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Originally Posted by sn0wball
Instead it is suggested that criminal behaviour should be treated as a dangerous social illness and treated accordingly. Society has to be protected fromt he effects of that illness and the illness has to be healed.
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Of course, whatever one might personally think about this, it wouldn´t have worked in the 70ies and it wouldn´t work now, since we do not know how to effectively combar criminal behaviour, let alone predict future criminal behaviour.
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In France, a scientificaly accredited commission recently suggested to organize the systematical predictive detection of children prone to developpe criminal attitude in the futur, what caused many protests. This program was not cognate to any plead for a less repressiv policy. It seems likely that this would primarely leads, in a TS context, to treat, if not cure, individuals unhappy to their conditions of living. The easier way to "cure" their sociopathic tendency would then to make them happy with their condition, if the cost of their unsocial behaviour is higher that the "cure". You can cure them by giving wealth and entertainment, or drugs, or by threatening them, whatever... If you think that ones mind is just a collection of memes, then cut off the wrong ones, by any way.
This all leads to a kind of social order where there's nothing like individual responsability. I don't say that punishment is a better response. I just say that such a society, not-so-unlikly to appear in a not-so-far futur, could at best be named brave happy new world. Symmetrically, the more-responsabilisation policy leads to an even more securitarist and repressive society (in today France one of the principal candidate to presidency want the "minority excuse" to be abolished in case of recidivism - that's: minors would be treated as majors). Then what to do? Sometimes, more is less...
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Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert
What's so irrational about punishment? When done right, it can work on animals - for example, when training a dog - and it can certainly work on humans as well. "Do something bad, and something bad will happen to you." In the TS era, more effective was of punishment will exist because more is known about how the human mind works, but the basic principle doesn't have to be unsound.
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Well, there is different ways to train an animal; basicaly, though that could sound a little too behaviourist, they will be spoken of positive reinforcement (when I obey, I get a suggar), and negative one (when I disobey, bipeds beats me). Some people are prone to claim that the first one is not as good as the second, requiering somehow the animal cooperation, and not inconditional submission. But in fact, when an animal act by fear, negative reinforcement works only by being stronger that the contingeant fear, when it seems more logical to show the animal that there's no actual threat. Farther, more complexe what the animal is expected to do, more the cooperative mode will outclass the terrorist one, at least if the animal abilities are requested. Of course if you think you can better compute the use of the animals body than it can, then better lobotomies it. (But I would not see the interest of cyberhorseriding, though some of todays riders would enjoy it, it would solve ALL their problems - said aside).
Then, it seems more rational too to convince a human being that his behaviour is not adequate, or to cure its pathologicaly motivated behaviour, than to threaten him.
Of course, if it's the society who is wrong, it will be more difficult...
And then, of course some people will act intentionaly & consciously wrong; but if they understand their interests, they will not be the easier to catch, I guess. However, this problem is as old as humanity, and will not be soluble in any technological soup, even a medical one.