Crime, punishment and free will

[caseys]

Just to pick up on one of your points, quantum theory has interesting implications for a deterministic universe.

 

To summarise: I'm saying that every event has a cause, whether it's a pebble being washed up on a shore or a man deciding to kill another man. If we know absolutely all the forces on the pebble, we can predict where it will land. And if we know all the electrical and chemical events in the brain, we can predict absolutely the murderer's decision. In this scenario, as the guy's choices can be explained completely in terms of events he cannot control - in what sense is he responsible.

 

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that (a) chaos theory makes the world unpredictable - small events elsewhere (e.g. a butterfly's wing) unpredictably affect events elsewhere. and (b) quantum theory makes the universe unpredictable.

 

 

Far from it, I am saying that every event is predictable, it's just the chances of predicting correctly, or for your prediction to occur are nigh on infinitesimally small that you could say it is chaos. I am more for seeking patters in chaos.

 

There still has to be a causal chain between them, even if it's very difficult to track. There might by ten billion interactions along the way, but I see nothing that could not potentially be explained by conventional physics.

Exactly.

 

Quantum theory is a bit different. My understanding of it is very basic. My take on it is that quantum theory says that at a subatomic level, events are unpredictable. But as you move up to the macro scale, these effects become less and less influential on causality. You would probably have to wait the lifetime of the universe before the tennis ball went through the wall. Where does that leave us? To me, it only means that Alan's brain events ('choices') are predictable at a 99.999999999999% level rather than a 100.000000000000 % level. To me, that doesn't sound like free will. It doesn't get around the issue of what 'personal responsibility' actually means.

 

I thought it was that quantum theory shows that some events occur and that we do not yet have the tools/metrics to be able to measure them. Or that the permutations that we have seen appear to be random when measured against all the possible permutations.

 

No I admit it doesn't get around the idea of personal responsibility and I was just saying from a purely scientific point of view if we had parallel universes that played out every possible chain of events in the universe then yes, free will is a fallacy.

 

It's purely that we are a reactionary life form, we react to stimulae, nothing is completely stoic and closed. Something, albeit chemical, electrical or other make us perform actions or decide to not perform them.

 

If we looked at a human in pure matter form there is nothing distinctive that makes life. I think the idea of personal responsbility infact borders on a theological idea of people being fair to each other. Unfortunately as any life form there will be a time where one of the species will do something out of the ordinary (mugging/killing etc) to see themselves get ahead of the rest.

 

It's in our nature.

[tbourner]

I just found this thread while searching for the thread where Cliff made the quote in my sig!

 

So, couple of years late, but here's what I think:

I used to agree that everything is predictable and would have agreed with the OP if I'd have thought about it in depth, but now I'm thinking the quantum mechanics ideas are more of a problem than you're making out. My (limited) understanding is that to predict anything with absolute certainty you'd have to go down to the smallest constituent particle, which would be heavily effected by quantum randomness, and therefore completely unpredictable assuming our current understanding of quantum mechanics is correct.

Having said that, you can't just scale it up and say macro scale items are therefore unpredictable, as obviously they are predictable to some extent even with our current limited ability. So there must be some crossover where the fact that macro sized objects are less and less effected by quantum randomness, and small objects are more and more effected by it. This crossover is the point where the predictability of macro objects and unpredictability of quantum objects evens out - my guess is this would be somewhere on a micron scale, cells maybe, so how predictable is one cell and does that give us enough predictability to say what actions someone will take throughout their life? If we had the technology I'd say probably yes.

 

Regardless of that, I think in our current state we still have to punish criminals even though it's not really their fault. Maybe in future we'll have some 'precogs' or computers which can predict to a high accuracy what actions someone will take from birth (or their children will take etc.), but I don't think that will change the reaction, the morally wrong thing will always be the wrong thing, maybe it will mean erradicating those actions from the gene pool by stopping someone who's great grandchild is predicted to be a genocidal maniac.

[Wez]

[Abz]

Slightly off course but we haven't taken into account the spiritual side of things? Although I understand that thoughts are put together & could maybe be calculated by technology. What about how that thought comes into place in the first place? How do you measure character? How do these thoughts start?

[Ian C]

Slightly off course but we haven't taken into account the spiritual side of things?

