New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Before it

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

I find hypotheticals with no possibility of realistic existence to be quite a waste of time.

I disagree. Hypotheticals can be used to illustrate a principle. In this case, they help us to identify what is ideal.

I feel that ethics is something which demands a top-down solution. We formulate the goal (the ideal), and then break it down into smaller components which have to be debated against one another with similarly hypothetical questions. At the lowest levels you get something practical.

Crucially, the higher levels of ethics take precedence, so we have to formulate those before we can move down to the lower levels, and that's how top-down design works.

Ideals are nice but without practical implementations they aren't worth much. An ideal, in and of itself, doesn't have much value. Only in the way that it informs a pragmatic solution does it bring something to the table.

 

[Jadzia]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Ideals are nice but without practical implementations they aren't worth much.

I said in my above post, that at the lower levels of top-down design, you get something practical.

An ideal, in and of itself, doesn't have much value. Only in the way that it informs a pragmatic solution does it bring something to the table.

Which brings us back to my original point. Whatever pragmatic solution we end up with, we should keep in mind what we are trying to achieve with it, rather than follow protocol for it's own sake.

And for that -- to use your terminology -- we have to look at what informed that pragmatic solution.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Ideals are nice but without practical implementations they aren't worth much.

I said in my above post, that at the lower levels of top-down design, you get something practical.

An ideal, in and of itself, doesn't have much value. Only in the way that it informs a pragmatic solution does it bring something to the table.

Which brings us back to my original point. Whatever pragmatic solution we end up with, we should keep in mind what we are trying to achieve with it, rather than follow protocol for it's own sake.

And for that -- to use your terminology -- we have to look at what informed that pragmatic solution.

I think we are coming at the same point from different directions.

Your original point seemed to be to the effect that it would be nice if we didn't need laws and people just behaved themselves. Which is, of course, a lovely idea but not something that's possible here and now under realistic circumstances.

Conversely, we could construct a legal system with virtually nil offense rates if we simply execute people for every offense. Some ideals may be possible to accomplish but I don't think anyone would much like what it would take to get there.

 

[Jadzia]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Your original point seemed to be to the effect that it would be nice if we didn't need laws and people just behaved themselves.

Not quite. My original point was that written laws are an attempt to describe what is right/wrong, rather than being definitive of what is right/wrong. Let me try to explain that differently...

Laws often have loopholes. The fact that they are called loopholes tells you something about the nature of law ~ that laws can be flawed, and can permit things that weren't intended to be permitted. And what this suggests is that such a law is a failed attempt at something. It is a failed attempt to describe an underlying ethic.

So that's how we should see written law ~ as an attempt to describe what is right&wrong, rather than being definitive of what is right&wrong. A law has a spirit that is impossible to convey precisely enough in words.

But despite this, literalism seems to prevail when dealing with laws... which is quite irrational when you think about it.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Your original point seemed to be to the effect that it would be nice if we didn't need laws and people just behaved themselves.

Not quite. My original point was that written laws are an attempt to describe what is right/wrong, rather than being definitive of what is right/wrong. Let me try to explain that differently...

Laws often have loopholes. The fact that they are called loopholes tells you something about the nature of law ~ that laws can be flawed, and can permit things that weren't intended to be permitted. And what this suggests is that such a law is a failed attempt at something. It is a failed attempt to describe an underlying ethic.

So that's how we should see written law ~ as an attempt to describe what is right&wrong, rather than being definitive of what is right&wrong. A law has a spirit that is impossible to convey precisely enough in words.

But despite this, literalism seems to prevail when dealing with laws... which is quite irrational when you think about it.

That's why we have judges, juries, and lawyers: because the letter of the law is not the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong. If the letter of the law was all we used, then we could just feed all cases into a computer running an expert system and decide guilt/innocence and punishments automatically.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

I think it's extremely dangerous to do away with the written rule of law.

Where would you rather live?

(i) A society in which all people follow written laws, whatever those may be, but nobody has any real grasp of ethics. So the people might enjoy finding loopholes in those laws, because it allows them greater freedom to do what they like to one another.

(ii) A society in which all people have a well developed sense of ethics, and who live by those ethics. This society doesn't have any laws.

A coda to (ii): This society is also going to be very short-lived.

Perhaps it is irrational. I accept that. But it's the best we can do. Spirit cannot be written down. It can be remembered while the law is enforced, but that's the end of it.

