= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vaniver comments on Terminal Bias - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (125)
Does it?
Because if you don't use Bayes' Rule to navigate through conditional probabilities, you will come up with answers that are objectively wrong.
Yes, but in any discussion about bias context matters. If people believe that real systems that serve real people work better with justice, but we can imagine a system in which there are no obvious defects from ignoring justice, that doesn't mean those people are biased.
Constructing these sorts of policy questions, particularly centered around a single scenario, typically strikes me as motivated cognition. If we'd like to be kind to murderers (how nice of us!), we can come up with a scenario that suggests that option rather than seeking vengeance (how mean!).
But the same justifications can be applied in scenarios that are less contrived, where they look more questionable. Suppose a productive member of society, Mr. B, murders Mr. A because of a calculated defection and gets caught. Mr. B informs us that Mr. A was the only person he would want to murder, with several compelling reasons attached arguing the rest of us needn't fear him. Should we forgive and forget? We don't even need a 2 month training course, so it's cheaper for society, and we have the assurance of experience that Mr. B is productive.
(I don't particularly want to delve into casuistry. Suffice it to say there are reasons to say Mr. B should pay the price and Dan should not, but it seems to me that those reasons do not carve reality / game theory at the joints.)
Does it not? Do we know of a better basis for decision theory? Please tell me what you know.
When we are faced with having to punish someone, we want to get out of it. Punishing people sucks. The question is whether we can avoid giving the punishment, and still credibly hold the threat of punishment against rational defectors. I think in Deadbeat Dan's case, since he is not a rational defector, we can credibly hold the threat against defectors. In Mr. B's case, we don't care if he'll never do it again, we have pre-committed to punish rational defectors, and must follow thru if we wish to maintain that threat.
I don't think this is a case of carving reality into qualitative categories, because we have a quantitative analysis that solves the problem (utility of letting them go vs disutility of undermining rule of law).
About excuses
I know this reaction is not rational, but still, my first reaction was: In such environment (where it is possible to tell the difference between irrational and rational crime, and punish accordingly), becoming rational means losing your "get of out the jail once" card, and that's not fair! The more rational you are, the wider range of your possible crimes becomes punishable. You are being punished for being rational.
Technically, a good person should not care about limiting their own crime range, and (if the good for everyone is their goal) they should be actually happy they have less chance to harm anyone. But still it somehow sucks to know that while I would be punished for doing X (because I am rational and see the consequences), other person would not be punished for doing a similar thing.
I guess this intuition is based on the real-world situations, where the psychologists are not perfect, the justice is not perfect, and therefore any rule like this has big chance to be heavily abused. (As in: If you have a good lawyer, your crimes will be declared irrational, and you will be sentenced to two weeks of group therapy. Meanwhile the average Joe does the same thing and gets hanged.)
I agree with everything you said, but don't understand why you don't think it's "rational".
Remember "good" and "rational" are not the same thing.
Maybe rational defector was the wrong way to put it. I don't mean punish people who test high on rationality, I mean punish in the cases where it's a calculated defection for personal gain. Punish in cases where tit for tat is actually an effective strategy.
Some crimes just aren't done for personal gain, and those should have alternate strategy. Of course, what the alternate strategy is is still open, and distinguishing between them is difficult, as you say:
At our level, I don't think we are able to distinguish between crimes that should get punishment, and things where punishment is ineffective. It's just useful to understand that justice is about game theory, not revenge.
I have not seen a satisfactory way to compare utilities, and so believe that actually running a utilitarian calculation is an unsolved (and I would suspect unsolvable) problem.
Why should someone with this view ever be given the position of judge? I would even be leery of entrusting a child to their care for an afternoon, let alone an upbringing.
(I assume that by "want to get out of it" you mean "expected negative total value" not "expected negative short-term value." One who delights in punishment is a brute, but one who shirks from meting out just punishment is infirm.)
No. Next question.
Not nearly straightforward enough to use the "No. Next question." move on. Deception and various forms of active manipulation are possible. They are rational, not omniscient.
Punishing people sucks the same way paying for stuff you take sucks, or working hard to achieve your goals sucks. You should be able to conceive of the fact that short term suck can pay for long term good. Pretending that punishment is good because it pays for good is stupid and you will get confused if you think like that.
A judge or parent who understands that punishment is bad is not necessarily going to not do it. They may also understand that following thru on punishment threats is necessary to keep the threat credible.
Those words are loaded with connotation. Why are you using them? Say what is bad about punishing too much or too little without using words like that. You may find that too much punishment is bad because punishment is bad, and not enough punishment is bad because it fails to follow thru on the precommitment to punish that holds up the rule of law.
Really? So theres no such thing as extenuating circumstances where we let someone off, but everyone understands that the threat of punishment is still there?
Maybe it was an accident, maybe punishing the weather won't make it sunnier, maybe we should deal with the insane a little bit differently.
Yes, of course. Indeed, there are few long term goods that can be purchased without short term suck.
But you weren't arguing that punishing criminals was a long term bad, or even insufficiently good. You were arguing that it was short term suck.
Invert the order of the sentences, and you have your answer. But I will answer at length:
The history and law and order is one of long and painful experience. The common law definition of "assault" did not spring forth from first principles, it was learned.
The source of order is deterrence; deterrence rests on expectations; expectations rest on identities. The brute is resisted in a way that the even-handed is not; the infirm are flaunted in a way that the firm are not.
Accepting any excuse reduces the credibility of the commitment. Sometimes you may think that reduction is acceptable, but you should never pretend it was absent.
Yes? Punishing criminals sucks, but it pays for the rule of law. I miss your point.
still don't get it
agree
agree
wat? I don't understand. What has identity got to do with anything? And too many loaded words. What does "even-handed" even mean, apart from "vaguely good and something to do with justice"?
Agreed. I thought you meant there weren't cases that were worth it.
If you consider "not being a brute" part of your identity, you are less likely to act like a brute.