 

I already disproved the existence of a supreme being in the other crazy quantum universe thread

 

I just had a read through this, a late 2009 thread that's strangely similar to what we've been talking about recently For a start, I'm glad Cliff got my throwaway comment, I wish he was still around for this sorta discussion.

 

Onto more serious things, perhaps we could consider this - A system could have a predetermined outcome from the very start, but it is so complex that in order to predict the final state of the system you have to model it and run it to the conclusion, therefore never actually predicting it but simply experiencing it. Which renders the idea that you can ever predict it impossible. Which makes it unpredictable. Which is the antithesis of predetermination.

 

So in a nutshell, even if the universe and all actions within were predetermined from the first femtosecond of existence, the utter complexity of it simulates randomness and choice.

[Havard]

Anyone got any asprin or paracetamol?

[Septic]

I already disproved the existence of a supreme being in the other crazy quantum universe thread

 

Onto more serious things, perhaps we could consider this - A system could have a predetermined outcome from the very start, but it is so complex that in order to predict the final state of the system you have to model it and run it to the conclusion, therefore never actually predicting it but simply experiencing it. Which renders the idea that you can ever predict it impossible. Which makes it unpredictable. Which is the antithesis of predetermination.

 

So in a nutshell, even if the universe and all actions within were predetermined from the first femtosecond of existence, the utter complexity of it simulates randomness and choice.

 

 

With regard to your point about the impossibility of pre determination due to the extreme complexity of a system- are you talking about it being impossible to comprehend at a human level?

[tbourner]

Surely to predict even the simplest system with 100% certainty you have to model the entire system and run it for it's lifespan? Any prediction you make without doing that is less than 100% certain? This fact is different from predeterminism though, whether or not this fact makes it pointless to try to find the outcome is irrelevant. Predeterminism just suggests that if you had all the starting data you could model the entire universe and know every outcome - the argument is whether or not this is true or whether trully random events occur, meaning one iteration of the universe will be different from another from identical starting data.

[imi]

i'm out.

 

lol

[Rob]

Now to the killer implications. We punish Alan to (a) stop him from doing it again (b) keep him out of society and © crucially, because we feel he is responsible for doing wrong, and so retribution is necessary. If a child, or a dog, or someone who is mentally ill does something wrong, (a) and (b) might apply, but certainly not ©. Retribution is reserved for those who are 'responsible for his own actions'. But, as explored above, in what sense is Alan 'responsible' for his criminal life, or you for your non-criminal one? To put it simply: you didn't choose your genetics, and you didn't choose your family. Maybe you chose your mates – but only as a result of the other two, which weren't your choice. You didn't choose your thoughts, either, they are only the next link in the chain between past and future action.

 

It's a conclusion that plenty will reject outright, because it sounds like it's giving everyone carte blanche to do what the hell they want to, and then blame it on their genetics or their terrible background. Not really: it has no impact on what we find acceptable as a society, but it does have an impact on justice systems and the nature of punishment. It implies, for example, that retribution is a useless concept.

 

Views? I'm hoping StevieB and Trev might chip in.

 

Going back to the original 3 points, surely © Retribution is unneccessary, since (a) and (b) do a good enough job, or a barely good enough job dependant on your opinion on the amount of crime we have.

If the point of fining or imprisoning people is to dissuade or prevent them from reoffending and therefore protect society, retribution is irrelevant to all except the emotions of those to whom the crime was committed against. Threfore the point of punishing someone for the life-decisions they have made or had forced upon them or were reached in whatever way we want to philosophize about is ultimately irrelevant, as it is done to protect society, not to exact retribution.

[Ian C]

With regard to your point about the impossibility of pre determination due to the extreme complexity of a system- are you talking about it being impossible to comprehend at a human level?

 

No, not at all. If you turn the resources of the entire universe, all matter and energy, into one massive computing system, it still wouldn't be able to simulate the entire universe simply because you're asking it to simulate itself simulating itself etc etc ad infinitum.

 

It's nothing to do with human perception, most can't comprehend car indicators.

[Ian C]

Surely to predict even the simplest system with 100% certainty you have to model the entire system and run it for it's lifespan?

