If the government under-sentences someone, then that approximately means they’re doing less defense than you would do yourself in a hypothetical individualist anarchist society where you handle it yourself correctly. You delegate some of your individual defense rights to the government, but you can also look at them directly to try to understand what they are and whether the government is handling them well.
A different way to view it is the government’s light sentence is putting the general public at risk of further crimes by the same aggressor and inadequately deterring other people from becoming aggressors.
For restitution, the government often doesn’t even try to handle this well and says you can deal with it yourself by suing in civil court, which in many cases will cost more money than it gets you. The government could have but did not include any monetary restitution in the criminal trial they paid for. I believe neither the criminal nor civil trial will mandate an apology, but one can imagine a hypothetical society where apologies and various other things are available types of restitution. AI tells me that while US courts don’t like compelled speech and avoid mandating apologies (though they do reward them in some cases), Japanese and Chinese courts sometimes mandate apologies, and one of the main justifications is to help restore a victim’s reputation.
Hmm. I guess along with that I think she has disclaimed quite a few times that a lot of law questions for lawyers/philosophers of law to decide. So I guess she was going off of the positions that were available to her and trusted(?) those legal philosophers.
Also an additional thought: maybe retribution is a good idea for judging how long to put someone away for? Though I’m a bit unsure. I think it’s hard to judge what kind of sentencing is best from a defensive point. In one sense anyone who’s shown themselves to be a danger could be locked up forever (though there are issues previously discussed where people may commit more serious crimes,. for example, because the punishment for stealing is the same as murder), Maybe we could use retribution as a framework purely for how long people should be in jail for?
I don’t see how. Coming up with the right number of years in jail for retribution seems even harder than coming up with the right number for defense. I don’t see how the principle of retribution would help guide you to a number of years.
You’re adding extra value to the reformed criminal that my hypothetical never gave. The hypothetical doesn’t require him to make some huge intellectual breakthrough about morality. Most people already know rape, torture and murder are wrong. In the hypothetical, he would just have to genuinely change his mind and stop wanting to do those things.
That could be a personal change without producing any special knowledge that would make him valuable as a lecturer. Maybe he could explain what changed for him but I don’t see how that’s a Galt level achievement or more impressive than almost every scientist’s career. I think you’re giving him way too much credit, whereas if I heard him say he thinks what he did was wrong and he won’t do it again, my feelings would me more like “ooh, want a cookie?”
We could also make the hypothetical more clear when it comes to what his thoughts were. What if he just couldn’t take the social pressure of it all and the effect on his reputation and won’t ever do anything like that again for that reason? It still satisfies defense if he won’t ever do it again and he already gave restitution.
Another thing related to retribution, Rand talked about in principal approving of capital punishment in cases of first degree murder, and if someone by conscious deliberate intention has murdered someone, he morally deserves to forfeit his own right to life. But, she’s against capital punishment in practice because of the possibility of errors (executing an innocent man). I agree with her here and it sounds in line with Popper’s CR.
I think retribution in cases of first degree murder can be objective and even more clear than restitution and defense. Restitution is impossible for the dead person and defense depends partly on uncertain guesses on what the offender might do in the future. Retribution seems clearer here: if you’ve intentionally destroyed another person’s right to life, you forfeit your own. Because execution is irreversible and legal systems are fallible, life imprisonment may be the safer practical penalty.
On another note, your response to the hypothetical didn’t mention that the family of Mary didn’t receive restitution because they were all murdered. I don’t know why you didn’t mention it. Maybe you thought it was implied or something, but I think it’s important to emphasize that part. One of the types of cases where restitution fails.
It sounds off to me that he won’t do it again. How does one not want to do something again that was really bad? Why did they do it in the first place?Just cuz they say they won’t do it again doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. What is making them not want to do the bad thing again? A negative feeling? Like, feeling bad for doing the killing?
I think when your feelings are like, “ooh, want a cookie?” that means what he did is not that extraordinary. Like, he doesn’t deserve praise. What’s easy about changing like that? Or not extraordinary? I would be perplexed if he actually changed or not. Like, did they really do it? This is similar to when someone does something pretty bad to another person when they showed that they were better. I think the wronged party gets confused why that even happened. Like, why did the perpetrator do what they did?
Did you read the hypothetical under discussion? It’s not realistic but it specifies that he won’t do it again and that we know that using infallible sci-fi technology.
