But, I've demonstrated, it's wrong. You're going to vote for things, and build society in such a way, that makes it worse for all of us.
That's probably the most obnoxious thing anybody's said to you in a while but I can't see any way around that fact: my point of view is absolutely correct so far as I have the ability to confirm this. You haven't been able to convince me otherwise (nor are you interested in trying) so I'm safe to assume my point of view is closer to the truth, and my idea (not mine rather but the one I support) of restorative justice is the correct way to build a better society.
You disagree, won't be convinced, won't read evidence contrary to your experience, and want to make the world more like what you think it should be, which will, as per the evidence presented, make it worse. Furthermore since you're not interested in investigative reasoning for certain subjects about which you're convinced you know the truth (my attempt at your words), when the world gets worse as we step further down the path of retributive justice, you won't acknowledge that your ideology is bad, because you've determined for yourself it's correct and won't be convinced otherwise, and will try to implement it even further. With this ideology locked as such I'd say it's not slippery slope fallacy to suggest you may one day find yourself arguing to literally cut off the hands of thieves.
Given these stakes, how could I not be angry? What a frustrating ideology to encounter!
But people don't respond well to anger so I'll say truthfully and earnestly, if you ignore the subject of the conversation and focus only on the logical and ideological framework I think you're applying here, can you see how refusing to consider studies or arguments that challenge your core beliefs can sometimes be problematic? How it can be a recursive and self feeding problem?
But of course, things do go both ways. Part of the reason people like me adopt such dug-in positions is because there's just so much stupid shit and terrible ideas in society that some kind of filter becomes necessary, and it's not always easy to tune. For every legitimate, good-intentioned proposition out there that may contradict common sense, there are another 10 idiotic propositions, and it can become very laborious to look through them all to try to find the good ones. And you have to understand that I don't have my position out of malice, it's moreso a greater concern for the welfare of what I'd call "law abiding citizens" than what I'd call "criminals" (now that we have clarified the definitions). You may disagree with this, but I don't think it makes me evil or malicious.
Now I do want to say one thing. It is not IMPOSSIBLE to convince me of something when my common sense tells me otherwise. If I could see an example of a major US city, very similar to the ones I've lived in, that has successfully been lenient on crime and had a crime decrease, then I would certainly be open to reconsidering my positions. But throughout my life it seems like the opposite has happened. It seems to me in fact that the "compassion not conviction" policies directly caused the increase in crime. SF is a city that seems to agree with me, given the Chesa Boudin recall. NYC is another example, where that city was actually quite safe in the 2000s and only seemingly with De Blasio's compassion-focused administration did it start to deteriorate again. Chicago is another example.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't feel I'm entirely "refusing to consider" arguments. But when it comes to things that I feel increasingly certain about, it requires an increasingly salient level of proof to convince me otherwise. Like for this particular issue, given that I've been to SF and seen with my own eyes what it's like on the streets there, it would require more than a study to convince me of this, I'd want to go and see the successful policy in action with my own eyes. Because right now my own eyes have seen that the policy was not really that successful, and news stories like the one in the OP reinforce my perception here.
This is kind of off topic, but if I could build my ideal world, I'd begin to do away with cops entirely. Modern technology could enable total, pervasive surveillance of an entire city's public areas. AI could enable automatic monitoring and enforcement. You could build a system of perfect justice, where nobody could get away with anything because it would all be seen. I'd still prefer privacy in the home so that it wouldn't be some hellish dystopia, but otherwise, hell, let's go full Minority Report. The tech is ready and I truly think it would make for a better and safer society, and eliminate lots of problems with human-centric law enforcement such as profiling, brutality, etc. In fact, I'm actually really hopeful that SF tries something like this out. Given the city's impending budget cliff and dwindling police force numbers, they may be faced with a choice between just tolerating increasing lawlessness or starting to use cheap tech to try and keep people safe in other ways.
I think I don't want to line by line you and link bomb, though the temptation is there, but before we go our separate ways I want to somewhat address what you brought up.
