Peterkin

2 hours ago, beecee said:

Your's and Dimreeper's hearts are probably in the right place, and no one has really argued against the system you both would like established, but it just isn't feasible or possible with the variables in human society.

Interesting judgment on something you presume that I "would like established". Can you describe the system I would like established? I know I haven't. 

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I can't steal contentment from you, and make it my own. But I can steal contentment from you, because you denied me...

That may just be the answer to a large percentage of crime in our times. Property damage, malicious mischief, joyriding, reckless endangerment, vandalism, arson. Much of that kind of crime is retaliatory: people who are or feel deprived of something, feel unfairly treated, abused, cheated, betrayed. Discontented - and determined to share with their discontent with those who have wronged them, or who they have been told are responsible, or those who benefit from the wrong done to them, or even, unreasoningly, those who appear to be content when they are not.     

Okay, so i took the dumb test. It's a dumb test. They ask what you are and and then tell you are what you just said you were.

8 hours ago, Hans de Vries said:

with unusual Big Five combinations be like?

Probably people like me: who didn't take the test seriously and just put down whatever.

People not open to experience are usually either fearful (because they have been injured or threatened) or complacent (self-satisfied; convinced that they are already complete).

Are these references to a test or chart of some kind? What are Big Five? 

50 minutes ago, swansont said:

I think legality and illegality figures into whether or not you broke the law.

 

Yes, but not into which person can, would, or is likely to break which law.

It's illegal in most cultures to strangle a man. I might even desire to strangle some particular man for some particular reason. But I could not do it, simply because my hands are weak and stiff with arthritis. 

Besides, I have several times made the distinctions between breaking a law and committing a crime, between committing a crime and being a criminal, between unlawful and antisocial behaviour.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Much like a worm, trained to eat shit, instead of good old-fashioned, dirt...

No, it just dies. That's often, though not always, an available option for humans faced with impossible laws.

However, if you're insisting that every citizen can be trained to commit antisocial acts, then you should consider the converse: that perhaps every citizen can be trained to refrain from antisocial acts.

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

You're missing the key variable, not all German's were subject to the same training...

You are basing a very big generalization on an untested theory. I'm not saying it's impossible to turn every person on Earth into a depraved child-raping murderer, but I'm skeptical. Even the craziest-making societies raise a variety of criminals and law-enforcers - I'm guessing because there is a variety of temperaments and mentalities.

27 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Given the right training/order's many a German became a Nazi... 

All Germans obeyed some of the laws. Most Germans disobeyed some of the laws. Some Germans committed heinous war crimes. Some Germans disobeyed the law by refusing to abet the war crimes.

26 minutes ago, swansont said:

If you don't know what laws exist, I don't see how you can say you wouldn't break laws.

Ignorance or knowledge, legality or illegality doesn't figure into individual capability or individual conscience.

It doesn't matter whether something I am is against a law or not. If it's illegal to be albino and I lack pigmentation, I can't help breaking the law. If it's legal, and richly rewarded, to defraud pensioners of the equity in their home, I still wouldn't do it, because I consider it wrong. If the law says, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, I won't light the bonfire and might, if i were brave enough, help one escape her legal punishment. 

Everyone is capable of breaking laws. Not everyone might break every law.

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

49 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Every person? Every crime?

Every person.

I don't think so. Every person might break some laws at some time under some circumstances, but there is a limit to the physical and psychological capability of each one. There are many things I have done, am willing to do or might be provoked to do that are against a law. But there are some things I cannot do, whether they are forbidden or required -  either due to my physical or emotional limitations, and some things I will not do, due to moral constraint.  

42 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Yes of course, if a human commited the crime, then a human is capable of the crime,

A human, not all humans. Else, who would throw the stones?

30 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

Which ever direction takes society to a better level sometimes at cost to the individual, sacrifice for the greater good. 

That's a restatement of the first one. What makes a society good or better? Which good is greater and by what standard of measurement? What level of sacrifice does it take to serve the greatest good?

If societies have trajectories through history, those trajectories can be traced from the point of origin - or constitution -  to the point of extinction. In past civilizations, we can point to the junctions at which pivotal decisions were made or events took place, that determined the direction that society's history was about to take. We can see which of those events and decisions led on to success and which to failure of the society. But the people, even the top leadership, living in those long-ago civilizations could not see where their decisions would lead. They didn't know they were making bad laws and creating unnecessary criminal classes, enemies, ruptures and fractures.  Neither do we. 

23 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

I'm not saying things can't or shouldn't be improved, of course they should, they should evolve. But evolve in the right direction, and sometimes to maintain the correct direction we have to look back at the path that lead us there in the first place and be careful not to take a step too far back or sideways.     

