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[LARD]

predestination, determinism, sorry about that

[Mephansteras]

Either way it doesn't matter. Since you don't know what you're 'going' to do, you have to act as if you have free will whether you do or don't. Further, since we can't know if free will is true or an illusion it's best to assume that people do have free will. If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law.

If there is no free will, then the illusion of law helping is simply how it is supposed to be.

If there is free will, then law does what we think it does and helps keep an ordered society.

[Fenrir]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law revenge.

FTFY. We would still find it necessary to lock up criminals for the protection of society.

[Another]

PTTG?, add to that that it is mathematically proven that there is NO way to predict with certainty whether this K40 atom in your body will decay in the next minute or not that would not contradict quantum mechanics. And not just some particular interpretation of quantum mechanics but it's core math. Which just works in all experiments so far.

[cerapa]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law.

I have never understood this argument.

I have always thought that its the other way around.
If actions are a part of a cause->effect chain, then it can be affected by laws and/or other targeted factors.
if actions are not affected by outside factors, then laws will have no bearing on the actions of an individual.

[10ebbor10]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a moral basis for law.

FTFY

[Culise]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law revenge.

FTFY. We would still find it necessary to lock up criminals for the protection of society.

Indeed.  Also, you can make the case that the incarceration of criminals should be carried through upon because of its deterrence effect on other people, who would otherwise have (through such deterministic patterns) carried through on this actions not because of their own will, but because of the absence of punishment opens new probabilistic outcome branches.  Though they are not responsible for their crimes, we are not responsible for their punishment, and instead act in a manner benefiting society as a logical consequence of originally establishing and modifying that society in the first place, and our continued perpetuation of that society from then to now.

It is kinda funny to say that religion is incompatible with determinism when so many religious debates centered on the very concepts of predestination, which was itself an outgrowth of determinism as a consequence of an omniscient God.  A God that can see the future and know our actions and their consequences thus knows, deterministically, our ultimate outcome, whether He defines it and thus defines free will, but that he determines it through observation and thus merely knows the consequences of our collective and individual wills in advance.  More succinctly, omniscience was understood, accurately or otherwise, to imply determinism through knowledge at a bare minimum.  As far as scientific theories of determinism are concerned, classical determinism, quite prominently in the form of Laplace's demon, does run solidly into the major issue of indeterminancy in quantum mechanics, which can grow into effectively-random macro-scale interactions.  Probabilistic determinism is more interesting, but reliant on large-scale behaviors where quantum behavior can be averaged out, so to speak.  It's also not nearly as certain, so to speak, as classical models; you can't say there is "one way" under such a principle, but simply a "most likely way." 

[Frumple]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law revenge.

FTFY. We would still find it necessary to lock up criminals for the protection of society.

Indeed.  Also, you can make the case that the incarceration of criminals should be carried through upon because of its deterrence effect on other people, who would otherwise have (through such deterministic patterns) carried through on this actions not because of their own will, but because of the absence of punishment opens new probabilistic outcome branches.

The minor chime in thing... we know deterrence doesn't work for the prevention of crime -- or, at absolute best (and this is giving benefit of doubt where there functionally isn't any), is one of the most horrifically inefficient and ineffective methods we have. We've known this for decades now, and the research and practical experiments attempted related to that knowledge has time and again proven that deterrence does not work for the prevention of... anything, really. It's bumpkis folk psychology that's flat out false. Human psych just doesn't work that way.

It sounds really good (just world something or other, or rational actors or whatever), but frankly anyone that tells you that deterrence is meaningfully effective is just... wrong. Completely in contradiction of multiple, disparate, and repeated investigations into the subject.

[PanH]

And even if you could detect everything 100% correctly, you'd still run in the problems needs to be capable of simulating itself simulating itself simulating itself .....

This. There's a law about it (don't remember and too lazy to search it).

With quantum physics near-randomness (at micro scale), at our scale, I'd say this is random, therefore, there would be free will.
Basically, that would let enough possibilities open so that this could be considered as free will.

[Culise]

If you don't make that assumption, then people aren't responsible for their actions and there wouldn't be a basis for law revenge.

FTFY. We would still find it necessary to lock up criminals for the protection of society.

Indeed.  Also, you can make the case that the incarceration of criminals should be carried through upon because of its deterrence effect on other people, who would otherwise have (through such deterministic patterns) carried through on this actions not because of their own will, but because of the absence of punishment opens new probabilistic outcome branches.

The minor chime in thing... we know deterrence doesn't work for the prevention of crime -- or, at absolute best (and this is giving benefit of doubt where there functionally isn't any), is one of the most horrifically inefficient and ineffective methods we have. We've known this for decades now, and the research and practical experiments attempted related to that knowledge has time and again proven that deterrence does not work for the prevention of... anything, really. It's bumpkis folk psychology that's flat out false. Human psych just doesn't work that way.