 

Yes, that's my point So to simulate anything like the universe, even once you get past the infinite loop of simulating the simulator, you still need to run it for the lifespan of the universe, which means it'll only end just as existence stops as well.

 

the argument is whether or not this is true or whether trully random events occur, meaning one iteration of the universe will be different from another from identical starting data.

 

This is a very good point. But even if you had a megaproject that spanned ten millenia and said "OK we'll set up the starting conditions of the universe and model the first 1000 years ten times", you'd still be on a loser because you have to store the entire universe's data somewhere and have a universe-runtime model to run it on. Both of which can't exist in the thing they are trying to emulate. Annoyingly

[tbourner]

You're still thinking in practical terms though, we don't actually want to simulate it, just to know if it's simulatable!!

 

We could simulate a ball rolling down a slope. We don't need to run the simulation, all that gives us is the result, but I know we could simulate it if we wanted to - we'd just need to know the mass of the ball, direction of the slope, angles, air circulations etc. That's a complex enough simulation but I know it's possible. I don't know if it's possible to simulate everything.

 

Put it this way, hypothetical; assume we have a 10th dimensional supercomputer, the Pentium Graham, with Intel Outside. It's completely separate from our known universe and contains easily enough power to run trillions of universe simulations at once within a fraction of a second. Could it simulate our universe given the starting criteria, and give an output that matches PRECISELY where we are today? Or would the randomness of stuff mean it gives us just one of an infinite number of possible current outcomes?

[Ian C]

I thought I'd covered if it was simulatable or not - "No" is my answer Yes, you can simulate a ball rolling down a hill but it's always going to give the same results as it'll be a closed system, in which case the experiment is useless, unless you introduce a 'fudge factor' to pretend it's random, in which case you render the experiment useless... You can't model for everything ever, and to see if there is randomness, you'd have to. For example, you need the chance that a seagull swoops down and carries the ball off, or someone shoots with with a rifle from a mile away, or a chunk of asteroid lands on it from a trajectory it was set upon a million years ago. See what I mean?

 

Your very valid question was, given exactly the same starting conditions, would things turn out differently between one run and the next? The only way to include all known factors would be to run the whole universe, otherwise at some point you introduce a fudge factor, an assumption, some guesswork. You assume the ball rolls down the hill every time and isn't for example suddenly teleported away by an advanced alien species.

 

As for running a simulation outside of the universe, well, that's a permanently unprovable thought experiment isn't it, we've harped on about all that enough already We may as well be one of the simulation runs. But we'll never know about the rest -to do so would trigger infinite recursion and mean the simulation no longer encompasses everything. And we'd be in the heat death stage of the universe before the results were in.

[tbourner]

As for running a simulation outside of the universe, well, that's a permanently unprovable thought experiment isn't it,

 

Aha, we're on crossed wavelengths. I've been talking about a thought experiment. Obviously you can't actually really simulate the universe, my question about randomness was literally hypothetically thought experimental!! We're never going to know the answer.

Forget the practical issues. What is your opinion? Do you believe the universe and a perfect simulation running side by side would achieve the same end point (or any point) if they were started from the same starting criteria?

[Chris Wilson]

I think it means that punishment will only get you so far.

 

My view is that labels like 'evil' and so on do us some emotional good, but they don't get us anywhere. Crime is like any other action: it has a set of causes. Many of the circumstances resulting in crime can be addressed. But we're still stuck in pre-scientific thinking about it.

 

As an analogy, we've got malaria, and we're fussing around with herbal poultices trying to address the effects of it, instead of looking at the root causes and vaccinating against it.

 

Genetic engineering? Genocide? Mother knows best, he's / she's a bad lot, wrong side of the tracks and all that? Missed this thread. Interesting stuff

[jonathanc]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041629/21-7-terrorist-Siraj-Yassin-Abdullah-Ali-pictured-using-public-transport-London.html

A terrorist who helped would-be bombers prepare an attack on London's transport network has been spotted travelling on the capital's buses and tubes.

 

Ali, who is originally from Eritrea, was not deported following his release because judges ruled he could face 'inhumane treatment or punishment,' if he was sent to his homeland.

 

CRIME: Pretty sure this is considered a crime

PUNISHMENT:Sod all

FREE WILL:???