[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment

[Vladimir Nesov]

Thursday, August 16, 2007, gts wrote:

g> Retribution ought not figure into the equation.

Retribution/punishment IS a way to enforce lawful behaviour,
enforced correllation between negative utility
for a person and unlawful behaviour that leads to
diminishment of unlawful behaviour itself in utility and consequently
to smaller amount of crime. So it's all about preventing the crime.

Main idea is that person would, based on awareness of the law,
make different choices. System is effective for cases when choice is
changed significantly by its presence, and not effective for other
cases. It limits its applicability, and for example leaves out insane
people and self-defence. And this principle would be better to have
explicitly in the law, rather than just most frequent corollaries.

Correction is a separate issue, but isn't technically effective and in
case of hypothetical technology that would enable it would sometimes ammount
to significant change of personality, similar to death sentence.
Though such correction could have broader applicability,
for example enforcement of moral behavious that conflict
with personal utility, which doesn't seem like a nice thing to do. :)

-- 
 Vladimir Nesov                            mailto:robotact at mail.ru