And Singapore has a very punitive legal system, while featuring a recidivism rate around 20-25%.
You can't just take two cherry-picked examples and proclaim the ‶idea of punishment as [...] dead and buried″.
You can't just take two cherry-picked examples and proclaim the ‶idea of punishment as [...] dead and buried″.
My dude, the other guy provided 100% more data than you!
The real flaw in the argument of the parent is, that in a direct comparison between Singapure and Norway Norway still wins: If roughly the same recidivism rates are achieved in a very punitive and a very supportive system, the supportive system is superior according to utilitarian principles.
If the recidivism rate is 20% regardless of if the punishment is harsh or not, I don't see why the conclusion should be that the harshness is supremely important. The harsh punishment does not better than the lenient ones!
Likewise: with the rate is 70% and 20%, but the punishments are equally hard in both places, why on earth is the conclusion that clearly the punishment is universally effective at keeping the rate of recidivism low?
What the original posted was arguing is that harsh punishment is not an effective way of reforming criminals, as measured by the recidivism. The example merely needs to illustrate that recidivism and harshness don't go together.
What shakow did was simply adding another example proving this point, and then acting like they'd provided a contradiction.
Wouldn't that depend on subjectively balancing costs and benefits of the other involved factors? For example, Singapore's system may (or may not, frankly I don't know and it's not important to the logical point I'm making) cost less than Norway's system. In that case, the question would be what value the society places on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive.
Right?
So when I pointed out a "flaw in the argument", I meant the argument as presented, without additional refinements (as you are trying to develop).
A minor detail: When discussing a normative question, it is important to carefully distinguish between normative and descriptive aspects. The descriptive aspects are everything that is the case. The normative aspects are everything that should be the case. Therefore, the question is what value a society should place on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive. -- And the idea that norms are up to a certain point "subjectively" is in itself a description whose normative relevance asks for an intense debate.
[1] There might exist a few exceptions, such as fundamental logical theorems. But this is too far off from our case.
Yes, that's the whole point of a counter-example...
If I try to prove the all odd numbers are prime (look, 1, 3, 5, 7, ... – it works!), you telling me that 9 is not is enough to disprove my theory.
Well... he can! He can prove, with one example, that the other person's thesis doesn't fit the facts.
And he did that.
So, yeah.
A correlation is an observation that seemingly unrelated events occur in proximity to each other, temporally or otherwise.
I repeat: can you show how a single data point can contradict a statement about the absence of correlation originally claimed?
>The idea of punishment as a deterrent is hopefully dead and buried at this point.
That's an absence of correlation claim?
Maybe the examples shown gave the impression that an anti-correlation was claimed, but that is purely an invention of the reader.