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Comment by sysbin | Hacker News Reader

Both cases are handled by a punishment modal that assumes humans have free will. I wish we lived in a society that handled these cases with a rehabilitation modal and understanding free will is an illusion by determinism & how the brain functions.

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I guess you’ve never interacted with a large fraction of people that are typically committing violent crimes. A lot of them are these brutish unhinged characters, with low IQ. They are mentally defective, you can either lock them away for the rest or their life (more humane) or kill them (generally frowned upon). There is no way to rehabilitate them.

My perspective is people committing crimes are similar to persons suffering an illness. We as a society should be approaching both situations the same because that's how we obtain cures and not with the mindset of the current justice system. The justice system is slowing progress similar to if we approached illnesses with the mindset of the justice system.

It would rehabilitate us to treat them as malfunctioning humans who are worthy of compassion, even as we keep them away from public society. As a culture we really need to grow out of thinking about criminal justice in terms of punishment.

Whether we have free will or not makes no real difference as long as we can't prove whether we have it or not. Besides, even defining the term "free will" is difficult. One thing we do know is that we do not have rules and do not enforce them, then we'll get more of the behavior that we have found undesirable enough to have rules against it -- whether this is due to our having free will or not is immaterial to whether or not we should have rules.

See my comments to other replies. The simplest description of the justice system upon society is constructing deterrents for actions decided as bad. The argument that people need to believe in free will to be good people hasn't been proven fundamentally true. The deterrents made by the justice system don't work for everyone and it's not fair when people have events or the genetics making the deterrents not work for them like others. I'm not voicing for no rules. I'm suggesting a better system needs to be designed.

> The argument that people need to believe in free will to be good people hasn't been proven fundamentally true.

I did not make that argument. I only argued that having free will or not makes no difference as long as we cannot tell whether we have it. Even supposing we all believed none of us has free will, it doesn't follow that we wouldn't agree to have rules. It also doesn't follow that believing we have or might have free will is what makes us behave well, but having rules does seem to help that.

As to fairness, there's also fairness to the rest of society -- if a person cannot help but commit crimes, then maybe they shouldn't be free to do so. You might think that unfair to the criminal, but it is certainly better for everyone else. Call this whatever you want, but it is pretty much how all societies work, from the most primitive to the most modern -- we have rules, and we seek to enforce them.

Rules are not rules when a person cannot not break them because of no control over the events in their life and their genetics leading them to break these rules.

I'm not saying it's fair that we don't allow people to be free to act upon what is bad. I'm saying the system needs to be designed to be a rehabilitation modal and not a punishment modal because it's dehumanizing, amoral, and unethical to punish a person who is forced into the circumstances. The punishment modal doesn't help fix the problem and keeps a system from evolving to where people can be fixed like illnesses in the healthcare system.

You can say that all you want, but everyone else can still enforce their rules, and you know they will. Rules won't go away -- they'd better not! Your best bet is to talk about what punishments are appropriate to what crimes.

Words are for sharing human expression. Your interpretation of a something being a rule, is rigged when it's not possible for a person to follow it by choice. I think it's best to talk about how people don't have free will and let people understand the injustice to humanity for progress to eventually come.

That will make no difference. Free will or not society will still impose rules you don't like.

Or look at it this way: if the universe is fully deterministic and we have no free will then what's the problem if a criminal goes to jail? It's not as if it means anything, and it was all pre-determined, no?

But the real answer is that we neither know for sure whether the future has been pre-determined, nor could we predict the future if it were, and we do not know if we have anything like free will, but we at least have the illusion of free will, so we have no choice but to act as if we do.

I feel like you’re making a straw man argument to my original point.

Rules can change, get better or worse and effect society in a little way. I have no problem with that! I’m not saying if someone cannot follow a rule it’s not good.

I’m saying the consequences of breaking a rule need to be a rehabilitation modal compared to a punishment modal. The illusion of free will is similar to humans once perceiving the world is flat. I’m a firm believer that it’s better to not live a life under an illusion and when the consequences to humanity are something like the justice system being built incorrectly in a dehumanizing manner. I find it heartless when a person feels like the people fated to suffer should just be damned instead of acknowledging a problem. Predetermination doesn’t make me into that type of person and while living several years with the illusion gone. I find that attempt something a person who hasn’t thought much about life (would say) while not thinking everything is determined.

You assume rehabilitation is always possible or cost-effective. From a utilitarian viewpoint, it might be best to simply rid society of some people forever. I’m not arguing for or against that view, but it’s a possibility. The issue of “free will versus determinism” doesn’t settle the question of capital punishment like you think it does.

As a philosopher I tend to approach all things as objects and similar to humans with their properties that happen to be unique because of the life events not being equivalent in order or even with outcomes because of mixed order. Dehumanization happens when we treat objects as broken and not fixable or worth fixing. I think we should try to be above nature.