Order and law are not inherent qualities. They must be imposed. The tendency of all living beings, especially humans, is towards chaos and disorder - if people can do anything, they will do everything. That is why we have the law - to keep the chaos from spreading. Because where there is chaos, no one is safe.

To put it another way: In a society without law, there would be nothing to stop your next door neighbor from pulling out a shotgun and blowing you to bits just because they didn't like your stereo being played too loud, or your lawn growing too long, or whatever they feel like. That sound like a society you'd want to live in? I thought not.

People obey the law because they fear the punishment for breaking it. For most of the human race, that's all that's stopping them. Human beings are irrational and violent creatures at heart. The purpose of law and civilization is to restrain them.

Sure, laws can be, and often are, flawed. But there is a framework in place to change aberrant laws. There is a system that can - must - be followed. When a law exists but is flawed, there is an approved mechanism to change it. When a MOB exists but is flawed...game over. We're all dead if that happens.

 

[Jadzia]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

That's why we have judges, juries, and lawyers: because the letter of the law is not the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong.

Lawyers are among those most likely to quibble over the precise wording, and care not for the underlying ethics... especially when it comes to things like corporate law, or insurance, or others cases in which large sums of money are in jeopardy.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

That's why we have judges, juries, and lawyers: because the letter of the law is not the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong.

Lawyers are among those most likely to quibble over the precise wording, and care not for the underlying ethics... especially when it comes to things like corporate law, or insurance, or others cases in which large sums of money are in jeopardy.

Ethics are not as cut-and-dried as you seem to be implying here. No doubt we can agree on some basic premises, like "murder is wrong" and "theft is wrong," but once you get down into specific details things are a lot murkier. This is why I do not believe in moral absolutism.

 

[Jadzia]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Ethics are not as cut-and-dried as you seem to be implying here. No doubt we can agree on some basic premises, like "murder is wrong" and "theft is wrong," but once you get down into specific details things are a lot murkier. This is why I do not believe in moral absolutism.

But you do believe in a constitution.

The fact that we can write constitutions and have them celebrated for so long should tell you something about ethics. It tells us that ethics isn't such a subjective thing, and that our sense of right and wrong is not a competing set of desires, but something common.

As far as specific details being murkier at depth, this is why I talked earlier about how ethics should be being viewed as a top-down problem, where at each step, we formulate ideals and debate hypotheticals to bring the smaller details into sharper focus.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Re: New Intelligence-Led Policing Strategy Strives to Stop Crime Befor

Jadzia

Where would you rather live?

(i) A society in which all people follow written laws, whatever those may be, but nobody has any real grasp of ethics. So the people might enjoy finding loopholes in those laws, because it allows them greater freedom to do what they like to one another.

(ii) A society in which all people have a well developed sense of ethics, and who live by those ethics. This society doesn't have any laws.

Obviously scenario 2, but the fact is humans aren't like that. There are some very ethical people, but many of them are not so ethical, and about a percent have no sense of ethics at all other than to benefit themselves.

For the few who are ethical, scenario 2 would work; for the bulk of the population you need to of course educate people how to think ethically and responsibly, but you'll also need laws to keep them in line; and for the percent that have no consciences aren't often even kept in line by fear of punishment, most spend their entire lives bouncing in and out of jail, and a small percentage of them are smart enough to avoid getting caught and they end up rising to the top of businesses and politics.


Mr. Laser Beam

A coda to (ii): This society is also going to be very short-lived.

No shit

People obey the law because they fear the punishment for breaking it. For most of the human race, that's all that's stopping them.

There have been times I could have broken the law but didn't. There were cases I felt it wasn't right to do, other times I felt it wasn't even practical to do it.

Human beings are irrational and violent creatures at heart.

Not all violence is actually irrational though. There are a lot of ruthless behaviors people engage in that do actually have a logical (albeit brutal and amoral)

The purpose of law and civilization is to restrain them.

To restrain the ugliest aspects of human behavior...


Jadzia

Lawyers are among those most likely to quibble over the precise wording, and care not for the underlying ethics... especially when it comes to things like corporate law, or insurance, or others cases in which large sums of money are in jeopardy.

Lawyers can be the worst offenders when it comes to interpreting the letter of the law while completely ignoring it's spirit.