Say a child is born into an abusive childhood (one variable) and this variable means they lack confidence, and so end up with no friends at school (a new variable), which makes them depressed (yet another) so they fail school, which could mess up their life. That child’s life could not have turned out any differently, because of their abusive parents, who probably ended up that way because of their own childhoods, etc etc up until the first life ever.

The point is, that was the only way it could have worked out for that child, and it is the same for everything else in existence. To change the future, or the present, you’d have to change the past. So I guess all blame can be laid upon the first variable which ever existed.

One thing about the vomiting example: Vomiting is a physical urge, so to speak, a reflex. I would say that the urge to vomit is not something occuring in your higher brain functions, thus you have the capacity to not ‘want’ to vomit, but still do it. However, when something is affecting the higher functions of a person’s brain, how does this urge manifest, and how much of their mind can consciously claim to be against the action? When things start affecting the personality traits of an individual, separating will from action becomes much more difficult. Still a useful example, though.

I really like what you said about moving away from retribution in punishment, and focusing on prevention. Seems like a very sane way of addressing an increasingly insane reality.

there is also a risk if you only look at it from a medical/neurological perspective: the brain is more complex than most people realize (from my experience), so if we start to assign aggressive behavior to specific regions right now without understanding how it all works, we might become the same situation we had when we assigned homosexuality to a mental disorder

A plaintive cry that is applicable to every topic!

The basic mechanics go like this:
You start the game with one unit, your wizard. He is very fragile, and has crappy offensive skills, but he acts as your ‘king’. If he dies, you lose.
Your wizard is also the source of all your power . You can use him to cast magic attacks, or to summon creatures.
This is where the bluffing comes in. Nothing in chaos is ever certain, every action is based on chance. This makes summoning powerful creatures difficult, as they have very low chances to succeed. However, when summoning a creature, you have the option to summon an illusion instead. Illusions have a 100% chance to summon, and are identical to real units in every aspect. However, if an opponent suspects an illusion, he may ‘disbelieve’ it, which destroys ‘fake’ creatures immediately.
Needless to say, this makes for some interesting strategies.

I’m sorry this post is so long, and I also apologise if it came across as an advertisement. It’s not, I’d just really like to see your take on the game.
The link is here, if you wanna try it:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1206403106/chaos-reborn-from-the-creator-of-the-original-x-co/description

Thanks!

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

I think one of the most productive ways to discuss this sort of thing is in terms of sustainability.

Rather than concerning ourselves with whether or not the way we assign blame makes sense, we should consider how sustainable it is when compared to our prototype society.

The extreme of brainwashing in order to construct a society of people who simply never mis-perform is, much like the extreme of any ideological vision, rather antithetical to certain elements of most prototype societies. It erases concepts of identity and agency that are at the heart of many long-standing prototype societies. That means that sustainable doesn’t even get a chance to come into it–programming people more explicitly than we do is out of the question.

But another view: we have an imperfect vision of the future. By programing uniform adherence to our current vision, we reduce the diversity in our system. Just like biodiversity, social transgression frequently allows societies to be more flexible by continually exposing societies to new ideas and allowing societies to adopt traits, much like organisms, that benefit them. Societies that adhere to their prototypes overly rigidly and uniformly lose the ability to adapt not only to new motivations, but indeed to new basic scientific discoveries.

But, again, we should nonetheless always be aware of the complete implications, such as is possible, of our social systems so we can properly assess them by whatever wibbly metrics we deem most appropriate. The need not be rational metrics, but only with proper understanding of the complexity of our society can we make informed, consenting decisions as to how our societies operate.

I don’t feel ‘punishment’ is a terribly useful word for thinking about management of criminal behaviour. Criminal justice systems are already acknowledged to pursue a broad, chaotic tangle of different purposes – rehabilitiation and discipline in the ideal case, imposition of disincentives on rational antisocial actors, subtitutionary retribution to suppress cycles of private escalation, and down at the bottom simple physical prophylaxis.

