not malicious, but it can be reckless. For two reasons. First, it’s dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve mistakenly diagnosed as easily solvable. There is real fallout when well-intentioned people attempt to solve problems without acknowledging the underlying complexity."

[The second reason isn't immediately applicable here.]

Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840

Chesterton's Fence:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

I like how the author makes a casual reference to The Matrix without calling out that his plan is a literal implementation of it.

What do you have against The Matrix?

I think this is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while.

We have reached peak Hacker News.

Well, this I suppose this is a "Silicon Valley style solution," in that it's handwaving bullshit written by someone with absolutely no knowledge of what they're talking about.

Right? Complete lack of empathy in this 'article'.

On the corporate side, these two products may not want to be associated with this "market". Wearable biosensors are already creeping towards surveillance and vendors won't want to further spook citizens.

There is a better than even chance that the GPS tracking device in their pocket was manufactured by or gets service from a company that works directly and openly with the government on matters of intelligence.

You think companies really care about the perception, when people don't?

They manifestly do, they want control over that perception. It's just that they believe they can still control that through marketing.

Exactly

It's so out of touch it's probably going to be featured in the next edition of TEDx

Also, do they expect people to be on Oculus 24/7?

What, you mean the The Matrix wasn't a documentary?! Or are you saying something even crazier, such as these products not being intended as a replacement for all of life?

That kind of comment is not appreciated here. If you have some knowledge about this topic that the author doesn't have, HN strongly encourage you to write it down, rather than attack the author.

This is satire, right?

If not satire, it neatly summarizes why some people hate silicon valley so much.

while claiming to reduce solitary confinement but actually making it universal as a growth strategy for overpriced nutrient solution is pretty absurd; the question is: is it less absurd than the current strategy?

The problem isn't technical, it's political - nobody gives a shit about the prisoners, and therefore nobody is punishing poor behaviour of the people in charge of prisons. Lowering costs won't do anything other than increase the profit margins of the private prison companies, who will then proceed to figure out ways to cheap out on soylent instead of cheaping out on traditional food.

I hope so. This sounds suspiciously like a plot point during Claremont's run of Fantastic Four which even had Dr. Doom calling such treatment inhuman and monstrous.

You wish, and so do I.

What's great is that the soylent-oculus-isolation pods could be reused for other purposes, such as

  * Mental institutions
  * Homeless shelters
  * Public schools

No more need to deal with the risks of humans interacting with other humans in meatspace. Awesome.

With respect to But whether it’s The SoyOculus method or some other, a first principles approach to American incarceration is definitely overdue., I don't think this is it. The article doesn't seem to consider why people go to prison in the first place, and it is not a convincing argument that food and VR will keep them from returning once they are out.

And We’d eliminate prison violence.: exactly this proposal does this is unclear.

Meanwhile, Soylent and Oculus have nice solid government contracts.

Is it me or is this solution extremely misguided?

First both are as far as I know unproven technologies with possibly devastating side effects.

Second this essentially doesn't seem to fix correctional aspect, because people that socialize using OR aren't really taught to socialize. They are taught to socialize using OR.

people that socialize using OR aren't really taught to socialize

As long as your mind can be convinced that you're really socializing, what's the substantial difference? If it would be possible to use VR as treatment for, say, social anxiety[1], there's no reason it wouldn't work here.

[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15295148

Well, you aren't learning body language and eye movement for one. Plus you only learn to socialize in context of having VR glasses on.

But even if all that was implemented... This seems like a cruel and unusual solution.

My jaw dropped. This is not a joke right? Wow! Empathy zero.

Silicon Valley in a nutshell. Reminds me of the funeral scene from the HBO show, and a quote in response to the 'Summers Memo' regarding exporting toxic waste to third world countries.

"Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in"

Empathy is pointless, the only relevant question is: would you rather spend time in the authors prison or an average standard us prison? If you, like me, would prefer the authors prison then it doesn't matter why he made it that way, whether it is because he belongs to an obscure sect that only allows prisons designed that way, or because he cares about prisoners.

There exist more than two possibilities

I tried switching to Soylent and I would consider this inhumane treatment for prisoners.

Out of curiosity, have you tried the 2.0 liquid version? It's much better than v1. I only use it when I need to get a meal on the run, though. I can totally see how people could dislike the taste in this version.

Imagine how it would taste after the neo cons in the legislature has their say.

This comment thread...

There's a lot of bashing the author for perceived lack of empathy and precious little explaining exactly what's wrong with the ideas presented.

The idea here is improving prison and reducing its costs, not perfecting it. You will not have a Nordic-style prison system in the USA in your lifetime. Too many people that vote have too few fucks to give about people they're conditioned to not give fucks about. It's a people problem, and the author even touched on it - any positives you make to improving the system will be slagged on by the ignorant as being soft on evil people.