Reread your hypothetical. The scenario was someone who really did reform, but now you bring up someone who merely claimed to reform but probably didn’t. You’re contradicting your own hypothetical scenario.
This is misquoting adjacent. You’re misrepresenting my position. You present me as believing that, if a criminal says he won’t commit any more crimes, then I would believe him. That isn’t even remotely what I said. It’s somewhat of the opposite of what I said, as I’ll explain below.
That wouldn’t be a clarification of the original hypothetical. It contradicts it.
The ironic thing is you seem to have no idea what I said. By offering a mocking cookie for a claim to have reformed, you’re expressing skepticism that criminals reform. But that’s what I said. I said if such a heinous criminal really did fully and genuinely reform (reaching not just the societal average at respecting rights but perfection), as the hypothetical specified, that would be stunning news, an amazing breakthrough, kind of like Galt’s motor.
You presented it like you’re disagreeing with me by taking the other side when you actually took a weaker version of my position. I expressed stronger skepticism of criminal reform than you did.
A typical cause of this is fighting culture wars. You seem to be arguing with an enemy tribe’s position instead of engaging with what I say.
You also didn’t listen to my warnings. (Such things often being ignored is one of the reasons people find culture wars frustrating and unproductive.) I foresaw and tried to prevent this sort of response. I talked about how unintuitive and implausible the scenario was and:
Then you wrote a post that didn’t go into depth trying to grapple with the hypothetical, and actually contradicted it multiple times like you didn’t review it.
Not particularly. He contradicted his own hypothetical. That misled you. While you could have caught it, it’s understandable to expect people not to misrepresent their own scenarios. Being skeptical of people and double checking them (regarding things that seem pretty safe like quotes, paraphrases and facts) is a somewhat advanced skill. It’s hard to know which things to double check. Double checking everything would take way too long.
I went through this a bit. I was going to post later but I caught a glance at some further stuff from @Elliot and @Dface and decided to just go ahead and post this. I’ll respond more tomorrow.
Responding to this post (below this response is a breakdown(?) of how I went through this part of the discussion):
You had originally presented a criminal that was genuinely remorseful and that will certainly never violate anyone’s rights again. Now its changed. You said your clearing up his thoughts, but it seems to be changing his thoughts. A remorseful criminal that will never violates anyone’s rights seems very different from a person who isn’t even remorseful but is instead just worried about his reputation. He won’t commit crimes because of his social reputation being at stake, not because he’s remorseful or meaningfully changed into a different person.
I think that’s part of the issue(?) here. When you said:
A person like that seems changed and reformed. Change and reform is hard. It’s a process. It’s not easy. Possibly related:
The “want a cookie” comment seems to imply that it is easy to know that murder, rape, and torture are wrong. Two things:
This gives me the vibes of comments like “2+2 = 4” is simple and obvious. It’s not impressive knowledge and its self-evident.
Murder, rape, and torture are not easy self-evident wrongs. Maybe rape (though there’s a lot of culture-war debate around that topic, so it’s not like uncontroversial ig) and murder. However, torture is something that is not easily seen as bad. Hell, people want to use it for retribution too. It has many defenders.
I’ve read that and I’m aware of it (though I do forget where). I think I get Miss Rand’s reasoning. I think it was along the lines of once you have violated one man’s right you have violated them all. In a similar way, once you kill someone in coldblood or whatever you have given up your right to life by taking theirs. Sure.
wdym by objective?
also its a bit confusing to bring up
after starting this hypothetical on certain knowledge that they wil never commit the crime.
also this seems like a point(?) for defense too (though I’m a bit unclear on your point): we don’t know what people will do, we do know they committed a crime and have knowledge of that and attempt to lock them up for a certain number of years for our safety. i guess your point is that after that lock up period, when he goes back into society he’s still a risk?
Idk. I can’t speak for Elliot obviously, but it doesn’t seem like the main issue at hand. I didn’t think of it really. Maybe you thought this issue was more obvious than it was?
Also: restitution fails cause there’s no one to give restitutions too, sure ig. I feel like this is similar to this though:
This dude murders Mary’s family and all this bad stuff. Afterwards, on his way home he trips on something, falls, and dies. Is that retribution? I don’t think most people would be satisfied with that death.
A few extra things:
So the scenario you provided was a really bad dude who did a lot of bad things besides murder. To keep things proportional for retribution should he have those things done to him? Should he be made to feel the rape, the burns, the sexual assault, and just general torture? Is that something the government should get involved in? There are a lot of people who would say yes. I’m unsure/not a fan.