I would say that I enjoyed you post (I very much did) and leave it at that, but I’m afraid I agree too strongly with the ideas contained within it to say so, and only so) without reeking of confirmation bias. :P So here’s me noting that I reek of confirmation bias.

This has long been my own stance on these sorts of matters. I’m torn as to how we respond as a society. Currently, the illusion of free-will is an essential element of the society we want to craft. Whether that’s good or should continue is another matter–but for now at least, I think the society we want to create is very much *not* just one in which the man with the tumor stops killing people, but one in which he is held responsible–socially and legally–for having done so.

There will always be a fuzzy line, it’s merely a matter of what we want to be fuzziest. Do we want to do as we do and have ideas of blame and culpability be fuzzy and neglected in exchange for a clear sense of self, agency and sovereignty to act as armor against our inevitable systems of social programming such that individuals can stand a greater chance resisting programming when necessary to act as an additional balancing force? Or do we want to place the fuzz on the matter of agency and identity in exchange for clear license to eradicate harm as seen from the perspective of the powers that be–i.e. the Brave New World route (note: this is not meant to be disparaging; I find it fascinating that one of the most compelling passages in the entire book is the part where the Director explains his view to the Savage … that Huxley utterly failed to convince me the Savage’s earnestness in the pages that followed was earned has always been immensely interesting to me).

There are other axes and requisite fuzzinesses to consider, of course. But I feel that accepting the fuzziness of blame in a cognitive sense is merely a matter of straight-forward data. The case for free-will is not entirely lost–indeed the case for non-local effects of consciousness is not entirely lost and that could well tie in to free will–but the feasible bar for the *power* and *scope* of free-will (and non-local consciousness effects, for that matter) lowers by the day, That, to me, is a matter of routine observation–albeit stifled by our systems of socialization such that it is completely understandable that it is not a way of thinking people find “obvious” or otherwise naturally occurring. it goes against common sense, certainly, but I feel it is quite apparent in a scientific sense.

But as you discuss somewhat, the extent to which that matters is nebulous. Our society has no particular need to take such things explicitly into account. It is certainly our obligation to *consider* the true costs and difficulties of certain social perspectives and socialization schemes in light of this kind of discussion, but I do not think that because we have any obligation to be *rational* about the way we respond to that consideration. We are not and cannot be rational actors–but we hit a somewhat circular logic at that point: if we decide that our society must rationally abandon the rational actor/agent concept in order to function properly we are cleaving to an inherently rational ideal while simultaneously deciding that that ideal defeats itself. Certainly we should abandon rational actors/agents as *predictive* models of behavior, but to throw away the rational ideal in favor of embracing our wibbly-wobbly-ness wholeheartedly is not necessarily the proper response.

No system can be properly described within itself. This is true of math, this is true of ethics and of logic. We cannot define the direction our society should move in or the most rational course of action or what-have-you from within those respective systems of parlance–and as long as we’re standing them willy-nilly against each other semi-arbitrarily to achieve a cohesive yet circular justification for the way things are … we might as well consider continuing to assign blame in precisely the way that we do now. It’s no less valid a course in many respects.

But, again, the recognition of why it is also no *more* valid a course and the specifics therein is essential. Hence my general concurrence with your discussion here. :)

All this reminded me of the Ulysses contract. It’s an interesting question.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/317421-blame/

Radiolab have a really good podcast on blame. It goes into a lot of similar things.

You’re essentially discussing a very specific instance of free will. My go-to-read on that was Daniel Dennet’s Freedom Evolves, which looked at free will in a deterministic universe.

That said, I was talking to a physicist recently who claimed that the universe isn’t deterministic and that quantum effects have a much larger effect on events than are often credited.

For bonus points: An inflationary universe likely equals an infinite one. How does free will fit into an infinity of possible outcomes.

thanks for the read.