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Hellfire revisited - evolution of religion, cooperation and what it
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Burkhard
Aug 11, 2012, 5:33:50 AM8/11/12
to
Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
thought it might be of interest to TO
a typical pop since account is here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
The full study is open access and
available here:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.00...
Plos1 has also a "comment" section, worth looking into (I say a bit
more about them later)
The findings are pretty depressing. In essence: Religious beliefs do
have an effect on crime rates. The nastier the religion is (fire and
brimstone, emphasis on hell, punishment, eternal torture) the better
as far as crime is concerned - "nice" religions (universal salvation,
let's all have a hug and be friends type) _also_ have an effect, just
in the opposite direction, they actually increase crime rate - or so
it seems. This summary is in effect a little bit (intentionally)
careless, though this is how many have interpreted the results.
As you can see when you go to the "comment" section, that article got
quite some media coverage, including, unsurprisingly, in religious
newsletters - so you can expect people refer to it, with varying
degrees of accurately representing what the article says, so worth
reading for that reason alone.
OK, bit of background for those of you not having next office door
neighbours who are criminologists, - the rest can skip a few
paragraphs.
The idea of studying the interaction between religion and crime is as
old as criminology and sociology itself. Auguste Comte formulated the
theory that religion increases social coherence and deters crime -
which then led him (being an atheist himself) formulate the project to
set up a "positive religion" or "religion of humanity", a purely
secular religion that should take on the same role but without the
metaphysical baggage.
Closer to modern notions of scientific studies was Durkheim's study on
suicide, which became the classical text for the deterrent effect of
religion on deviant behaviour. (Durkheim argued that religious beliefs
can reduce crime - but bear in mind that he thought that crime was
something potentially quite good..) It really became mainstream
however in the 1950s, with the rise of "control theory" in criminology
(which in turn responded to the increase in crime in western postwar
societies). Early control theory is most closely related with the
names of Albert Reiss (who started it) , Ivan Nye and more than anyone
else Travis Hirschi. While religion is just one aspect of control in
his theory, Hirschi did some ground breaking work on that aspect, and
he gave the name "hellfire hypothesis" to the idea that threat of
eternal punishment is negatively correlated with crime rates.
(classical text: Hirschi, T. & Stark, R. (1969). "Hellfire and
Delinquency." Social Problems 17:202-213)
Ever since, lots of criminologists have tried to either confirm or
dis-
confirm the hypothesis (as Hirschi and Stark argued themselves) ,
creating in the process some extraordinarily good studies, but also
some methodologically abysmal ones, and the methodological issues are
substantial. A huge body of literature has as a result emerged from
this, and it is difficult to give an overall appreciation
The result is confusing, to put it mildly, with some studies showing
strong negative correlations, many neutral effects, and a few a
positive correlation (religion as criminogenic)“. One recurrent theme
in all these studies and the discussion they trigger are issues of
methodology - there is an unfortunate focus on your delinquency, a
focus on convicted offenders rather than society wide sampling, the
problem to get good crime data and also an absence of longitudinal
studies (that for me the biggest issue, but these are expensive - the
very large cohort study my colleagues are running on youth crime and
delinquency in Scotland extremely so)
One recurrent theme is how to design the tests, and what to control
for - often, initial correlations disappear when the analysis is
subsequently extended or refined. This led one of the most influential
researchers in the field conclude that the correlation is probably
spurious - John Cochran, P Wood and B Arneklev: Is the Religiosity-
Delinquency Relationship Spurious? A Test of Arousal and Social
Control Theories.
Spurious in both directions that is, there is no positive or negative
correlation according to this study. Chochran'es PhD btw was also on
that topic, and is available free here:
http://tinyurl.com/calja27
More recently (2001), Colin Baier and Bradley Wright did a meta study
of the 60 largest (and, methodologically, least controversial )
studies: If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments”: A Meta-Analysis of
the Effect of Religion on Crime Journal of Research in Crime &
Delinquency, 38 (1), pp. 3-21. Their results of the meta-analysis
show that religious beliefs and behaviours exert a moderate deterrent
effect on individuals' criminal behaviour. However, this general trend
hides significant differences, so a better conclusion could be: it all
depends. (Big surprise that)
Some religious beliefs deter some forms of deviance - and more so in
some societies than others. So yes, the number to drink driving
offences in Saudi Arabia is very low - they simply don't allow woman
to drive <frantically ducks for cover...> Generally, one sub-theory
that has some empirical support is that religious beliefs can support
asceticism, and hence reduces "consumption crimes" (which can have a
domino effect if you consider the relation between alcohol in
particular and violent crimes) But even for that , the evidence is
mixed: Chochrane and Akan (1989) Beyond Hellfire: An Exploration of
the Variable Effects of Religiosity on Adolescent Marijuana Use.
Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency. 26 (3), pp. 198-255 is a
typical "it all rather depends" study, with a general negative
correlation between drug use and religious belief, but it depends on
the belief, how it is measured, and the drugs.
Rarer are the studies that identify a positive correlation between
religion and crime, but these too exist. One example is Charles
Kimball, When religion becomes Lethal, (2003) which argues that
dualist (struggle between good and bad) religions with a high degree
of punitativeness and absolutist truth claims fare particularly
badly with regards to homicide (which contributes to the explanation
of the disproportionately high homicide rate in the southern part of
the US, see also Ellison C.G., J. A. Burr, and P. McCall. 2003. “The
Enduring Puzzle of Southern Homicide: Is Regional Religious Culture
the Missing Piece?” A Homicide Studies 2003; 7: 326-352 ).
So, by and large, criminologists don't even ask any longer: "does
religion deter crime?" but: "what aspects of a specific religion
deter what sorts of crime under what wider social conditions?" That is
the wider context of the study linked to above, the most recent
offering. It does "drill down" to specific aspects of religions, in
particular belief in hell and heaven. But it is more ambitious on the
crime side, and looks at a variety of core crimes. What however does
it actually say? Despite reports to the contrary, it does NOT claim
that belief in hell reduces crime. Rather, it says that in comparison
to belief in heaven, belief in hell reduces crime, while belief in
heaven increases it. It "may" also be the case the belief in hell is
an absolute deterrent - but the study is agnostic about it. It only
compares two types of religious belief. In essence, the result is:
people react better to punishment than to rewards, which again is
depressing for all sorts of reasons (and has massive implications for
all sorts of issues - my approach to marking e.g. is all wrong...)
Quite a number of people misread this, including one of the critics on
the comment page, Paul. That one is in a way quite funny - as I said
above, the research into the hellfire hypothesis always going to be
methodologically difficult (as is any study in the causes of crime)
and there are a couple of studies around where you wonder why in hell
(pun intended) the referees let that one through. Paul's own. "Cross-
National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popularity
Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of
Religion & Society 7: 1–17 is in my opinion one of them, and I have
used it in our method courses as an example of what you really should
not do. So misunderstanding the article, then criticising its
methodology on the basis of this misunderstanding, and complaining
that one's own work is not cited enough is... cheeky I think is the
technical term.
Having said that, if you take the study together with the meta-
analysis by Baier and Wright (and some of the lab research by the
authors of this study) , it seems not too implausible to speculate
that the weak negative correlation between religion and crime might in
fact be much stronger for some religions (and, and that is the really
depressing part, the nasty ones for that) who are however "dragged
down" by the nicer ones.
What can we say about the validity of the study? They use much larger
data than most other studies, and most importantly, they also look at
data over time. That is very often not done and I;d consider it
crucial - they do however in their analysis not make the most of it.
So it is not a real longitudinal cohort study that would be much
better to settle the issue - but closer to it than many others. They
are pretty unique in combining lab studies with etiological macro
studies, another great plus. The quality of the statistical work is
also very good. As always, there are issues - and they acknowledge
that the study allows for different interpretations in addition to the
"simple cuasal one" they prefer on balance.
The points made by some of the commentators address some of these, and
you can look at the rebuttal of the authors yourself. my first point
too would have been that belief in hell and heaven are too strongly
correlated, and the surveys they use too coarse grained - but their
answer to this made sense to me. There is as always problems with the
reliability and comparability of the crime data. Heck, even within
nations, method of crime data collection, classification and recording
differ widely - in the UK e.g. the British crime survey asks a sample
of people if they have become victims of crime, whereas the police
statistics record reported crime - the two diverge for obvious
reasons.
More problematically, some of the crimes are heavily influenced by
cultural norms - both in the way they are defined and the way they are
enforced. Rape is the obvious example - whether marital rape is in our
out differs between countries. In Islamic jurisdiction, as a haddith
crime, you'd need five male witnesses of good standing for a
conviction - and if the accusation fails to result in a conviction,
the victim is in some countries likely to face prosecution for
adultery. Social norms also impact heavily on the willingness to
report this crime even where the law is more favourably disposed.
Kidnapping too might be distorted by cultural norms - as a large
percentage are kidnappings by a parent as part of a custody battle .
How this is classified varies between countries. Human trafficking is
another crime where enforcement, and classification, differs
substantially, and some of it is culturally caused (police attitudes
towards "foreigners" e.g.. general attitudes on immigration etc etc)
The authors argue that this does not apply for the "gold standard",
homicide, and the fact that all the other categories bar two diverge
ion the findings for homicide is a good indication that the
correlation is real for them too. While it is true that homicide is
for these studies seen as gold standard, it is a bit of tarnished
gold. It only records cases where the unnatural death was established
- Harold Shipman anyone? So countries with a better forensics/medical
coroner infrastructure will have higher homicide rates for this reason
alone - but that should be unrelated to religious/cultural beliefs,
unless a religion prohibits autopsy. Another factor is quality of
medical care - some of the reduction in homicide in the UK since the
80s e.g. is attributable to improved medical care for assault victims
- its simply that more people can be saved after a knife or gun
attack, and then count as assaults. So in theory at least, if you ave
say a religious prohibition against blood transfer, that could
artificially increase your homicide rat for the purpose of a study
like this one. However, while all these factors can influence the
absolute numbers, the authors have a point when they argue that none
of them can explain the convergence between the categories.
personally, I'm also a bit doubtful if "countries" are not way too big
as entities, especially when the in-country differences are larger
than those between countries - but they do a very good job in
controlling for a variety fo factors that could be affected by this.
My own overall conclusion is that the study is too good to be
dismissed easily and raises some interesting issues (and some worrying
conclusions for policy, regardless of the religious issue). The
authors also make a link to the evolution of cooperation, and with
that the "social glue" theories of selection for a predisposition to
evoke invisible, powerful and and omnipresent entities. Even though
I'm all in favour of this line of reasoning (they cite the study by
Johnson (2011) Why God is the best punisher. Religion Brain Behav 1:
77–84 that I cited before) I'm actually unsure if this specific study
really fits into this debate. Our surveillance culture with
omnipresent CCTV coverage should on a macro-level drown out any
correlation you can establish on a macro (nation state) level - the
laboratory based work by the same authors (e.g. Shariff AF,
Norenzayan A (2007) God is watching you: Supernatural agent concepts
increase prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychol Sci
18: 803-809 or Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A.F., & Gervais, W. (2010).
The Evolution of Religious Misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
32, 531-532.
.
A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
thought it might be of interest to TO
a typical pop since account is here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
The full study is open access and
available here:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.00...
Plos1 has also a "comment" section, worth looking into (I say a bit
more about them later)
The findings are pretty depressing. In essence: Religious beliefs do
have an effect on crime rates. The nastier the religion is (fire and
brimstone, emphasis on hell, punishment, eternal torture) the better
as far as crime is concerned - "nice" religions (universal salvation,
let's all have a hug and be friends type) _also_ have an effect, just
in the opposite direction, they actually increase crime rate - or so
it seems. This summary is in effect a little bit (intentionally)
careless, though this is how many have interpreted the results.
As you can see when you go to the "comment" section, that article got
quite some media coverage, including, unsurprisingly, in religious
newsletters - so you can expect people refer to it, with varying
degrees of accurately representing what the article says, so worth
reading for that reason alone.
OK, bit of background for those of you not having next office door
neighbours who are criminologists, - the rest can skip a few
paragraphs.
The idea of studying the interaction between religion and crime is as
old as criminology and sociology itself. Auguste Comte formulated the
theory that religion increases social coherence and deters crime -
which then led him (being an atheist himself) formulate the project to
set up a "positive religion" or "religion of humanity", a purely
secular religion that should take on the same role but without the
metaphysical baggage.
Closer to modern notions of scientific studies was Durkheim's study on
suicide, which became the classical text for the deterrent effect of
religion on deviant behaviour. (Durkheim argued that religious beliefs
can reduce crime - but bear in mind that he thought that crime was
something potentially quite good..) It really became mainstream
however in the 1950s, with the rise of "control theory" in criminology
(which in turn responded to the increase in crime in western postwar
societies). Early control theory is most closely related with the
names of Albert Reiss (who started it) , Ivan Nye and more than anyone
else Travis Hirschi. While religion is just one aspect of control in
his theory, Hirschi did some ground breaking work on that aspect, and
he gave the name "hellfire hypothesis" to the idea that threat of
eternal punishment is negatively correlated with crime rates.
(classical text: Hirschi, T. & Stark, R. (1969). "Hellfire and
Delinquency." Social Problems 17:202-213)
Ever since, lots of criminologists have tried to either confirm or
dis-
confirm the hypothesis (as Hirschi and Stark argued themselves) ,
creating in the process some extraordinarily good studies, but also
some methodologically abysmal ones, and the methodological issues are
substantial. A huge body of literature has as a result emerged from
this, and it is difficult to give an overall appreciation
The result is confusing, to put it mildly, with some studies showing
strong negative correlations, many neutral effects, and a few a
positive correlation (religion as criminogenic)“. One recurrent theme
in all these studies and the discussion they trigger are issues of
methodology - there is an unfortunate focus on your delinquency, a
focus on convicted offenders rather than society wide sampling, the
problem to get good crime data and also an absence of longitudinal
studies (that for me the biggest issue, but these are expensive - the
very large cohort study my colleagues are running on youth crime and
delinquency in Scotland extremely so)
One recurrent theme is how to design the tests, and what to control
for - often, initial correlations disappear when the analysis is
subsequently extended or refined. This led one of the most influential
researchers in the field conclude that the correlation is probably
spurious - John Cochran, P Wood and B Arneklev: Is the Religiosity-
Delinquency Relationship Spurious? A Test of Arousal and Social
Control Theories.
Spurious in both directions that is, there is no positive or negative
correlation according to this study. Chochran'es PhD btw was also on
that topic, and is available free here:
http://tinyurl.com/calja27
More recently (2001), Colin Baier and Bradley Wright did a meta study
of the 60 largest (and, methodologically, least controversial )
studies: If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments”: A Meta-Analysis of
the Effect of Religion on Crime Journal of Research in Crime &
Delinquency, 38 (1), pp. 3-21. Their results of the meta-analysis
show that religious beliefs and behaviours exert a moderate deterrent
effect on individuals' criminal behaviour. However, this general trend
hides significant differences, so a better conclusion could be: it all
depends. (Big surprise that)
Some religious beliefs deter some forms of deviance - and more so in
some societies than others. So yes, the number to drink driving
offences in Saudi Arabia is very low - they simply don't allow woman
to drive <frantically ducks for cover...> Generally, one sub-theory
that has some empirical support is that religious beliefs can support
asceticism, and hence reduces "consumption crimes" (which can have a
domino effect if you consider the relation between alcohol in
particular and violent crimes) But even for that , the evidence is
mixed: Chochrane and Akan (1989) Beyond Hellfire: An Exploration of
the Variable Effects of Religiosity on Adolescent Marijuana Use.
Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency. 26 (3), pp. 198-255 is a
typical "it all rather depends" study, with a general negative
correlation between drug use and religious belief, but it depends on
the belief, how it is measured, and the drugs.
Rarer are the studies that identify a positive correlation between
religion and crime, but these too exist. One example is Charles
Kimball, When religion becomes Lethal, (2003) which argues that
dualist (struggle between good and bad) religions with a high degree
of punitativeness and absolutist truth claims fare particularly
badly with regards to homicide (which contributes to the explanation
of the disproportionately high homicide rate in the southern part of
the US, see also Ellison C.G., J. A. Burr, and P. McCall. 2003. “The
Enduring Puzzle of Southern Homicide: Is Regional Religious Culture
the Missing Piece?” A Homicide Studies 2003; 7: 326-352 ).
So, by and large, criminologists don't even ask any longer: "does
religion deter crime?" but: "what aspects of a specific religion
deter what sorts of crime under what wider social conditions?" That is
the wider context of the study linked to above, the most recent
offering. It does "drill down" to specific aspects of religions, in
particular belief in hell and heaven. But it is more ambitious on the
crime side, and looks at a variety of core crimes. What however does
it actually say? Despite reports to the contrary, it does NOT claim
that belief in hell reduces crime. Rather, it says that in comparison
to belief in heaven, belief in hell reduces crime, while belief in
heaven increases it. It "may" also be the case the belief in hell is
an absolute deterrent - but the study is agnostic about it. It only
compares two types of religious belief. In essence, the result is:
people react better to punishment than to rewards, which again is
depressing for all sorts of reasons (and has massive implications for
all sorts of issues - my approach to marking e.g. is all wrong...)
Quite a number of people misread this, including one of the critics on
the comment page, Paul. That one is in a way quite funny - as I said
above, the research into the hellfire hypothesis always going to be
methodologically difficult (as is any study in the causes of crime)
and there are a couple of studies around where you wonder why in hell
(pun intended) the referees let that one through. Paul's own. "Cross-
National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popularity
Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of
Religion & Society 7: 1–17 is in my opinion one of them, and I have
used it in our method courses as an example of what you really should
not do. So misunderstanding the article, then criticising its
methodology on the basis of this misunderstanding, and complaining
that one's own work is not cited enough is... cheeky I think is the
technical term.