I think you're probably right that the usa is a unique environment to apply the reformative justice principles, as you say and for reasons I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread, such as difficulty of achieving true universal healthcare for example. I think a key reason though is the political divide in America and the outsized ability of various people and organizations to make or break a policy.
This is important in the SF case because my running theory, backed I believe by evidence (I won't link bomb) is that for example a relatively progressive politician like Chesa Boudin can be hamstrung by the cops not making as many arrests. For reasons I can't quite comprehend Boudin seems to be hated by a lot of people, but what I've found is that before he was elected the police union was already putting out hit pieces. In reality, Boudin's prosecution rates were the same or higher than his predecessor. In terms of actually putting people in jail, he was just as happy to do it as any other prosecutor, he just was brought less people to put in jail.
Now maybe he deserved to be recalled for his inability to work with the sfpd, I'm not sure, but that doesn't seem related to the two things in line with reformative justice that he did, eliminating cash bail and pretrial detention. Here's the key: there were iirc one or two high profile instances of a person out of pretrial detention that then committed a heinous crime. This is fodder for yellow journalism and confirmation bias. "See, it doesn't work, and furthermore this is an indictment of reformative justice and progressive politics!"
What is never mentioned is that certain forms of crime, particularly violent forms, did drop during his tenure, and in fact rose again after his recall.
The situation with him also seems fodder for misattribution. How much affect can one DA over the course of, what, two years, really have, in the face of record inflation and a historic pandemic? Property crime rose during his tenure but it rose across America (murder rates did too). I have lots of evidence showing that crime rates correlate more strongly with economic disparity than anything else, so if crime is going up in SF, it's probably because of that, rather than a single polarizing politician.
Basically my point is, yeah, your eyes are seeing things, no way I can deny that, but the news never reports the mundane, and the truth of it is San Francisco is a relatively boring place. There are far more violent cities in America, but for whatever reason the media loves to paste a sensationalist story of every single murder in SF, every single robbery. Your eyes can only see what's put in front of them, and crime stats aren't being put in front of them. Little Rock had 119 murders last year, twice San Francisco's, but the media doesn't tout every single one as either the personal failure of a socialist DA or the collective failure of progressive politics in general, so nobody talks about it.
So that's why I argue so strongly in favor of the boring: awareness of cognitive biases and rhetorical fallacies, research, and statistics, because I don't think the more exciting way of being aware of the world will give you an accurate picture. Maybe the job of people like me is to find ways to get this information in front of people that doesn't involve insulting them on internet forums lol
In any case having previously lived in SF I feel like what you're seeing on the streets there is less to do with murderers and more to do with the outsized homeless population and lack of public restrooms. I suppose the car break-ins thing is bad but from what I've read the sfpd is neither defunded nor under staffed (compared to cities with worse or more crime), so I'm not sure what's preventing them from making arrests? My pet theory is they're just kinda shit at their jobs, maybe on purpose. Plenty of stories on here of people showing them GPS tracking for a stolen bike and them shrugging their shoulders.
As for your ideal world, that certainly agrees with the evidence that certainty of punishment is the best deterrent (though deterrence is not necessarily the best way to reduce crime). Having though lived in a pervasive surveillance police state (the PRC) I hesitate to throw my weight behind it. Then again Taiwan has somewhat pervasive surveillance and I haven't found any privacy issues as a result, perhaps because the digital minister is an advocate for privacy, or maybe because much of the surveillance is from private businesses on their stores. There's other considerations with the AI thing such as AI can fail to face recognize on black people more frequently than white depending on the model which could deepen inequalities of the application of justice in the USA. Also such a tool, if built with good intentions, could be abused upon the election of some kind of fascist, and used to target political enemies. In general I'm on board with ideas that reduce brutality and profiling.
I will drop only one link, a quick fact checking of various crime theories in San Francisco, from I think about 2 years ago now https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...
Anyway my final question I think is: if you were willing to grant there might be something to my idea that the truth may be more hidden away in statistics and studies, is there a way to bring that truth "before the eyes" of a million people all who have their own things they're worrying about?
