Looking at the comment thread here, it seems to me that many commenters are unaware, or at least fail to remember, that in the U.S. and Canada, and presumably many other Anglospheric common law jurisdictions, well over 90% of criminal cases are these days resolved by plea-bargaining and never reach trial.

This is an essential feature of how the criminal law system works today -- the whole infrastructure of criminal courts would be overwhelmed to the point of collapse if it actually had to provide jury trials for more than a tiny minority of all defendants who get convicted. In the contemporary socially atomized and thoroughly bureaucratized society, in which law has become complex, vast, and abstruse to the point where it's completely outside the intellectual grasp of the common person, trial by jury is little more than an ancient historical relic. Focusing on juries as a central issue of the modern criminal law makes little more sense than focusing on the monarchy as a central factor in the modern U.K. government and politics. Of course, jury trials provide good material for movies and TV shows, and like in many other things, folks who haven't had any personal experience with the system tend to mistake what they seen on TV for reality.

The true backbone of the contemporary American criminal law are the discretion of the police and prosecutors to investigate, arrest, and bring charges, and the subsequent plea-bargaining procedure. You can still insist on a jury trial, but the system has developed to the point where prosecutors can wield threats that will nearly always make it safer to plea-bargain. They can crank up the list of charges to the point where even with a very small probability of being found guilty, the probabilistic expected penalty is higher than what you're offered to plea-bargain for -- and even if you're innocent, it takes a good and very expensive lawyer to reduce this probability to a negligible level. Not to mention that if things reach trial, cops and prosecutors are sometimes -- and arguably quite often -- willing to use very dirty tricks, up to an including perjury and faked evidence.

All this is not necessarily bad. Honest cops and prosecutors may well be more accurate in determining guilt than typical juries -- but any realistic analysis of the system should focus on them as the central decision-making agents on whose accuracy and honesty the quality of the system hinges, not juries.

For example, most academics who use quantitative studies to investigate the effect of jail sentences find that jail time increases recidivism rates. In other words, putting someone in jail makes them likely to commit more total crimes over the rest of their life as compared to simply being released immediately. This is one decent paper on this topic that isn't behind a paywall; Professor Ian Shapiro at Yale University can refer you to more recent, more damning papers. If you believe this evidence, it follows that pushing long jail sentences to cause specific deterrence is flat-out irrational, and should be discontinued.

It only follows if you focus on deterring convicted criminals from recidivism. How about deterring people from becoming criminals to start with?

Are you saying that "pushing long jail sentences to cause specific deterrence" should be discontinued (which makes sense, if the specific deterrence is deterring recidivism), or that "pushing long jail sentences" should be discontinued? (which doesn't follow - you have only provided evidence that long sentences don't fulfill the goal of deterring recidivism, not that it doesn't fulfill any other goal)

Second, even under the most optimistic "good" equilibrium, this argument applies only to those behaviors and opinions that are actually widespread. Those whose unconventional opinions and preferences are in a small minority, let alone lone-wolf contrarians, will have to censor themselves 24/7 or suffer very bad consequences.

I think it can apply even to minority opinions, because the minority opinions add up. Even if only 1% of the population has a given minority opinion, significantly more than 1% of the population is probably going to have at least one minority opinion about something. If people choose to be super-intolerant of 1% opinions, and if 70% of the population has at least one 1% opinion, then it's not 1% of the population that people will have to be super-intolerant of, but 70% of the population.

Or if 70% seems too extreme a possibility, try 30%. The point is that the sum total of small minorities adds up to a total that is less small, and this total will determine what happens. Take the extreme case: suppose the total adds up to 100%, so that 100% of the population holds at least one extreme-minority opinion. Can a person afford to ostracize close to 100% of the population (consisting of everybody who has at least one extreme-minority opinion that he does not share)? I think not. Therefore he will have to learn to be much more tolerant of extreme-minority opinions.

While that is only the extreme case, and 30% is not 100%, I think the point is made, that the accumulated total of all people who have minority opinions matters, and not merely the total for each minority opinion.

Please reply to this comment if you intend to participate, and are willing and able to free up a few hours per week or fortnight to work through the suggested reading or exercises.

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And really, a stereotype leads to a 1110:1 ratio? Mighty powerful things, those stereotypes.

But notice that these are examples of restrictions on evidence of guilt. The assumption (very reasonable, it seems to me) is that human irrationality tends in the direction of false positives, i.e. wrongful convictions. (Possibly along with the assumption that our values require a lower tolerance for false positives than false negatives.)

If juries are capable of convicting on the sort of evidence presented at the Knox/Sollecito trial (and they are, whether in Italy, the U.S., or anywhere else)...well, can you imagine all the false convictions we would have if such rules as you listed were relaxed?

The thinking how to fall to get a minimal possible damage is still a potential way out.

At least, the thinking increases your odds to survive in any situation you are thrown into.

How many people died needlessly of chocking, when they could invent the auto Heimlich - but they failed to do so?

No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.

--Voltaire

I'm reminded of the post a while back on whether an Atheist/Rationalist society would be effective in war.

I have trouble understanding why they wouldn't be (which seems to be the opinion of most of the others here). In an objective moral sense, if Truth doesn't matter more than Winning, then what does? Implicitly most here behave in accordance to that statement - I'd suggest that the amount of time devoted to this site exceeds the amount required for merely winning in contemporary society - but most seem to balk at the concept that Truth might require the sacrifice of life.

Maybe it's scope insensitivity. Risking 1 utilon for 10 utilons (at fifty/fifty odds) is a gamble everyone here would take - but when the risk is 1000 utilons for 10 000 utilons, even though it's the same gamble, it's harder to see it as such (this being the major pause which Yudkowki's dust-mote vs torture analogy brought out).

If we are, in fact, advocating Truth over mere Winning, there are going to be casualties along the way; in concrete terms, if my goal is an equal and just society, then I will be called upon to intervene in any gay-bashings I witness, at the risk of my own life.

So yes, the Atheist/Rationalist society - assuming they have that meta level of moral awareness - will go to war and be more viciously stalwart than any religious group could possibly hope to be. And if Wednesday must choose between Truth and Winning - as long as she isn't a lecherous societal leech, concerned only with besting her opponents, rules be damned - she'll choose the former, regardless of the expense to herself.

Not necessarily. I have a different Mormon friend who wants to be immortal - not just in the going to heaven sense, but also in the not dying sense. She'd probably go for cryonics, if she saw an argument informing her of its potential. Maybe Wednesday would too.