Also death can be mercy. Poor girl here, even with all the restitution, still has to live after all that dealing with the trauma and injuries (I assume the idea wasn’t that restitution isn’t magically perfect here, just reasonably good). The dude on the other hand, if he got a death penalty, is dead. He is no longer here. Is that fair to Mary? She’s suffering through all that while this guy doesn’t (well he isn’t even here anymore).
Miss Rand stated in that article(?):
But you ask me what is the punishment deserved by criminal actions. This is a technical, legal issue, which has to be answered by the philosophy of law.
In general, for a lot of law questions her and Peikoff both would disclaim that they are not lawyers or philosophers of law. While her input is valuable she is not a philosopher of law. Relatedly: without too much deep thought, I think a defensive position is consistent with her philosopy.
Hmm. Thinking about it a bit more it seems a bit confusing. From Galt’s Speech (from Ayn Rand Lexicon online):
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.
I agree with that. I think governments should protect. The role to punish is unclear to me. (as an aside: maybe this issue comes up because of issues with justice?)
Breakdown on a post for today (I was trying to do a discussion tree of sorts but as an outline):
Neo:
We have a man who does a lot of bad things to someone. He’s committed rape, torture, murder, sexual assault, attempted murder, and arson.
One of the victims survives: Mary.
She survives with severe permanent injuries.
It then goes that we have perfect technology that gives us, presumably, perfect knowledge that: he knew what he was doing and that he aimed for the maximization of suffering.
We also now know that he is genuinely remorseful and will certainly never violate anyone’s right ever again.
He has also paid as much restitution as possible to Mary: medical care, therapy, lost income, lifelong assistance, legal costs, and millions in additional compensation.
Eliot’s main(?) point in response to Neo:
The core of the scenario is very implausible. What is the core?
The total reform of a criminal. Additionally:
Something like a total reform is not common. Intuitions are better suited for common things.
“Basically the former criminal just did a major intellectual breakthrough that’s more impressive than the careers of 99.999% of scientists. It’s a little bit like this hypothetical: “A person is a criminal but then repents, completely changes his personality, values, everything, becomes John Galt, and invents the motor.”
Neo to Elliot:
“You’re adding extra value to the reformed criminal that my hypothetical never gave. The hypothetical doesn’t require him to make some huge intellectual breakthrough about morality. Most people already know rape, torture and murder are wrong. In the hypothetical, he would just have to genuinely change his mind and stop wanting to do those things.”
Did Elliot give extra value to the reformed criminal that his hypothetical never gave? Hmm I’m not sure.
Neo presented a criminal that had reformed from a very very violent criminal into someone who feels genuine remorse (which I think is somewhat common but still good) and, what I think is more important, someone who will never violates anyone’s rights again.
“That could be a personal change without producing any special knowledge that would make him valuable as a lecturer. Maybe he could explain what changed for him but I don’t see how that’s a Galt level achievement or more impressive than almost every scientist’s career. I think you’re giving him way too much credit, whereas if I heard him say he thinks what he did was wrong and he won’t do it again, my feelings would me more like “ooh, want a cookie?””
One issue I have here: it’s treating some knowledge as common sense and easy to know. I’m unsure. Neo claims that people already know rape, torture, and murder are wrong. This has the same energy as knowing that “2+2 =4”. That it’s something obvious and redundant. I don’t think issues like rape, torture, and murder are that easy. Rape and murder possibly, but torture, I feel, has many defenders for it (including using it as retribution).
“We could also make the hypothetical more clear when it comes to what his thoughts were. What if he just couldn’t take the social pressure of it all and the effect on his reputation and won’t ever do anything like that again for that reason? It still satisfies defense if he won’t ever do it again and he already gave restitution.”
Sure but that’s changing the hypothetical. He went from genuinely remorseful and someone who will never violate rights again (which to me implies a real change in someone) to someone who doesn’t have remorse and is merely affected by social pressure.
I would like to emphasize Elliot’s point about this being a hard question because of :that perfect technology is impossible". One of the elements in dealing with people is knowing that you don’t know what they will do. A perfect knowledge machine (it seems like that is implied here) that lets us know for a fact that someone won’t do something makes things a bit confusing.
Mmm. Isn’t that we already do? This discussion is involving some disagreements with Rand, sure, but I think part of her legal opinion her is common. Retribution is a common enough idea. In that article(?) @Neo shared it talked about proportionality:
make the punishment proportionate to the crime in the full context of all the legally punishable crimes.
