Hacker News Reader

Comment by mihaic | Hacker News Reader

I know it's almost always taboo whenever I bring it up, but in recent years I've become convinced that a moderate level of retaliatory violence could lead to a better society.

There seems to no longer be any negative consequences for many minor antisocial acts (types of bullying, shoplifting in some parts, even reckless driving/endangerment). It's impossible in practice to legislate being an asshole, so until recently we relied on group shaming or the thread of a minor beating from someone wronged to keep this sort of behaviour in check.

Because of past cruelties, we've determined that all amount of verbal and psychological abuse is milder that a single slap, and I'm honestly wondering if we're leaving too many usable options to better society on the table.

That, combined with shaming and some amount of indoctrination of morals and ethics in our youth seem to have been abandoned completely, instead of being mostly toned down.

View on HN

> I've become convinced that a moderate level of retaliatory violence could lead to a better society.

I'm against this based on purely ideologic principles but... when I try to think about this question objectively, I don't find compelling arguments against it (other than it doesn't work, but I'm not quite sure about that).

Intuitively, I think that violence brings violence, and making violence legitimate will generate more rather than less violence.

I agree that it's a potentially slippery slope, which would need to be carefully addressed and constantly balanced. Not all laws need to be eternal, some just apply to the current social status.

I think your principles also come from us not defining any clear separation between minor violence (a slap, a shove, anything that completely heals within a week and is a singural episode) and major violence (breaking a bone, acid attacks, etc) -- in the same way there is a distinction between asault and battery.

I disagree - I think you are conflating 1. "how to punish someone" vs 2. "whether to punish someone".

You are arguing that we should change 1. by allowing violence. But in the examples you gave, it's not an issue of _how_ those acts are punished, but whether they are punished at all.

In other words, maybe we need to enforce current punishment more strictly rather than increase the pain of currently loosely enforced penalties.

Punishment is actually not my intented point, it's having negative repercussion for a large class of antisocial behaviour.

Being rude and verbally abusive in many situations for instance gives you a stricly positive outcome, from a game theory perspective. I'm arguing to add something in the mix to make that outcome negative, and corporal punishment and shaming are the only things I can see.

Honestly, maybe spending a day at stocks on public square might be effective tool. And probably relatively cheap punishment.

We could even stream it online. Show advertisements and have it pay itself.

Yeah, or imagine what effect adding 50 lashed to the CEO on those $100 million fines that get easily paid.

Imagine the current cancel culture is even more widespread (it is a nightmare).

[My personal point of view is that] the society should not punish, it should try to prevent future crimes. For example, capital punishment: according to studies I've read, it is not a real deterrent, and false positives are likely (innocent people are killed) -- therefore I'm against capital punishment (if the capital punishment were effective to prevent murders, I'd reconsider it).

Sure, that's exactly my point: capital punishment is over the top, and prevention would have been achieved with much less.

If light corporal punishment were shown to be just as efficient at prevention as a 1-year in jail sentence, would you consider it?

There definitely is an element of vengeance in capital punishment as well. "Eye for an eye".

I am not fully on board with that, but, on the other hand, I cannot pretend to myself that I'd consider "Eichmann being hanged" somehow morally bad or evil. In a sense, he had it coming, like many of his peers. More recently, the people who raped and killed their way through Bucha, deserve the same treatment.

But I can see that them hanging won't deter further butchers of next Buchas. People commit such crimes while feeling virtually sure that they won't ever be punished for them, and they are often right - too many war criminals expired in a luxurious bed at home. Notably, Stalin's executioners were never tried by an international tribunal unlike their Nazi counterparts, because the USSR won the war.

If the butchers of Bucha were to hang, it would be mostly motivated by vengeance.

Capital punishment certainly works as a deterrent in the sense that a dead person commits no crime. But the way its conducted and the number of false positives makes me not a fan, in most cases. I imagine there are some situations where it is highly effective, but only if done immediately; I cannot fathom the whole "death row" thing for those hypotheticals. I believe strongly in innocent until proven guilty, speedy trial, due process, beyond a reasonable doubt, preponderance of evidence, trial by jury of peers, and all that fun stuff, and I acknowledge even all that goes wrong sometimes. However, assuming full uncoerced confession and irrefutable evidence and eyewitness testimony, why do we still make a (say, serial killer) suffer in death row instead of just execute them immediately? Revenge?

> There seems to no longer be any negative consequences for many minor antisocial acts (types of bullying, shoplifting in some parts, even reckless driving/endangerment).

This is a current media panic and PR campaign, not a reality.

edit: It's made up. After the administration changes hands, the perception (which, I've been assured, is actually more important than the reality) that crime is out of control will evaporate. Coverage of crime in SF after the Boudin recall has disappeared as completely as "concentration camps on the border" did after Biden was elected.

I agree with the problem, not sure about the solution. We don't have a good small/middle ground crime punishment. I actually don't hate the idea around the Chinese social credit score system (China's use of it is abusive, horrid, and dystopian). giving people points and taking some away for minor crimes that then spill over to privileges or benefits of society seems like a decent idea, one better than hitting them with sticks.

Interesting that you're ok with some system of social credits. Even in the ideal scenario, I see two major issues with it:

1. People often don't perceive purely numerical losses properly, just like credit cards make people overspend compared to cash.

2. It sounds like in order for it to be effective, it would need to have very low forgiveness. If the punishment has a high duration, it makes rehabilitation difficult.

We do need to figure out deterrents for minor bad behavior in modern society, and first need to have a list of criteria by which to judge these deterrents.

I grew up in a place and time where everyday life was permeated by a constant threat of violence. What I can tell you from my experience is that idea of minor retaliatory violence is kind of ridiculous.

The thing about violence and retaliation is that it can and will escalate very fast. What are you going to do when you tap them on the knuckles and they come back blasting? My advice is that you should avoid violence unless backed into a corner and all other options are exhausted.

It sounds as if you lived in a place where the rule of law was also absent, and you are right that violence can often spiral. Could you say where this was?

What is was envisioning was a decriminalization of minor violence as long as we can't criminalize general rude behaviour and I just wanted to explore that idea.

The hood lmao. There was a war in drugs and crimes were prosecuted zealously. Your mistake is thinking that someone will act rationally when hands are laid on them.

So leaning into your idea, where would the line be between minor and major violence?

Now suppose someone kills another person. They claim the victim attacked them and they were in fear for their life. The victim’s friend claims that the victim was engaging in legal “minor” violence in response to some perceived slight. How do you adjudicate this?

Right now there is an exception for violence committed in self-defense for instance. You still can't claim self-defense if you murder someone that shoved you. That's why I think things would get worse, you'd still be on the hook for serious escalation. My definition of minor violence is anything that doesn't leave a trace for more than a few days, so I know it's not legally precise.

I'm just arguing for a fringe solution right now, but from the outside it seems that long prison sentences for minor offenses have destroy lives and communities in many US inner city areas, and almost anything might be an improvement. How was your experience with rehabilitation of minor offenders?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com