Imagine you run the government along with law enforcement. Say that one day someone on Hacker News announced that they figured out how to predict a person’s future behavior with a resolution of about one day, simply by running some terminal command along with that person’s social media profiles.
As the authority, it becomes imperative for you to use this information. The choice becomes: are people still at fault for their future crimes even if they never commit them? If they are morally bad, then you are justified in executing some people for future crimes, if you believe that they are not responsible for crimes uncommitted, then you might take a more humane approach.
A person, P, will commit crime X at place Y at time Z. So you pour resources into changing Y and Z for future crimes, because you realize that outcomes are a product of P, X, Y and Z. In this equation, it makes no sense to speak of “punishing” the environment, of a time on the clock being “bad”. In exactly the same way, it no longer makes sense that a person is “bad”. What makes sense is: change, influence, separate, nudge the variables to get the outcome you want.
This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it.
Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state.
I hope this thought makes some sense to you considering your deeper dives into determinism. I would love to read your writing!