For the police example, we have two conflicting requirements, first is to be so scary
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs.
A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Similarly we want teachers to be kind and understanding with students with genuine difficulties
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
The point is really how pessimistic or cautious is your basic view. Do you see the police as a thin blue line separating barbarism from civilization? Do you see every generation of children as “barbarians needing to be civilized” (Hannah Arendt) Or you have a more optimistic view, seeing the vast majority of people behaving well and the vast majority of kids genuinely trying to do good work?
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.
No, policemen don’t need to be scary to do their jobs. A police that can be counted on doing a proper investigation that punishes criminals can deter crime even when the individual policmen aren’t scary.
A policemen being scary can also reduce the willingness of citizens to report crimes because they are afraid of the police. Whole minority communities don’t like to interact with police and thus try to solve conflicts on their own with violence because they don’t trust the police.
Being empathic is not simply about being “kind and understanding” it allows the teacher to have more information about the mental state of a student and more likely see when a student gets confused and react towards it. A smart student also profits when the teacher get’s that the student already understands what the teacher wants to tell him.
Neither. I rather care about the expected empiric result of a policy than about seeing people are inherently good or inherently evil. I think you think too much in categories like that and care too little about the empirical reality that we do have less crime than we had in the past.
It’s like discussing global warming not on the scientific data about temperature changes but on whether we are for the environment or for free enterprise. The nonscientific framing leads to bad thinking.
It’s not clear how much of that is this and how much is them being more afraid of the kingpins of their ethnic mafias than they are of the police.