I feel like the law aims to, in general, proportionally punish. That seems in line with retribution and number of years in jail, no?
yeah i think one thing being missed here (in the original scenario anyway) of what it takes to truly change. to actually become someone who will never violate rights again or something.
I found the certainty of the hypothetical confusing. We went from a scenario with hypothetical certainty to then discussing later about real-life uncertainties in people’s behavior.
I think I get what you’re saying. It’s not just all my bad I think. What does “bad” mean? I use the phrase a lot so it would be good to know the meaning.
In the context of the term “my bad” it basically means “mistake”.
“My bad” means you think you made an error. Whatever bad thing just happened, you are taking responsibility for it. It is often accompanied by “sorry” and even when it isn’t I think a sorry is kinda implied.
It also typically denotes that the mistake is relatively minor. The responsibility isn’t too serious — it would be an odd/inappropriate colloquialism to use then.
Thank you. I wrote about what you said to get it more. I don’t want to overfill the thread with off-topic stuff so I hid it:
What does “bad“ mean?
There’s a context? That context belongs to a term? How does a context belong to a term? I think if a term had context then that’s what’s true about it. I think I gotta look up the word context. It seems like it means situation. Context makes sense to me somewhat intuitively. It’s like if one is within the context of “my bad” then it would basically mean “mistake”.
I think “it” refers to the term “my bad”. I think if that’s true then when…Wait now after looking at my reply, “it” refers to the word “bad”. Not the term “my bad”. So you could then say instead, ‘my mistake’. I think that would basically mean the same thing.
Idk what “basically” means. It’s often used in discussions. I think saying ‘something basically means’ is the same as saying there’s additional things left out. There’s more parts to the whole. Are those other parts not as essential? Idk
I hid my reply as well, IDK if that's a good idea or not but I'll match your style.
Yeah, context is kind of like situation. Context refers to the specifics (whatever they might be) of a given situation.
Right, “it” refers to the word “bad” because that is what you asked about. You specifically asked what “bad” means.
But, “bad” in the context of the phrase “my bad” has a specific meaning that is a bit different than it is in other contexts. So I was still talking about “my bad” — but I was specifically talking about what the word “bad” means in that phrase.
Yes, “my bad” is basically an informal way of saying “my mistake.”
“Basically” means you are simplifying a concept a bit. Or generalizing it. You’re reducing an idea down to its “basic” version.
In the context of my usage above, “basically” is also kind of like a hedging word. It is not necessarily saying there are things left out. But there might be, because I’m keeping things simple. Some nuanced complexity might be lost.
It is saying something like “this may not be entirely precisely technically 100% correct in all possible contexts, but for most purposes in this conversation it is close enough that we can treat it as correct.”
Wait, I don’t know either if it’s a good idea or not to hide replies. I think maybe it would be good to just reply by default.
I think you could say that situation is an idea that’s an approximation of context? There’s is a situation involved in the meaning of context. Context refers to the specifics of that situation. Situation helps to understand the word context. If context refers to the specifics and you understand them, then if there’s a given situation, you’ll have details about it. What is the context of the term “my bad”? “bad” is placed right after “my”. That’s a specific I think.
That’s right you can have other contexts. I think you can have other contexts in different phrases. It’s hard to think of some but that kind of makes sense.
There’s context in the phrase “my bad”. “bad” in that context has a specific meaning. That meaning could be different than in other contexts? Could that be when bad means something else?
You were still talking about “my bad”; that makes sense. That’s like the topic and it’s about the meaning of a word in a phrase. I wasn’t thinking about other contexts like about other phrases. The meaning of the word “bad” probably wouldn’t make sense if I was thinking about another phrase. The meaning wouldn’t match if bad was an adjective in the phrase ‘bad apple’. The meanings sound similar but you can’t substitute mistake for ‘bad’ in that phrase.
FYI this isn’t the main issue here. There are other issues with the cookie comment.
Yes, good catch.
Based on this Neo quote, what types of things do you think my post probably said or didn’t say about restitution? Brainstorm some answers. While brainstorming, include guesses about what I might have said to imply the thing Neo guesses I might have thought was implied. Think over what would or wouldn’t potentially imply that. And Neo brings up emphasizing a particular part: what does that comment suggest is and isn’t in my post? Then check my post and compare. (If you’re too confused about how to do the brainstorming, you can ask for help without checking my post yet.)
