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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

> E.g. if you genuinely believe the notion that we have free will is nonsense (and I do), then the logical extension is to be very uncomfortable with the notion of e.g. prison used for vengeance or anything at all other than to the bare minimal extent required to protect others, because the logical conclusion of thinking people don't have agency is that there was no way other than other external stimuli in their lives that they could have come out making other decisions.

I think this lacks imagination for human cruelty. If they had no free choice but to steal my things, then I guess I don't have any free choice but to torture them in revenge. Hard determinism does not erase the possibility of punishment.

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It doesn't erase the possibility, of course. It doesn't even erase the possible moral justifications for punishment. I was very specific with my wording there for a reason: It does erase the main moral justifications used for vengeance.

With respect to using hard determinism as an excuse for vengeance, keep in mind that even a society that buys into the lack of moral justification for vengeance on a hard determinist basis will still have every reason to punish you for it purely based on the expected effect on future offending (by you or others).

This is one of the things that often cause people to react to a determinist view: They tend to think that it either makes it pointless to make choices because they have no control, or that it makes everything a free for all because you have no responsibility.

But the problem with that line of thinking is that we don't get to "step out of the illusion". We live within a world where irrespective of whether your choices are free, you do make them - choosing to do nothing (or anything) because your choices are not free is in itself a choice, and has consequences that may be good or bad for you. Making choices because you think you can use lack of free will as an excuse may or may not end well for you even if your choice to do so was not free.

> I was very specific with my wording there for a reason: It does erase the main moral justifications used for vengeance.

It seems to do so either by erasing justification entirely (thus permitting anything), or by making it impossible to justify reforming any one person (by removing moral responsibility).

That is, under hard determinism, either society does not have to bother justifying anything it would like to do in response to what it considers a crime, or if you think moral justifications for actions are still required, it makes it impossible to actually say "person X requires rehabilitation", because placing such blame requires free will from which moral responsibility follows.

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