It sounds really good (just world something or other, or rational actors or whatever), but frankly anyone that tells you that deterrence is meaningfully effective is just... wrong. Completely in contradiction of multiple, disparate, and repeated investigations into the subject.

I can safely say that I've never heard this before, though I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, nor is criminal psychology in my usual avenues of light reading.  Digging into it through various abstracts, I can't find something very simple in this direction, though there are some interesting things about degree versus fact of punishment (i.e. that increasing the severity of punishment does not significantly increase deterrence rates over the existence of punishment, once a certain socially-perceived threshold is reached) and social versus legalistic methods of punishment (that "unofficial" methods such as social condemnation up to and including ostracization tend to have greater effects than purely legal methods of arrest and incarceration), but it all seems to suggest that deterrence does have a non-negligible impact, especially if punishment is administered promptly against significant majority of offenders.  I even went on Wiki to find something, and that only points out a particular outlier case where a fine is introduced in the previous absence of punishment, thereby "replacing" unofficial scorn and condemnation with what the paper authors refer to as a "price".  I'm still looking, of course, but I'd be interested in seeing some of these investigations, if you could point me at them?  Thanks. 

[Realmfighter]

I can safely say that I've never heard this before, though I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, nor is criminal psychology in my usual avenues of light reading.  Digging into it through various abstracts, I can't find something very simple in this direction, though there are some interesting things about degree versus fact of punishment (i.e. that increasing the severity of punishment does not significantly increase deterrence rates over the existence of punishment, once a certain socially-perceived threshold is reached) and social versus legalistic methods of punishment (that "unofficial" methods such as social condemnation up to and including ostracization tend to have greater effects than purely legal methods of arrest and incarceration), but it all seems to suggest that deterrence does have a non-negligible impact, especially if punishment is administered promptly against significant majority of offenders.  I even went on Wiki to find something, and that only points out a particular outlier case where a fine is introduced in the previous absence of punishment, thereby "replacing" unofficial scorn and condemnation with what the paper authors refer to as a "price".  I'm still looking, of course, but I'd be interested in seeing some of these investigations, if you could point me at them?  Thanks. 

While not talking about deterrence this study does show that prisons are ineffective as a form of rehabilitation and may even increase the chance of re-offending.

[Culise]

While not talking about deterrence this study does show that prisons are ineffective as a form of rehabilitation and may even increase the chance of re-offending.

Thank you for that; it looks interesting, and for me at least, it raises more questions about how the prison system is managed rather than the utility of incarceration as a potential means for reducing criminal behavior in general.  I notice that the paper itself cites the increased focus on punishment over rehabilitation in the last few decades and appears to seek primarily to determine the viability of this shift in focus, rather than to serve as a scathing indictment of prisons in general; it notes a decrease in recidivism rates for light sentences, which would be frequently seen in lesser crimes in which recidivism rates tend to be lower to start with, and all except for one of the studies cited take place after the shift in focus noted in the introduction.  I'd also note that it doesn't seem to partition by crime category; certain crimes tend to have greater recidivism rates than others, and grouping them can skew the values.  Still, I wasn't so much arguing for the offenders themselves as much as for that indeterminate and difficult-to-quantify population of "potential offenders" who are deterred by the existence of punishment.  The books I was skimming online (not reprinted online in full, unfortunately, and sorely dated given a print date in the 1970s, predating all but one of the cited studies in this paper), and included a study on that which indicated the converse for that particular circumstance.  Obviously, though, that's far harder to pin down, which makes it difficult to formulate any policy without using preconceived notions about it (which may have little basis in reality) as a basis. 

Even so, I think we've derailed this philosophical discussion enough.  It was and is quite interesting, though. 

[dei]

And even if you could detect everything 100% correctly, you'd still run in the problems needs to be capable of simulating itself simulating itself simulating itself .....

This. There's a law about it (don't remember and too lazy to search it).

I think it's Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Don't quote me on that, I just did a Google search for "law about a simulation simulating itself simulating itself" and got that somehow.

[Vactor]

A very basic limiting factor is this, your simulating system has a unit (a) capable of emulating a single unit (p) of the universe.

even if a unit (a) can be built that only requires one unit of (p), every unit of (p) in your computer requires at least one unit of (a) dedicated to its own simulation, as it exists as part of the universe.  You can never start simulating the rest of the universe.

Free will is best described as being free from control by another intelligence/will.  Even in a deterministic universe, an individual can have free will, so long as there is no other will that controls their actions.