Having said that, if you take the study together with the meta-
analysis by Baier and Wright (and some of the lab research by the
authors of this study) , it seems not too implausible to speculate
that the weak negative correlation between religion and crime might in
fact be much stronger for some religions (and, and that is the really
depressing part, the nasty ones for that) who are however "dragged
down" by the nicer ones.
What can we say about the validity of the study? They use much larger
data than most other studies, and most importantly, they also look at
data over time. That is very often not done and I;d consider it
crucial - they do however in their analysis not make the most of it.
So it is not a real longitudinal cohort study that would be much
better to settle the issue - but closer to it than many others. They
are pretty unique in combining lab studies with etiological macro
studies, another great plus. The quality of the statistical work is
also very good. As always, there are issues - and they acknowledge
that the study allows for different interpretations in addition to the
"simple cuasal one" they prefer on balance.
The points made by some of the commentators address some of these, and
you can look at the rebuttal of the authors yourself. my first point
too would have been that belief in hell and heaven are too strongly
correlated, and the surveys they use too coarse grained - but their
answer to this made sense to me. There is as always problems with the
reliability and comparability of the crime data. Heck, even within
nations, method of crime data collection, classification and recording
differ widely - in the UK e.g. the British crime survey asks a sample
of people if they have become victims of crime, whereas the police
statistics record reported crime - the two diverge for obvious
reasons.
More problematically, some of the crimes are heavily influenced by
cultural norms - both in the way they are defined and the way they are
enforced. Rape is the obvious example - whether marital rape is in our
out differs between countries. In Islamic jurisdiction, as a haddith
crime, you'd need five male witnesses of good standing for a
conviction - and if the accusation fails to result in a conviction,
the victim is in some countries likely to face prosecution for
adultery. Social norms also impact heavily on the willingness to
report this crime even where the law is more favourably disposed.
Kidnapping too might be distorted by cultural norms - as a large
percentage are kidnappings by a parent as part of a custody battle .
How this is classified varies between countries. Human trafficking is
another crime where enforcement, and classification, differs
substantially, and some of it is culturally caused (police attitudes
towards "foreigners" e.g.. general attitudes on immigration etc etc)
The authors argue that this does not apply for the "gold standard",
homicide, and the fact that all the other categories bar two diverge
ion the findings for homicide is a good indication that the
correlation is real for them too. While it is true that homicide is
for these studies seen as gold standard, it is a bit of tarnished
gold. It only records cases where the unnatural death was established
- Harold Shipman anyone? So countries with a better forensics/medical
coroner infrastructure will have higher homicide rates for this reason
alone - but that should be unrelated to religious/cultural beliefs,
unless a religion prohibits autopsy. Another factor is quality of
medical care - some of the reduction in homicide in the UK since the
80s e.g. is attributable to improved medical care for assault victims
- its simply that more people can be saved after a knife or gun
attack, and then count as assaults. So in theory at least, if you ave
say a religious prohibition against blood transfer, that could
artificially increase your homicide rat for the purpose of a study
like this one. However, while all these factors can influence the
absolute numbers, the authors have a point when they argue that none
of them can explain the convergence between the categories.
personally, I'm also a bit doubtful if "countries" are not way too big
as entities, especially when the in-country differences are larger
than those between countries - but they do a very good job in
controlling for a variety fo factors that could be affected by this.
My own overall conclusion is that the study is too good to be
dismissed easily and raises some interesting issues (and some worrying
conclusions for policy, regardless of the religious issue). The
authors also make a link to the evolution of cooperation, and with
that the "social glue" theories of selection for a predisposition to
evoke invisible, powerful and and omnipresent entities. Even though
I'm all in favour of this line of reasoning (they cite the study by
Johnson (2011) Why God is the best punisher. Religion Brain Behav 1:
77–84 that I cited before) I'm actually unsure if this specific study
really fits into this debate. Our surveillance culture with
omnipresent CCTV coverage should on a macro-level drown out any
correlation you can establish on a macro (nation state) level - the
laboratory based work by the same authors (e.g. Shariff AF,
Norenzayan A (2007) God is watching you: Supernatural agent concepts
increase prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychol Sci
18: 803-809 or Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A.F., & Gervais, W. (2010).
The Evolution of Religious Misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
32, 531-532.
.
Richard Norman
Aug 11, 2012, 10:04:31 AM8/11/12
to
I hereby nominate this fine essay for POTM.
It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
be: a critical review of an important issue. That plus the fact that
this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
knowledge. I now have a lot more.
It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
be: a critical review of an important issue. That plus the fact that
this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
knowledge. I now have a lot more.
Michael Siemon
Aug 11, 2012, 12:34:58 PM8/11/12
to
In article <ddpc2851vpbnq14mv...@4ax.com>,
seconded
Richard Norman <r_s_n...@comcast.net> wrote:
> I hereby nominate this fine essay for POTM.
>
> It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
> be: a critical review of an important issue. That plus the fact that
> this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
> knowledge. I now have a lot more.
>
> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 02:33:50 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
...
> I hereby nominate this fine essay for POTM.
>
> It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
> be: a critical review of an important issue. That plus the fact that
> this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
> knowledge. I now have a lot more.
>
> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 02:33:50 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
seconded
Kalkidas
Aug 11, 2012, 1:23:18 PM8/11/12
to
On 8/11/2012 2:33 AM, Burkhard wrote:
> Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
> A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
> of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
> cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
> type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
> invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
> thought it might be of interest to TO
>
> a typical pop since account is here:
>
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
>
> The full study is open access and
> available here:
> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.00...
>
> Plos1 has also a "comment" section, worth looking into (I say a bit
> more about them later)
>
> The findings are pretty depressing. In essence: Religious beliefs do
> have an effect on crime rates. The nastier the religion is (fire and
> brimstone, emphasis on hell, punishment, eternal torture) the better
> as far as crime is concerned - "nice" religions (universal salvation,
> let's all have a hug and be friends type) _also_ have an effect, just
> in the opposite direction, they actually increase crime rate - or so
> it seems. This summary is in effect a little bit (intentionally)
> careless, though this is how many have interpreted the results.
If you adhere to an irrational belief system (I would include secular
> Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
> A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
> of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
> cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
> type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
> invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
> thought it might be of interest to TO
>
> a typical pop since account is here:
>
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
>
> The full study is open access and
> available here:
> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.00...
>
> Plos1 has also a "comment" section, worth looking into (I say a bit
> more about them later)
>
> The findings are pretty depressing. In essence: Religious beliefs do
> have an effect on crime rates. The nastier the religion is (fire and
> brimstone, emphasis on hell, punishment, eternal torture) the better
> as far as crime is concerned - "nice" religions (universal salvation,
> let's all have a hug and be friends type) _also_ have an effect, just
> in the opposite direction, they actually increase crime rate - or so
> it seems. This summary is in effect a little bit (intentionally)
> careless, though this is how many have interpreted the results.
humanism among these) without an absolute moral code, then you won't
dare make moral judgments that will lead you to punish anyone. Hence,
criminals aren't punished, and crime goes up.
On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
Burkhard
Aug 11, 2012, 4:48:21 PM8/11/12
to
"direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
findings here apply across the board.
Second, it assumes that secular or "heaven centred" religious
societies are not punitive. For that too there is little evidence.
Quite on the contrary, e have seen a steady increase in the use of
penal sanctions in Europe over the last decades - the Labour
government during its rain created I think 600 new offences. Makes
sense too if you think about it - quite the converse of your analysis
seems plausible to me: If I don;t belief in divine sanctions, secular
law is all I have (both for satisfying a desire for revenge and for
keeping people on the straight and narrow) By contrast, if I think
that terrible things will happen to the criminal any way, why should I
waste my energy and money to inflict what is in comparison a minor
inconvenience at worst (in comparison to an eternity of re hot pokers
up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
(as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
inclination to meat out some punishment all by myself will also go
up.
Kalkidas
Aug 11, 2012, 5:24:56 PM8/11/12
to
And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
not punishment.
I do not know of any statistics on the efficacy of corporal punishment,
since it has not been legal in the West for a long time. But I would
suggest taking a look at, for example, Singapore, one of the most clean
and orderly places in the world, where corporal punishment has not yet
fallen prey to the guilt-trips of political correctness and misplaced
"compassion".
> Second, it assumes that secular or "heaven centred" religious
> societies are not punitive. For that too there is little evidence.
> Quite on the contrary, e have seen a steady increase in the use of
> penal sanctions in Europe over the last decades - the Labour
> government during its rain created I think 600 new offences. Makes
> sense too if you think about it - quite the converse of your analysis
> seems plausible to me: If I don;t belief in divine sanctions, secular
> law is all I have (both for satisfying a desire for revenge and for
> keeping people on the straight and narrow) By contrast, if I think
> that terrible things will happen to the criminal any way, why should I
> inconvenience at worst (in comparison to an eternity of re hot pokers
> up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
> strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
> beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
> the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
> (as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
> inclination to meat out some punishment all by myself will also go
> up.
Again, I suggest that as long as incarceration is regarded as
> up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
> strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
> beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
> the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
> (as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
> inclination to meat out some punishment all by myself will also go
> up.
"punishment" (and, as you note, incarceration is rather ineffective as a
deterrent to crime), then societies, whether secular or sacred, are,
frankly, kidding themselves about achieving law and order.
Imprisonment as a punishment, does not fit the crime, (except the crime
of imprisoning someone else). I am very surprised that no one seems to
notice this bizarre irony and conclude that the modern concept of
criminal justice needs radical rethinking.
Paul J Gans
Aug 11, 2012, 7:27:08 PM8/11/12
to
--
--- Paul J. Gans
Paul J Gans
Aug 11, 2012, 7:43:05 PM8/11/12
to
Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
It would be interesting to know the crime rate among practicing
atheists. But I expect such data is either missing or untrustworthy.
>On Aug 11, 6:23?pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>> On 8/11/2012 2:33 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
>> > A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
>> > of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
>> > cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
>> > type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
>> > invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
>> > thought it might be of interest to TO
>>
>> > a typical pop since account is here:
>>
>> >http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
>>
>> > ? The full study is open access and
>> On 8/11/2012 2:33 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
>> > A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
>> > of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
>> > cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
>> > type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
>> > invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
>> > thought it might be of interest to TO
>>
>> > a typical pop since account is here:
>>
>> >http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2012/06/25/is-the-devil-a...
>>
atheists. But I expect such data is either missing or untrustworthy.
Richard Norman
Aug 11, 2012, 8:10:41 PM8/11/12
to
God had a slightly significant effect (0.05 level) correlation with
reduced assault and reduced average of all crimes. It had no
significant correlation with the other crime categories analyzed:
motor, burglary, drug, homicide, human trafficking, kidnapping, rape,
robbery, and theft.
Kalkidas
Aug 11, 2012, 8:14:09 PM8/11/12
to
something rather than an affirmation.
Richard Norman
Aug 11, 2012, 8:19:37 PM8/11/12
to
really do have to practice to get good at it. Professionals, of
course, continue to practice every day to maintain their skills. I
think that is what Paul meant.
Kalkidas
Aug 11, 2012, 8:47:58 PM8/11/12
to
"not praying"? Does one practice "not going to church"?
What exactly is there to practice?
Richard Norman
Aug 11, 2012, 8:59:59 PM8/11/12
to
It is best learned with a professional experienced tutor or coach who
can guide you through the proper technique. It really is far more
difficult than it looks. Try, for example, NOT thinking about a pink
elephant! And they don't even exist. Not thinking about an
omnipresent, omnipotent, and ominscient deity who knows your every
thought (or absence thereof) is incredibly more difficult.
Kalkidas
Aug 11, 2012, 9:15:51 PM8/11/12
to
And most criminals are mindless. Kind of makes you not-think....
Mark Isaak
Aug 11, 2012, 10:00:34 PM8/11/12
to
On 8/11/12 2:24 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>> [...]
> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
>>
>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
>> is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
>> positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
>> academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>> findings here apply across the board.
>
> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
No, it does not. Capital punishment gets innocent people killed, shows
>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
>>
>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
>> is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
>> positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
>> academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>> findings here apply across the board.
>
> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
little if any (or possibly even negative) deterrence effect, and is only
trivially superior to a less expensive measure at preventing recidivism.
> And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
> not punishment.
> I do not know of any statistics on the efficacy of corporal punishment,
> since it has not been legal in the West for a long time. But I would
> suggest taking a look at, for example, Singapore, one of the most clean
> and orderly places in the world, where corporal punishment has not yet
> fallen prey to the guilt-trips of political correctness and misplaced
> "compassion".
option of "ten lashes now and the issue is settled" would be preferable
to all concerned over the usual justice process, and would work better
as a deterrent. A problem with punishment is that its deterrence value
drops over time. If the police catch a 20-year-old who stole a car for
a joy ride, punishment on spot would be ideal for deterrence.
Punishment after the trial six months later, not so much. Rapid
corporal punishment opens the doors to all kinds of abuse, though, so
may not be practical.
The prison system in California, incidentally, makes no claims about
deterrence and no longer even pretends at rehabilitation. Its sole
purpose is to keep criminals away from the rest of society for awhile,
and it does succeed at that. When there is a release of prisoners in
large numbers (because of court-ordered alleviation of overcrowding),
crime rates show a statistically significant rise.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
SkyEyes
Aug 12, 2012, 2:34:08 AM8/12/12
to
my life than that it lock me up in a cage for the rest of my natural.
Brenda Nelson, A.A.#34
skyeyes nine at cox dot net OR
skyeyes nine at yahoo dot com
Syamsu
Aug 12, 2012, 7:58:32 AM8/12/12
to
any tender judgement, argue to rearrange the system of justice....
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 2:04:38 PM8/12/12
to
On 8/11/2012 7:00 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 8/11/12 2:24 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
>>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
>>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
>>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
>>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
>>>
>>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
>>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
>>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
>>> is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
>>> positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
>>> academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
>>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>>> findings here apply across the board.
>>
>> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
>
> No, it does not. Capital punishment gets innocent people killed, shows
> little if any (or possibly even negative) deterrence effect, and is only
> trivially superior to a less expensive measure at preventing recidivism.
commit crimes? If not, then capital punishment works 100% of the time.
>> And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
>> not punishment.
>
> Give incarceration a try, and then tell us your considered opinion.
to have a considered opinion on it. That's why we have minds and reason.
My considered opinion is that punishment should be corrective, and
should fit the crime. Otherwise it's not punishment but something else.
Incarceration does not fit any crime except perhaps kidnapping. It is
only "punishment" for that. Otherwise, it is merely torture, or a
scholarship to crime graduate school.
My considered opinion is that incarceration should only be used to
prevent criminals from fleeing to avoid trial and/or sentencing.
Or for the rare crime of, say, kidnapping, for which imprisonment is
appropriate, since that's essentially what the criminal did to his victim.
>> I do not know of any statistics on the efficacy of corporal punishment,
>> since it has not been legal in the West for a long time. But I would
>> suggest taking a look at, for example, Singapore, one of the most clean
>> and orderly places in the world, where corporal punishment has not yet
>> fallen prey to the guilt-trips of political correctness and misplaced
>> "compassion".
>
> There, I think you have a point. For some crimes, I suspect that an
> option of "ten lashes now and the issue is settled" would be preferable
> to all concerned over the usual justice process, and would work better
> as a deterrent. A problem with punishment is that its deterrence value
> drops over time. If the police catch a 20-year-old who stole a car for
> a joy ride, punishment on spot would be ideal for deterrence. Punishment
> after the trial six months later, not so much. Rapid corporal
> punishment opens the doors to all kinds of abuse, though, so may not be
> practical.
done to those who initiate it. Whipping someone for shoplifting is not
appropriate. Whipping them for assault and battery is.
For non-violent crimes against property, some sort of forced labor to
repay is appropriate.
chris thompson
Aug 12, 2012, 2:37:27 PM8/12/12
to
innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
Is that acceptable to you? To kill two people (who may very well be
criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
sentence) for every one you get right?
Personally, I have nothing against capital punishment. I see things on
TV, I read things in the paper, I get news from the web. Do I think
the Arizona shooter should be executed? Yes, I do.
But...that 30% in Illinois keeps coming back to me. It's just not
worth it to kill two innocent people just to see the Arizona shooter
die for his crime. Just. Not. Worth. It.
Chris
snip
chris thompson
Aug 12, 2012, 2:27:12 PM8/12/12
to
On Aug 11, 7:27�pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> Michael Siemon <mlsie...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >In article <ddpc2851vpbnq14mv4e8k312rek4aoe...@4ax.com>,
an amazingly concise, well-written piece with cites, on a topic that
on first glance seems to have little to do with this group, but on
mature reflection strikes right at the heart of many of our issues
here.
Chris
> Michael Siemon <mlsie...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >In article <ddpc2851vpbnq14mv4e8k312rek4aoe...@4ax.com>,
> > Richard Norman <r_s_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >> I hereby nominate this fine essay for POTM.
>
> >> It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
> >> be: �a critical review of an important issue. �That plus the fact that
> >> this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
> >> knowledge. �I now have a lot more.
>
> >> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 02:33:50 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> >> <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> >...
> >seconded
>
> Thirded, if that counts.
>
> --
> � �--- Paul J. Gans
Fourthed, as if it matters. This is a shoo-in. Thank you Burkhard, for
> >> I hereby nominate this fine essay for POTM.
>
> >> It represents what I think of as the best model for what POTM should
> >> be: �a critical review of an important issue. �That plus the fact that
> >> this is a fascinating topic of which I previously had very little
> >> knowledge. �I now have a lot more.
>
> >> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 02:33:50 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> >> <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> >...
