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Literal feuds?
Murder isn't exactly the most common crime.
Yes, literal feuds. Cycles of tit-for-tat revenge that involve violence or are likely to escalate to violence unless the injured party (or their surviving relatives) perceive that "justice has been done" through state-imposed punishment. I lived in West Virginia, which such feuds were common before effective law enforcement was substituted for private revenge.
This is clearly not an argument for punishment in the case of victimless "crimes" or offenses unlikely to provoke escalating retaliation.
I got the impression that such feuds were common in prison. As such, it would increase them.
Also, while drug-dealing does tend to result in long-lasting feuds, it wouldn't happen if it wasn't black-market. As such, the primary reason people go to prison (in America) wouldn't help with this.
I agree that we should imprison as few people as possible.
My point was that having murders punished by the state rather than by the victim's families leads to fewer people in prison. If we don't jail Bob for killing Ken, then Ken's brother kills Bob, so then Bob's brother kills Ken's son, and so on. At least, that's what tends to happen in societies without effective law enforcement.
I think you mean "preempt"? Deterrence would be against all future crimes, not revenge in particular, wouldn't it?
In response to
Crime and punishment
One reason we punish criminals is to deter private revenge, which tends to escalate into long-lasting feuds. This function isn't incompatible with rehabilitation in prison, though, teaching people life skills that will keep them out of trouble after release.
I was hoping for hints or links for teams of motivated adults.
These days, I only work for small companies, not huge corporate behemoths.
The majority of why this is so is because IME, huge corporate behemoths have a much higher proportion of unmotivated people working in what they consider "cushy jobs" (ie they're "wally" from Dilbert - trying to get out of doing any actual work), as well as far more political bullshit.
Small companies don't have so much time or money to waste on that. I won't say that they're entirely without their own problems... but the ratio is likely to be better. After all - it's harder to hide lack of motivation in a small team. and a small company simply can't afford to keep on somebody that won't pull their own weight.
So - if you want a heuristic for finding teams of adults that work well together - look at smaller, rather than larger companies.
My second heuristic is to find companies that are actually on the cutting edge of technology. Note: not people that say they're on the cutting edge... high levels of corporate BS bespeak of teams that are likely to be more busy politically wrangling than actually Getting Stuff Done. To find companies that are actually on the cutting edge... you need to know what it actually looks like when you see it - which means you need to learn an industry at least well enough to be able to spot the difference between people actually doing interesting stuff, from people just saying they are.
IME, people that are working on something really cool - and actually getting stuff done... are far more likely to be a motivated, interesting team to work with.
So: small companies, not large companies, companies that are Getting Stuff Done, rather than talking about it...
That's where you'll find interesting teams of motivated adults to work with.
I'd rather have a motivated group that's poorly organized than a well-organized bunch of goof-offs. Given motivation, though, I wonder whether some forms of organization (especially voluntary organization) work better than others.
I'm particularly interested in situations where there's a significant opportunity cost to collaboration, that is, where any time participants spend on collaborative project X comes at the expense of time they would otherwise spend on worthwhile project Y. How can we get things done together while wasting as little of each others' time as possible?
Careful, someone else just gave me the "dumb question" lecture. For what it's worth, I think your analogy is the right line of inquiry. I agree that the two analogues (cryogenics and burial) aren't strictly analogous though, cryogenics does take more resources.
For what it's worth, here's what the Cryonics Institutes gives in (their FAQ)[http://www.cryonics.org/prod3.html]:
Q: Why would people in the future want to revive us?
A: Why are scientists talking about cloning from the DNA of the pharoahs or the frozen sperm of prehistoric animals? Because the past interests people. Why do people donate to charitable hospitals? Because people care about one another. Complete indifference to human life isn't as common as we sometimes let ourselves think.
Mind you, we aren't depending on that sort of help in the least. We hope to be revived — and helped in leading new future lives — not by some featureless "them", but by the efforts of our own cryonics organizations. After all, it's their — and our — job.