Same here. People are ignoring the research that highly punitive retributive justice systems don't work, and reformative justice systems do, because of some combination of yellow journalism and cognitive / rhetorical fallacy.
> Studies are not the arbiters of truth.
Certainly not all truths, and I agree with you that we can't expect people to fact check literally every aspect of their lives. However, your flat earth example is fantastic, here's why: the earth being flat is common sense. If you don't fly (many people) and have never seen the ocean (many people), don't think much about orbits or astronomy, why would you think the earth is round? There's a reason flat earthism is so popular, it really does "make good horse sense."
Grant me for a moment that to believe the earth is flat in 2023 requires believing in a massive global conspiracy, maybe instead let's consider a detached farmer in 1920. How about this guy: https://youtu.be/RS27u6IqWt0 . Consider what's necessary to know with certainty that the earth is a globe, and consider how they disagree with "common sense."
A flat earth would allow for seeing all the way to the end of it, right, so since you can't see all the way to new York city from here, the earth must be a globe, right? "No, fog prevents that, and tall trees, and mountains." Ok, the shadow cast on the moon during a lunar eclipse is always round, and the only shape that can do that is a sphere. "Well, that's nice, but I've never seen a lunar eclipse, and I don't really care to sit around moving shapes in front of a candle to see if that's true." Ok, time zones! If the earth was flat it would be the same time in new York and San Francisco, instead it's different. "Is it different? I didn't know, I don't have a telephone."
Without resorting to things completely outside the realm of "common sense," and basically coming up with good explanations for someone's daily experiences, i don't see how you could explain to someone (pre space age) how the earth is a globe. Can you think of a way?
I wish there was a more polite way to say "willful ignorant" but my point is basically, you've had the explanations, with evidence, for why your common sense doesn't align with reality, set before you, and you said "I don't want to read that, I'm good with my view of reality." I'm not trying to sell you essential oils here, this is just something outside your domain and to do it well takes some research and perhaps I guess something that disagrees with the "common sense" of some people. What else can I call that?
And anyway, surely you agree that when it comes to setting up our laws, infrastructure, we want to make sure to be doing so correctly? Before we build a bridge, don't we want some studies done on concrete before choosing the right kind? And isn't it best to have the domain experts doing that? And doesn't it make sense that even though every time you tried to use consumer concrete to build something with a gap, it crumbled, that's ok because we use a different kind for building in industrial applications with techniques involving rebar?
And I still hold the position that the retributive model isn't common sense, I've found great success with never wielding a stick as a leader in various spheres: teacher, social worker, sales leader, engineering lead, scout leader, burning man camp leader. It just seems common sense and agreed with my every day experience that punishment drives shit results. A story from "How to Win Friends": a tech fails to fuel a stunt pilot's plane well, he nearly crashes and perishes. Tech is apoplectic, apologizing profusely, offering to resign, pilot says "why would I fire the tech least likely to make a fuel calculation mistake in the future?" I only use this example to demonstrate that even in the domain you chose, that being business / school / interpersonal relationships, the "retributive " model isn't common sense or effective, though again I don't think it's a great idea to try to draw too many conclusions between handling a fuel calculation error and a premeditated crime or crime of passion.
> "I don't commit any crimes" is tantamount to me saying "I have literally never sped or broken any law in my entire life."
Well, do you see why maybe your common sense is maladjusted? For me I'm genuinely surprised at your surprise. What else is a criminal but someone who breaks the law? That's why I pushed back so hard! Your definition is vague! "Someone that does these crimes I think are really bad." Well the USA doesn't care if you murdered someone or committed certain kinds of white collar fraud, or even something more mundane, all are felonies and you don't get to vote after. You're a criminal in all circumstances. Hence my point that your common sense doesn't map well onto an actual society, or at least not this one.
> We disagree, dude. It's no reason to get emotional.