> >seconded
>
> Thirded, if that counts.
>
> --
> � �--- Paul J. Gans
an amazingly concise, well-written piece with cites, on a topic that
on first glance seems to have little to do with this group, but on
mature reflection strikes right at the heart of many of our issues
here.
Chris
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 3:15:55 PM8/12/12
to
of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
> Is that acceptable to you? To kill two people (who may very well be
> criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
> sentence) for every one you get right?
separate issue.
It's irrational to refuse to use a hammer just because someone else once
smashed his thumb with a hammer.
Paul J Gans
Aug 12, 2012, 4:30:12 PM8/12/12
to
Mammon.
Paul J Gans
Aug 12, 2012, 4:33:04 PM8/12/12
to
folks who do believe. That is their right and I respect it. But
I am very conscious of those who keep telling me that God is hot
on my tail and is really going to get me one of these days.
I also think of atheism when I read about freedom-of-religion
spouting folks who want to make religious beliefs part of school
curricula.
But most of the time in my life, it just never comes up. Of course
I hang out in rarified circles populated by sophisticated non-believers.
Paul J Gans
Aug 12, 2012, 4:34:30 PM8/12/12
to
Paul J Gans
Aug 12, 2012, 4:38:08 PM8/12/12
to
devils, djinns, virgins, and gods to think BIG thoughts and post
them here in talk.origins.
>And most criminals are mindless. Kind of makes you not-think....
Richard Norman
Aug 12, 2012, 4:49:18 PM8/12/12
to
general rule. On the other hand, there is Kalkidas.
Burkhard
Aug 12, 2012, 5:11:30 PM8/12/12
to
system,isn't there a possibility that he is reborn only to commit even
worse offences?)
It works of course equally 100% on anyone innocently convicted of a
crime.
Apart from that, the data is rather mixed. Some studies support a
weak deterrent effect (The Impact of Incentives on Human Behavior: Can
We make It Disappear? The Case of the Death Penalty," with Kaj
Gittings. in The Economics of Crime: Lessons for Latin America ;
Rafael DiTella, Sebastian Edwards and Ernesto Schargrodsky (eds.) NBER/
University of Chicago Press. 2010, pp. 379-418) quite a number fail to
find any evidence for it (John J. Donohue III, and Justin Wolfers
(2005), Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty
Debate, Stanford Law Review 58: 791-846) and some find crime actually
goes up. This is attributed either to brutalisation of society, or to
"rising of the stakes" (death penalty is bad news for cops) (William
J. Bowers & Glenn Pierce, Deterrence or Brutalization: What is the
Effect of
Executions?, 26 Crime & Delinq. 453, 456 (1980))
A recent study looked at the changes in Oklahoma after reintroducing
the death penalty, and also found no decrease, but a possibly
attributable increase in crime. (William J. Bowers & Glenn Pierce,
Deterrence or Brutalization: What is the Effect of Executions?, 26
Crime & Delinq. 453, 456 (1980)
This study has the advantage that by focussing on one state over
time, we can assume that most other factors remained constant -
generally though, these studies suffer from the fact that they tend to
be all about the US, which for many reasons is perceived as one biog
anomaly in this debate anyway - the one western democracy that still
uses it widely, putting it into a group with China and Saudi Arabia.
Most Euroepan states e.g. have a much lower crime rate, despite giving
up on the death penalty long ago
There is a potentially interesting side line from this though. as I
said, severity of punishment is much less a factor than likelihood to
be caught/convicted. One reason the UK dropped the death penalty was
that because of the seriousness of the sanction, jurors wanted much
more evidence than in other cases, and simply did not convict - not
because they had any doubts about the amorality of the action, but for
the simple and quite understandable reason that if your decision has
irrevocable consequences . (My own theory is that Mohamed did in fact
try to abolish the death penalty in Sharia law in the same way, by
making the proof standards so high to be impossible to meet,
regrettably his followers seem to have missed the point and now only
apply it in rape cases)
It may well be that different societies are affected in different ways
by this recognition of our fallibility when reasoning about facts. If
the predominant belief system has something like a "kill them all, God
will find his own", or encourages in some other way trust in absolute
truth claims about the factual world, jurors may be more inclined to
ignore what e know about the limits of proof.
>
> And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
> not punishment.
>
enlightenment: As soon as freedom was perceived as a key right and
defining human dignity (and only then) depriving people of freedom
became a viable form of punishment.
> I do not know of any statistics on the efficacy of corporal punishment,
> since it has not been legal in the West for a long time. But I would
> suggest taking a look at, for example, Singapore, one of the most clean
> and orderly places in the world, where corporal punishment has not yet
> fallen prey to the guilt-trips of political correctness and misplaced
> "compassion".
city states. But even with Singapore, I'd argue that the constant
surveillance (by state and neighbours) results in high conviction
rates (that is high rates for the crimes you notice, given Singapore's
key industries, my guess is that there is a significant under-
reporting of the type of crime that is less visible). High conviction
rates, much more than severity of sanctions, is to a degree efficient
as a deterrent - but the costs in terms of loss of liberty are of
course high. That of course fits to the general strict control of
speech, political activities (e.g. the persecution of supporters of
pro democracy activists in Burma), etc etc
There are some studies. In the UK, it was abolished in the 1930 on the
basis of a study in its efficiency, the Cadogan report. A more
comprehensive analysis, focussing however on corporal punishment
outside the judicial system (schools and parents) is here: Murray A.
Straus, Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American
Children (2001). Didn't read the book myself, but the overall result
is highly sceptical of the positive effects, and links it long term to
increase in criminal behaviour.
>
> > Second, it assumes that secular or "heaven centred" religious
> > societies are not punitive. For that too there is little evidence.
> > Quite on the contrary, e have seen a steady increase in the use of
> > penal sanctions in Europe over the last decades - the Labour
> > government during its rain created I think 600 new offences. Makes
> > sense too if you think about it - quite the converse of your analysis
> > seems plausible to me: If I don;t belief in divine sanctions, secular
> > law is all I have (both for satisfying a desire for revenge and for
> > keeping people on the straight and narrow) By contrast, if I think
> > that terrible things will happen to the criminal any way, why should I
> > waste my , except poenergy and money to inflict what is in comparison a minor
> > inconvenience at worst (in comparison to an eternity of re hot pokers
> > up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
> > strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
> > beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
> > the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
> > (as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
> > inclination to meat out some punishment all by myself will also go
> > up.
>
> Again, I suggest that as long as incarceration is regarded as
> "punishment" (and, as you note, incarceration is rather ineffective as a
> deterrent to crime), then societies, whether secular or sacred, are,
> frankly, kidding themselves about achieving law and order.
>
order can be achieved through state action, at least when you mean
with law and order eradicating or minimalising crime, not just
preventing civil war. Also historically, the reason that states took
on the role to hand out punishment was to give the relatives of
victims enough incentive to take matters in their own hands. "If there
has to be violence at least we can have orderly violence", if you
like.
For that, the punishment had to be severe enough to satisfy the
revenge desire of the victims - and of course the "vicarious victims",
people who really like to see harm inflicted on others, but are
normally too timid or too well adjusted to do it randomly by
themselves, but get a warm feeling if the state does it on their
behalf to people they disapprove of. All this talk about deterrence
and other positive social consequences is just post hoc
rationalisation people came up with when it became unfashionable to be
seen driven by vengeance.
> Imprisonment as a punishment, does not fit the crime, (except the crime
> of imprisoning someone else). I am very surprised that no one seems to
> notice this bizarre irony and conclude that the modern concept of
> criminal justice needs radical rethinking.
really want ot base criminal justice on ius talionis (and risk a life
in a society of blind) all forms of property crimes e.g. ought to be
dealt with through fines - one of my former colleagues e.g. advocated
a return to fines as the normal sanction - it can be tailored to both
the offence and the offender and is much more flexible than prison
punishment. This was of course the standard sanction before modernity,
even for serious crimes (e.g. "bloodmoney"). And then there are of
course the recurrent attempts to replace criminal alw with medicine,
some of them rather worrying
Friar Broccoli
Aug 12, 2012, 5:35:58 PM8/12/12
to
On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
[extensive snipping]
>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>
>OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
after being released than any other type of criminal.
If you don't believe me do a google search for:
rate of recidivism for murderers
The first hit I got was:
http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_Offenders.pdf
which included the statement:
"In conclusion, none of the 336 homicide offenders committed another
murder."
So you are correct: killing them is 100% effective, but not killing them
is also 100% effective.
--
Friar Broccoli (Robert Keith Elias), Quebec Canada
I consider ALL arguments in support of my views
[extensive snipping]
>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>
>OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
after being released than any other type of criminal.
If you don't believe me do a google search for:
rate of recidivism for murderers
The first hit I got was:
http://nj.gov/corrections/pdf/REU/Recidivism_Among_Homicide_Offenders.pdf
which included the statement:
"In conclusion, none of the 336 homicide offenders committed another
murder."
So you are correct: killing them is 100% effective, but not killing them
is also 100% effective.
--
Friar Broccoli (Robert Keith Elias), Quebec Canada
I consider ALL arguments in support of my views
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 6:07:50 PM8/12/12
to
offender not to repeat his offenses, then why shouldn't capital
punishment achieve the same result?
> It works of course equally 100% on anyone innocently convicted of a
> crime.
vividly illustrating the problem of dealing with individuals on the
basis of statistical studies of groups.
>> And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
>> not punishment.
>>
>
> It most certainly is relatively new. An interesting consequence of the
> enlightenment: As soon as freedom was perceived as a key right and
> defining human dignity (and only then) depriving people of freedom
> became a viable form of punishment.
you also seem to, that it is "punishment", in the sense of correction.
It seems more like a graduate school of crime.
same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
why what he did was wrong.
Now if he's such a psychopath that even this doesn't work, then he's
utterly without redeeming value, and incorrigible, and must be removed
from the world, by capital punishment or a life sentence. A life
sentence is a complete waste of resources on such an unregenerate demon.
Therefore, kill him.
This is, in fact, an application of the "Golden Rule". The reason why
you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you is
precisely because what you do to others *will* be done to you! If this
is not the case, then the "Golden Rule" is not backed up by anything,
and is therefore without importance.
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 6:22:17 PM8/12/12
to
On 8/12/2012 2:35 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> [extensive snipping]
>
>>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>
>> OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>> of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
>
>
> Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
> kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
> partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
> by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
> no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
> prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
> after being released than any other type of criminal.
But those aren't the people on death row, since, as you say, they get
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> [extensive snipping]
>
>>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>
>> OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>> of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
>
>
> Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
> kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
> partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
> by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
> no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
> prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
> after being released than any other type of criminal.
released from prison.
Paul J Gans
Aug 12, 2012, 7:29:20 PM8/12/12
to
it.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 12, 2012, 7:29:38 PM8/12/12
to
On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:22:17 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>On 8/12/2012 2:35 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>
>> [extensive snipping]
.
>On 8/12/2012 2:35 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>
>> [extensive snipping]
>>>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>>>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>>
>>> OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>>> of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
>>
>>
>> Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
>> kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
>> partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
>> by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
>> no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
>> prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
>> after being released than any other type of criminal.
.
>But those aren't the people on death row, since, as you say, they get
>released from prison.
falsified?
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 7:39:36 PM8/12/12
to
On 8/12/2012 4:29 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:22:17 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
>> On 8/12/2012 2:35 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>>> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>>
>>> [extensive snipping]
>
> .
>
>>>>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>>>>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>>>
>>>> OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>>>> of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
>>>
>>>
>>> Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
>>> kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
>>> partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
>>> by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
>>> no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
>>> prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
>>> after being released than any other type of criminal.
>
> .
>
>> But those aren't the people on death row, since, as you say, they get
>> released from prison.
>
> So you are claiming your model must be true because it cannot be
> falsified?
No. I'm pointing out that your example is of murderers who are deemed
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:22:17 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
>> On 8/12/2012 2:35 PM, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>>> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:15:55 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>>
>>> [extensive snipping]
>
> .
>
>>>>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>>>>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>>>
>>>> OK, so at least 70% were guilty. And if the 70% are excecuted, then 100%
>>>> of that 70% will not commit any more crimes.
>>>
>>>
>>> Most (something like 70% in US and well over 80% elsewhere) murderers
>>> kill people they know: usually a spouse, other relative or business
>>> partner. Most such murderers acted because they were highly stressed
>>> by the "victim" over a long period of time, and most such murderers are
>>> no more likely to murder again than you or I after being released from
>>> prison. Indeed they are far less likely to commit *any* type of crime
>>> after being released than any other type of criminal.
>
> .
>
>> But those aren't the people on death row, since, as you say, they get
>> released from prison.
>
> So you are claiming your model must be true because it cannot be
> falsified?
fit to reside in the general prison population, not those who are on
death row. We were talking about capital punishment. Your examples do
not qualify as capital punishment.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 12, 2012, 8:06:17 PM8/12/12
to
your claim that capital punishment is 100% effective?
Kalkidas
Aug 12, 2012, 8:47:19 PM8/12/12
to
BTW, the study you cited concludes:
"Our study indicates that it is a misconception that homicide offenders
released after long-term incarceration are hardly ever involved in
violent crimes upon release. This misconception stems from several
studies that have found that homicide offenders rarely re-offend with a
second homicide. After analyzing a large volume of data, our study found
that none of the 336 released homicide offenders committed another
homicide, but approximately one-third of both the felony homicide
offenders and general altercation precipitated homicide offenders do
re-offend with new violent or drug offenses."
In other words, although none of the offenders committed another murder,
many of them went on to commit other violent crimes.
And the researchers only kept track of the released offenders for 5
years. Nothing is said about what they did after that.
Mark Isaak
Aug 12, 2012, 10:01:21 PM8/12/12
to
innocent people, then the death penalty is great. If your goal is to
prevent the death of innocent people, then the death penalty is
counterproductive. Your goal, apparently, has no concern whatsoever
with people in general; you are concerned only with the set of people
that the convicted murderer might kill in the future, i.e., with perhaps
one or two people per century.
> >> And perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that incarceration is
> >> not punishment.
> >
> > Give incarceration a try, and then tell us your considered opinion.
>
> That's an invalid argument. One need not experience something in order
> to have a considered opinion on it. That's why we have minds and reason.
opinion is not considered.
> My considered opinion is that punishment should be corrective, and
> should fit the crime.
reason for it, except perhaps that it might make a slightly better
fiction story. A punishment should either deter a crime or provide
restitution, or both. I can think of no other justifiable reason for
punishment. If fitting the crime fits in with either of those, fine,
but there is no reason to make it an end in itself.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 13, 2012, 12:06:47 AM8/13/12
to
- 0% of the people executed were guilty of any crime
- 0% of the people executed would have gone on to commit another crime.
So your original *claim* that:
"Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time."
is completely empty of meaning in the real word. And because that
*claim* is completely meaningless it cannot be falsified.
>
>BTW, the study you cited concludes:
>
>"Our study indicates that it is a misconception that homicide offenders
>released after long-term incarceration are hardly ever involved in
>violent crimes upon release. This misconception stems from several
>studies that have found that homicide offenders rarely re-offend with a
>second homicide. After analyzing a large volume of data, our study found
>that none of the 336 released homicide offenders committed another
>homicide, but approximately one-third of both the felony homicide
>offenders and general altercation precipitated homicide offenders do
>re-offend with new violent or drug offenses."
>
>In other words, although none of the offenders committed another murder,
>many of them went on to commit other violent crimes.
are many problems with that argument, but the most obvious is that about
2/3rds of other criminals go on to commit other crimes, so executing
them would by your reasoning be 200% effective.
jillery
Aug 13, 2012, 12:57:51 AM8/13/12
to
On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:49:18 -0400, Richard Norman
In practice, the rule is to not deliberately insult believers for
their beliefs. However, other reasons seem to be open targets, and
rightfully so.
their beliefs. However, other reasons seem to be open targets, and
rightfully so.
jillery
Aug 13, 2012, 1:06:02 AM8/13/12
to
the forms rightful punishment can take. Assuming punishment itself is
valid, the tendency is for punishment to become cruel and unusual, ie
to exceed the crime.
The argument presented by Mark Isaak above is actually against the
assumption of punishment itself, to redefine it as deterrence or
restitution.
Attila
Aug 13, 2012, 2:11:35 AM8/13/12
to
violent crime) than places that do not have capital punishment? Along with
capital punishment, doesn't America stand out as having the highest
incarceration rate in the world? Are there reasons why this should be so?
In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely
than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. Do Americans think this
is right and proper?
>>
<snip>
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 4:41:34 AM8/13/12
to
"social causes for crime", comparing entire countries is fraught with
dangers, and doing "snapshot comparisons" even more so (e.g. - high
unemployment can be criminogenic, and the countries you compare are
just at a different stage in the economic cycle)
So all you say above is at least consistent with the theory that crime
in the US is for some other reasons way higher than that in Europe -
and would be even higher if there were no capital punishment. Not that
I say this is true,just that it too is consistent with the data.
There are some reasons why this could be the case. One is economic -
my own favourite theory is that economic disparity (rather then simply
poverty) is criminogenic, something that is measured through things
like the Gini index (though other measures, such as polarisation,
work better for crime) - and some studies confirm that hypothesis
(Bourguignon, Franc¸ois. “Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and
Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.” Unpublished
manuscript. Washington, D.C.:World Bank, Development Economics
Research Group,1998.)
So on its own, the comparison with non-capital punishment countries in
Europe does not tell you that much.
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 5:00:31 AM8/13/12
to
On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
<snip>
>
> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
> why what he did was wrong.
That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
<insert justification here>.
