What I find most disturbing that under such law, revengeful people are more protected.
It’s also optimal for people who profess to be non-vengeful, since the government’s vengeance is now fully deniable. So, we should expect that at least some of the people who claim to be less vengeful are actually just pretending.… which means it might not be as bad as it seems.
I don’t understand. The less vengeful you are the safer is for criminals to attack you and the easier you become a victim. That is, if the punisment takes into acount the wishes of the victim.
The less vengeful you are the safer is for criminals to attack you and the easier you become a victim.
Which is why it’s only safe to signal less vengeance if you have somebody else out of your direct control who’s going to do the avenging for you. ;-) It’s, “gosh, I’m full of forgiveness and love the sinner, hate the sin, but there’s nothing I can do to stop the government from locking you away.”
In fact, it’s even better than signaling vengefulness, in a way: you are not required to be individually credible in your threats of revenge. So a default-vengeful government allows even the not-very-threatening to have safety. (In that context, being forgiving may well be countersignaling: “I’m so high-status that I don’t have to pursue individual vengeance.”)
It’s, “gosh, I’m full of forgiveness and love the sinner, hate the sin, but there’s nothing I can do to stop the government from locking you away.”
In fact, it’s even better than signaling vengefulness, in a way: you are not required to be individually credible in your threats of revenge.
Eh, with the exception of homicide, the government still needs significant cooperation and initiative from you before they will follow through on avenging. So it really doesn’t allow you to put up the act of, “oh, I’d like to forgive, but I can’t stop them …”
That’s not always true; for instance, victims of domestic violence frequently refuse to cooperate, and police and prosecution agencies will still try to convict if possible (though doing so is often difficult without cooperation).
I think that’s backwards. US police are much less likely to prosecute domestic violence without the cooperation of the victim, compared to other crimes. But there are fairly recent laws in some jurisdictions requiring them to prosecute without cooperation.
The victim still has to make the complaint, and cooperate with the police that one time. Even for this crime, it’s notable how much you have to do on your part to “get the avenger in action”.
Yes, they often withdraw cooperation later, but the victim still can’t use the excuse of “hey, I can’t stop them”, at least not right after being abused. If you don’t want the abuser to suffer, just don’t report it to the police. You certainly had choice about whether you reported it to them.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I smell some misunderstanding here. I have said that I disagree with the principle that the victims could partly decide the severity of the punishment, because the vengeful are better protected. When you had reacted
It’s also optimal for people who profess to be non-vengeful, since the government’s vengeance is now fully deniable.
by “it” you had meant what? This system, where the victims are directly responsible for a part of the punishment, or the opposite, where only the government decides?
Agree. Vengeance is essentially the carrying out of an implied threat. Combined with credible signaling this is exactly what a rational agent can be expected to do.
No one in this thread seems to consider the idea that less vengeful people actually gain utility in this system by way of less vengeance.
I don’t mean to say that this is a strong argument—I’m not a very vengeful person but I’m certainly only willing to put up with a very small chance of being murdered compared to how strongly I hold that conviction—just that I feel that the “perverse” (if you like people who are less vengeful!) incentives should be weighted against satisfying people’s preferences.
I have considered this, but I have spoken about protection, not utility. Some people may prefer less revenge, but somehow I think we need social mechanisms which prevent the criminals from abusing this situation.
To illustrate my intuition, imagine a situation where a thief breaks into a house and steals an equivalent of 100€ (it is the thief’s first crime). Afterwards he is caught and is tried. Now, the house owner at the trial testifies that he we cannot afford having such dangerous thiefs roaming around, that the amount was low but once you are a thief you are forever a thief and in the future there will be much more money stolen, and so that he wants the thief to be imprisoned forever. Such attitude makes me sympathise with the thief and I really don’t want the victim’s preferences even partially satisfied. I don’t want to support unreasonable vengefulness.
Sure but adding on or subtracting say 10% from the sentence would make both a more vengeful and less vengeful victim feel empowered and somewhat satisfy their preferences without leaving too much room for those sorts of abuses.
I hope it didn’t sound like I was endorsing the idea that a victim should fully decide punishment. For example, the Athenian idea seems much better than that, but also a more structured approach like asking for a marginally increased or decreased penalty seems attractive to me.
Speaking about abuses, I would expect that in practice the division line between victims suggesting high penalties and those suggesting low penalties would separate the brave from the cowards, rather than the vengeful from the merciful. Thoughts about the criminal waiting in front of my home with words “you swine, you made me spend two more years in jail” aren’t for the faint-hearted.
You could somewhat mitigate that by shifting police forces automatically around prison releases and/or by creating stiff penalties for such vengeance, but I can see your point.
