[somenameforme]

What happens if we take your argument to its logical extreme? Imagine we were able to definitively prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that all behaviors are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes within our bodies and minds. In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will.

Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

And yes, I preemptively agree that the ideal goal in a society would be to rehabilitate and not punish. But getting back to the thought experiment it may ultimately even be the case that widespread rehabilitation is impossible. It'd certainly be many orders of magnitude more difficult than simply getting society to agree to not kill each other, yet that's something we're still nowhere near achieving.

[suslik]

> Imagine we were able to definitively prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that all behaviors are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes within our bodies and minds. In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will.

I am not sure why you consider this a logical extreme; I'd say the existence of free will is in fact an extreme (although not very logical) position.

> Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

... which indeed renders the idea of 'punishment' obsolete - it is nothing more than a rudiment of our barbaric past. Punishment for the sake of punishment (as in inflicting suffering as retribution for a deed after the deed is done) is simply unethical, and punishment as deterrence is even more so. It doesn't mean a criminal should, in every case, go free - the objective here should be to maximize the outcome for the society, but equally as important, to minimise the suffering for the criminal. In the OP case, psychiatric supervision and prohibiting access to digital technology for the accused is more than enough.

[matbatt38]

Sorry but that's a terrible argument. It is likely that there is no or at least very few free will. But that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. Care and education are not only preventive, they could also be used as an answer to criminality - even in a world without free will.

Prison is known to fail at changing people who commit crimes anyway, free will or not, autistic or not: half of people who go there get arrested again in the 5 years. I'll actually follow you in taking the argument to the extreme: prison are pointless in almost every case and we should replace it with something different.

[luckylion]

> I'll actually follow you in taking the argument to the extreme: prison are pointless in almost every case and we should replace it with something different.

If rehabilitation is their only goal. If their primary reason of existence is to keep criminals from committing further crimes against citizens, they work well. You'd just need to extend the time to make them work even better. Can't reoffend if you're behind bars (well, you can, but only against your fellow prisoners, and that might earn you solitary confinement, aka prison in prison).

[coldtea]

And how does that work out for you, the country with the biggest per-capita incarcertation rate in the world?

[luckylion]

I am not a country, so I'm not the country with the biggest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, and so idk how to answer your question.

I do think in general that it's very hard to compare countries on these metrics unless the countries are very similar in culture and demographics. I.e. comparing Norway to the US feels like comparing a dog to a cow. You can extract some fundamental information ("tend to have four legs", "food goes in at one end and comes out the other") but there's little value in explaining the cow's digestive system to dog breeders who asked about nutrition.

[coldtea]

>unless the countries are very similar in culture and demographics

Point being, citizens of such a country might not be in the best position for arguing in favor of prison as means to reduce crime by locking away the baddies (as opposed to rehabilitation), as said country has both the greatest incarceration rate and far worst crime statistics.

Especially considering - speaking of culture and demographics - that they're not some narco-banana republic, or some developing world backwater, but a rich western country.

Or perhaps the Old-Testament ideas regarding punishment and incanceration are part of the problematic difference in culture that leads to more crime - as opposed to a response to it...

[luckylion]

I guess I'm probably in a great position to argue for or against prisons as a means of protecting the population from criminals, since I'm not from the US, which you seem to assume.

> Or perhaps the Old-Testament ideas regarding punishment and incanceration are part of the problematic difference in culture that leads to more crime - as opposed to a response to it...

Hey, maybe cancer causes cigarettes instead of the other way around, you never really know.

[coldtea]

>Care and education are not only preventive, they could also be used as an answer to criminality - even in a world without free will.

In a world without free will "care and education" don't matter. People are gonna do what they are gonna do, and education or care aren't gonna change it. No free will means determinism, not just in choice of action, but in everything else too.

[q-big]

> In a world without free will "care and education" don't matter.

The fact that care and education cause change in the behavior has nothing to do with any "freedom" as in "free will"

[coldtea]

>The fact that care and education cause change in the behavior

If you don't have free will there's no change in behavior. You have the same predetermined behavior you'd have all along - the care is incidental, would have happened or not happened anyway.