Most thieves e.g. have a very clear notion of property entitlement,
and react very badly when things are stolen from them. Generally, the
world does not divide neatly into victims and perpetrators - a study
by some of my colleagues e.g. showed that the very large number of
recipients of victim of crime payouts had a criminal record (a huge
chunk iof crime are violent assaults, often after drinking, e.g. after
football games. One week you were the last man standing and arrested
and charged, the next week you are on the ground and the victim...
And of course, the majority of perpetrators of assaults will have
experienced physical violence in their life, by parents, caregivers or
other gangs. So the "punishment as learning" idea seems to be a bit
far from reality.
There will be variations between crimes - a bit less e.g. for rape
(but even there many abusers have been abused themselves) and this
crime is of course particularly difficult for your approach, unless
you ant the state to hire official rapists (the hangman equivalent)
which seems... problematic.
Dealing offences are another category where a sense of harm may be
missing, especially if as so often the dealer is also a user. How
you'd implement the !equivalence principle there woudl be interesting
to see - would a dealer get drugs as his punishment?
or incarcerated, I also don't want to inflict it on others. But if we
take your point as granted - does that not rather contradict your
stated beliefs? I remember that you argued once that natural disasters
like earthquakes don't really kill "the innocent", but balances out
the bad Karma the victims have accumulated in past lives. So according
to you, reality itself would back up the rule. And that I'd say should
lead to a position where it is much better to leave it to earthquakes
and some such instruments of cosmic justice (which one assumes hits
the right target) than my fallible human reasoning - I could convict
the wrong person and inflict harm on him (which then rebounds on me?)
when as far as the GR or retribution/just deserts are concerned, I
could have left it to nature.
<snip>
>
> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
> why what he did was wrong.
or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
<insert justification here>.
Most thieves e.g. have a very clear notion of property entitlement,
and react very badly when things are stolen from them. Generally, the
world does not divide neatly into victims and perpetrators - a study
by some of my colleagues e.g. showed that the very large number of
recipients of victim of crime payouts had a criminal record (a huge
chunk iof crime are violent assaults, often after drinking, e.g. after
football games. One week you were the last man standing and arrested
and charged, the next week you are on the ground and the victim...
And of course, the majority of perpetrators of assaults will have
experienced physical violence in their life, by parents, caregivers or
other gangs. So the "punishment as learning" idea seems to be a bit
far from reality.
There will be variations between crimes - a bit less e.g. for rape
(but even there many abusers have been abused themselves) and this
crime is of course particularly difficult for your approach, unless
you ant the state to hire official rapists (the hangman equivalent)
which seems... problematic.
Dealing offences are another category where a sense of harm may be
missing, especially if as so often the dealer is also a user. How
you'd implement the !equivalence principle there woudl be interesting
to see - would a dealer get drugs as his punishment?
>
> Now if he's such a psychopath that even this doesn't work, then he's
> utterly without redeeming value, and incorrigible, and must be removed
> from the world, by capital punishment or a life sentence. A life
> sentence is a complete waste of resources on such an unregenerate demon.
> Therefore, kill him.
>
> This is, in fact, an application of the "Golden Rule". The reason why
> you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you is
> precisely because what you do to others *will* be done to you! If this
> is not the case, then the "Golden Rule" is not backed up by anything,
> and is therefore without importance.
Mhh. For me the GR would mean that as I don't want to be hit, killed
> Now if he's such a psychopath that even this doesn't work, then he's
> utterly without redeeming value, and incorrigible, and must be removed
> from the world, by capital punishment or a life sentence. A life
> sentence is a complete waste of resources on such an unregenerate demon.
> Therefore, kill him.
>
> This is, in fact, an application of the "Golden Rule". The reason why
> you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you is
> precisely because what you do to others *will* be done to you! If this
> is not the case, then the "Golden Rule" is not backed up by anything,
> and is therefore without importance.
or incarcerated, I also don't want to inflict it on others. But if we
take your point as granted - does that not rather contradict your
stated beliefs? I remember that you argued once that natural disasters
like earthquakes don't really kill "the innocent", but balances out
the bad Karma the victims have accumulated in past lives. So according
to you, reality itself would back up the rule. And that I'd say should
lead to a position where it is much better to leave it to earthquakes
and some such instruments of cosmic justice (which one assumes hits
the right target) than my fallible human reasoning - I could convict
the wrong person and inflict harm on him (which then rebounds on me?)
when as far as the GR or retribution/just deserts are concerned, I
could have left it to nature.
Attila
Aug 13, 2012, 5:44:03 AM8/13/12
to
favour of this hypothesis in their "The Spirit Level".
>
> So on its own, the comparison with non-capital punishment countries in
> Europe does not tell you that much.
>> In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely
>> than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. Do Americans think
>> this is right and proper?
>>
Any thoughts on this point? I would take it as evidence that the American
> So on its own, the comparison with non-capital punishment countries in
> Europe does not tell you that much.
>> In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely
>> than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. Do Americans think
>> this is right and proper?
>>
legal system is fundamentally flawed and deeply racist in nature. I do not
believe that Florida is merely the "bad apple" (should I say "bad orange"?)
of the US. Many other states show this pattern in a less extreme fashion.
>> <snip>
Richard Norman
Aug 13, 2012, 9:55:53 AM8/13/12
to
too much of the American legal system. I do wish to point out that
many other countries who once felt so superior are finding themselves
to be just as bad (if not worse) once significant numbers of minority
groups reside there. Cultural and racial clashes, discriminatory
laws, and the unequal application of the law turns out to be far too
universal a phenomenon. We must all work to eradicate these problems
while not pointing fingers and arguing whether the pot is blacker than
the kettle.
Attila
Aug 13, 2012, 10:57:05 AM8/13/12
to
a death penalty and withoug waging nonstop wars and without spending more on
"defense" then the next 14 countries combined and without declaring
themselves the leader of the world and, of course, the greatest country in
the world. I could go on but you get the idea. As for countries which "felt
so superior are finding themselves to be just as bad (if not worse) once
significant numbers of minority groups reside there," you could well be
right but I'd like to know the names of those countries and the categories
which you claim are just as bad (if not worse) than the US. Oh, and I'm not
sure who you think is the "minority group" in the issue of white vs. non-
white victims of the death penalty.
Glenn
Aug 13, 2012, 11:38:01 AM8/13/12
to
"Attila" <jdka...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:k0b4k2$92f$1...@dont-email.me...
aren't misusing statistics.
Mitchell Coffey
Aug 13, 2012, 12:30:58 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 12, 4:38 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> >On 8/11/2012 5:59 PM, Richard Norman wrote:
> >> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:47:58 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>> On 8/11/2012 5:19 PM, Richard Norman wrote:
> >>>> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:14:09 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On 8/11/2012 4:43 PM, Paul J Gans wrote:
> Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> >On 8/11/2012 5:59 PM, Richard Norman wrote:
> >> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:47:58 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>> On 8/11/2012 5:19 PM, Richard Norman wrote:
> >>>> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:14:09 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On 8/11/2012 4:43 PM, Paul J Gans wrote:
I object: no man with a young daughter denies the existence of
virgins.
Mitchell
Mitchell Coffey
Aug 13, 2012, 12:38:12 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 13, 12:57 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:49:18 -0400, Richard Norman
>
>
>
>
>
> <r_s_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:33:04 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans
> ><gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:49:18 -0400, Richard Norman
>
>
>
>
>
> <r_s_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:33:04 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans
> ><gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> >>Richard Norman <r_s_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >>>On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:14:09 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>>>On 8/11/2012 4:43 PM, Paul J Gans wrote:
> >>>On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:14:09 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>
> >>>>On 8/11/2012 4:43 PM, Paul J Gans wrote:
only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
Then again, he also wrote "I believe that the evidence for immortality
is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more
respect."
Mitchell
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 1:05:36 PM8/13/12
to
cases in Singapore and Saudi Arabia, though that could reflect the
reliance of these countries on foreign workers, so a
disproportionately large number of young males (the most common crime
group) are foreigners. Maybe more surprising, post-Apartheid South
Africa continued for quite a while to convict (against crime trends)
mainly black offenders to capital punishment (by a stil mainly white
judiciary, and with a clear correlation to ethnicity of victim and
perpetration) That was one of the reasons for its eventual abolition.
(The State v T. Makwanyane and M. Mchunu, [6 June 1995], Case No. CCT/
3/94, para. 48) China also applies the death penalty selectively, but
there it is on all accounts part of an official policy to crush local
dissidents from ethnic minorities.
Mitchell Coffey
Aug 13, 2012, 12:59:38 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 11, 5:33�am, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
> A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
> of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
> cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
> type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
> invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
> thought it might be of interest to TO
[snip]
> Given a certain tendency to shoot at messengers, especially when as in
> A new study on the impact of religion on crime rate has caused a bit
> of a stir,and as the authors link it also to the evolution of
> cooperation and the evolution of religion (as one of the "social glue"
> type of theories that advocate that a tendency to reason about
> invisible powerful entities was selected for in our distant past), I
> thought it might be of interest to TO
I wonder how such studies account for the fact that, in the United
States, the majority of criminal incidents, and by by the majority of
the monetary loss to crime, is white collar, and hardly ever punished.
I understand why people would be most frightened and concerned with
crime that is violent or steals their property directly, but we are
talking about the effect of post mortem punishment, overseen by
someone who is sure to notice. Surely cases like taking office
supplies home, or most forms of cheating on ones taxes, would be
perfect tests of the efficacy of devine sanction - exactly because
they shouldn't be expected to draw earthly attention.
Mitchell Coffey
Kalkidas
Aug 13, 2012, 1:18:15 PM8/13/12
to
commit any more crimes.
> - 0% of the people executed would have gone on to commit another crime.
whether or not a criminal would or wouldn't have committed more crimes
if he had or hadn't been punished? No one has a time machine.
> So your original *claim* that:
> "Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time."
>
> is completely empty of meaning in the real word. And because that
> *claim* is completely meaningless it cannot be falsified.
nothing. I really can't understand why.
>> BTW, the study you cited concludes:
>>
>> "Our study indicates that it is a misconception that homicide offenders
>> released after long-term incarceration are hardly ever involved in
>> violent crimes upon release. This misconception stems from several
>> studies that have found that homicide offenders rarely re-offend with a
>> second homicide. After analyzing a large volume of data, our study found
>> that none of the 336 released homicide offenders committed another
>> homicide, but approximately one-third of both the felony homicide
>> offenders and general altercation precipitated homicide offenders do
>> re-offend with new violent or drug offenses."
>>
>> In other words, although none of the offenders committed another murder,
>> many of them went on to commit other violent crimes.
>
> Yes about 1/3rd of murders went on to commit a different crime. There
> are many problems with that argument, but the most obvious is that about
> 2/3rds of other criminals go on to commit other crimes, so executing
> them would by your reasoning be 200% effective.
homicides chosen were generally not of the type that warrants a death
penalty.
[snip]
Kalkidas
Aug 13, 2012, 1:29:25 PM8/13/12
to
On 8/13/2012 2:00 AM, Burkhard wrote:
> On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>
>> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
>> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
>> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
>> why what he did was wrong.
>
> That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
> or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
> mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
> that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
> wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
> <insert justification here>.
Knowing one is wrong intellectually is not the same as experiencing the
> On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>
>> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
>> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
>> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
>> why what he did was wrong.
>
> That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
> or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
> mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
> that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
> wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
> <insert justification here>.
wrong first-hand. And usually it's not enough to convince criminals to
reform themselves. After all, that is the justification of punishment.
I think that the variations of the adage about walking a mile in
someone's shoes really applies. Nothing brings morality home like
first-hand experience.
And as you no doubt know, habitual criminals are nothing if not adept at
feigning remorse. So let them have some *real* remorse.
sometimes by criminal justice systems.
Kalkidas
Aug 13, 2012, 1:34:38 PM8/13/12
to
himself so that he no longer wants to commit the offense. He must know
that he is responsible for causing specific suffering to others. The
best way to instill this knowledge in him is to do to him what he did to
others.
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 1:41:55 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 13, 6:29 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> On 8/13/2012 2:00 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>
> > On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > <snip>
>
> >> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
> >> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
> >> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
> >> why what he did was wrong.
>
> > That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
> > or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
> > mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
> > that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
> > wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
> > <insert justification here>.
>
> Knowing one is wrong intellectually is not the same as experiencing the
> wrong first-hand. And usually it's not enough to convince criminals to
> reform themselves. After all, that is the justification of punishment.
>
> I think that the variations of the adage about walking a mile in
> someone's shoes really applies. Nothing brings morality home like
> first-hand experience.
>
Well, but as I said, the data indicates that the a significant
> On 8/13/2012 2:00 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>
> > On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > <snip>
>
> >> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
> >> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
> >> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
> >> why what he did was wrong.
>
> > That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
> > or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
> > mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
> > that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
> > wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
> > <insert justification here>.
>
> Knowing one is wrong intellectually is not the same as experiencing the
> wrong first-hand. And usually it's not enough to convince criminals to
> reform themselves. After all, that is the justification of punishment.
>
> I think that the variations of the adage about walking a mile in
> someone's shoes really applies. Nothing brings morality home like
> first-hand experience.
>
percentage of criminals does _have_ first hadn experience. Very strong
in sexual abuse cases, and also for assault.
are fewer natural disasters? Looks like a testable theory to me...
Attila
Aug 13, 2012, 1:53:31 PM8/13/12
to
conclusions.
http://www.all-creatures.org/murti/next-18.html
Kalkidas
Aug 13, 2012, 1:54:39 PM8/13/12
to
On 8/13/2012 10:41 AM, Burkhard wrote:
> On Aug 13, 6:29 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>> On 8/13/2012 2:00 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>>> On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>
>>>> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
>>>> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
>>>> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
>>>> why what he did was wrong.
>>
>>> That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
>>> or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
>>> mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
>>> that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
>>> wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
>>> <insert justification here>.
>>
>> Knowing one is wrong intellectually is not the same as experiencing the
>> wrong first-hand. And usually it's not enough to convince criminals to
>> reform themselves. After all, that is the justification of punishment.
>>
>> I think that the variations of the adage about walking a mile in
>> someone's shoes really applies. Nothing brings morality home like
>> first-hand experience.
>>
>
> Well, but as I said, the data indicates that the a significant
> percentage of criminals does _have_ first hadn experience. Very strong
> in sexual abuse cases, and also for assault.
Well, perhaps they're too far gone then and need to be permanently
> On Aug 13, 6:29 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>> On 8/13/2012 2:00 AM, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>>> On Aug 12, 11:07 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>
>>>> My basic assertion is this: that an offender ought to experience the
>>>> same kind of suffering he inflicted on his victim(s). He ought to
>>>> experience how he made others feel. Then he will know without a doubt
>>>> why what he did was wrong.
>>
>>> That assumes that criminals don't know that what they did was wrong -
>>> or rather, harmful to the victim. apart from the psychopath you
>>> mention below, I think that is the exception rather than the norm, and
>>> that most know that their actions are both harmful and, in general
>>> wrong - just not wrong "for them" at this point in time, because of
>>> <insert justification here>.
>>
>> Knowing one is wrong intellectually is not the same as experiencing the
>> wrong first-hand. And usually it's not enough to convince criminals to
>> reform themselves. After all, that is the justification of punishment.
>>
>> I think that the variations of the adage about walking a mile in
>> someone's shoes really applies. Nothing brings morality home like
>> first-hand experience.
>>
>
> Well, but as I said, the data indicates that the a significant
> percentage of criminals does _have_ first hadn experience. Very strong
> in sexual abuse cases, and also for assault.
removed from the game.
natural justice are mutually exclusive, so that an increase in one means
a decrease in the other. The intelligence that presides over reality is
not limited to using one tool at a time. He has many hands.
A sane person believes that reality is benevolent, and that therefore
justice will prevail in the long run.
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 1:39:03 PM8/13/12
to
crime rate for the offences they did look at - which as I said may
differ in varying degree from the actual crime rate. For rape in
particular, there is significant under-reporting in all jurisdictions.
The same I suspect for human trafficking. As i said, one could
hypothesise that the divergence between actual and reported crime is
(also) dependent on religious belief sets - as was the case with
suicide in Durkheim's famous study.
But then there is as you say the issue of choosing offences to
compare in the first place. Now, the reason they have chosen the "big
ones" are first that the data there is more reliable (tax crime has an
even worse under-reported prevalence, and certain types of fraud
simply destroy the statistics - technically speaking, every Nigerian
spam you get is an attempted fraud, so if you were to account for the
million of crimes that this creates, all other signal from the
statistics is drowned out) The final reason is that researchers who do
country comparison try to take offences where attitudes are similar -
the core criminal offences where everybody agrees they are real
crimes. With low level office theft (perk or crime?) or tax (evasion
or efficient management?) that is less obvious.
The authors of the paper deal with this through their lab experiments
that are referenced - these types of etst run by behavioural
economists typically look at low level cheating in otherwise
meaningless game situations, e.g. simple card or bidding games
For tax evasion though, there are also some studies that look at
correlations between reported religious beliefs and preponderance to
commit tax evasion. The interest here is to look at a crime where the
victim is diffused - "the community" rather than any specific
individual They are therefore a good test case for the "moral
community" model of religion as crime deterrent (according to which
it is less important what the individual actually beliefs, but whether
or not they interact actively with a strong community that reinforces
expectations of behaviour on its members - "would a good Jewish/
protestant/catholic/wiccan" boy/girl do this? No! Only amoral Jewish/
protestant/catholic/wiccan boys/girls are that shameless")
Here are a few :
Steven Stack, Augusta Kposowa: The Effect of Religiosity on Tax Fraud
Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis, Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion, Volume 45, Issue 3, pages 325–351, September 2006
Grasmick, H., R. Bursik, and J. Cochran. 1991. Render unto caesar what
is caesar's: Religiosity and taxpayers inclinations to cheat.
