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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not advocating for a violent person to not be stopped.

You're advocating for "stopping" them by having someone else rearrange their brain so they won't be violent any more. And you refuse to acknowledge the fact that that someone else is making a choice that has consequences; to you it's all just particles reacting to their environment. Yet you also seem to think suffering is bad--but if it's all just particles reacting to their environment, there is no such thing as suffering, any more than there is such a thing as choice. So you are the one who is being inconsistent, not me.

> If it affects someone else, well, do you really care? From your answers, you seem not to care in the slightest.

You clearly don't understand my actual position, and I don't know how to explain it any better than I already have.

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Absolutely! Re-education, rehabilitation is exactly THAT! It's altering the synaptic connections in the brain to bring their behavior in line with what we view should be the case in civilized society. You just seem to have a problem with making that process more efficient.

And it is all just particles moving around, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore what is very likely an unpleasant experience from your subjective, internal point of view. I don't dismiss your personal experience of reality, just your rational understanding of what's going on.

And I do, I really do, but you are inconsistent. You say you should be free to make your choices, but then also want to put people in jail fornmaking their free choices. You call it consequences, and yet that doesn't eliminate the fact that you then want to LIMIT THEIR FREEDOM TO CHOOSE to do it again. You are self contradictory. At best, you are picking what choices people are and aren't allowed to make.

> You just seem to have a problem with making that process more efficient.

No, I have a problem with that process being done without the consent of the person, even in cases where there the person has not harmed anyone else. I have asked you about that elsewhere in this discussion; your response will tell me whether it actually is an fundamental difference in our viewpoints or whether you are just describing things using very different terminology than I would use.

In cases where a person has harmed someone else, it's the fact that they have harmed someone else (more precisely, that they have harmed someone else without an extremely good reason, such as self-defense, for doing so) that creates the consequences I have talked about. There are consequences for people's choices regardless of whether we have a society or not. Sometimes, as a society, we alter the consequences from what they would be in a state of nature (for example, we put murderers on trial and then imprison them if they are found guilty, instead of just letting the families and friends of the murder victim take private vengeance, which is what would happen in a state of nature with no society). But it is simply ridiculous to say that respecting people's freedom of choice is inconsistent with there being consequences for people's choices. If you choose to jump off a cliff, you will die. If you choose to harm other people for no good reason, they will retaliate. Calling that "limiting freedom to choose" is just sophistry.

It isn't sophistry, it's showing that your own reasoning fails to hold because a word like choice is meaningless when you really analyze it. If free will doesn't exist, then there are no choices, only the illusion that you made a choice.

You keep getting hung up on the word "choice" instead of addressing the actual substance of what I'm saying. I don't see any point in further discussion on those terms.

Because you keep referring to choice and free will in a completely different definition than anyone coming along and reading this conversation understand it to me. It's intellectually dishonest and preys on minds that won't be able to distinguish the subtly and instead just see, "pdonis mention free will, me likely, updoot."

> It's intellectually dishonest

No, it isn't. The definition of free will that I am using is common in the literature on free will and cognitive science, i.e., among people who have actually worked on understanding how human brains work based on exactly the same physicalist principles that you say you believe. I also have disagreed several times with your claims about what "anyone coming along and reading this conversation" would understand.

I have responded to your misleading comment elsewhere, but in fact the commonly accepted definition of free will as known to the general English speaking population is that free will is not an illusion of choices but a direct ability to influence the world without prior cause, something that is IMPOSSIBLE according to the know laws of physics, both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Even the Copenhagen interpretation permits the universe is infinitely "splitting" to handle different "choices" or "events" happening.

As for your blatant attempt to misrepresent the cognitive science communities belief on the subject, again, put up or shut up by linking to anything that backs up your claim that current cognitive scientists support your point of view. I know for a FACT, that you can't because papers and talks on the subject are FREELY available to watch and/or read!

To add to my previous response to this: while I do think it's justified to imprison a convicted murderer, I do not think it's justified to force someone imprisoned for murder to undergo, say, brain surgery that is claimed to remove their propensity to murder.

So forcing them to do everything else is fine, just as long as no one touches the brain. Removing a foot ok though? What about the death penalty? That can be done without rearranging the brain.

> forcing them to do everything else is fine, just as long as no one touches the brain.

I have made no such claim. You keep attacking straw men instead of addressing what I'm actually saying.

> Removing a foot ok though?

I have made no such claim.

> What about the death penalty?

I have already pointed out that the natural consequence (i.e., in a state of nature if there is no society) of attacking someone else for no good reason can be death. So imposing death as a penalty for a sufficiently heinous crime seems to me to be justifiable in principle, if you are sure to a moral certainty that the person did the crime.

Where our current system falls down horribly is in that last part: we impose the death penalty when we are not even close to meeting the strict standard of moral certainty that I just stated.

Incorrect. You willingly lock people up for premeditated murder even if the murder did not happen. If I hire a hit man, and they turn out to be an FBI undercover agent, I am now in jail not for committing murder but trying to commit murder.

Yes, conspiracy to commit murder is also a crime under our current legal system. Do you not think it should be? If not, why not? Instead of name calling, how about some actual arguments?

Where did I ever name call you? My position is if you have thoughts to carry out murder and actually show actions that indicate your thoughts might become reality, they can absolutely be used as evidence in the court to convict you of conspiracy to convict murder without ever having to have actually committed murder.

By your whole argument, this person shouldn't be held criminally responsible UNTIL murder has actually occurred.

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