Nice post. The contrast with many others, reminded me of a recently-posted Jim Keller interview:
> His [Elon Musk] great insight is people are how constrained. I have this thing I know how it works, and then little tweaks to that, will generate something. As opposed to what do I actually want, and then figure out how to build it. It's a very different mindset, and almost nobody has it obviously.
This is a great post and I think discusses many interesting things. I think there is this dichotomy in how people think what policing is about. One camp thinks policing should be to stop "bad guys" while the other thinks it is to protect and serve, emphasis on the serve. Disclosure, I fall into the latter camp.
I do think we do need to seriously talk about the incentives around policing, justice, and prison systems. They do not have seemed to change much in the last 50 years, but I think many would argue that we've learned a lot, especially about the root causes to what causes people to turn to crime and why they turn away.
I think we also need to revisit Blackstone's ratio[0]. This was an idea from many of the founding fathers. Anyone that is familiar with engineering and failure principles is essentially aware of the topic here. So we need to revisit what failure mode we want the justice system to have. When justice fails should a guilty person go free or should an innocent person be punished? I don't think this is an easy question to answer (disclosure: I believe we should let the guilty person go, because I highly value freedom). This does not mean that we should just let knowingly guilty people go, but means that we know no system is perfect and if we don't design a system with that in mind we are doing a disservice and ignoring an integral part. We always should be trying to improve, but we should recognize that we are not perfect and cannot create a perfect system. We don't design buildings to collapse, but we do design how a building should collapse if for some reason it does (think skyscrapers falling in on themselves so they don't take out other surrounding buildings). Imagine building a bridge and not thinking about possible failure modes. Problem is, a bridge fails catastrophically (unplanned) and a dozen or a hundred people die. A justice system fails thousands are killed, stricken of their rights, or harmed.
WE MUST DISCUSS THIS. While the article discusses topics that essentially say they agree with Blackstone's ratio, I do believe that we need to talk about what we are doing. If we don't then there's no arguing with the other side because our premise is different.
So HN, how do you think failure in justice should work? Do you think should fail so that innocent people go to jail or that guilty people go free? I do believe there are good arguments on both sides, but I also think it depends on what you think policing should be for. So I'll ask that question too.
> but doesn't sound like you want a police free lefty utopia
In some ways that’s a feature more than a bug - by demanding an insanely extreme solution, you shift the overton window such that a realistic solution looks acceptable by comparison.
(How did we even end up in a place where “police should not be tear-gassing peaceful protests” is a controversial opinion, and we need to reboot people’s expectations before suggesting it??)
I wonder if that does shift the window, though? At some point I think you appear to be far enough out of the realm of reality that the suggestion appears unserious and is completely disregarded.
eg, if we were talking about climate change one could say that we should just sterilize every human. Certainly that would reduce CO2 emissions. But I don't think it would move the discussion in any meaningful way.
Defund the Police isn't that extreme, but the soundbite version of it may be far enough out there that many people ignore it in a similar way. Or maybe not, I'm just speculating.
> His [Elon Musk] great insight is people are how constrained. I have this thing I know how it works, and then little tweaks to that, will generate something. As opposed to what do I actually want, and then figure out how to build it. It's a very different mindset, and almost nobody has it obviously.
[1] Short section starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=3854 . Also liked the longer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=4851 , emphasizing self deception and reading.