Sociological Quarterly 32:251–66.
I'm not up to date with the results I must admit
Glenn
Aug 13, 2012, 2:07:41 PM8/13/12
to
news:k0beus$da0$1...@dont-email.me...
> >> >>> (Bourguignon, Franc?ois. ?Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and
> >> >>> Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.? Unpublished
I suppose I deserved that.
> >> >>> Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.? Unpublished
Glenn
Aug 13, 2012, 2:07:41 PM8/13/12
to
news:k0beus$da0$1...@dont-email.me...
> >> >>> (Bourguignon, Franc?ois. ?Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and
> >> >>> Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.? Unpublished
> >> >>> Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.? Unpublished
Attila
Aug 13, 2012, 2:59:53 PM8/13/12
to
is a far cry from talking about "guest workers" in Saudi Arabia. The vast
majority of the ancestors of the former category did not exactly come to the
states voluntarily. According to recent statistics it is becoming rather
problematic to consider non-whites a "minority".
Putting the USA in a class with Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the PRC might
disturb some but as you've brought it up let's have a quick look at
incarceration rates in those countries (2009).
USA 743 per 100.000
Saudi Arabia 178 per 100.000
PRC 119 per 100.000
Singapore 229 per 100.000 (in 1994; US rate was 519 in that year)
and the breakdown of incarceration by groups in the USA (mid-year 2008)
727 White males were incarcerated per 100,000 White males
1760 Hispanic males were incarcerated per 100,000 Hispanic males
4777 Black males were incarcerated per 100,000 Black males
1 in 355 White women aged 35-39
1 in 297 Hispanic women aged 35-39
1 in 100 Black women aged 35-39
Paul J Gans
Aug 13, 2012, 3:35:05 PM8/13/12
to
Mitchell Coffey <mitchel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>>> academies") , it varies hugely ?between crimes (for obvious reasons
>> >>>> really do have to practice to get good at it. ?Professionals, of
>> >>>> course, continue to practice every day to maintain their skills. ?I
>> >> difficult than it looks. ?Try, for example, NOT thinking about a pink
>> >> elephant! ?And they don't even exist. ?Not thinking about an
the cult of virgins in the world (and especially in the US) seems
religious like to me.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
>> >>>>>>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>> >>>>>>> findings here apply across the board.
>>
>> >>>>>>> Second, it assumes that secular or "heaven centred" religious
>> >>>>>>> societies are not punitive. For that too there is little evidence.
>> >>>>>>> Quite on the contrary, e have seen a steady increase in the use of
>> >>>>>>> penal sanctions in Europe over the last decades - the Labour
>> >>>>>>> government during its rain created I think 600 new offences. Makes
>> >>>>>>> sense too if you think about it - quite the converse of your analysis
>> >>>>>>> seems plausible to me: If I don;t belief in divine sanctions, secular
>> >>>>>>> law is all I have (both for satisfying a desire for revenge and for
>> >>>>>>> keeping people on the straight and narrow) By contrast, if I think
>> >>>>>>> that terrible things will happen to the criminal any way, why should I
>> >>>>>>> waste my energy and money to inflict what is in comparison a minor
>> >>>>>>> inconvenience at worst (in comparison to an eternity of re hot pokers
>> >>>>>>> up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
>> >>>>>>> strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
>> >>>>>>> beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
>> >>>>>>> the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
>> >>>>>>> (as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
>> >>>>>>> inclination to meat out some ?punishment all by myself will also go
>> >>>>>>> findings here apply across the board.
>>
>> >>>>>>> Second, it assumes that secular or "heaven centred" religious
>> >>>>>>> societies are not punitive. For that too there is little evidence.
>> >>>>>>> Quite on the contrary, e have seen a steady increase in the use of
>> >>>>>>> penal sanctions in Europe over the last decades - the Labour
>> >>>>>>> government during its rain created I think 600 new offences. Makes
>> >>>>>>> sense too if you think about it - quite the converse of your analysis
>> >>>>>>> seems plausible to me: If I don;t belief in divine sanctions, secular
>> >>>>>>> law is all I have (both for satisfying a desire for revenge and for
>> >>>>>>> keeping people on the straight and narrow) By contrast, if I think
>> >>>>>>> that terrible things will happen to the criminal any way, why should I
>> >>>>>>> waste my energy and money to inflict what is in comparison a minor
>> >>>>>>> inconvenience at worst (in comparison to an eternity of re hot pokers
>> >>>>>>> up your backside), The US are as so often the odd one out, where
>> >>>>>>> strong desire for (secular) punishment coincides with strong religious
>> >>>>>>> beliefs - and as the studies show, these themselves may contribute to
>> >>>>>>> the higher than average homicide rate if I believe in absolute values
>> >>>>>>> (as you put it, I never quite understood what that means), my
>> >>>>>>> up.
>>
>> >>>>>> It would be interesting to know the crime rate among practicing
>> >>>>>> atheists. ?But I expect such data is either missing or untrustworthy.
>>
>> >>>>>> It would be interesting to know the crime rate among practicing
>>
>> >>>>> How does one "practice" atheism anyway? I mean, atheism is a negation of
>> >>>>> something rather than an affirmation.
>>
>> >>>> Reall atheists know that it doesn't come all that naturally. ?You
>> >>>>> How does one "practice" atheism anyway? I mean, atheism is a negation of
>> >>>>> something rather than an affirmation.
>>
>> >>>> really do have to practice to get good at it. ?Professionals, of
>> >>>> course, continue to practice every day to maintain their skills. ?I
>> >>>> think that is what Paul meant.
>>
>> >>> So how does one "practice" a negation? Does one, for example, practice
>> >>> "not praying"? Does one practice "not going to church"?
>>
>> >>> What exactly is there to practice?
>>
>> >> It is a highly skilled process that is difficult to explain in words.
>> >> It is best learned with a professional experienced tutor or coach who
>> >> can guide you through the proper technique. ?It really is far more
>>
>> >>> So how does one "practice" a negation? Does one, for example, practice
>> >>> "not praying"? Does one practice "not going to church"?
>>
>> >>> What exactly is there to practice?
>>
>> >> It is a highly skilled process that is difficult to explain in words.
>> >> It is best learned with a professional experienced tutor or coach who
>> >> difficult than it looks. ?Try, for example, NOT thinking about a pink
>> >> elephant! ?And they don't even exist. ?Not thinking about an
>> >> omnipresent, omnipotent, and ominscient deity who knows your every
>> >> thought (or absence thereof) is incredibly more difficult.
>> >Then it seems that, for an atheist, a mind is a terrible thing to have!
>>
>> Not at all. ?We use the empty space freed up by not believing in
>> >> thought (or absence thereof) is incredibly more difficult.
>> >Then it seems that, for an atheist, a mind is a terrible thing to have!
>>
>> devils, djinns, virgins, and gods to think BIG thoughts and post
>> them here in talk.origins.
>[snip]
>I object: no man with a young daughter denies the existence of
>virgins.
Having had two of those myself, I see your point. Nevertheless
>> them here in talk.origins.
>[snip]
>I object: no man with a young daughter denies the existence of
>virgins.
the cult of virgins in the world (and especially in the US) seems
religious like to me.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
Richard Norman
Aug 13, 2012, 4:20:31 PM8/13/12
to
>>>> Inequality:A Review Focusing on Developing Countries.? Unpublished
no excuse or justification other than it was commonplace in Europe and
still exists in Japan (not to mention being widespread in other parts
of the world). As to American imperialism and jingoism, we are just
the most recent to do this. Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium
and Italy all had imperialistic hands in Africa and Asia within recent
(living) memory. I seem to recall Germany, Italy, and Japan being
involved in some war waging not to mention something about the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (although that was was not in my
living memory). The USSR and China also had designs on world
domination: China still might.
More to the point. In times not so long ago it seems that Jews were
not treated all too kindly in central and eastern Europe and the Roma
are still heavily discriminated against. The Bosnians also had a few
problems with the Serbs in your own back yars. The breakdown of the
USSR freed nationalistic and nativistic pent up emotions all
throughout eastern Europe.
Less than a month ago "Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe�s human
rights commissioner, called on governments to do more to combat
anti-Muslim discrimination and said lawmakers should stop targeting
the religious group through legislation or policy"
"Muiznieks � a Latvian human rights activist who began work as
commissioner in April � singled out several European nations for
legislation affecting Muslims in particular, including France and
Belgium � which have banned the full-face veils worn by some Muslim
women.
Similar initiatives have been discussed in Austria, Bosnia, Denmark,
the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, he said.
...A recent EU study found one in three Muslims in the EU had
experienced some form of discrimination in the past 12 months and one
in four had been stopped by the police."
http://tribune.com.pk/story/412468/council-of-europe-slams-governments-for-anti-muslim-laws/
There is the article
Is Immigration Fueling the Rise of Nativism in Europe
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/05/is-immigration-fueling-the-rise-of-nativism-in-europe.php
relating racist and discriminatory groups to increased immigration.
In particular I was thinking of Holland and Sweden as countries
ordinarily thought of as fair and tolerant but with really significant
nativist and anti-muslim/anti-immigrant political and social
movements. Of course you can add the problems of Turks in Germany,
Algerians in France, and the old skinhead tradition of "Paki-bashing"
in England.
Why not add very recent outbursts against black athletes and
spectators at football (soccer) matches, the outcries against police
racial profiling in Spain, the claim by the Turkish foreign minister
"that racism is on the rise across the European continent, offering
neo-Nazi murders in Germany and xenophobic political developments in
France and other countries as examples."
http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=8245A37FCB147ABB18A27841067969AB?newsId=275115
Walter Bushell
Aug 13, 2012, 4:55:45 PM8/13/12
to
In article <k0940m$3v6$5...@reader1.panix.com>,
> What is there to practice if one is religious? Prayers?
Fasts, feasts, trips to Mecca, Sabbaths, reading scriptures and so on.
--
This space unintentionally left blank.
> What is there to practice if one is religious? Prayers?
Fasts, feasts, trips to Mecca, Sabbaths, reading scriptures and so on.
--
This space unintentionally left blank.
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 4:32:25 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 13, 9:20 pm, Richard Norman <r_s_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >>>> (Bourguignon, Franc�ois. ?Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and
You mean when that bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he
was hungry, and thus started the war?
was hungry, and thus started the war?
Mark Isaak
Aug 13, 2012, 7:09:54 PM8/13/12
to
though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the efficacy
of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
Burkhard
Aug 13, 2012, 7:19:04 PM8/13/12
to
On Aug 13, 9:55 pm, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <k0940m$3v...@reader1.panix.com>,
> In article <k0940m$3v...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > What is there to practice if one is religious? Prayers?
>
> Fasts, feasts, trips to Mecca, Sabbaths, reading scriptures and so on.
>
> --
You have to practice these things? They sound quite simple.
>
> > What is there to practice if one is religious? Prayers?
>
> Fasts, feasts, trips to Mecca, Sabbaths, reading scriptures and so on.
>
> --
Kalkidas
Aug 13, 2012, 7:40:59 PM8/13/12
to
their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
"know" the wrong they've done.
I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 13, 2012, 11:27:55 PM8/13/12
to
>>> It's not a "claim", it's an observation that dead men don't commit crimes.
>>
>> That "observation" is true even if
>> - 0% of the people executed were guilty of any crime
>
>But that's not true. 70% of them were guilty. So the guilty ones won't
>commit any more crimes.
completely innocent people (some of whom would have gone on to commit
other crimes) is also 100% effective.
>> - 0% of the people executed would have gone on to commit another crime.
>
>That applies to all crimes, not just capital crimes. How can anyone say
>whether or not a criminal would or wouldn't have committed more crimes
>if he had or hadn't been punished? No one has a time machine.
of capital punishment, your claim that "capital punishment certainly
works 100% of the time" is not falsifiable.
>> So your original *claim* that:
>> "Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time."
>>
>> is completely empty of meaning in the real word. And because that
>> *claim* is completely meaningless it cannot be falsified.
>
>No. What's going on is that you're just trying to pick a fight over
>nothing. I really can't understand why.
punishment certainly works 100% of the time" is either meaningless, or
(when given substantive meaning) false. This fight (which I inherited
from Chris Thompson - [I didn't pick it]) is over something.
>>> BTW, the study you cited concludes:
>>>
>>> "Our study indicates that it is a misconception that homicide offenders
>>> released after long-term incarceration are hardly ever involved in
>>> violent crimes upon release. This misconception stems from several
>>> studies that have found that homicide offenders rarely re-offend with a
>>> second homicide. After analyzing a large volume of data, our study found
>>> that none of the 336 released homicide offenders committed another
>>> homicide, but approximately one-third of both the felony homicide
>>> offenders and general altercation precipitated homicide offenders do
>>> re-offend with new violent or drug offenses."
>>>
>>> In other words, although none of the offenders committed another murder,
>>> many of them went on to commit other violent crimes.
.
>> Yes about 1/3rd of murders went on to commit a different crime. There
>> are many problems with that argument, but the most obvious is that about
>> 2/3rds of other criminals go on to commit other crimes, so executing
>> them would by your reasoning be 200% effective.
>
>But again, this study was not of people on death row. The categories of
>homicides chosen were generally not of the type that warrants a death
>penalty.
most European countries have zero murderers on death row, because the
death penalty has been abolished. As a group murderers are always
found to have a (usually much) lower rate of recidivism than other
felony offenders following their release.
--
Friar Broccoli (Robert Keith Elias), Quebec Canada
I consider ALL arguments in support of my views
Attila
Aug 14, 2012, 5:49:45 AM8/14/12
to
Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 8/12/12 11:04 AM, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>> On 8/11/2012 7:00 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> > On 8/11/12 2:24 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>> >> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>> >>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>> >>>> [...]
>> >>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
>> >>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
>> >>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective
>> punishment --
>> >>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
>> >>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
>> >>>
>> >>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
>> >>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
>> >>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which
>> >>> there is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have
>> >>> an positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as
>> >>> "crime
>> >>> academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
>> >>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>> >>> findings here apply across the board.
>> >>
> On 8/12/12 11:04 AM, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>> On 8/11/2012 7:00 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> > On 8/11/12 2:24 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>> >> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
>> >>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
>> >>>> [...]
>> >>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
>> >>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
>> >>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective
>> punishment --
>> >>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
>> >>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
>> >>>
>> >>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
>> >>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
>> >>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which
>> >>> there is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have
>> >>> an positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as
>> >>> "crime
>> >>> academies") , it varies hugely between crimes (for obvious reasons
>> >>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
>> >>> findings here apply across the board.
>> >>
>> >> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
>> >
>> >
for a book, eh?) could someone explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent
a single day in prison. He makes Bin Laden look like a complete amateur in
the field of killing Americans. It is now the Amercian view that
corporations are entitled to free speech but apparently exempt from capital
punishment or indeed any other form of phyical punishment such as
incarceration. Granted it would be hard to give a corporation a lethal
injection with the families of victims corporate crimes lookng on to
experience "closure" but maybe "real" humans responsible for the corporate
decisions might be held to account. In the extreme cases such as Vioxx,
Merck had to pay a fine (a negligible one at that compared to its profits).
The President could have easily had the CEO hunted down and killed by Navy
Seals without any tiresome legal niceties like a trial. Granted most of
Gilmartin's victims were old geezers like me, still we're not entirely
useless (or at least that's not the absolutely unanimous opinion).
Friar Broccoli
Aug 14, 2012, 6:40:30 AM8/14/12
to
report bad news to them. Indeed it is a problem all the way up the
chain of command. No one wants to report bad news to their boss.
Even when bad news does manage to reach the top decision makers, it is
frequently watered down so much that the men at the top really have no
idea how bad the problem actually is.
I have no knowledge of any kind on this particular case, but there is
good reason to suspect that Gilmartin had no clear information about
what was going on with Vioxx until just before it was pulled from the
market.
>He makes Bin Laden look like a complete amateur in
>the field of killing Americans. It is now the Amercian view that
>corporations are entitled to free speech but apparently exempt from capital
>punishment or indeed any other form of phyical punishment such as
>incarceration. Granted it would be hard to give a corporation a lethal
>injection with the families of victims corporate crimes lookng on to
>experience "closure" but maybe "real" humans responsible for the corporate
>decisions might be held to account. In the extreme cases such as Vioxx,
>Merck had to pay a fine (a negligible one at that compared to its profits).
>The President could have easily had the CEO hunted down and killed by Navy
>Seals without any tiresome legal niceties like a trial. Granted most of
>Gilmartin's victims were old geezers like me, still we're not entirely
>useless (or at least that's not the absolutely unanimous opinion).
Walter Bushell
Aug 14, 2012, 8:25:29 AM8/14/12
to
In article
<c3b0358e-efff-4500...@g13g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>,
Simple like being a doctor. Collect the patients complaints, prescribe
the pills that address the symptoms that are recommended by your
favorite drug rep.
"He wore a white coat and acted arrogant, how were we to know he
wasn't a doctor?"
<c3b0358e-efff-4500...@g13g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>,
the pills that address the symptoms that are recommended by your
favorite drug rep.
"He wore a white coat and acted arrogant, how were we to know he
wasn't a doctor?"
Walter Bushell
Aug 14, 2012, 9:01:52 AM8/14/12
to
In article
<a0760b03-557a-459c...@l10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 12, 2:04�ｿｽpm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > On 8/11/2012 7:00 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > �ｿｽ> On 8/11/12 2:24 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>>>> [...]
> > �ｿｽ>>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
> > �ｿｽ>>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
> > �ｿｽ>>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
> > �ｿｽ>>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
> > �ｿｽ>>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
> > �ｿｽ>>>
> > �ｿｽ>>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
> > �ｿｽ>>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
> > �ｿｽ>>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
> > �ｿｽ>>> is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
> > �ｿｽ>>> positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
> > �ｿｽ>>> academies") , it varies hugely �ｿｽbetween crimes (for obvious reasons
> > �ｿｽ>>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
> > �ｿｽ>>> findings here apply across the board.