CI has a legal and moral obligation to do its best for its patients — some of whom will be friends and relatives of future CI officers and directors — and we are confident those obligations will be respected.
This answer doesn't inspire me with confidence at all. It's true that the past interests people, but this isn't the same as wanting hundreds or maybe thousands of members of this past living with us. It would look more like an immigration from the past, and we all know how immigrants are traditionally treated.
It's true that we're not completely indifferent to human life, yet I don't think this extends to people who are technically dead. This is more of an unknown problem--will society treat preserved human beings as potentially alive human beings? Much hinges on this.
CI's legal and moral obligation is factual at present, but this will become less certain the further we have to project into the future. Will the CI become one of those few seemingly immortal institutions like the Catholic Church, or will it degenerate? I guess there's a good case for its own immortality if a few important thresholds are reached. For one, the revival process on a human being has to be demonstrated. This would be enough to put human interest into the preservation of this, or similar, institution.
If I wanted to be revived, I'd hide a bunch of gold and tattoo a note to that effect on my chest before being frozen.
In response to
Ranting about Representative Democracy
Randomly grouping voters into districts might be worth considering. With geographic districts, incompetent and corrupt incumbents get reelected by bringing their district more than its share of national resources or by playing to regional prejudices (religion, etc.). If those options were off the table, character and competence might win more often.
In response to
The trouble with teamwork
Post and comments seem useful for students and teachers, but I was hoping for hints or links for teams of motivated adults. The teams I've been on mostly produce scientific publications (original research or reviews). Some observations: 1) work doesn't need to be divided equally, so long as each team member makes an essential contribution, but major contributors need to get more credit; 2) "you do most of the work and we share credit" can work if the one doing most of the work is essentially an apprentice (e.g., a grad student or postdoc) -- it's understood what the roles were -- but maybe not for two people with similar status; 3) two (or maybe three) people can brainstorm effectively without needing much structure; 4) big teams are tricky; if one or two people do most of the work with small contributions from many others (each getting a little credit), that seems to work OK. But I would have no idea how to organize a project that took major effort from more than 3-4 people; 5) email works OK, especially with collabators many time zones away; I always wonder about shared-screen-plus-audio tools, though.
In response to
Marginally Zero-Sum Efforts
If we assume that the time wasted writing multiple grants outweighs the benefits of stiffer competition (stimulating creativity or harder work?), there are several ways success rates could be increased: more total funding, smaller grants, limiting grants/researcher, or fewer researchers. One reason we have so many researchers is that overhead payments to universities exceed the marginal cost of doing more research. So they keep hiring more researchers, independent of teaching needs.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/denis036/thisweekinevolution/2011/03/the_problem_of_pronatalist_pro.html
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I'm wondering whether the rationalists can effectively use mercenaries. Why doesn't the US have more mercenaries than US soldiers? In the typically poverty-stricken areas where US forces operate, we could hire and equip 100-1000 locals for the price of a single US soldier (which, when you figure in health-care costs, is so much that we basically can't afford to fight wars using American soldiers anymore). We might also have less war opposition back at home if Americans weren't dying.
We do use mercenaries: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/10/mercenaries-in-iraq-to-take-over-soldiers-jobs.html
But there might be cheaper options. If we paid Afghan girls $10/day to go to school, would the Taliban collapse?
We could be a little more subtle. Start by offering jobs to do something the Taliban wouldn't consider threatening -- Mechanical Turk work-from-home stuff not requiring literacy, via some kind of specialized radio or satellite link with no access to porn or feminism or anything the Taliban would object to. Every family wants one of those terminals and they can make twice as much money if the girls work (from home) too. Gradually offer higher pay for higher skill levels, starting with nonthreatening stuff like arithmetic but escalating to translating the Koran and then to tasks that would involve reading a wide variety of secular material, analyzing political and judicial systems of different countries (still maybe disguised as a translating job)...