We can’t be above nature because we are part of nature. And some things are not fixable at all or even worth fixing without diverting significant resources away from better uses.

I ask you how you think the case of being fated into a reality where your life events, turn you into a person who is eventually labeled a criminal because of the predetermined actions in a system not designed to prevent it and thus you're placed behind bars or even executed... Is that not worth fixing or not one of the better uses of resources? It seems really perplexing to me. How wouldn't it be one of the highest pursuits for humanity to defeat by resourcing a better system for these tragic outcomes of a current system making it occur.

> Is that not worth fixing or not one of the better uses of resources?

At all costs? No. Otherwise? It depends.

You said it yourself: Some people are dealt terrible cards, and that can include (as yet) unfixable aspects of brain function.

I didn't write anything of the sort by you referring to unfixable.

Some societies have made a rehabilitation model work.

https://www.mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-...

In the end from a cost perspective it's a lot cheaper to have a productive member of society living on their own than it is to lock someone up for life. You have to weigh the recidivism rate vs. the cost of the program, but there isn't any country in the world with a more expensive criminal justice system than the US. We can definitely do better.

Even if free will is an illusion (and I'm not sure how to assign meaning to this statement), how does that change anything? If a murderer had no choice but to murder, then the prosecutor had no choice but to prosecute, the jury had to find guilty, and the executioner had to execute.

Why does software update? We want to have it become better and the summation of your comment is imposing a nihilistic view that nothing needs to change if it's all fated to happen. That's contrary to how humans strive for increasing the quality of life and making the system better even if it's fated to happen. I'm trying to express my view as a needed piece in the destiny of humankind like any other person.

While I do hold opinions about criminal justice, you can't possibly know what they are. I was pointing out that introducing "free will" into the debate only introduces a layer of indirection. A perpetrator felt as if he wanted to commit a crime, and a judge felt as if he decided that three years of prison was a commensurate sentence. Now, let's just redefine all verbs of volition to imply "feels as if", and nothing has changed. The judge may feel as if he thinks the perpetrator "deserved" the sentence. You want him to want to not feel that way, or rather, you feel as if you wanted him to feel that he should feel as if he wanted not to feel that way, by pointing out that one can't choose what to want.

> and understanding free will is an illusion

This argument always strikes me as bogus. Is it possible to tell the difference between "real" free will and "illusory" free will? If so, how? If not, than why does it matter?

Free will being an illusion is denoting free will isn't real and in the sense that you don't have any control of your life outcomes or actions you take. Research with how the brain functions shows we're unaware of making a decision few seconds before we think of making one. Similar there are cases where brain tumors have made persons act/desire in ways unwanted by society and the tumor removed the act/desire went away and only reoccurred when the tumor developed again. Understanding determinism with how cause & effect is fundamental in nature. Even being a programmer should help the mind resolve the difficult philosophy for someone who has thought all their life they had free will.

So you are saying, in essence, that there is no such thing as real free will and there never can be due to the laws of physics?

I'm basically saying, there's no evidence for free will and the evidence that exists shows free will cannot exist. It intrigues me how people understand we had no choice in the life we're born into but people like to assume contrary for what comes after. I think a lot of that has to do with socially conditioning and religion. I'm not necessarily sure why people downvote my comments on this topic and when it brings an issue with the justice system that maybe should be considered. Since, I think the system is failing people because of an antiquated belief in making everyone think they're responsible and thus be punished.

Absence of evidence for free will can be another illusion. If one does not believe in free will, the discussion about justice system is pointless. In this case judges and this discussion are just parts of the puppet show and follow the same script.

As with gods the free will is matter of belief and cannot be proved or disproved.

You're imposing a nihilistic view upon me. I'm proposing we don't ignore the evidence and make an antiquated system be designed properly.

One does not need to refer to the brain research. According to physics everything is predetermined and follows from the initial conditions. So free will is an illusion. Also according to physics time flow is another illusion as time-space is just a wave function on 4d surface.

Yet these illusions are strong and people have been writing about them for at least for 2500 years. Epicurus effectively suggested to believe in gods since the alternative, physical determinism, is just hopeless and useless.

I wouldn't view things as hopeless & useless until people completely abandon reason and rational for progressing the system of society. Determinism doesn't make me feel hopeless or useless because I can see faults in a system that's antiquated by an incorrect belief.

You jumped from the morality of execution to casually wanting to overhaul the sense of identity of almost every person and group.

Not that it’s not interesting. Just a little out of scope IMO.

I think if not discussed it will always be out of scope.

Agreed. Even without going down the philosophical rabbit hole, it should be clear in 2019 that retributive justice is unseemly.

I would say barbaric for what's possible without an antiquated incorrect belief.

I agree. I just think that tactically all we really need is for people to realize that what we have now is retributive, and calling them barbaric tends to backfire.

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