It’s also optimal for people who profess to be non-vengeful, since the government’s vengeance is now fully deniable. So, we should expect that at least some of the people who claim to be less vengeful are actually just pretending.… which means it might not be as bad as it seems.
I don’t understand. The less vengeful you are the safer is for criminals to attack you and the easier you become a victim. That is, if the punisment takes into acount the wishes of the victim.
Which is why it’s only safe to signal less vengeance if you have somebody else out of your direct control who’s going to do the avenging for you. ;-) It’s, “gosh, I’m full of forgiveness and love the sinner, hate the sin, but there’s nothing I can do to stop the government from locking you away.”
In fact, it’s even better than signaling vengefulness, in a way: you are not required to be individually credible in your threats of revenge. So a default-vengeful government allows even the not-very-threatening to have safety. (In that context, being forgiving may well be countersignaling: “I’m so high-status that I don’t have to pursue individual vengeance.”)
Eh, with the exception of homicide, the government still needs significant cooperation and initiative from you before they will follow through on avenging. So it really doesn’t allow you to put up the act of, “oh, I’d like to forgive, but I can’t stop them …”
That’s not always true; for instance, victims of domestic violence frequently refuse to cooperate, and police and prosecution agencies will still try to convict if possible (though doing so is often difficult without cooperation).
I think that’s backwards. US police are much less likely to prosecute domestic violence without the cooperation of the victim, compared to other crimes. But there are fairly recent laws in some jurisdictions requiring them to prosecute without cooperation.
The victim still has to make the complaint, and cooperate with the police that one time. Even for this crime, it’s notable how much you have to do on your part to “get the avenger in action”.
Yes, they often withdraw cooperation later, but the victim still can’t use the excuse of “hey, I can’t stop them”, at least not right after being abused. If you don’t want the abuser to suffer, just don’t report it to the police. You certainly had choice about whether you reported it to them.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
Those statistics show that the more people their are nearby who hear or see the crime the less likely it is that the crime will be reported.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I don’t know if there are statistics on these things, but I’d imagine that some of the time, a neighbor or someone nearby who hears or sees the crime is the one to report the crime to the police. Still, you’re right; it’s certainly less likely that the crime will be prosecuted if the victim doesn’t cooperate.
I smell some misunderstanding here. I have said that I disagree with the principle that the victims could partly decide the severity of the punishment, because the vengeful are better protected. When you had reacted
by “it” you had meant what? This system, where the victims are directly responsible for a part of the punishment, or the opposite, where only the government decides?
Agree. Vengeance is essentially the carrying out of an implied threat. Combined with credible signaling this is exactly what a rational agent can be expected to do.
No one in this thread seems to consider the idea that less vengeful people actually gain utility in this system by way of less vengeance.
I don’t mean to say that this is a strong argument—I’m not a very vengeful person but I’m certainly only willing to put up with a very small chance of being murdered compared to how strongly I hold that conviction—just that I feel that the “perverse” (if you like people who are less vengeful!) incentives should be weighted against satisfying people’s preferences.
I have considered this, but I have spoken about protection, not utility. Some people may prefer less revenge, but somehow I think we need social mechanisms which prevent the criminals from abusing this situation.
To illustrate my intuition, imagine a situation where a thief breaks into a house and steals an equivalent of 100€ (it is the thief’s first crime). Afterwards he is caught and is tried. Now, the house owner at the trial testifies that he we cannot afford having such dangerous thiefs roaming around, that the amount was low but once you are a thief you are forever a thief and in the future there will be much more money stolen, and so that he wants the thief to be imprisoned forever. Such attitude makes me sympathise with the thief and I really don’t want the victim’s preferences even partially satisfied. I don’t want to support unreasonable vengefulness.
Sure but adding on or subtracting say 10% from the sentence would make both a more vengeful and less vengeful victim feel empowered and somewhat satisfy their preferences without leaving too much room for those sorts of abuses.
I hope it didn’t sound like I was endorsing the idea that a victim should fully decide punishment. For example, the Athenian idea seems much better than that, but also a more structured approach like asking for a marginally increased or decreased penalty seems attractive to me.
Speaking about abuses, I would expect that in practice the division line between victims suggesting high penalties and those suggesting low penalties would separate the brave from the cowards, rather than the vengeful from the merciful. Thoughts about the criminal waiting in front of my home with words “you swine, you made me spend two more years in jail” aren’t for the faint-hearted.
You could somewhat mitigate that by shifting police forces automatically around prison releases and/or by creating stiff penalties for such vengeance, but I can see your point.