Except people are cruel and many of them would rather see criminals in Azkaban than living a relatively normal life. Although to be honest, making criminals chose between Azkaban and the last part of A Clockwork Orangeis pretty awful already in my opinion.
People precommit to punishing criminals because having a precommitment discourages crime--if the criminal can figure out that you'll change your mind once the crime is over with, and not punish them, the prospect of punishment won't work as a deterrent. But if you have to follow through on the precommitment, that may mean you just "cruelly" punished a criminal "even though at this point causing the criminal harm doesn't benefit anyone".
Most people don't consciously think of it this way, but people don't usually know why their own memes spread.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 119.
Plans for next chapter release:
There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)