Civilization is my country. Objectivity is my religion.

[Clintone]

Originally Posted by cebuan

The importance of those factors is offset by:

*What percentage of those accused reoffend?
*Should criminal justice be cost-effective?

Your questions still reflect confirmation bias.

It's not confirmation bias, so much as carelessness.

*Regarding whether or not criminal justice should be cost effective, it should, just like everything else, because of the following reason: money is used to achieve our goals. Anything being cost effective increases our ability to complete our goals. Some events of goal completion cause problems, but the best way to solve problems is to intentionally try to find ways to solve them. Therefore, more enhanced ability to complete goals, whether in the form of more money, time, or better technology, will usually be better than less.

Even if it's not, the better solution than reducing goal-completion ability is usually to change the goals.
____________________________________


*Regarding the question of "What percentage of those accused reoffend?"

That is a valid question I didn't think of. Prisoners who are given life sentences will re-offend, at times, such as against their fellow prisoners.

However, an interest in the answer to that question only makes sense if you're concerned about levels of happiness and suffering...which shows an interest in objective measurements of right and wrong. When they reoffend they cause suffering, and you're expressing an interest in learning that amount. You therefore are basing your moral or ethical judgements off measurable amounts of things.

When our judgements are based off measurable amounts of things, we might visualize that by seeing decision 1 creating X number of blue marbles and an alternative decision 2 creating Y number of blue marbles. The blue marbles could represent pleasure.

Decision 1 would also create W number of red marbles alternative decision 2 would create Z number of red marbles, representing suffering.

Humans can feel the positive and negative value of suffering and pleasure. Our bodies do that better than any theory or computer could, at least that we could make now.

There will always be a definite number of blue and red marbles created by any decision. Their number might be hard to detect...but they'll always be there, and they'll always determine ideal behaviors. The closest thing to truly subjective morality that can happen is when two actions produce equal amounts of "marbles" or when the amounts of marbles created from two or more different decisions are close enough in value to each other that our bodies can't tell the difference in their value, or when it's just incredibly difficult to distinguish the values of the results of different decisions (say, for example, the question of whether or not to build a race of super humans that lives better lives than we do, but which go off somewhere where we never see them again, which costs the previously existing humanity a great deal of suffering in the form of repercussions of losses of valuable resources, when we take into account the perspective that, arguably, the superhumans weren't missing out on anything by never existing in the first place).

So, that's the main reason why I objected to your statement:

Who did you root for in the Super Bowl? Why? Do you think the other tenets you hold to are any more objectively sound than your choice of a favorite NFL team? Or is all just confirmation bias, right to yhe core?

Your statement treats morality as if it's arbitrary. It's not, usually. Our decisions result in measurable amounts of rightness or wrongness. I've heard some people claim that everything we've done amounts to nothing after we die, or that some day humanity will go extinct and everything we've done will amount to nothing then. Both those statements are false. The consequences of our decisions do not fade with our death, or the extinction of humanity, or any other event, because history does not fade away. The proper way to perceive time is, so far as I can tell, as something that, rather than moving like a river, has all, already happened. Time merely appears to move to us.

Also, when I say "morality" I'm talking about normative morality. Normative morality is defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as "a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons." In this case, those specified conditions would be...just...existing in our universe.

Most of the time when philosophers describe the terms "morality" and "ethics" they mention codes of conduct that change depending on culture or personal belief. That greatly bothers me. It bothers me because "morality" and "ethics," in general society, are usually used to refer to things that are actually right or wrong...and what is actually right and wrong is in no way affected by culture or one's personal beliefs.

If a code of conduct is affected by culture or personal beliefs...I don't even think it should be called morality or ethics, because it doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong, and we already have a word for behavior that doesn't inherently have anything to do with right or wrong: behavior.

But you did think of something I didn't think of.

Some other things I didn't think of was that I've heard that not all states in the U.S. have available research relating to the cost of lifetime incarceration vs. capital punishment. Also, in the U.S. we don't have physician-assisted euthanasia (and we definitely should). Therefore, lifetime imprisonment is basically legalized torture. The solution to that though, is just to legalize physician-assisted euthanasia as soon as possible.

[cebuan]

Originally Posted by Clintone

It's not confirmation bias, so much as carelessness.

*Regarding whether or not criminal justice should be cost effective, it should, just like everything else, because of the following reason: money is used to achieve our goals.

I disagree. Economy is above most things on the scale of importance, but not above justice. It was cost effectiveness that led a general to say "Kill them all and let God sort them out", but we are obliged to see that justice is done before reaching that stage, whatever the cost.

[Clintone]

Originally Posted by cebuan

I disagree. Economy is above most things on the scale of importance, but not above justice. It was cost effectiveness that led a general to say "Kill them all and let God sort them out", but we are obliged to see that justice is done before reaching that stage, whatever the cost.

Right now, you're building a straw man argument. That is to say you're arguing against things I never claimed to be for.

You asked if justice should be cost effective. I responded that yes, it should. By that I meant that, in general, the cheaper the cost of justice, the better. I then attempted to explain why I believed cheaper justice is better....usually. Note that I didn't argue that it's always better, just that, in general. it will probably be better than more expensive justice. Note that my argument never mentioned what type of justice I was talking about, so therefore readers should realize that I wasn't talking about shoddier, but cheaper, justice, or justice that's inferior in any way. The basic point of my fairly lengthy explanation was that if if I can put someone in jail for $300 or for $200, who is probably guilty, and there is no difference in the quality of the trial, or the conditions within the jail, or any other relevant factor besides cost, it would probably be better to pick the cheaper cost. If you were looking for some more specific or useful answer than that, you should have asked a more specific question.

Regarding the pros and cons of the "kill them all and let God sort them out" mentality...I suppose I'd see the "kill them all and let god sort them out" mentality as an option on the table. It certainly frequently is a strategy used in war. When you're bombing factories, you could very possibly kill some people who actually are attempting to sow insurrection in their country, or who are pacifists, or who have been brainwashed by propaganda to the extent that their actions really aren't entirely their fault.

You talk about seeking justice, whatever the cost, but part of justice necessarily involves cost-effectiveness. Cost-effectiveness can keep lives from being harmed, just like having proper trials and not "killing them all and letting God sort them out" can. After all, hurricane relief costs money.

When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd say that was a pretty good example of the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" mentality. There are arguments that more people would have been killed in the invasion of Japan if those two bombs hadn't been dropped.

To determine whether or not to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki people weighed the amount of suffering that would be caused by the bombs against the other option, which was the amount of suffering that would be caused by an invasion.

I'd be very surprised if the emphasis was not on keeping Americans from suffering, rather than Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the goal was to prevent Japanese suffering as well.

So, what was justice in that case? I'd say that a pretty good chance justice was actually the "nuke everybody in this area," stance, the "Kill everyone and let God sort 'em out" stance," because there was a solid chance it would have resulted in less suffering than the alternative option...the invasion of Japan.

We can measure that by contemplating how many units of suffering each possibility results it. Some people may disagree about how much suffering each option would cause...but some people will disagree on what 1+1 equals too. Some people will claim it's 2. Some people will claim it's 11. Regardless of their opinions...the answer remains 2. Just like that, regardless of people's opinions, one of the two options for how to end the war with Japan would have resulted in less overall suffering. Therefore, I don't know why morality isn't often an objective process, despite so many people seeing it as subjective.

Although, you may have meant "kill them all and let God sort them out" in some other way.