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ahartell comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong
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But would you want to "[punish] undesirable behaviors even if there is no benefit to doing so after the behavior has occurred"?
I would want to pre-commit to punishing criminals after the fact if I thought this would lead to a world where the pos-util of averted crime outweighed the neg-util of punishing people, but not if there were no benefit, and I would be doing this on consequentialist grounds. (I'm basically asking if the deontological view truly "has its place' in this scenario.)
Before the person made the choice of whether or not to do the undesirable behavior, I would want to have precommitted to punishing them if they did the behavior.
In the real world, punishing criminals (probably) does reduce crime. In a world where it didn't, precommitment wouldn't be a useful strategy. But it looks like we live in a world where it does.
Yes. And since we (probably) live in such a world, we can precommit to punishing criminals based on consequentialism. We don't need the deontological view for this.