> > �ｿｽ>>
> > �ｿｽ>> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
> > �ｿｽ>
> > �ｿｽ> No, it does not. �ｿｽCapital punishment gets innocent people killed, shows
> > �ｿｽ> little if any (or possibly even negative) deterrence effect, and is only
> > �ｿｽ> trivially superior to a less expensive measure at preventing recidivism.
> criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
> sentence) for every one you get right?
>
> Personally, I have nothing against capital punishment. I see things on
> TV, I read things in the paper, I get news from the web. Do I think
> the Arizona shooter should be executed? Yes, I do.
>
> But...that 30% in Illinois keeps coming back to me. It's just not
> worth it to kill two innocent people just to see the Arizona shooter
> die for his crime. Just. Not. Worth. It.
>
> Chris
> snip
Didn't you make a math error? 30% innocent is very close to for every
2 guilty person we execute one innocent.
Now the penalty of death is only applied when the alternative is life,
which is arguably a fate worse than death, so does it really matter?
<a0760b03-557a-459c...@l10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 12, 2:04�ｿｽpm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > On 8/11/2012 7:00 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>> On 8/11/2012 1:48 PM, Burkhard wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>>> On Aug 11, 6:23 pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:
> > �ｿｽ>>>> [...]
> > �ｿｽ>>>> On the other hand, a rational philosophy, which acknowledges the
> > �ｿｽ>>>> potential of human nature to become corrupt, and which acknowledges
> > �ｿｽ>>>> absolutes, will have no problem in exercising corrective punishment --
> > �ｿｽ>>>> as little as possible and as much as necessary -- to protect the
> > �ｿｽ>>>> society. Hence criminals are punished and crime goes down.
> > �ｿｽ>>>
> > �ｿｽ>>> That is one possibility the authors flag up, though they prefer the
> > �ｿｽ>>> "direct causality" model. There are a couple of problems with your
> > �ｿｽ>>> explanation. First, it assumes that deterrence works - for which there
> > �ｿｽ>>> is scant evidence. To the limited degree that it seems to have an
> > �ｿｽ>>> positive effect (very often it has a negative one - prisons as "crime
> > �ｿｽ>>> academies") , it varies hugely �ｿｽbetween crimes (for obvious reasons
> > �ｿｽ>>> the more emotional the deed, the less efficient deterrence) yet the
> > �ｿｽ>>> findings here apply across the board.
> > �ｿｽ>>
> > �ｿｽ>> Well, capital punishment certainly works 100% of the time.
> > �ｿｽ>
> > �ｿｽ> No, it does not. �ｿｽCapital punishment gets innocent people killed, shows
> > �ｿｽ> little if any (or possibly even negative) deterrence effect, and is only
> > �ｿｽ> trivially superior to a less expensive measure at preventing recidivism.
> >
> > Is there any criminal who has been executed and who has continued to
> > commit crimes? If not, then capital punishment works 100% of the time.
> >
>
> > Is there any criminal who has been executed and who has continued to
> > commit crimes? If not, then capital punishment works 100% of the time.
> >
>
> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>
> Is that acceptable to you? To kill two people (who may very well be
> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>
> criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
> sentence) for every one you get right?
>
> Personally, I have nothing against capital punishment. I see things on
> TV, I read things in the paper, I get news from the web. Do I think
> the Arizona shooter should be executed? Yes, I do.
>
> But...that 30% in Illinois keeps coming back to me. It's just not
> worth it to kill two innocent people just to see the Arizona shooter
> die for his crime. Just. Not. Worth. It.
>
> Chris
> snip
Didn't you make a math error? 30% innocent is very close to for every
2 guilty person we execute one innocent.
Now the penalty of death is only applied when the alternative is life,
which is arguably a fate worse than death, so does it really matter?
Walter Bushell
Aug 14, 2012, 9:04:00 AM8/14/12
to
In article <k0a5qo$9iu$1...@dont-email.me>, Attila <jdka...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Does anyone make that claim that America is safer (e.g. has lower rate of
> violent crime) than places that do not have capital punishment? Along with
> capital punishment, doesn't America stand out as having the highest
> incarceration rate in the world? Are there reasons why this should be so?
wrote:
> Does anyone make that claim that America is safer (e.g. has lower rate of
> violent crime) than places that do not have capital punishment? Along with
> capital punishment, doesn't America stand out as having the highest
> incarceration rate in the world? Are there reasons why this should be so?
> In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely
> than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. Do Americans think this
> is right and proper?
Apparently so.
> than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. Do Americans think this
> is right and proper?
Mark Isaak
Aug 14, 2012, 11:35:13 AM8/14/12
to
On 8/14/12 6:01 AM, Walter Bushell wrote:
> In article
> <a0760b03-557a-459c...@l10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
> chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
> In article
> <a0760b03-557a-459c...@l10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
> chris thompson <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> As shown in Illinois, up to 30% of the people on death row were
>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>
>> Is that acceptable to you? To kill two people (who may very well be
>> criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
>> sentence) for every one you get right?
>>
>> Personally, I have nothing against capital punishment. I see things on
>> TV, I read things in the paper, I get news from the web. Do I think
>> the Arizona shooter should be executed? Yes, I do.
>>
>> But...that 30% in Illinois keeps coming back to me. It's just not
>> worth it to kill two innocent people just to see the Arizona shooter
>> die for his crime. Just. Not. Worth. It.
>>
>
>> innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
>>
>> Is that acceptable to you? To kill two people (who may very well be
>> criminals, but who never did anything that warranted the death
>> sentence) for every one you get right?
>>
>> Personally, I have nothing against capital punishment. I see things on
>> TV, I read things in the paper, I get news from the web. Do I think
>> the Arizona shooter should be executed? Yes, I do.
>>
>> But...that 30% in Illinois keeps coming back to me. It's just not
>> worth it to kill two innocent people just to see the Arizona shooter
>> die for his crime. Just. Not. Worth. It.
>>
>
> Didn't you make a math error? 30% innocent is very close to for every
> 2 guilty person we execute one innocent.
That's correct.
> 2 guilty person we execute one innocent.
Now, it is possible that the evidence is biased -- that innocence is
more likely when a person's guilt can be conclusively tested by new
forensic methods, or that Illinois tends to convict more innocent people
than other places. But there is no evidence that I have ever heard of
for any such bias. If anything, I expect the biases to go the other way
(more innocents convicted where there is less forensic evidence,
testable or not, and more innocents convicted in Texas where convictions
come much more easily). So yes, figure one innocent person executed for
every two guilty ones.
Mark Isaak
Aug 14, 2012, 11:39:03 AM8/14/12
to
On 8/13/12 4:40 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> [...]
> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> Like I say, I agree with that goal. As Burkhard already explained,
>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the efficacy
>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>
> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
> "know" the wrong they've done.
>
> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
Psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of criminals, though. And I have
>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the efficacy
>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>
> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
> "know" the wrong they've done.
>
> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
seen nothing to suggest that they can be rehabilitated with a "fitting"
punishment.
Attila
Aug 14, 2012, 11:56:50 AM8/14/12
to
discussion. The last UK execution was in 1964. Capital punishment was
suspended in the USA in 1972 but (and this is the significant part)
reinstated in 1976. In the past it was commonplace but in Western Europe it
has not been used for a fairly long period. Last executions:
Belgium 1863
France 1977
Germany 1949
Ireland 1954
Italy 1947
Netherlands 1860
Portugal 1846
Spain 1975
There are enough countries and have been for some time that manage to
survive with a modicum of social order without resorting to this barbarity.
It's unclear how its use in an ever diminishing number of countries
justifies it in any way, shape or form. There was a pause in executions in
the USA between 1972-1976 did any one notice a sharp spike in the murder
rate due to its absence? Having survived for 4 years without an execution
why was it reintroduced?
> As to American imperialism and jingoism, we are just
> the most recent to do this. Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium
> and Italy all had imperialistic hands in Africa and Asia within recent
> (living) memory. I seem to recall Germany, Italy, and Japan being
> involved in some war waging not to mention something about the
> Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (although that was was not in my
> living memory).
I seem to recall that the US was involved in WWI or am I mistaken. I was
> the most recent to do this. Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium
> and Italy all had imperialistic hands in Africa and Asia within recent
> (living) memory. I seem to recall Germany, Italy, and Japan being
> involved in some war waging not to mention something about the
> Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (although that was was not in my
> living memory).
limiting myself to recent history, specifically to the last 70 years (my
current age). Is it necessary to list the number of US military engagements
during this period?
> The USSR and China also had designs on world
> domination: China still might.
Are you relying on Fox news for your sources? There is one country who's
> domination: China still might.
foreign policy is based on the principle of world domination. Can you guess
which one?
Some questions:
Why did the USA invade Afghanistan?
Why did the USA invade Iraq?
The USA may very well start a war with Iran in the near future, the casus
belli being Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Can you explain the
moral basis for this course of action?
>
> More to the point. In times not so long ago it seems that Jews were
> not treated all too kindly in central and eastern Europe and the Roma
> are still heavily discriminated against. The Bosnians also had a few
> problems with the Serbs in your own back yars. The breakdown of the
> USSR freed nationalistic and nativistic pent up emotions all
> throughout eastern Europe.
I'm not sure how this is relevant.
> More to the point. In times not so long ago it seems that Jews were
> not treated all too kindly in central and eastern Europe and the Roma
> are still heavily discriminated against. The Bosnians also had a few
> problems with the Serbs in your own back yars. The breakdown of the
> USSR freed nationalistic and nativistic pent up emotions all
> throughout eastern Europe.
>
> Less than a month ago "Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human
> rights commissioner, called on governments to do more to combat
> anti-Muslim discrimination and said lawmakers should stop targeting
> the religious group through legislation or policy"
Totally agree with the Human Rights commissioner. Are you equating this with
> Less than a month ago "Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human
> rights commissioner, called on governments to do more to combat
> anti-Muslim discrimination and said lawmakers should stop targeting
> the religious group through legislation or policy"
capital punishment or invading other countries or the level of social
violence in the USA?
>
> "Muiznieks – a Latvian human rights activist who began work as
> commissioner in April – singled out several European nations for
> legislation affecting Muslims in particular, including France and
> Belgium – which have banned the full-face veils worn by some Muslim
> women.
I'm losing the thread. If I park illegally, I lose my right to condemn the
> "Muiznieks – a Latvian human rights activist who began work as
> commissioner in April – singled out several European nations for
> legislation affecting Muslims in particular, including France and
> Belgium – which have banned the full-face veils worn by some Muslim
> women.
holocaust?
measure of social malaise that you can imagine the USA is simply off the
chart. You have real problems. Maybe it's about time you tried solving them.
A previous post mentioned the strong correlation between a high Gini index
and social problems.
The USA does not do too well in the following areas:
* level of trust
* mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction)
* life expectancy and infant mortality
* obesity
* children’s educational performance
* teenage births
* homicides
* imprisonment rates
* social mobility (not available for US states)
Perhaps you might want to move past your state of denial and get to work on
these things. Perhaps more time spent fixing what is broken in your country
might give the rest of the world the chance to do the same in theirs.
Kalkidas
Aug 14, 2012, 1:34:51 PM8/14/12
to
On 8/14/2012 8:39 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 8/13/12 4:40 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> Like I say, I agree with that goal. As Burkhard already explained,
>>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the efficacy
>>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>>
>> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
>> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
>> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
>> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
>> "know" the wrong they've done.
>>
>> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
>> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
>
> Psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of criminals, though. And I have
> seen nothing to suggest that they can be rehabilitated with a "fitting"
> punishment.
I disagree. There are degrees of pathology of course, but the prison
> On 8/13/12 4:40 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> Like I say, I agree with that goal. As Burkhard already explained,
>>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the efficacy
>>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>>
>> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
>> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
>> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
>> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
>> "know" the wrong they've done.
>>
>> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
>> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
>
> Psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of criminals, though. And I have
> seen nothing to suggest that they can be rehabilitated with a "fitting"
> punishment.
system is quite full of nasty people.
The argument is over whether the present system of "punishment", which
is to imprison criminals in large facilities with other criminals, is
the most effective at getting criminals to change their ways.
Clearly this system falls far short of the desired goal. It keeps
criminals out of the general population for a while. That's about all.
Richard Norman
Aug 14, 2012, 1:41:23 PM8/14/12
to
>> rights commissioner, called on governments to do more to combat
>> anti-Muslim discrimination and said lawmakers should stop targeting
>> the religious group through legislation or policy"
>Totally agree with the Human Rights commissioner. Are you equating this with
>capital punishment or invading other countries or the level of social
>violence in the USA?
>>
>> "Muiznieks ? a Latvian human rights activist who began work as
>> anti-Muslim discrimination and said lawmakers should stop targeting
>> the religious group through legislation or policy"
>Totally agree with the Human Rights commissioner. Are you equating this with
>capital punishment or invading other countries or the level of social
>violence in the USA?
>>
>> commissioner in April ? singled out several European nations for
>> legislation affecting Muslims in particular, including France and
>> Belgium ? which have banned the full-face veils worn by some Muslim
United States? On both this and your introduction of what I called
three issues there is this exchange:
<you> I would take it as evidence that the American legal system is
fundamentally flawed and deeply racist in nature.
<me> I certainly cannot defend the many flaws and deep racism found in
far too much of the American legal system. I do wish to point out
that many other countries who once felt so superior are finding
themselves to be just as bad (if not worse) once significant numbers
of minority groups reside there.
In return, you bring up capital punishment and imperialism, and
that many other countries who once felt so superior are finding
themselves to be just as bad (if not worse) once significant numbers
of minority groups reside there.
America-first-ism while minimizing the flaws in justice and deep
racism present in Europe. I did not defend our position, only saying
"As to the death penalty I have no excuse or justification other than
it was commonplace " and " As to American imperialism and jingoism, we
are just the most recent to do this." That is admitting the problems,
not denying them. We suffer from many of the outrages and injustices
that, in the near and distant past, were committed by many. We have
not reformed when other did and we suffer worse from the hypocrisy of
proclaiming that we stand for justice and equality and freedom while
actding to deny those things. We should simply declare "we do these
things because we are big and powerful and you can't stop us" just the
way countries used to act.
By the way, you forgot to add slavery to your list: when I was young
there were still alive people who had themselves been slaves in
America.
I still say "physician, heal thyself" (or is it "let those without
sin..."). Your slavic neighborhood does not seem to be the hotbed of
freedom and justice if my recall of recent history serves me. Perhaps
Udine is in a relatively peaceful area but people just a few hundred
miles away have been busy killing each other there for many decades in
the living memory of both you and me (70 years). The United States
occupies an area about the same as all of Europe. Has there been no
conflict between peoples in Europe in recent times? Have there been
no problems or difficulties? Why can't you all just get together in
peace and harmony and agree with each other?
In the meantime, I work to help eliminate injustice and racism in my
country and to reform our foreign policy.
Attila
Aug 14, 2012, 3:21:23 PM8/14/12
to
the murder of over 25.000 people. I've heard the expression "the buck stops
here" but in this case the buck never got started. I also wonder if Bin
Laden could have used the same excuse outlined above ("oh those pesky Al
Quaeda underlings! There's just no keeping track of them."
Friar Broccoli
Aug 14, 2012, 5:00:01 PM8/14/12
to
particularly inappropriate. Bin Laden, by all accounts, was proud of
his accomplishment and was encouraging others to do the same. I doubt
if Gilmartin was proud of his failings as an executive.
Another problem goes back to an aspect of Burkhard's original post. He
pointed out that fear of retribution prevents bad behavior - and he even
added (tongue in cheek):
"people react better to punishment than to rewards, [therefore] my
approach to marking e.g. is all wrong..."
But as he well knows, for many positive behaviors, like creative
thinking, people react very very poorly to punishment. Most of his best
students will respond far better to positive reinforcement. Similarly,
the more drug companies fear risk than they desire reward, the less
likely they are to proceed with work on beneficial treatments for AIDs,
Lyme disease, anti-biotic resistant bacteria etc.
I am 61. And neither I nor my wife would have made it out of infancy
but for recent advances in medical science. Indeed I could have died
last month when I contracted an anti-biotic resistant bacteria, which
required me to go on a round of the original sulfa drugs - the side
effects are nasty, although much better than having my arm amputated or
dying. Drug companies are constantly balancing risks against rewards,
and while they need to be regulated, *we* also need them to continue
marching forward without undue fear.
Now if it was Bankers and Hedge fund managers, I'd line them all up
along the Grand Canyon and push every tenth man into the abyss - and
then tell the remainder they will be coming back in two years if the
world economy has not significantly improved. Fear of punishment is the
only way to encourage social parasites to act against their personal
interests and for the collective good, but the situation isn't nearly so
clear in the case of drug development companies.
Mark Isaak
Aug 15, 2012, 1:35:17 AM8/15/12
to
On 8/14/12 10:34 AM, Kalkidas wrote:
> On 8/14/2012 8:39 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/13/12 4:40 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>>> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> Like I say, I agree with that goal. As Burkhard already explained,
>>>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>>>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>>>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>>>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the
>>>> efficacy
>>>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>>>
>>> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
>>> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
>>> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
>>> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
>>> "know" the wrong they've done.
>>>
>>> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
>>> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
>>
>> Psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of criminals, though. And I have
>> seen nothing to suggest that they can be rehabilitated with a "fitting"
>> punishment.
>
> I disagree. There are degrees of pathology of course, but the prison
> system is quite full of nasty people.