This is the extraordinary privilege you live with. Imagine the conversation is discussing sodomy laws in Texas. "who cares, doesn't affect me, and anyway isn't that kinda gross?" You have the privilege to not worry about it, other people are literally fighting for their right to exist.
If you're finding anger in response to your position, why is your response to hand wave it? "Damn bro, calm down." Are you not at all curious why someone would be so passionate about this issue? Because what we're talking about is America's bloodthirsty retributive justice system that's resulted in one of the highest incarceration rates on earth and essentially a continuation of slavery (prison labor, for profit privatized prisons), and you're dispassionately making "common sense" arguments for not only how that's great, but we should do more of it, and by the way you don't care about whatever evidence I show you demonstrating that you're wrong, you just want to continue believing it or whatever. No shit that's infuriating lol.
> When I talk about law abiding citizens I'm talking about people who don't commit crimes that make life drastically shittier for everyone else.
There's plenty of things people do that make life drastically shittier for everyone else, that isn't illegal. Banks making bad investments and crashing the economy in 2008. Sending soldiers to die in foreign countries. Locking up refugees. Lobbying to keep minimum wage low. Torpedoing welfare budgets. Driving gas guzzling vehicles. Operating a fossil fuel company. Rejecting health insurance claims. Addicting someone to alert bubble dopamine hits. Harvesting user data.
Seems common sense to me that destroying the Gulf coast through blatant malpractice is just as bad as punching someone in the face, but nobody went to jail after the BP oil spill.
> Are they perfect deterrents? Of course not. But I've changed my own behavior to avoid punishment, I've seen a million other people do the same, and there's no possible universe in which I could just read some study online and go "wow, I guess punishments don't work to deter crime!"
It's worth pointing out by the way that this is basically a strawman, no study I linked said "we should stop punishing crime," the basic argument is that the best deterrent is certainty of being punished, whereas degree of punishment holds basically no effect. In this context that means the SFPD quiet quitting is having a much larger effect on increase in crime than, say, eliminating cash bail. In any case the other arguments are about actually solving what drives crime more than anything else which is economic disparity: improving that doesn't require halting the punishment of crime, my point is that the call to arms are a distraction towards ineffective solutions.
Btw I forget that some Americans consider "conservative" an insult, I didn't mean that in a name calling way, I meant that in an attempt to accurately describe the political leanings of the position you hold. I maintain that retributive justice is a conservative policy position, and indeed is a favorite of your Republican party. Note also though that Biden is also a conservative by most international perspectives, and sf politicians are mostly centrists or at best liberals (a term which here means "moderate centrist," not "progressive"). So I didn't mean to name call you, sorry.
> I could continue on, and go over the Norway thing and how I believe it's a completely different situation than the US
Norway is different but I don't see why that means the usa can't apply the basic restorative justice principles
> or go over the housing the homeless thing and talk about how expensive that would be in SF
First, housing first advocates seem to be demonstrating that housing the homeless would be cheaper than the current solution of cycling them in and out of jail while wasting police resources on tearing down their shelters. Second, so what it's expensive? We're talking about humans living on the street. Society is only as good as it is for those living in the worse condition it offers.
I admire you for having a clearer understanding of why you post here. I enjoy the discussions as well I think, and maybe I'm driven by a desire to seek truth? I guess throughout this thread I've been hoping people had SOME evidence to justify the retributive justice model they're all touting and seeking further implementation of, because otherwise to me it just seems like people are seeking further cruelty, but I haven't gotten that, just people saying "doesn't it just make sense? Cut off the hands of thieves, that'll teach them!" So maybe that's why I'm so frustrated.
So we have two dudes with common sense disagreements. We need to decide whether we punish thieves by cutting off their hands or by making them make society whole through labor or otherwise while investigating why they felt the need to steal at all. How do we resolve that other than by seeking the truest effective method through study, experimentation, publishing results? "We disagreed so we did research and found the right answer." Well that's basically what I'm saying we as a society should do and it sounds like you're basically saying "despite that effort I still prefer to just believe I'm right."