What makes a direction the right one? Which is forward?

5 minutes ago, swansont said:

Everyone might commit a crime.   

Every person? Every crime?

Evil, like good, is a product of the human imagination. While other animals show degrees of ingenuity in problem-solving, we have a flair for problem-creating. We have put as much effort into making one another suffer as we have into healing - and certainly more of our human and material resources into warfare than welfare.

It's not so much a question of how many of its people are bad for a society, as how bad a society is for its people.

A criminal justice system is built up from the assumption that the most desirable outcome for a nation is that all citizens abide by the law. To that end, it sets about training up its citizens to obey its laws. Those who fail to obey the laws are designated "criminal" - a breed apart, suddenly different in kind - and dealt-with according to some philosophical principle ranging from gentle persuasion to years of torture. We deal in the same way with the law-abiding citizens of another nation with which we happen to be in conflict. And with otherwise law-abiding citizens who have been on the losing side of an internal disagreement over political leadership. And sometimes with citizens who profess a spiritual belief that has been repudiated by the current rulers. Every society makes its own criminals. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UqNIOc8rgc&t=51s

But we're not like that anymore!!!!

I don't understand the significance of that ^^^ math; I'm a word nerd. Here's the Guardian article. Quite succinct, as usual. (I'll link it when my internet service resumes. It's been hit-and-miss for a week.)

Quote

Scientists at the US National Science Foundation’s summit station saw rain falling throughout 14 August but had no gauges to measure the fall because the precipitation was so unexpected. Across Greenland, an estimated 7bn tonnes of water was released from the clouds.

That would explain the three days "blanked out".

Quote

I noticed that they also reported their temperatures and rainfall to 9:00am their time so I assume the bias against lower maximums referred to above would be common around the world in similar circumstances to those in Australia.

I don't follow how recording temperature at 9 am forms a bias. I should think accurate charting would absolutely require that data be collected  at the same time from the same place every day.  

You can't assume anything about commonality between places: the wind and ocean current patterns have been changing dramatically and unpredictably; landmarks, such as swamp, rain forest, reef, glacier and snowfield are diminishing or disappearing; the factors we used to count on to figure into our local weather can't be counted-on anymore. The only reliable gauge of trends is a graph of temperature, water depth,  CO2 level, sandfleas per square foot of beach, or whatever local data are under consideration, collected at a specific spot at specified intervals over a period of time.  

News outlets like to report 'record' anythings - coldest, fastest, deepest - rather than show trends: those charts the scientist kept waving are such a yawn, they're afraid the audience will not understand it and tune out. There, BTW, is one of our biggest causes of inaction: leaders and news editors treat us like backward children who can't handle big, complicated facts and must be fed on slogans.

The NSIDC entry is excellent. Thanks for that!

Look. It has already happened. Like the man in the video (thx, btw; you're just like us!) said, the 1.5 degree mark was passed in 2016. The evidence was compelling enough by the early 80's (when Reagan had the solar panels removed from the White House) Everything since is corroboration. There is nothing more to prove: it's a matter of watching it play out.

What's not possible:

Halt or reversal of the manifestations.

Retention of low-lying coastlands.

Saving any part of any glacier - and that means a lot of dry riverbeds.

Saving many thousands of animals, bird, insect and plant species.

What's still possible:

Rescue, relocation and protection of vulnerable human populations.

Developing alternate - more efficient - food sources, heating, cooling, lighting, production, transportation and communication.

Developing and expanding high-density, efficient and self-sufficient housing.

Some mitigation of local damage.

Large-scale geoengineering. Some very big concerns there! 

You know the most bizarre, the most surreal thing about these endless panel discussions? The moderator always smiles and says "Now, now, let's all be polite and hear the crackpot out," as if the crackpot and the expert were both there for their equal entertainment value. In a sane world, the moderator, presumably having had the research team's homework handed to him ten minutes before air-time, wouldn't be fairnadbalanced - he'd be hysterical. It's only the end of the frickin world.... 

1 hour ago, beecee said:

I'm pretty sure you understand that.

I do. I also very much appreciate how many more interesting sources of information you have contributed since the beginning of this thread. Maybe internet forums are not just a way to kill time, after all!

1 hour ago, beecee said:

contained in prison and the key thrown away.

That wasn't in my sentence. It's okay to agree with things I didn't say, but not to pretend I said them.

I think I'll skip the history lesson today.

1 hour ago, beecee said:

Just another question if I may, Do you believe they were too hard on the copper that killed George Floyd and that the judge and jury did not show a sufficient amount of sympathy for the poor old copper? 

