Free will, morality and crime

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Again, you are NOT GETTING THE POINT! How do you increase certainty of capture? I mean it is absolutely silly to argue that police forces could increase certainty of getting caught and they are not doing as much as they can right now. If they could increase certainty of capture, why aren't they doing it (except for civil liberties issues).

What's the difference between 10 years and 20 years?

It ain't difference between 10 and 20 years. It is the difference between 10 years and life (or death). At least that is what the theory asserts.

At the cost of 30 000$ per annum for the upkeep of prisoners I'm sure we could put more money into police forces, Imran. Increasing sentences is an easy answer that does not provide a reasonable return on investment. Not, at least, from a deterrence point of view. From a rehabilitation point of view is a different story, perhaps...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Calc II


Prisoners? thats a pretty bad experiment then. Prisoners are already a group of people who mostyly took risks by trying to get away with breaking the law...

a) That's brilliant. Who are we trying to deter except criminals?

b) I direct your attention to that part of the page I pointed you towards which states that the prisoners were at least as astute in judging their risks as a control group of college students was.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Frogger


And again...it's ineffective. You'd do better decreasing your failure rate by half than you would to increase jail time by a factor of 4...

It loses reality after a while. What's the difference between 10 years and 20 years? Nothing, to most people. It's so hard to conceive that it has almost no behavioural impact. Don't argue with me, Imran; argue with 40 years of behavioural science...

I agree with it.

You could see it for example in China.
If you sell and smuggle drug, your Punishment is Execution.

So you should think Noone sane would try to commit this crime. But they do. And they aren´t even Hardcore Criminals who commit it (and are finally being put to death) but also normal Students and Housewifes.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


I agree with it.

You could see it for example in China.
If you sell and smuggle drug, your Punishment is Execution.

So you should think Noone sane would try to commit this crime. But they do. And they aren´t even Hardcore Criminals who commit it (and are finally being put to death) but also normal Students and Housewifes.

and what percentage of population take these extremly risky behaviors?

[Zero]

Originally posted by Frogger


a) That's brilliant. Who are we trying to deter except criminals?

b) I direct your attention to that part of the page I pointed you towards which states that the prisoners were at least as astute in judging their risks as a control group of college students was.

a)everyone

b)Honestly, i dont want to click on a link to a long article just to post for one thread.

[Ramo]

Its not just "pissed off". Its not like someones crashed their car into yours and you experience road rage, or you've got into a bar fight and are smashing the crap out of each other.

With a crime of passion, you a upset, angry, betrayed, lost, confused, and a host of other emotions. This combination of emotions is very uncommon.

In that case, does that problem not warrant state-enforced mental help?

In such a crime of passion people do not think straight, and so thoughts of criminal detention aren't even considered. Locking people up for the crime will not be a deterrent.

Right, just making a general comment.

Would it be ok to incarcerate a person who is extremely likely to commit a serious crime, but has so far not? Prevention being better than cure - It would after all be protecting society.

How do you know this person is likely to committ a serious crime if he has not had any previous criminal behavior? It seems extraordinarily unlikely that a person would committ a serious crime without committing a crime before.

It is true that incarceration generally fares very poorly as a method re-habilitation, but that is a problem with the criminal justice system itself, and until it is reformed, it's difficult to justify it doing anything.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


Interesting.
With this reasoning,
one could attest also Computers or Computer-Programs a free will.
For example the norns and Grendels in Creatures 1 - 3.
(simulated creatures within a simulated environment in the computer, with an artificial neural network, simulated hormone-Levels and even a simulated DNA)

Everything the norns do is dependand on their own internal state (simulated Hormone-Levels and the like) experiences they have made in the past (which alter their neural circuitry) and the interest they have at the moment (norns can get hungry, sexually aroused, frightened ... ) and so they fulfill every above mentioned criteria, even if their Environment is only a simulated one.

Interesting thread indeed

Well I have no real knowledge of the systems you speak about but from what you said, there is something certainly "non-trivial" involved with those systems.

Now how the simulated environment is organised I have no clue, and in what way do the "norns" react, but it doesn't seem to be the regular "pre-programmed" behaviour. So they might have "free will" as such that they do what they " need" like a fly for example. Do they develop new kind of behaviours? Do they learn as well? Do they react on all new objects in their simulated environment?

Who says that our world is not a big simualtion in some lab . No way that we could find that out. They are just keeping all variables the same for last 200 years just to see what happens .

