Why do you believe that brains have to be magic for prisons to make sense?

Who's implying to believe in magic here? I certainly don't.

I'm just trying to warn about the pitfalls of monocausal explanations for complex issues..

You should try to ask the OP the same question..

But, to be fair, the title of the submission to HN has been changed, to something a lot less of clickbait.

Maybe I would not have engaged otherwise, actually. Makes you think..

But still, downvotes = disagreement, I thought HN would be better than that.

Apparently, I was wrong.

> But still, downvotes = disagreement,

Nope, downvotes can be for many reasons, disagreement is not required to downvote. (I often downvote comments that I agree with and find non-useful in context, and upvote comments I disagree with but which contribute to productive discussion.)

Not everyone is a saint like you, I guess..

I agree in theory, but I would like to hear some justification why other comments, even if unrelated, get downvoted as well then.

You seemed to be implying magic by arguing against crime being caused by biochemical processes in the brain. As far as we know all human behavior ultimately boils down to stuff in happening in the brain and the brain is a biochemical machine.

That's quite a stretch to say that I would imply something like that.. You should read the original comment again. To which I was simply writing a reply.

I don't know, maybe you should have a talk with some post-structuralists, or with some other folks who seem to believe that xyz is a "social construct"..

> But still, downvotes = disagreement, I thought HN would be better than that.

downvotes can also be for perceiving questions as posed in bad faith, non-sequiturs, being reductive, rude comments, etc.

Tell me something I don't know yet..

But I was not asking in bad faith, it is beyond me why anyone would even want to do that.

Okay, this is the Internet, I know, and you cannot tell from across the screen. That old drama.

But still, I don't agree that an uncharitable interpretation should be the standard on HN that everyone just downright assumes..

> Time to abolish prisons now.. is that what you are trying to say?

i'm not quite sure how "abolishing prisons" is suggested by what they posted. what leads you to that?

Nothing. It was not suggested.

I just extrapolated a bit too unconstrained maybe. Okay, you can accuse me of erecting a straw man now.

But the thing is, I don't know how many times I've seen this (or very similar) debates unfold. Definitely getting a bit tired of it, to be honest. So I just though, why not skip ahead a bit, leave out some of the usual steps, you know?

no, that would be a different topic (although prisons are probably not the best way to introduce socially beneficial patterns into human mind, quite the opposite).

So glad to see that the concept of individual responsibility is not dead yet...