I'm never particularly sorry for people who abuse their power, when they finally - rarely - come to some kind of judgment. I can sort of appreciate why you mix in extraneous material, but I won't. 

Yay for Australia! (I mean that: it's one of the better western countries. But it's not the world standard - yet.)

2 hours ago, beecee said:

But a well meaning magistrate still granted him parole. What that animal has actually done, besides the horrific crime he commited, is make it harder for other criminals that may deserve parole or shorter sentences, far less likley to have them granted. Does that trouble you any?

Why should it? I didn't appoint or advise that magistrate. If that wrong decision influences other jurists to be unfair to other convicts, I have no control over that, either.  Remember, my [uninformed] opinion was that the rapist had probably behaved abnormally long before the first major crime, and should have been flagged as potentially dangerous - possibly contained - sooner. 

2 hours ago, beecee said:

Assasination attempts were also tried with Hitler, but I'm still at a loss to follow you.  In all my rhetoric, I have emphasised a normal western society. His was not normal, but a society based on hatred and racism

Hitler didn't live in Australia: where and when he lived, it was normal. Racism has been, and is, quite normal and legal in many countries, and so were/are atrocities. Your definition of a normal western country does apply to modern Germany.  You have no jurisdiction in the past.

2 hours ago, beecee said:

[3]Trump may not have been prosecuted, [we are talking about the invasion of the White House] but his redneck supporters were, at least some of them.

I am talking about all kinds of crime committed by heads of state. If they broke the laws of their own country, they can be prosecuted through its own legal apparatus, after they have left office. If they broke international laws, they can be prosecuted in the International Court of Justice, or in a war crimes tribunal set up for the purpose, after their defeat and apprehension. Suicide strikes me a quite sensible precaution in those circumstances. 

3 hours ago, Externet said:

Were the slaves from Africa centuries ago bought from their tribes

Generally, they were bought - bartered - from other tribes. Some had been captured in standard warfare, and if they had not been transported across (or under) the ocean, might have been won back or ransomed by their own people, or traded on to yet other tribes (so the captors might see nothing amiss in selling them on to white trading partners), worked off their own ransom and let go, or assimilated (esp young women and children) into the victorious tribe. 

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

As a kind of overarching narrative one could argue that over time the profitability of the trans-atlantic slave trade did increase the demand for slaves, which in turn changed how they were acquired.

  Yes!! Once the capture of one's enemies and rivals becomes a commercial enterprise, profiteering and corruption set in; people are kidnapped simply for their monetary value.

Many European prisoners and debtors were transported to do mandatory servitude. While that's not exactly voluntary emigration, they at least were viewed as human beings with basic (very!) rights, and some hope of gaining their freedom through legal means. Other Europeans - half or more of the early immigrant population - signed up voluntarily for indentured servitude of a specified period (normally 4-7 years), to work off their passage. These people were often treated like property by their employers, but they had a superior legal status to African and native American captives.   

T^^^hat's about it!

A fine summary.

2 hours ago, beecee said:

You once again, have it all wrong....It's society in general that insists on justice, based on the popular meaning of justice.

Translation: "I speak for the majority; you two are in the minority."

Dimreepr and I are voters, too.

2 hours ago, beecee said:

Because sometimes the barbaric violence and cruelty inflicted by monsters on human beings, is beyond any sympathetic feelings.eg: The case of the little girl I gave....Adolf Hitler...the movement behind the suicide bombings in Kabul today. That will do for starters.

The first and your all-time favourite example is a deranged person who may or may not be in control of his impulses. Certainly, someone like that needs to be sequestered - and should have been, before he committed that particular act. It's also possible - I have no detailed knowledge of the case - that at least some of his behaviour was aberrant long before, and nobody was paying attention. It's also possible, if you do not overburden the system with unnecessary crimes, to make such sequestering humane, and to give that captive activities beneficial to society.

The other examples are invalid. Hitler was a head of state who greatly influenced or dictated the laws of his society; according to the laws of his land, he committed no crime.* Heads of state are punished only if defeated in war, revolution or election, caught and prosecuted and tried by a constituted authority. Hitler wasn't caught; Ceaușescu was; Trump wasn't prosecuted; the Taliban warlords probably won't be, though some may be assassinated - that's another form of justice available for leaders, good and bad.

*Hence my first argument: If you want an orderly society, make good laws. Eg: criminalizing personal decisions and substance use; letting mentally unstable and untrustworthy persons run around with assault weapons.

2 hours ago, beecee said:

 Again you have it all wrong in making this so personal...

!!!!