Nasty does not mean sick. I suspect your definition of "psychopath" is
> On 8/14/2012 8:39 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/13/12 4:40 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
>>> On 8/13/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> Like I say, I agree with that goal. As Burkhard already explained,
>>>> though, there are reasons why having "fitting" punishment is not
>>>> expected to further it. (First, because offenders generally already
>>>> know the suffering they are causing; second, because finding fitting
>>>> punishment is often impractical.) If research demonstrates the
>>>> efficacy
>>>> of your approach, I'll gladly adopt it, but not until then.
>>>
>>> I completely disagree that offenders generally "know" the import of
>>> their crimes. The criminal, or psychopatic, mentality, as psychologists
>>> well know, spends an enormous amount of energy on self-justification and
>>> blaming the victim. This is not compatible with the claim that criminals
>>> "know" the wrong they've done.
>>>
>>> I have had some experience with criminal psychopaths, and I assure you
>>> that any pretense to remorse is just that, a pretense.
>>
>> Psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of criminals, though. And I have
>> seen nothing to suggest that they can be rehabilitated with a "fitting"
>> punishment.
>
> I disagree. There are degrees of pathology of course, but the prison
> system is quite full of nasty people.
more rhetorical than descriptive.
> The argument is over whether the present system of "punishment", which
> is to imprison criminals in large facilities with other criminals, is
> the most effective at getting criminals to change their ways.
>
> Clearly this system falls far short of the desired goal. It keeps
> criminals out of the general population for a while. That's about all.
criminals to change their ways. Many criminals have remarked that
prison is a school wherein to learn to be a better criminal.
But then, the current system does not pretend to be a system to get
criminals to change their ways. In fact, I doubt if it even pretends to
be a system for punishment (although the people in charge surely are
willing to let the general public believe it to be that). The present
system is a system to keep criminals out of the general population for a
while. That, and a source of income for the unionized prison guards,
which is probably the primary reason why it is maintained.
But pointing out the problems with the current system does not tells us
how to fix it. Your suggested method (fitting punishments) needs a case
made *for it*, not against alternatives. I have seen no such case, and
doubt whether one exists.
Attila
Aug 15, 2012, 5:54:23 AM8/15/12
to
critical of the various aspects of USA policies are most likely to be
critical of their own countries policies and practices.
The bog standard apologist's arguement (kettle...black, first stone, etc.)
simply doesn't wash. The USA in the early 1940's was hardly a model of
decency what with racial segregation/discrimination, the internment of
Japanese-Amercians of 1942-1945 and various other things. These are serious
enough faults as I'm sure you'd agree. Would you therefore frown on
American's criticisms of Nazi policies on the basis of the American
practices listed above?
In today's world to condemn various points of American policy without
condemning the vicious misdeeds of one's own government or society is the
height of hypocrisy. This is why I have a long history of annoying, to the
best of my ability, the powers that be. The Lega Nord have their offices
just a few metres down the road from where I live. Their officers have
learned all about my views on their policies in an "up close and personal
sort of way. I have no illusions about my own importance or my ability to
change the world but I do try my best. Just this morning I signed a petition
condemning the Russian action of imprisoning Pussy Riot band members.
After Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were jailed for a performance
this past February where they called on the Virgin Mary to "throw Putin out"
and were charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or
hostility," the band went on trial on Monday (7/30).
I don't claim that this is either heroic or particularly effective. It's
just the best I can manage from where I am.
Attila
Aug 15, 2012, 7:49:52 AM8/15/12
to
serious. Ok, it won't be the first time I've been made a fool of <sigh>. Let
us consider the respective geographical locations of Mssrs Gilmartin & Bin
Laden at the time of their crimes. Duh, would you truly expect a different
reaction or absence of one from Gilmartin? I'm sure Gilmartin addressed a
shareholders meeting before the shit hit the fan and I'm equally sure he was
pleased and proud of the $2.2 billion in sales that Vioxx made for him in
2000.
As for Bin Laden, I always found in strange that the instigator of the most
publicised terrorists acts in the history of the world would remain closed
mouth on the subject, not admitting responsability at all, until the end of
October, 2001. Why the silence? Would Al Quaeda be anxious to publicise
their envolvement in the propaganda bonzanza? Isn't that the whole point of
these terrorists acts? So why wait? ...just asking.
Back to corporate responses to their own malfeasance remember the reaction
of Enron traders described here?
"Enron traders joking about stealing from poor grannies; celebrating by
singing a disco song while a power plant in California burns in a wildfire
during the electricity crisis of 2000-01; mocking a small business owner on
the brink of destruction; and dreaming that their boss "Kenny-Boy" Lay would
become George Bush's energy secretary."
While not strictly relevant to the Gilmarting case it does give us some
insight into US Corporate culture and values.
>
> Another problem goes back to an aspect of Burkhard's original post. He
> pointed out that fear of retribution prevents bad behavior - and he even
> added (tongue in cheek):
>
> "people react better to punishment than to rewards, [therefore] my
> approach to marking e.g. is all wrong..."
>
> But as he well knows, for many positive behaviors, like creative
> thinking, people react very very poorly to punishment. Most of his best
> students will respond far better to positive reinforcement. Similarly,
> the more drug companies fear risk than they desire reward, the less
> likely they are to proceed with work on beneficial treatments for AIDs,
> Lyme disease, anti-biotic resistant bacteria etc.
>
> I am 61.
A mere youngster. I was 61 once. ;)
> Another problem goes back to an aspect of Burkhard's original post. He
> pointed out that fear of retribution prevents bad behavior - and he even
> added (tongue in cheek):
>
> "people react better to punishment than to rewards, [therefore] my
> approach to marking e.g. is all wrong..."
>
> But as he well knows, for many positive behaviors, like creative
> thinking, people react very very poorly to punishment. Most of his best
> students will respond far better to positive reinforcement. Similarly,
> the more drug companies fear risk than they desire reward, the less
> likely they are to proceed with work on beneficial treatments for AIDs,
> Lyme disease, anti-biotic resistant bacteria etc.
>
> I am 61.
> And neither I nor my wife would have made it out of infancy
> but for recent advances in medical science. Indeed I could have died
> last month when I contracted an anti-biotic resistant bacteria, which
> required me to go on a round of the original sulfa drugs - the side
> effects are nasty, although much better than having my arm amputated or
> dying. Drug companies are constantly balancing risks against rewards,
> and while they need to be regulated, *we* also need them to continue
> marching forward without undue fear.
Last year I had two heart-related operations in Italy: a valve replacement
> but for recent advances in medical science. Indeed I could have died
> last month when I contracted an anti-biotic resistant bacteria, which
> required me to go on a round of the original sulfa drugs - the side
> effects are nasty, although much better than having my arm amputated or
> dying. Drug companies are constantly balancing risks against rewards,
> and while they need to be regulated, *we* also need them to continue
> marching forward without undue fear.
for a defective aortic valve and 2 months later installation of a pacemaker
when my heart went down to 35 beats/minute -- good for meditating and not
much else. Total cost to me? €0,0. Thank Wallace for the public health
system. The care was absolutely brilliant and all the medical staff kind and
pleasant beyond belief. They even had me in for a 2 month rehab course
(3xweek) at my local hospital. None of this was due to drug companies. I
really feel uncomfortable about having meds produced by a for-profit
corporation. I'd be much happier seeing them produced by a public medical
research facility. Human necessities should be made on a for-profit basis.
Lamborghinis, fine! Health, housing, food, education, transport, ... no
thank you.
>
> Now if it was Bankers and Hedge fund managers, I'd line them all up
> along the Grand Canyon and push every tenth man into the abyss - and
> then tell the remainder they will be coming back in two years if the
> world economy has not significantly improved.
Nah, I'm against capital punishment, even for them. I'd strip them of all
> Now if it was Bankers and Hedge fund managers, I'd line them all up
> along the Grand Canyon and push every tenth man into the abyss - and
> then tell the remainder they will be coming back in two years if the
> world economy has not significantly improved.
their assets and have them live the rest of their lives below the US
governement defined poverty line.
Kalkidas
Aug 15, 2012, 1:29:21 PM8/15/12
to
reformed. In fact, that's probably why the present system drags on, by
inertia. In that case, why keep them in prisons? Why not execute the
whole lot and save billions of taxpayer dollars?
If prison tends to make criminals worse, and if they eventually get out
of prison and commit more crimes, then the prison system itself is
criminal. If people want such a system in place in the United States, as
official government policy, then let them enjoy the society they get.
But if anyone wants a rational solution to the problem of crime, let
them first acknowledge that the present system is wrong precisely
because its premise is *not* reformation.
People have to change their premises if they want to institute a system
that works. Throwing up ones hands is not a solution.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 15, 2012, 4:51:39 PM8/15/12
to
this is of much importance to me.
>It's hard to imagine you're being
>serious. Ok, it won't be the first time I've been made a fool of <sigh>. Let
>us consider the respective geographical locations of Mssrs Gilmartin & Bin
>Laden at the time of their crimes. Duh, would you truly expect a different
>reaction or absence of one from Gilmartin? I'm sure Gilmartin addressed a
>shareholders meeting before the shit hit the fan and I'm equally sure he was
>pleased and proud of the $2.2 billion in sales that Vioxx made for him in
>2000.
be a crime if he had made that money in the full knowledge that he was
allowing or causing people to die, who if they had understood the risk
they were taking, would have done something different. That is he
caused deaths intentionally or with reckless disregard.
>As for Bin Laden, I always found in strange that the instigator of the most
>publicised terrorists acts in the history of the world would remain closed
>mouth on the subject, not admitting responsability at all, until the end of
>October, 2001. Why the silence? Would Al Quaeda be anxious to publicise
>their envolvement in the propaganda bonzanza? Isn't that the whole point of
>these terrorists acts? So why wait? ...just asking.
possible culpability of Gilmartin, so I will pass on this question.
>Back to corporate responses to their own malfeasance remember the reaction
>of Enron traders described here?
>"Enron traders joking about stealing from poor grannies; celebrating by
>singing a disco song while a power plant in California burns in a wildfire
>during the electricity crisis of 2000-01; mocking a small business owner on
>the brink of destruction; and dreaming that their boss "Kenny-Boy" Lay would
>become George Bush's energy secretary."
>
>While not strictly relevant to the Gilmarting case it does give us some
>insight into US Corporate culture and values.
but for what he personally did or did not (intend to) do.
were developed by drug companies, but even if true that does not mean
that those companies provide no benefits to many other people.
>I really feel uncomfortable about having meds produced by a for-profit
>corporation. I'd be much happier seeing them produced by a public medical
>research facility.
assistance of large for-profit drug companies. There would be very
little to produce without that development. Maybe drug development
could have been done just as effectively in state run non-profit
enterprises, but as someone who has worked in a government bureaucracy,
I don't think that's realistic.
>Human necessities should be made on a for-profit basis.
saying Great_Idea, if I didn't know what happened when it was tried.
>Lamborghinis, fine! Health, housing, food, education, transport, ... no
>thank you.
enterprise (under varying degrees of state regulation) etc. To the best
of my knowledge, the evidence is that *direct* medical care (by doctors
and hospitals) is best and most efficiently administered by the state.
Attila
Aug 16, 2012, 8:48:37 AM8/16/12
to
>
>>It's hard to imagine you're being
>>serious. Ok, it won't be the first time I've been made a fool of <sigh>.
>>Let us consider the respective geographical locations of Mssrs Gilmartin &
>>Bin Laden at the time of their crimes. Duh, would you truly expect a
>>different reaction or absence of one from Gilmartin? I'm sure Gilmartin
>>addressed a shareholders meeting before the shit hit the fan and I'm
>>equally sure he was pleased and proud of the $2.2 billion in sales that
>>Vioxx made for him in 2000.
>
> No doubt true, but in and of itself this is in no way a crime. It would
> be a crime if he had made that money in the full knowledge that he was
> allowing or causing people to die, who if they had understood the risk
> they were taking, would have done something different. That is he
> caused deaths intentionally or with reckless disregard.
All true and isn't that the purpose of a trial? Oh whoops silly me. Trials
>>It's hard to imagine you're being
>>serious. Ok, it won't be the first time I've been made a fool of <sigh>.
>>Let us consider the respective geographical locations of Mssrs Gilmartin &
>>Bin Laden at the time of their crimes. Duh, would you truly expect a
>>different reaction or absence of one from Gilmartin? I'm sure Gilmartin
>>addressed a shareholders meeting before the shit hit the fan and I'm
>>equally sure he was pleased and proud of the $2.2 billion in sales that
>>Vioxx made for him in 2000.
>
> No doubt true, but in and of itself this is in no way a crime. It would
> be a crime if he had made that money in the full knowledge that he was
> allowing or causing people to die, who if they had understood the risk
> they were taking, would have done something different. That is he
> caused deaths intentionally or with reckless disregard.
are so passé and no longer "the American Way" of justice. Guantanamo and
Navy Seals targeted assassinations have made all that legal stuff obsolete.
>
>
>>As for Bin Laden, I always found in strange that the instigator of the
>>most publicised terrorists acts in the history of the world would remain
>>closed mouth on the subject, not admitting responsability at all, until
>>the end of October, 2001. Why the silence? Would Al Quaeda be anxious to
>>publicise their envolvement in the propaganda bonzanza? Isn't that the
>>whole point of these terrorists acts? So why wait? ...just asking.
>
> The actual guilt or innocence of Bin Laden is not relevant to the
> possible culpability of Gilmartin, so I will pass on this question.
>
Indeed, but you are missing the point of my question. In the case of Bin
>
>>As for Bin Laden, I always found in strange that the instigator of the
>>most publicised terrorists acts in the history of the world would remain
>>closed mouth on the subject, not admitting responsability at all, until
>>the end of October, 2001. Why the silence? Would Al Quaeda be anxious to
>>publicise their envolvement in the propaganda bonzanza? Isn't that the
>>whole point of these terrorists acts? So why wait? ...just asking.
>
> The actual guilt or innocence of Bin Laden is not relevant to the
> possible culpability of Gilmartin, so I will pass on this question.
>
Laden who may or may not have been behind it, the murder of 4000+ people led
to the invasion of 3 countries causing a massive number of casualties along
with an extrajudicial murder of the presumed perp. This extrajudicial
murder, AFAIK, is celebrated with utter joy by all and sundry at least in
the USA. Gimartin, who may or may not be implicated in the deaths of 25,000+
Americans, to a greater or lesser degree, gets a free pass with not even a
ripple of resentment.
Perhaps this makes sense or more likely, is of no interest to you (I'm
unaware of having forced you to respond) but the question intrigues me.
>>Back to corporate responses to their own malfeasance remember the reaction
>>of Enron traders described here?
>>"Enron traders joking about stealing from poor grannies; celebrating by
>>singing a disco song while a power plant in California burns in a wildfire
>>during the electricity crisis of 2000-01; mocking a small business owner
>>on the brink of destruction; and dreaming that their boss "Kenny-Boy" Lay
>>would become George Bush's energy secretary."
>>
>>While not strictly relevant to the Gilmarting case it does give us some
>>insight into US Corporate culture and values.
>
> Gilmartin should not be condemned for "US Corporate culture and values",
> but for what he personally did or did not (intend to) do.
Indeed he shouldn't. I am merely offering evidence that it is not
>>of Enron traders described here?
>>"Enron traders joking about stealing from poor grannies; celebrating by
>>singing a disco song while a power plant in California burns in a wildfire
>>during the electricity crisis of 2000-01; mocking a small business owner
>>on the brink of destruction; and dreaming that their boss "Kenny-Boy" Lay
>>would become George Bush's energy secretary."
>>
>>While not strictly relevant to the Gilmarting case it does give us some
>>insight into US Corporate culture and values.
>
> Gilmartin should not be condemned for "US Corporate culture and values",
> but for what he personally did or did not (intend to) do.
particularly far-fetched to suggest that Gilmartin, having first covered his
arse with plausible deniability then gave a nod and a wink to his
subordinates at Merck to go ahead. But then we'll never know, will we?
their alleged contributions. Just about all the drugs I take are of the
"generic" variety. I take 8 different drugs on a daily basis and I shall
continue taking most of them for the rest of my life. Unlike American
conceptions of European health services ("death panels" and the like) the
reality is that I have a free choice between the generic vs. proprietary
versions of these drugs. As a consequence of this my monthly medication bill
is basically nil. My impression is that this is not typically the case in
the USA.
Now the drug companies are solidly behind the ACTA legislation that would
severely restrict my access to these generic versions. My financial means
are rather modest and if ACTA were to pass (it has recently been voted down
by the European parliament but less democratic means, such as the unelected
European Commission may be tried soon) the costs to the various national
health services would skyrocket and these costs would be passed along to the
end-users, e.g me. "The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of
negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has
said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic
drugs and restricting internet freedom.
He said that it now threatens online freedom, access to the use of generic
versions of drugs for treating illnesses..."
Oh, in passing I might mention that the chairman of Merck was paid 14,5
million US$ in 2007. I guess Gilmartin's salary would have been in that
range. I hardly think he was in need of my gratitude nor worthy of it. At
that salary you would figure he would have some clue as to what was going on
in his company.
>
>>I really feel uncomfortable about having meds produced by a for-profit
>>corporation. I'd be much happier seeing them produced by a public medical
>>research facility.
>
> Many, I suspect most, modern drugs are/were developed by or with the
> assistance of large for-profit drug companies. There would be very
> little to produce without that development. Maybe drug development
> could have been done just as effectively in state run non-profit
> enterprises, but as someone who has worked in a government bureaucracy,
> I don't think that's realistic.
>
the Salk polio vaccine. Being grateful to drug companies for developping
drugs[sic] is a bit like being grateful to the Italian Fascist government
for "making the trains run on time". Indeed the trains did run on time. If
you look at the compensation paid to CEO's of drug companies it does give
the impression that the main objective of these companies is to make money.