So, given that we're operating in a framework that requires prison sucking, how about we start by making it suck a little less and cost a little less?

Firstly, the article in classic Silicon Valley style comes off as "Hey, the disruptive cavalry's here, shut up, step aside, and we'll fix all your problems!". It doesn't talk of this as an incremental improvement over what we currently have that can be reasonably implemented. It proposes this as a flat solution, and seems to be talking in a vacuum as if this is the only/best solution.

And it's not a practical solution either. The cell space ideas sound good (I don't know, not an expert), but they're something that could have been implemented without SV and haven't so far, because it's costly. You may argue that the Soylent/Oculus solution saves money which can be put into here, but realistically that money will just go into increasing the profit margins. This is one of the core problems with prisons today; that profit-based motives or corruption lead to any money that could be used for improvement going into the pockets of those who run the prisons. The article mentions this but falls short of designing the scheme to protect itself from this.

Would we get a Nordic solution anytime soon? No. But neither will this solution work, for basically the same reasons. So I fail to see how this is an improvement.

Explaining what's wrong with it? Here:

It talks of a dehumanizing and shitty breakfast of oatmeal and bread, and proceeds to suggest an even more dehumanizing breakfast of goop. Note that most prison lunches still have variety, even if the food is crap. You take that away too. It talks of eliminating prison yards and replacing them with Oculus as if these people shouldn't care if they actually get to see the real sun.

It takes a system that treats people like shit, and suggests treating them even worse as a solution.

I don't agree with your conclusions, but seriously, thank you for at least detailing what you feel is wrong with it in a way that can be discussed, instead of just posting throwaway "Silicon valley, am I right?" crap.

>You will not have a Nordic-style prison system in the USA in your lifetime. Too many people that vote have too few fucks to give about people they're conditioned to not give fucks about. It's a people problem, and the author even touched on it - any positives you make to improving the system will be slagged on by the ignorant as being soft on evil people.

This is the real problem. It's not impossible, just extremely hard. How about we innovate on it and see what progress we can make? I mean, if someone said to you "You will not have a Minecraft client running full-speed on an Arduino in your lifetime", you'd call them defeatist.

If there is one thing I fear more than prison it would be forced to "eat" nothing but Soylent 24/7/365. I really mean that.

You clearly have no freaking idea what you're talking about if you fear a nutritional drink more than living in prison. Soylent is far better tasting/for you than many of the meals one is fed in prison. Truly spoken like someone who has no reference for a complete loss of freedom. I would drink soylent for the rest of my life of it was that or prison.

The lack of change is terrifying though. Eating sushi 24/7 is not pleasant either.

Repost from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10997074

I"m sorry, but how does something like this get up-voted? Tech is saturated with charlatans and wackadoodles. Get this man back to his padded room! And keep the other 44 patients from using the internet to up vote his articles.

What about sex? The author totally forgot about sex as a basic need. You can throw all the white paste and Occular headsets you want at the incarcerated population, but without the sex this plan will never fly.

While rape is a huge issue, it's interesting that the author didn't touch on consensual sex in the prison system. I presume the answer would be simulated VR sex, but that, more than any of the other social replacements, would fail to suffice with current technology.

Also, the author hadn't paid for the computer to run a Rift yet.

forced sex

Rape. The word is rape.

Whoa. Had to Google that. TIL there's a significant rhetorical distinction between the two. Edited and thank you.

yeah, add in another $10/year for a 4-pound can of Crisco. Delivered by WebVan, naturally. Also, that may double the cleaning expenses.

Double the handy wipe ration, add a few bucks for lotion. Problem sorted! /s

I used a similar idea in a cyberpunk book I wrote once. You might know cyberpunk as a dystopian genre.

Mostly I cribbed the idea though from Saint's Row IV.

This article is more ridiculous than a game with a dubstep gun.

I'd say this qualifies as a dangerous idea. Horrifying at first blush but it sticks in the brain. That the comments are almost universally negative tells you something.

The problem is that this doesn't fundamentally change prison, it just takes the two metrics of cost and violence, and analyzes ways to minimise them (by reducing to a minimalist food system and isolating sources of violence from eachother).

The comments being overwhelmingly negative are due to two reasons: 1. it's a solution that doesn't fix the main problems in the prison system, and 2. it's at the top of the freaking front page, indicating a lot of people are taking it seriously.

People laugh at idiotic ideas that nobody take seriously. People take out their pitchforks at idiotic ideas that everyone take seriously, because it's a serious danger to them and everyone else.

also, intestinators

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