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

[Samantha Atkins]

Bryan Bishop wrote:
> Out of the entire discussion I find those two paragraphs to be 
> the most notable.
>
> It seems that the "Justice" people dispense is more for the 
> emotional benefits such as finally seeing the rapist sent to 
> the chair or something. Sending the rapist to the chair will 
> of course not fix the problems and in fact 'waste' more 
> resources.*
>   

I rather like a different sort of justice that would indenture the 
rapist for a considerable period to make some form of restitution for 
his acts. 
> If we were serious about preservation of our systems we would 
> instead not have to worry about problems like somebody 
> stealing a few items from a store. Instead we would have 
> backups, redundancy, an ability to reinitialize a person now 
> found dead. But since we are not there yet, since we lack the 
> knowledge, it looks like some people hope for there to be 
> some "Justice" to dispense.
>   
What?  How can you start by talking about preservation of our systems 
and then presuppose such radically different technology available as to 
underly change all our systems as the way to preserve them?   By systems 
do you mean preserving all the people?   

> I am reminded of http://asarya.com/ which is quoted from 
> Zindell's Neverness trilogy: "An asarya ... is a person who 
> can look upon all aspects of creation and say \Yes\ no matter 
> how 'painful' the universe may be." The dispensed "Justice" 
> seems to be a way to try to say 'No'. Ouch.
>
>   
That is far out science fiction dude, not a guide to life or the height 
of philosophical insight.

- samantha