"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread"
As I personally believe that a legislature is a juicy target for sociopaths seeking power and impunity, and therefore likely to demonstrate less empathy than the general population, I'd rather leave the cold rationality for writing the laws, and the empathy for interpreting them in a just manner.
Practice rationality in determining the facts of the case. Practice empathy in deciding whether to convict or acquit, and in the sentencing for the convicted.
Cold rationality is how Jean Valjean gets 20 years in the galleys for stealing bread.
That's why most laws have a wide band of potential punishments.
> I'd rather leave the cold rationality for writing the laws, and the empathy for interpreting them in a just manner.
It's typically a single person -- the judge -- who will select the punishment from the band of permissible punishments. So now we're taking a theoretical group decision made across a wide swath of society, and laying it down on a single person... This is already done to a large extent, except that the judge has minimum and maximum punishments to work between.
> Practice empathy in deciding whether to convict or acquit...
This has huge implications on rule-of-law. I'll just link to another thread where I argued against a very similar viewpoint:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910#11504703
> There's a myriad of reasons why this is a bad thing for society. For example, white supremacy groups not being arrested or charged with crimes because all the cops and DAs and judges are also white supremacists. If it's truly within their world-view that a lynching is not wrong, then according to your theory it's their responsibility to not arrest or charge for it. This viewpoint is directly opposed to the rule of law.
(I removed the first sentence from my quote, since I was properly corrected on it down-thread.)
The legislature is supposed to be burdened with this. Empathy for the people living with us is the reason why we all left the wild and came together in the first place.
> Practice rationality in determining the facts of the case. Practice empathy in deciding whether to convict or acquit, and in the sentencing for the convicted.
I think I disagree. Once we've come to the facts of the case, with the proper (empathetic) laws, it just becomes a matter of execution (no pun intended).
>Cold rationality is how Jean Valjean gets 20 years in the galleys for stealing bread.
Don't think what you're saying is falling on deaf ears. I definitely get it. I'm a black man in the US. I know what strict mandatory minimums and culturally deaf laws do to people. However, I think that if we fix the laws, the rest shakes out.
Empathy for the people living with us is the reason why we all left the wild
Given that USA jails a hell lot of people (per capita) compared to any developed nation and large number of them are about drug offenses or victimless crimes I would rather have a linient jurors than harsh ones.
Seriously? At the very least I hope you're only narrowly applying this to the jury system, but even then...
I think his definition of empathy is narrower than what many people think of when they think of empathy, so in some ways his argument struck me as a battle against a straw man. But TBH I haven't read the whole book (just coverage of it, and some of his related work).
There's a counterpoint here [2].
1: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/paul-bloom-makes-a-weir...
2: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201310/wh...
And yes, this applies solely to the situation I gave.
What is the depth that makes it sound good?
For example, someone gets caught with some crumbs of weed. You could make the empathetic argument for fining that person rather than jail time because, "They're not hurting anyone. It's just a little weed.", so on and so forth. Or you could make the logical/rational argument that the punishment and what stems from it (housing a person in jail, the economic aspects of ruining this person's life for what really is a victimless crime) does not fit the crime.
Eh... don't practice any empathy. Practice rationality and common sense.