Ghost in the Cell | Hacker News Reader

Ghost in the Cell

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38 pointspmcpinto28 comments

The debate surrounding the ethicality notwithstanding, it seems like an incredible waste of talent and ability to lock up someone with this kind of mind and work ethic. If for no other reason than this, I hope we can at least have a meaningful conversation about justice reform and the prison-industrial complex.

Agreed - assuming they had enough of a moral compass to apply that mind and work ethic to something good on the outside. His fraudulent activities would probably have been much easier to perform outside of prison.

That's an interesting way to look at it.

Apply your comment to Harvey Weinstein and see if you can give him a pass on an "incredible waste of talent and ability"

Weinstein is talented?

Though, you could make this argument with Bill Cosby. World-class talent who went on a decades-long campaign of rapes and sexual assaults. Many people might now feel distraught their idol was a monster.

If Weinstein is talented it would be okay? Why talent matter his morality?

No, it still wouldn't be if he were. This is just about being dismayed by revelations about people whose fans used to look up to them.

> Weinstein is talented?

Success as a producer probably involves significant skill/talent, of a similar kind that drives success in other organizational/leadership roles.

Advocating for not locking people up isn't equivalent to arguing that there should be no enforcement of law or punishment for crimes committed, or as you say, giving someone "a pass". This seems to me an example of a false dilemma (logical fallacy). There are other strategies available besides either incarcerating someone or doing nothing at all.

I simply think that in general locking people up is inefficient, ineffective, and immoral. There are certainly exceptions IMHO; I'm not an absolutist on this. But I think the actual cases that justify incarcerations are a small percentage of what we currently have.

The argument for not locking up was that "he works hard and has great mind".

Imo, both are weak argument to treat that person any different if that person really commuted crime that would put less great hacker to prison.

No, the argument for not locking up was that he is a human being and has rights, and incarceration is a barbaric practice that doesn't work anyway (if the stated goal is rehabilitation, which it usually is).

Hard work and a great mind have nothing to do with the justification for not imprisoning him. Those come into play when considering the waste to society as a result of locking him up. I can see how the two positions were conflated, but hopefully this clarifies.

Curious where you draw your morals from...

This is a fantastic question. I tend to vacillate on this, and thus do not have as firm a foundation as I would personally like. However being honest with myself I have a lot of questions for which there are no easy answers.

However what I haven't really waivered on is my resonance with Enlightenment values, especially John Stuart Mill. I like a lot of what Michael Shermer has to say regarding a scientific basis for morality. He has a book called The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom which I find quite interesting.

Ultimately this may be the best ground on which to attack my argument, since it is a tripartite argument and one of those is based on morality. I will cede that the argument from morality is subjective, and ultimately some form of argument from authority which is a weak case.

Don't take this the wrong way... your manner of speaking about this strikes me as very authoritarian.

Usually that conversation is about lesser crimes, not murderers.

Totally fair. A case where the perpetrator has deprived someone else of their right to life is a lot less clear cut than say a non-violent drug user.

So the talent can ignore all laws and murder any people they want?

Not sure if this is a troll or not, but I'll assume good faith.

No I don't believe that to be the case at all. However the punishment or consequence(s) for violating a law (such as murder) should not involve incarceration. I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state. Obviously this isn't always applicable (such as murder where the victim is dead), and I do believe there truly are some people that are dangerous enough to warrant incarceration (although I reserve that for only the most severe cases). But we're way off balance IMHO.

So if a murderer shouldn't be incarcerated or pay restitution, then what?

> I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state.

So people should be able to kill others and just have to pay a fine to the estates/heirs of the victims?

Being in prison is kinda like being a high school kid. You have endless hours to do whatever you want and all of your needs are met. It’s easy to be smart and learn when you have nothing to do.

> Brady alerted the staff, and a lieutenant squeezed into the cramped space, snapping photos to document what they’d found. A couple of inmates pulled down the computers, and carted them away. Brady later told investigators that he didn’t realize just how troubling the discovery was. “It didn’t click for me that, oops, this might be a crime scene until after we had found everything,” he said. “And a couple days later, I went, ‘Ah, shit.’”

really? you found a lowly computer sitting in a ceiling in a prison and he didn't think much about it?

Brady was the IT guy, thinking about crimes wasn't his gig. The inmates weren't going to say anything. If the lieutenant mentioned is a police LT and not just a generic term for assistant, then it's the lieutenant's fault for not mentioning that it was obviously illegal.

I think the distinction that needs to be made is that hiding a computer in the ceiling is breaking the prison's rules, but not illegal in itself. There is no law saying that felons can't access the internet- that prohibition only happen in specific cases related to computers (fraud, child porn distribution, etc.). It could have been that the inmates were just browsing the internet, which isn't illegal. Brady the IT guy didn't think that convicts have less to lose and are more likely to conduct actually illegal activities with their computer network.

The buried headline here is that the AFL-CIO apparently used prison labor.

I think one of the takeaways here is that "the virtual world" and "the real world" are not as separate as many people seem to think. I used this fact to good effect to escape homelessness. But, like anything, it can be used for either good or ill.

We should perhaps be more mindful of that then we seem to be, on the whole. It is a central element of a lot of complaints about things like Facebook. What happens online has real world consequences, contrary to what a lot of people would like to assert when they are being assholes somewhere on the internet.

For a minute I thought this was about genetics (I'm listening "The Selfish Gene"[1] audiobook).

[1] http://a.co/i5iN6Jm

An affiliate link? :/

No, it is not. I gain nothing from this link, I just like the subject and the audiobook is very good.

> senderCustomerId=A15Z0B2L8G0ZY

> Let Paulo know I've redeemed this audiobook.

I'm not super familiar with audible but it seems like it could be.

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