Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
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Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#2A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have a good solution.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#3A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#4A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Having a panel of judges that is "isolated" from each other outside of the courtroom can help reduce the likelihood of these things happening.
Having attentive clerks as well as maybe mandatory psychiatric counseling for judges can also resolve some issues.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#5A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread.
You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
> empathy is part of our legal system
I don't see evidence of much empathy in the US justice system.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe simple cases could some day be automatically handled by a computer, in which case the judgement will be completely impartial. Initially they could be trained in parallel to real judges to see if the judgements more or less match and to detect errors.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
> unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread.
I found out this actually happens recently (if you have a record in Canada). A recent client of my lawyer partner had a past record ( domestic abuse and one more minor crime) and went to prison for stealing about $15-20 of food because he was hungry.
Regardless I know what you're saying. But there may still be the potential for a computer in the future which can analyze the context of the past thousands and thousands of human judge cases with machine learning algorithms. So it's not just a literal interpretation of law.
The challenge is establishing parameters such as previous record, age, grievousness of crime, etc. The goal is to provide a balance to human emotion. Maybe the solution here is providing that to judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys through technology.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#8A lot of the discussion around this seems to focus on football, but that's just the easily-measurable proxy for a bad mood the authors found. Presumably an argument with a spouse, a poker game loss, a parking ticket, or a bad interaction with a coffee clerk would have the same effect. It's disheartening that justice is so capricious, but setting sentences through the legislature seems even more fraught. I don't have…
Indeed other research has indicated that lots of factors can affect a judge's decisions.
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889.full
A panel of judges would be one approach. Perhaps judges could be made aware of what the average penalty is for similar cases and that would give them an easier anchor for their decision.
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
> empathy is part of our legal system I don't see evidence of much empathy in the US justice system.
Have you ever had to deal with the system on any level?
Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't want "impartial" judgements this is how martial law works, the legal system has to take circumstances into account unless you want to the days where we used to send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. You can't teach computers empathy and empathy is part of our legal system for better or for worse.
> empathy is part of our legal system I don't see evidence of much empathy in the US justice system.
The color of your skin still plays a major role in determining the amount of empathy you'll get