So I can't really comment on the example above, but from my human perspective the point I said in the previous post means "free will" for me.


Imran:

But WHAT is predetermined? No one knows. One person may say let them free because they will only kill as many as are determined. Other person might say that detention IS predetermined for those people so they should be incarcerated. How do you know the predetermined path if you cannot see in the future?

Well this view of prederteminism is like "predeterminism is the same as free will". You make your choices, but they are predetermined. I guess that is just equating the opposites. And the meeting point is "free will" at least from our perspective. And as there is no proof for predetermination, we can safely assume that there is none. In the same way people say there is no proof of God and we can therefore assume that there is none.

Krazyhorse:

Hell, if there was still a frontier I'd be all in favour of using it as a dumping ground for those society rejects due to criminal behaviour. But they'd get every reasonable assistance to help them thrive in the new wilderness. They wouldn't be there to make them suffer

The Moon

Now that is a good place to place all those drug abusers Someone should send that recommendation to Bush

The better question, to go back to free will is: How come we have free will in our own system which is based on "predeterminist physics"? How come free will come to a system where there was no conditions that it could have developed? Or what are the conditions that allowed for development of free will? Evolution?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Frogger


You'd be wrong. And that's why we have experimental psychologists. This is not new or controversial science; anybody with an eye towards proper controls can demonstrate that people would rather take a 50% chance of going down for 20 years than a 100% chance of going down for 10.

That's not surprising, given that the next ten years of your life are more valuable than the subsequent 10 years.

Therefore 10 years guarenteed is seen as a greater punishment than the split chance.


I do agree that certainty of punishment is more important than severity, but not that much more.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Free will, morality and crime

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
In this world is there any real sense of morality?

As a code of right and wrong, yes. Just because you have no control of what you do does not make it right.

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
Everything we do is out of our control. Are we responsible for our actions?

No.

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
If a person commits a crime are they to be held accountable? - they had no control over it. Accusing them of a crime is like accusing an hurricane of deliberate mass murder and wanton destruction.

No - but if such accusations do come, they are also predetermined.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
The better question, to go back to free will is: How come we have free will in our own system which is based on "predeterminist physics"? How come free will come to a system where there was no conditions that it could have developed? Or what are the conditions that allowed for development of free will? Evolution?

Physics on the micro level is not deterministic, it is probabilitistic. Freewill believers hold that as the basis of freewill, determinists hold that the effects are too small to affect anything on the macro level.

But are neuron cells too big, considering they communicate by electric pulses and chemical agents?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Physics on the micro level is not deterministic, it is probabilitistic. Freewill believers hold that as the basis of freewill, determinists hold that the effects are too small to affect anything on the macro level.

But are neuron cells too big, considering they communicate by electric pulses and chemical agents?

Probabilities do not create free will. If you had free will with them then surely the probability distribution of micro-systems would change to reflect the will, rather than the random?

Its like a quantum dice that free wills itself to turn up 6 every time. It is defying the laws of probability.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Here's my take on this:

Consider two parallel Universes, U1 and U2. They have slightly different starting conditions and follow different destinies, but both are entirely deterministic. Everyone in U1 and U2 makes "decisions" whose outcome is entirely predetermined.

In U1, policeman P1 throws criminal C1 into jail. This example convinces shady character S1 that carrying out a similar crime is a bad idea. S1's decision was predetermined, but P1's predetermined action is one of the factors that predetermined S1's decision.

In U2, policeman P2 is more tolerant/lazy/incompetent and fails to jail C2. S2 thinks he has a good chance of escaping justice also, and carries out the crime that S1 refused to carry out.

Neither S1 nor S2 could have come to any other decision. But it's also clear that there WAS a "decision" which determined the outcome (P1/P2's decision), even though P1 and P2 couldn't have come to any other decision either.

[Arrian]

I mean no offense, but what is the point of all this?

-Arrian

[Az]

UR: I really don't agree with your last post. every person is responisble for it's actions, because he, through the vast array of neural connections he IS, decided to do so. by committing the crime, he's hurt other people's happiness, and therefore, must be taught a lesson, so he won't do it again.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
Probabilities do not create free will. If you had free will with them then surely the probability distribution of micro-systems would change to reflect the will, rather than the random?

Its like a quantum dice that free wills itself to turn up 6 every time. It is defying the laws of probability.

What is your definition of freewill?