No free will == deterministic universe. Everything that is to happen can't change, and is already "schedulled" in a causuality cascade from billions of years ago.

If you don't have free will, you can't also decide to have "care and education" or not. Whether you will have them or not have them is already a done deal.

[q-big]

> You have the same predetermined behavior you'd have all along - the care is incidental, would have happened or not happened anyway.

This is correct, but this does not mean that, say, education is useless. It is just predetermined whether we give education or not.

[throw827474737]

You don't need to paint it black or white. Other jurisdications try it better imo - it is always and ever again amazing to see how in the US there is only one cause (very simplified: revenge/punishment here vs guilt and more in others), and that fully supported by most of the population (yes, admitted, by that it seems to be the right thing over here).

> widespread rehabilitation is impossible

Ah come on, that assumption is easily disproved by looking a bit around and elsewhere.

[somenameforme]

Many places in Asia have justice systems that make the US one look decidedly tame by comparison. The Japanese death row system is one of the most clear in its overt sadism. Prisoners are almost never allowed out of their cells, granted minimal resources to occupy their time, and never informed of the date of their execution until one day the steps coming down that hall aren't there to bring you food, but to (literally) put a rope around your neck.

Imagine just sitting there thinking each time you hear those footsteps. In the regular prison system at large Amnesty International has repeatedly singled out Japan for various abuses that verge on torture. A quick search for "keiheikin" can send you on a web crawl about such. Yet of course the criminality rate in Japan (and many places in Asia for that matter) is near zero, in spite of a vigorously punishment/revenge based system.

The point I make with this is that different places have different populations with different proclivities. It's not like if the Norwegian system was adopted in America we ought expect to suddenly see a relatively crimeless population with negligible recidivism rates, anymore than if Norway adopted the American system would they suddenly expect to see sharp increases in violent crime and skyrocketing recidivism rates.

[CuriousCosmic]

> Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

Not all consequences but rather all punishments. Like you said, widespread full rehabilitation may be impossible (partial sure but fully for 100% of individuals is unlikely) but outside of even attempting rehabilitation, some of the major mechanisms by which crime can be prevented are by reducing the individual's exposure to opportunities that put them at risk of committing a crime and by providing off-ramps for de-escalation before something actually happens.

In the case discussed by the article, this likely could have all been prevented had authorities contacted the individual's legal guardian and caretaker. The FBI should have easily been able to tell that this individual had a caretaker and was not fully independent. They could have worked with the caretaker to direct the individual away from these behaviors and towards safer/healthier outlets. Had things not gotten better, they could have escalated the situation to the point they eventually did but that should not have been a first response.

While non-neurotypical individuals certainly don't deserve immunity from consequence, we as a society should at the very least try to limit the opportunities for unnecessary escalation that may occur. This should be the case for all individuals but doubly so for non-neurotypical individuals who may not fit the standard mold despite being able to live a safe non-disruptive life when given some amount of accommodation and assistance.

[navjack27]

  The FBI should have easily been able to tell that this individual had a caretaker and was not fully independent. They could have worked with the caretaker to direct the individual away from these behaviors and towards safer/healthier outlets. Had things not gotten better, they could have escalated the situation to the point they eventually did but that should not have been a first response.

The FBI does that all the time though. They will secretly monitor and investigate without telling the person they are investigating and then whenever they feel like it they will swoop in and there's nothing you could do about it.

You could be investigated right now for something that might be illegal but it never went anywhere so you just have a file someplace with the FBI that just sits there in a filing cabinet.

Everything is punish first. Guilty until proven innocent or until proven not worth the time or effort to pursue. There is no rehabilitation, or in the case of internet crime, actually communicating when you've crossed the line, which is a humongous problem.

And it happens all over the place not just from the FBI or law enforcement but moderation policies where people get shadowbanned. That really actually doesn't help! Especially in cases where the individual might not know what they've done wrong or that what they've done was wrong. You see it in video games where you could just be a really curious person who downloads a hack for a video game and you're really just not using it to get a tactical advantage in the game you're actually using it because oh this is neat what does this do and then you get banned and the staff of the video game won't tell you a single thing about why you got banned. Take that to the next degree with this case and other cases like it where it doesn't seem like he was ever moderated at all and the first step at all was the FBI showing up at his door. That's so messed up.