Most of their products are, in fact, newer versions of existing products
with little if any advantages over the existing generic versions.
>>Human necessities should be made on a for-profit basis.
>
> State run non-profit farms should provide all food? I would probably be
> saying Great_Idea, if I didn't know what happened when it was tried.
>
>>Lamborghinis, fine! Health, housing, food, education, transport, ... no
>>thank you.
>
> Some services are best provided by the state, others by private
> enterprise (under varying degrees of state regulation) etc. To the best
> of my knowledge, the evidence is that *direct* medical care (by doctors
> and hospitals) is best and most efficiently administered by the state.
No need to speculate or posit vague hypotheses. Just check the WHO's league
>>thank you.
>
> Some services are best provided by the state, others by private
> enterprise (under varying degrees of state regulation) etc. To the best
> of my knowledge, the evidence is that *direct* medical care (by doctors
> and hospitals) is best and most efficiently administered by the state.
table. Guess which place the USA stands in. Italy is #2 in the world.
<http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html>
Friar Broccoli
Aug 16, 2012, 5:06:53 PM8/16/12
to
becomes active) I will focus on that.
>>>It's hard to imagine you're being
>>>serious. Ok, it won't be the first time I've been made a fool of <sigh>.
>>>Let us consider the respective geographical locations of Mssrs Gilmartin &
>>>Bin Laden at the time of their crimes. Duh, would you truly expect a
>>>different reaction or absence of one from Gilmartin? I'm sure Gilmartin
>>>addressed a shareholders meeting before the shit hit the fan and I'm
>>>equally sure he was pleased and proud of the $2.2 billion in sales that
>>>Vioxx made for him in 2000.
>>
>> No doubt true, but in and of itself this is in no way a crime. It would
>> be a crime if he had made that money in the full knowledge that he was
>> allowing or causing people to die, who if they had understood the risk
>> they were taking, would have done something different. That is he
>> caused deaths intentionally or with reckless disregard.
.
>All true and isn't that the purpose of a trial? Oh whoops silly me. Trials
>Navy Seals targeted assassinations have made all that legal stuff obsolete.
Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
better off spending his money on something else.
When I worked for revenu quebec (taxation) I frequently saw cases where
we could prove fraud in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we
knew as a practical matter that there must have been millions more, but
the case was settled for say 50,000 because the cost of prosecution
would have exceeded the likely return. Other times cases were dropped
because someone had said the wrong thing to the press or another
individual at the wrong time, indicating that we were preparing a
prosecution from inadmissible evidence, when under the law we only had a
right to be beginning an investigation in search of direct evidence.
In other words, even when someone is obviously guilty, prosecuting them
(taking them to trial) is really messy and difficult. If they can
afford good lawyers and they might also be innocent, going to trial is
almost always a waste of time.
>>>As for Bin Laden, I always found in strange that the instigator of the
>>>most publicised terrorists acts in the history of the world would remain
>>>closed mouth on the subject, not admitting responsability at all, until
>>>the end of October, 2001. Why the silence? Would Al Quaeda be anxious to
>>>publicise their envolvement in the propaganda bonzanza? Isn't that the
>>>whole point of these terrorists acts? So why wait? ...just asking.
.
>> The actual guilt or innocence of Bin Laden is not relevant to the
>> possible culpability of Gilmartin, so I will pass on this question.
>>
>Indeed, but you are missing the point of my question. In the case of Bin
>Laden who may or may not have been behind it, the murder of 4000+ people led
>to the invasion of 3 countries causing a massive number of casualties along
>with an extrajudicial murder of the presumed perp. This extrajudicial
>murder, AFAIK, is celebrated with utter joy by all and sundry at least in
>the USA. Gimartin, who may or may not be implicated in the deaths of 25,000+
>Americans, to a greater or lesser degree, gets a free pass with not even a
>ripple of resentment.
>Perhaps this makes sense or more likely, is of no interest to you (I'm
>unaware of having forced you to respond) but the question intrigues me.
Bin Laden (most of which were nutty and misdirected) were mostly
*extrajudicial*. Actions against Gilmartin will presumably be mostly
judicial. Prosecutors and judges (unlike presidents who direct armies)
must follow due process.
>>>Back to corporate responses to their own malfeasance remember the reaction
>>>of Enron traders described here?
>>>"Enron traders joking about stealing from poor grannies; celebrating by
>>>singing a disco song while a power plant in California burns in a wildfire
>>>during the electricity crisis of 2000-01; mocking a small business owner
>>>on the brink of destruction; and dreaming that their boss "Kenny-Boy" Lay
>>>would become George Bush's energy secretary."
>>>
>>>While not strictly relevant to the Gilmarting case it does give us some
>>>insight into US Corporate culture and values.
>>
>> Gilmartin should not be condemned for "US Corporate culture and values",
>> but for what he personally did or did not (intend to) do.
>
.
>Indeed he shouldn't. I am merely offering evidence that it is not
>particularly far-fetched to suggest that Gilmartin, having first covered his
>arse with plausible deniability then gave a nod and a wink to his
>subordinates at Merck to go ahead. But then we'll never know, will we?
>>>the public health system. The care was absolutely brilliant and all the
>>>medical staff kind and pleasant beyond belief. They even had me in for a 2
>>>month rehab course (3xweek) at my local hospital. None of this was due to
>>>drug companies.
>>
>> I would be very very surprised if none of the medications you were on
>> were developed by drug companies, but even if true that does not mean
>> that those companies provide no benefits to many other people.
.
>Actually, this raises an interesting issue about the drug companies and
>their alleged contributions. Just about all the drugs I take are of the
>"generic" variety.
That usually just means the patent has expired, and the drug in question
>>>medical staff kind and pleasant beyond belief. They even had me in for a 2
>>>month rehab course (3xweek) at my local hospital. None of this was due to
>>>drug companies.
>>
>> I would be very very surprised if none of the medications you were on
>> were developed by drug companies, but even if true that does not mean
>> that those companies provide no benefits to many other people.
.
>Actually, this raises an interesting issue about the drug companies and
>their alleged contributions. Just about all the drugs I take are of the
>"generic" variety.
can now be manufactured without a licence from the patent holder - who
often was the developer or who paid the developer for his services.
>I take 8 different drugs on a daily basis and I shall
>continue taking most of them for the rest of my life. Unlike American
>conceptions of European health services ("death panels" and the like) the
>reality is that I have a free choice between the generic vs. proprietary
>versions of these drugs. As a consequence of this my monthly medication bill
>is basically nil. My impression is that this is not typically the case in
>the USA.
taxation) health care. I find the US Republican position on public
health care every bit as nutty as you do.
I am grateful to both the state, and the free enterprise system that has
given me such a long and relatively comfortable life.
>Now the drug companies are solidly behind the ACTA legislation that would
>severely restrict my access to these generic versions. My financial means
>are rather modest and if ACTA were to pass (it has recently been voted down
>by the European parliament but less democratic means, such as the unelected
>European Commission may be tried soon) the costs to the various national
>health services would skyrocket and these costs would be passed along to the
>end-users, e.g me. "The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of
>negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has
>said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic
>drugs and restricting internet freedom.
make vague general comments.
Attila
Aug 17, 2012, 10:19:48 AM8/17/12
to
>>Navy Seals targeted assassinations have made all that legal stuff
>>obsolete.
>
> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>
> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
> better off spending his money on something else.
Do you know if a prosecutor even reviewed the case? In any event was really
>>obsolete.
>
> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>
> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
> better off spending his money on something else.
this: given the number of deaths involved why was so little attention paid
to this case while in the case of Bin Laden, killing him on 1/05/11 was
greated by the entire polical spectrum (such as there is) of the US with
unmitigated joy. And yet when the Taliban offered to allow Bin Laden to be
extradited from Afghanistan if a proper hearing found evidence against him,
the offer was refused and the American invasion ensued.
>
> When I worked for revenu quebec (taxation) I frequently saw cases where
> we could prove fraud in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we
> knew as a practical matter that there must have been millions more, but
> the case was settled for say 50,000 because the cost of prosecution
> would have exceeded the likely return.
with over 25.000 deaths. We are also dealing with false or deceptive trial
results of this drug along with concealment of evidence of dangers of
cardiac failure from this drug. This is not merely a monetary affair and yet
it was settled with fines and not a single felony charge was levelled.
> Other times cases were dropped
> because someone had said the wrong thing to the press or another
> individual at the wrong time, indicating that we were preparing a
> prosecution from inadmissible evidence, when under the law we only had a
> right to be beginning an investigation in search of direct evidence.
>
> In other words, even when someone is obviously guilty, prosecuting them
> (taking them to trial) is really messy and difficult. If they can
> afford good lawyers and they might also be innocent, going to trial is
> almost always a waste of time.
I repeat, given the number deaths and the enormity of the crime, the
> because someone had said the wrong thing to the press or another
> individual at the wrong time, indicating that we were preparing a
> prosecution from inadmissible evidence, when under the law we only had a
> right to be beginning an investigation in search of direct evidence.
>
> In other words, even when someone is obviously guilty, prosecuting them
> (taking them to trial) is really messy and difficult. If they can
> afford good lawyers and they might also be innocent, going to trial is
> almost always a waste of time.
reaction was most extraordinary particularly in view of what lengths and
costs the US was prepared to go to for the deaths of 4.000.
Democratic position on public health care every bit as repugnant as the
Republican one. I ask you to consider two facts:
1. What is the rank of the US health system in the world?
ans: 37th
BTW Canada is 30th.
Italy is 2nd and France is 1st.
2. How does the USA rate in per capita health cost?
ans: "According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States
spent more on health care per capita ($7,146), and more on health care as
percentage of its GDP (15.2%), than any other nation in 2008."
>
> I am grateful to both the state, and the free enterprise system that has
> given me such a long and relatively comfortable life.
I'm even moe grateful to the single-payer non-free entreprise system that
> I am grateful to both the state, and the free enterprise system that has
> given me such a long and relatively comfortable life.
gives me health care second only to France which has a similar system to
ours.
>
>>Now the drug companies are solidly behind the ACTA legislation that would
>>severely restrict my access to these generic versions. My financial means
>>are rather modest and if ACTA were to pass (it has recently been voted
>>down by the European parliament but less democratic means, such as the
>>unelected European Commission may be tried soon) the costs to the various
>>national health services would skyrocket and these costs would be passed
>>along to the end-users, e.g me. "The French MEP who resigned his position
>>in charge of negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
>>Agreement (Acta) has said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access
>>to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom.
>
> For better or worse, I know so little about these issues I cannot even
> make vague general comments.
>
the medical consequences. It kind of distorts your views a tad. I'd suggest
you have a look at the report published by The Canadian Generic
Pharmaceutical Association (CGPA) regarding ACTA. You can find it here:
<http://www.canadiangenerics.ca/en/news/anti_counterfeiting.asp>
Two short paragraphs give a quick look at the stakes involved:
"Of particular concern to the generic pharmaceutical industry, the proposed
content for this agreement does not indicate the discussions will address
appropriate limitations on the scope and reach of intellectual property
enforcement mechanisms. Patent disputes during the normal legitimate
business development of a product could become – in the context of ACTA – a
crime related to counterfeiting instead of remaining a private civil matter
between two companies.
"Such a change would have dire consequences for Canadian consumers, payers,
governments, the economy and the generic pharmaceutical industry, and would
not be successful in targeting counterfeit medicines. In fact, the resulting
increase in drug costs through monopoly drug prices could lead Canadians to
seek lower-cost alternatives through less-than-reputable sources, which in
turn could put them into contact with counterfeit medicines."
I think it's worth reading the entire document if you have the time and the
interest. As a final note I'd say that the actual contribution of "Big
Pharma" to the development of new drugs is vastly exaggerated. I believe the
bulk of the financing comes from various public institutions. The
development of the Salk polio vacine is a case in point.
Friar Broccoli
Aug 17, 2012, 3:06:23 PM8/17/12
to
>>>Navy Seals targeted assassinations have made all that legal stuff
>>>obsolete.
>>
>> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
>> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
>> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>>
>> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
>> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
>> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
>> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
>> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
>> better off spending his money on something else.
>Do you know if a prosecutor even reviewed the case?
Just did a google search and found this:
>>>obsolete.
>>
>> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
>> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
>> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>>
>> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
>> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
>> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
>> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
>> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
>> better off spending his money on something else.
>Do you know if a prosecutor even reviewed the case?
http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=3463#newspost
describing class action suites etc, not investigations by prosecutors
from government agencies, although it does suggest to me that this issue
must have crossed the desks of many such prosecutors.
>In any event was really
>this: given the number of deaths involved why was so little attention paid
>to this case while in the case of Bin Laden, killing him on 1/05/11 was
>greated by the entire polical spectrum (such as there is) of the US with
>unmitigated joy. And yet when the Taliban offered to allow Bin Laden to be
>extradited from Afghanistan if a proper hearing found evidence against him,
>the offer was refused and the American invasion ensued.
any way comparable. Or to put it differently: clearly irrational
behavior should not be used as a model for other situations, related or
unrelated.
>
>
>>
>> When I worked for revenu quebec (taxation) I frequently saw cases where
>> we could prove fraud in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we
>> knew as a practical matter that there must have been millions more, but
>> the case was settled for say 50,000 because the cost of prosecution
>> would have exceeded the likely return.
>I don't understand the relevance here. In the Vioxx case, we are dealing
>with over 25.000 deaths. We are also dealing with false or deceptive trial
>results of this drug along with concealment of evidence of dangers of
>cardiac failure from this drug. This is not merely a monetary affair and yet
>it was settled with fines and not a single felony charge was levelled.
available to prosecutors are limited. They frequently need to make
trade-offs that result in justice that is very far from perfect.
>> Other times cases were dropped
>> because someone had said the wrong thing to the press or another
>> individual at the wrong time, indicating that we were preparing a
>> prosecution from inadmissible evidence, when under the law we only had a
>> right to be beginning an investigation in search of direct evidence.
>>
>> In other words, even when someone is obviously guilty, prosecuting them
>> (taking them to trial) is really messy and difficult. If they can
>> afford good lawyers and they might also be innocent, going to trial is
>> almost always a waste of time.
.
>I repeat, given the number deaths and the enormity of the crime, the
>reaction was most extraordinary particularly in view of what lengths and
>costs the US was prepared to go to for the deaths of 4.000.
each year. That society seems to accept that a certain number of extra
deaths each year is a reasonable cost to pay in exchange for the right
to bear arms. I suspect that in a similar manner, many see a few
thousand extra deaths is a reasonable price to pay for a healthy
pharmaceutical industry and the direct and indirect benefits gained
thereby.
[snip]
Attila
Aug 18, 2012, 1:17:43 AM8/18/12
to
>>>>Guantanamo and Navy Seals targeted assassinations have made all that
>>>>legal stuff obsolete.
>>>
>>> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
>>> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
>>> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>>>
>>> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
>>> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
>>> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
>>> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
>>> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
>>> better off spending his money on something else.
>
>
>>Do you know if a prosecutor even reviewed the case?
>
> Just did a google search and found this:
> http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=3463#newspost
>
> describing class action suites etc, not investigations by prosecutors
> from government agencies, although it does suggest to me that this issue
> must have crossed the desks of many such prosecutors.
Fascinating reading. Thanks for the reference.
>>>>legal stuff obsolete.
>>>
>>> Keeping in mind that I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of
>>> this case, you began the offshoot discussion by asking: "could someone
>>> explain to me why Ray Gilmartin hasn't spent a single day in prison."
>>>
>>> and my first reply (unstated but boiled down to its essence) was:
>>> because there wasn't much chance of getting a conviction for criminal
>>> wrongdoing. Somehow, a prosecutor must be convinced that if he spends
>>> millions of dollars and years of time trying to prosecute Gilmartin,
>>> then he has a reasonable chance of getting a conviction - otherwise he's
>>> better off spending his money on something else.
>
>
>>Do you know if a prosecutor even reviewed the case?
>
> Just did a google search and found this:
> http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=3463#newspost
>
> describing class action suites etc, not investigations by prosecutors
> from government agencies, although it does suggest to me that this issue
> must have crossed the desks of many such prosecutors.
>
>>In any event was really
>>this: given the number of deaths involved why was so little attention paid
>>to this case while in the case of Bin Laden, killing him on 1/05/11 was
>>greated by the entire polical spectrum (such as there is) of the US with
>>unmitigated joy. And yet when the Taliban offered to allow Bin Laden to be
>>extradited from Afghanistan if a proper hearing found evidence against
>>him, the offer was refused and the American invasion ensued.
>
> Again, NOTHING connects Bin Laden to Gilmartin or makes their cases in
> any way comparable. Or to put it differently: clearly irrational
> behavior should not be used as a model for other situations, related or
> unrelated.
connection between Bin Laden and Gilmartin. I was/am interested in the
differential reactions by the (esp. American) public to acts involving
wholesale deaths. Bin Laden may or may not have been involved. Since a
judicial process is no longer feasible, we'll never know. The Taliban was
willing to allow the extradition of Bin Laden, at least to Pakistan, a US
ally in the "war on terror" but no one was really interested in that. Be
that as it may the case is closed.
To repeat the killings of some 4000+ people in the WTC served as a casus
belli for 2.5 wars (I'm counting the Pakistan engagement as .5 of a war) at
an incredible expense in both lives and money. The deaths of far more than
6x that number caused barely a ripple and was, as you suggest abandoned due
to the cost of prosecution. Perhaps this makes sense to you.
the world and one that has the highest per capita cost in the world and one
that involves around 26,000 annual premature deaths for people without
health insurance, that is certainly your prerogative. I'm sure you can look
forward to rises in all three of the figures cited above.
I respectfully suggest we agree to disagree on this question.
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