The “with certainty will never violate anyone’s rights again.” part seems pretty incredible. I can imagine it would be quite the feat to never violate anyone’s rights again, even in subtle or indirect ways. I can understand if you meant a criminal changing in that way could maybe be an intellectual breakthrough ( at least intuitively. I haven’t heavily criticized the idea of it being an incredible feat to not ever violate anyone’s right, but it seems true).
If I took out the part of the hypothetical where he never violates anyone’s rights ever again (say he instead becomes like your average law abiding citizen, and violates rights in the same way as the average law abiding citizen), would that change how much of an intellectual breakthrough you think the hypothetical criminal made?
If the criminal was genuinely sorry for what he’s done and the amount of restitution was the same amount as in the original hypothetical and he became an average law abiding citizen, I’d still have the “want a cookie” attitude towards him personally. In general, it’s harder to go against tradition. Traditionally (even if he doesn’t understand the deeper philosophical reasons why torturing and raping and then murdering a person are wrong) it is very common knowledge/tradition in our society that the crime he did is not okay to do. I don’t think it’s very impressive (not even remotely close to Galt level achievement) to feel remorse for doing something so horrific like that and to reform into an average law abiding citizen. Now that I reread my hypothetical and your response, I don’t think you do either, but correct me if I’m wrong.
I was thinking more in line with what I mentioned in the last paragraph above I just wrote. If we knew he was genuinely remorseful (so we’d both believe him and him being remorseful would be a fact because of the sci-fi mind reading tech) and for some reason I heard him going on about how he was wrong, I would not be very impressed even though we both know he’s remorseful. And I assumed you would be impressed because he’s no longer a murder, and is instead an average law abiding citizen. And I wouldn’t be very impressed because of what I mentioned about cultural knowledge and tradition above. I had assumed you added extra value to the reformed criminal that was undeserved, but I was the one that added extra value to him in my own hypothetical. The extra value and impressiveness I added to the criminal in my hypothetical was him never violating anybody’s individual rights ever again. That was my own error. Again, if he just reformed and became an average law abiding citizen that didn’t murder anyone else, my guess is you’d be less impressed with him too.
I explained my “want a cookie” comment above. But, even based on the previous context before my clarification in this post, I think one could interpret it differently than you did. I don’t think it had to have been interpreted as me expressing skepticism that criminals reform. It could have been interpreted as me saying something like “ even if it’s true you fully reformed, big deal/ whoopedy doo” for example. Idk I feel like you should have expressed more feelings of being unsure of what I meant/ been more undecided, but the sentence felt like you were more certain that I was expressing skepticism that criminals reform, instead of being unsure of what I meant?.. I think the “want a cookie” phrase may also be confusing in hindsight. I’m not sure how common and understood that sarcastic retort is.
Yeah, another error I made… I did change the hypothetical here and didn’t make it clear that’s what I was trying to do. I was thinking about a scenario where the criminal does change but it’s because he’s horrified by the effect it’s had on his status and reputation. But he lies and says he’s remorseful and we know somehow that he will change and never do anything like that again. We somehow know he won’t be dangerous to the population when he gets out. He’ll respect rights as much as the average law abiding citizen. Why not let him out under the restitution and defense theory of justice in this case?
Proportionality determines how much is appropriate right?
Idk I can think of it a little like a tree and first degree murder is the easiest example I can think of (im probably not answering your question but):
Person is murdered in the first degree
Restitution says: repair the victim’s loss where possible
Defense: protect the public from future crimes
Retribution: impose a painful consequence on the offender because of the crime already committed, proportionate to injury
In this case, retribution has a real role outside of restitution and defense (especially restitution, but also defense if I make up a hypothetical where defense is no longer necessary).
Also, correct me if I’m wrong but I think US law already recognizes retribution as legitimate and takes it into consideration. So there looks to be like there is some practicality to it at least.
Restitution and defense, in practice, have their own problems. The article you wrote criticizing Deutsch’s idea of retribution highlighted how complicated it can be. I can imagine defense is hard too. Like determining how long someone should be locked up to protect the public and what sentences deter future crime.
I have some very half baked/ quarter baked ideas about retribution related to game theory im thinking about too but they’re not close to well thought out yet. Might discard them entirely once I think about it and criticize it more…
Even after this back and forth, I think I’m still pretty thoroughly misunderstanding your disagreements with Rand here. Maybe you could go through Rand’s letter point by pointish if you want?