[s1artibartfast]

I dont think there is really a contradiction here if you dig into it.

Incentives very much do matter, but that doesn't say anything about free will. Conversely, the existence or lack of free will doesn't say anything about how we should implement incentives.

If you accept the premise that a mass shooter has no more control than a heart attack victim, what should that change? It certainly doesn't imply that we should make mass shooting legal or be incentivized.

Having read some of his books and watched his lectures, it seems like the only moral point he raises from this is that criminal justice should be guided by maximizing benefit to the greater population (which includes setting an example or incentive) but not simple revenge.

However, this is only loosely connected to the topic of free will. You can arrive at the same conclusion from a utilitarian perspective, or even from Christian ideals of forgiveness.

[enoch_r]

That's fair. The most egregious line, I thought, was: "it means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane." I took this to mean that we should essentially eliminate criminal justice entirely. But of course, that was the article author, not Sapolsky himself.

[s1artibartfast]

I realistically think that phrase is likely sloppy journalism, or just clickbait. The charitable judgement would be that "treating them the same" means approaching each case as a problem to be solved, with compassion for the offending party, and without hate.

Dont get me wrong, Sapolsky is very much on the side of rehabilitation and restorative justice.

I think he would argue that if we could go in and surgically fix the drunk driver so they never do it again, we should probably do it and then help them have a happy and productive life afterward.

I don't know if he thinks that setting an example isn't useful, or if that he just thinks the pendulum is so far in that direction that it is counter-productive.

My personal view is that modern punishments are way beyond the point have diminishing returns for prevention, but we also have to be careful about making perverse incentives/ rewards. You don't want someone to commit crime just so that they can get extra benefits and help afterwards.

It is a really questionable area that is being explored by some policymakers. For example, San francisco is paying criminals not to shoot people [1]. Does it save lives? probably in the short term? Does it incentivize people to become criminals so that they can get the benefit? Who knows? Does it sounds a lot like paying ransom? It does to me.

https://www.californiacitynews.org/2021/09/don%E2%80%99t-sho....