50 minutes ago, iNow said:

Criminal justice and legal systems vary from one country to another, so generalizations like these require caution. Out of curiosity, which country’s criminal justice system do YOU primarily have in mind while making these posts?

The most readily available stats are from the USA. I do link sources whenever it seems appropriate. Australia's and Canada's crime rates are generally better; lower on violent crime, lower on false conviction, but the recidivism rates are remarkably similar, which doesn't speak well for the practice of imprisonment.

11 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Obviously each and every case requires assessment on what levels of protection and punishment is/or if required. I'm not saying its the answer to all crimes and all levels of crime, I'm just saying it is a quick and immediate solution that then allows sometime for the authorities to decide on the next procedure and sometime for the perpetrator to think about and reflect on the crime they have committed.  

Except, that's not how the present system works in real life. However, if we cut down on the initial crime rate by 1. making better laws 2. practicing better enforcement 3. creating a social environment that engenders less privation, emotional  instability and early brutalization, then the justice system wouldn't be overwhelmed and the authorities would have the resources to do that assessment and make those appropriate decisions. We might even have the extra space to sequester people suspected of posing a danger in humane conditions.

8 hours ago, Intoscience said:

There is nothing preventing looking at the reasons any crime was committed.

Of course there is: volume. That's why they're giving accused thieves that lousy deal: if you insist on your right to a trial, you have to wait months (in jail, if you're poor) don't get a lawyer unless you're a pauper (if you are, you get a bad one), if you're just not rich, you have to hire one and be a pauper before it's over, and if you lose  (likely, in either case, and nobody will give you back those months) and the sentence is drastically more severe than if you plead guilty to begin with. Helluva gamble for the accused; no skin off the prosecutor's office.

You can't determine an appropriate lesson or punishment or correction without knowing the cause of the criminality. 

Sometimes the cause of the crime is not within the criminal's control: vagrancy, homosexuality, miscarriage. Even in "reasonable westernized societies", some laws are impossible for some people to obey. 

Sometimes the person being punished didn't do what he's accused of, but since he's accused and in detention, and can't afford bail, he's counted a criminal and punished. Odds are, he won't learn anything positive from this experience - but, because of his criminalization, he is no longer eligible for the employment, housing, credit and social standing that he may have enjoyed before the incarceration, and might therefore turn to crime. Even among those duly convicted, many have not committed the serious crime of which they are accused; in lesser crimes, many confessions are false, as defendants are counselled to plead guilty and accept a lesser sentence, rather than risk losing a trial [in which they often can't afford to mount an adequate defence]. 

Than there is broken-law-breaking: acts that do no harm to society, but offend the resident powers: resisting arrest, failing to stop when pursued, obstructing justice, unlawful assembly and failure to disperse while kettled, abetting a suspect, assaulting an officer's boot with one's ribs....  

Where somebody has actually and knowingly committed an antisocial act, it usually falls into one or straddles two of the common motivations: acquisition, love, anger, stupidity, mischief, activism, status. Each of those motivations has a range of intensity (and provocations), and so does the action they engender. But the severity of the legal response is determined less by the act itself than by the intended target. (e.g. you can get 12 years in prison, plus loss of your whole family's electronic devices for a five-minute interruption to Mastercard's advertising web-page. I just learned that today.)

I don't consider any of that fair dealing - which is what I think justice should be.  

7 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

Even if we achieve a 99% success rate investing in and using every prevention method possible, there is still 1% that has to be dealt with.  

And so much more expertise and resources available with which to do it, if the jails aren't full of people who can't afford bail and fines for minor infractions. But the 1% shouldn't determine what "justice" is.

18 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Shouldn't the word be 'mitigation', it's the industrious mouse all over and why Ricky didn't get it.

I don't understand.

Thing about "justice" is, to me, it's a much, much bigger and more inclusive concept than crime and punishment. There is the whole question of what a "crime" is and what makes the same act a crime in one situation, heroic in another and just routine work in a third. There is the question of the principles on which the social and legal structure are built; of who makes the law and for whose benefit, who is punished and who is beyond reach. There is the question of cultural norms, like bait-and-switch morality: teach the children to value winning above all else, then tell them  honesty is the most important thing. Raise adrenaline- and sugar-junkies, then make them sit quietly behind a desk for eight hours a day. There is the question of what ways and means are available to which segments of the population; of which people become "criminals" and how it happens.

There are anecdotes and statistics. I prefer to form my big picture from the latter.

But that's just me.

3 hours ago, Intoscience said:

What do you propose in place of punishment?

Prevention: economic equity, early intervention, physical and mental health care, security, education, opportunity. Haven't i said?