I guess I’ll say a few words in defense of doing something like this… Supposing we’re taking an ethically consequentialist stance. In that case, the only purpose of punishment, basically, is to serve as a deterrent. But in our glorious posthuman future, nanobots will step in before anyone is allowed to get hurt, and crimes will be impossible to commit. So deterrence is no longer necessary and the only reason to punish people is due to spite. But if people are feeling spiteful towards one another on Eudaimonia that would kill the vibe. Being able to forgive one person you disagree with seems like a pretty low bar where being non-spiteful is concerned. (Other moral views might consider punishment to be a moral imperative even if it isn’t achieving anything from a consequentialist point of view. But consequentialism is easily the most popular moral view on LW according to this survey.)
A more realistic scheme might involve multiple continents for people with value systems that are strongly incompatible, perhaps allowing people to engage in duels on a voluntary basis if they’re really sure that is what they want to do.
In any case, the name of the site is “Less Wrong” not “Always Right”, so I feel pretty comfortable posting something which I suspect may be flawed and letting commenters find flaws (and in fact that was part of why I made this post, to see what complaints people would have, beyond the utility of sharing a fun whimsical story. But overall the post was more optimized for whimsy.)
It’s fiction ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess I’ll say a few words in defense of doing something like this… Supposing we’re taking an ethically consequentialist stance. In that case, the only purpose of punishment, basically, is to serve as a deterrent. But in our glorious posthuman future, nanobots will step in before anyone is allowed to get hurt, and crimes will be impossible to commit. So deterrence is no longer necessary and the only reason to punish people is due to spite. But if people are feeling spiteful towards one another on Eudaimonia that would kill the vibe. Being able to forgive one person you disagree with seems like a pretty low bar where being non-spiteful is concerned. (Other moral views might consider punishment to be a moral imperative even if it isn’t achieving anything from a consequentialist point of view. But consequentialism is easily the most popular moral view on LW according to this survey.)
A more realistic scheme might involve multiple continents for people with value systems that are strongly incompatible, perhaps allowing people to engage in duels on a voluntary basis if they’re really sure that is what they want to do.
In any case, the name of the site is “Less Wrong” not “Always Right”, so I feel pretty comfortable posting something which I suspect may be flawed and letting commenters find flaws (and in fact that was part of why I made this post, to see what complaints people would have, beyond the utility of sharing a fun whimsical story. But overall the post was more optimized for whimsy.)