I almost feel like what these cases need is basically... There's going to start to have to need to be some sort of organization or advocacy group of people who are on the spectrum and extremely high functioning but still disabled who are able to empathize and talk with the more autistic to try to get these concepts across to them in a way that they could understand. And I'm talking from personal experience a little bit with this idea because I went to a high school for kids on the spectrum and I was one of the ones on the higher end of the spectrum who still had issues but I was able to talk to the lower functioning kids a lot of the time and get them to calm down to listen better to level with them that "hey there's someone else here who understands that what you're being told is bullshit but listen just trust me just go along with it it's fine yes there's a logical fallacy going on here but it's okay." Because sometimes they just need to know that there's someone else out there who has that same kind of line of thinking that they have. But also to know that someone else out there can think the same way they do but also switch on a different mode that they might not be aware of that they could develop that is more compatible with the way the world works.

But the only way an advocacy group like this would work is if it was part of the government if it was part of some sort of law enforcement branch because otherwise it would just be another advocacy group that already exists that actually can't make any changes happen in situations like this. They would need to be able to have some sort of official pull otherwise it would just be pointless to put it bluntly.

[CuriousCosmic]

I agree 100%. Advocacy and de-escalation seriously need to be integrated into the US legal system.

Worth noting is that there is definitely a way this type of thing can go the wrong way when taken too far. When taken too far these types of helpful advocacy and assistance policies can end up having the opposite effect. I don't bring this up to say "too much is a bad thing" but rather that pushes for these reforms need to be careful and precise lest we end up accidentally undermining our own goals.

[coldtea]

>In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will. Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves?

If we had prove that "there was literally no such thing as free will" then the question would be moot - as it didn't matter whether we "ought" or "ought not" "drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general".

We'd do it or not do it, without any say or free will on the matter. Even our meta discussion about it (e.g. its moral significance) wouldn't be made due to free will, and would be irrelevant to us doing what we end up doing.

You can't disprove free will and still be concerned of what you should do morally or strategically etc, as if its your own mind to make about it.

Or rather you can (still be concerned) but not your concern will in any way matter: it would be an automatic concern.

Note also that, in regards to crime statistics, without free will, it doensn't matter whether we drop "all consequences" or not. People will going to do or not do crime anyway, as they would have had anyway, as there's no free will to deter them.

[q-big]

> You can't disprove free will and still be concerned of what you should do morally or strategically etc, as if its your own mind to make about it.

The same as for free will can be said about God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[coldtea]

Not sure what you mean. I'm not making any religious claim.

In a universe without free will, you do what you're already set (by a causuality chain) to do. This is simply physics and basic axiomatic logic, no God or 9gag Spaghetti Monster memes need apply.

[candu]

> But getting back to the thought experiment it may ultimately even be the case that widespread rehabilitation is impossible.

And yet Norway manages a recidivism rate of 20% [1], by starting from the premise that rehabilitation is the point of incarceration; I'd certainly call it "widespread" to rehabilitate 80% of prisoners!

Also, I disagree strongly that the logical extreme of "some people are incapable of exercising full agency" is "free will doesn't exist at all, because biochemical determinism". This is a textbook example of the slippery slope fallacy. The law already recognizes and accommodates the possibility of the former, both in cases of permanent disability and of temporary incapability. One of its main tools for doing so is consultation with experts in psychology, which also means that we can refine legal application here as our understanding of psychology improves.

Moreover, "all behaviours are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes..." does not imply that free will doesn't exist! After all, it's pretty well demonstrated (through transcranial stimulation studies, cognitive behavioural therapy, more recent psychedelic studies on MDMA, etc.) that we can profoundly alter those chemical and electrical processes ourselves. Perhaps the better conclusion is that "free will" is merely our ability to alter our own biochemical state (where "merely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here!)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway

[xorfish]

> Perhaps the better conclusion is that "free will" is merely our ability to alter our own biochemical state

But isn't our ability to alter our own biochemical state dependent on our current biochemical state?