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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

#21

Post by hackuser »

Veedrac wrote: post #14
dogma1138 wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

> You don't want "impartial" judgements Why? Your argument seems to be that without empathy in the legal system people would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That doesn't really make sense, My argument would be that with empathy in the legal system, unlikeable people from the wrong minority with an unhappy judge would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. There is so much disproportionality in the lega…

I agree there are many problems with injecting human judgment, but also many benefits. It's not all or nothing. We don't want to simply replace one set of problems with another.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#22

Post by kldaace »

I'm going to wait for more replication before I adjust my priors too much on this. It seems plausible prima facie, but I'm suspicious of their methodology. From the article (I don't have access to the working paper), it sounds like they might have been trying to test the significance of a lot of different variables, and this might just be the one that popped up.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#23

Post by dogma1138 »

corecoder wrote: post #17
dogma1138 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about running these statistics (correlating decisions with day of week, hour of day, etc.) for each judge, and then just tell them: see, in the past year you acted in this not very bright way; maybe you should think about the way you do your job? And, by the way, we'll keep running these statistics on how you judge. Being made aware of our own biases is often the most effective way to make the situation better.

Could be but statistics are tricky.

Hour of day / day of week can easily be skewed by the system at large.

For example more bar fights over the weekends, more violent crime during the heat waves in the summer, more prank crimes involving young first time offenders during school breaks (e.g. spring break), more cases of spousal abuse during the holiday season etc.

Just having the numbers and saying here you are biased isn't really easy because it might not be possible to actually determine true bias from them.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#24

Post by dogma1138 »

Veedrac wrote: post #14
dogma1138 wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

> You don't want "impartial" judgements Why? Your argument seems to be that without empathy in the legal system people would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That doesn't really make sense, My argument would be that with empathy in the legal system, unlikeable people from the wrong minority with an unhappy judge would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. There is so much disproportionality in the lega…

How would you formalize it without it being exploitable?

And what about other things, how about a father who killed the man who raped his daughter? Or a woman who hired some one to kill her abusive partner? How would you estimate damage? it's easy to do with itemised goods but how do you estimate the damage of being abused, raped, how do you put a value on someone's life?

These are things we haven't even managed to fully grasp and defined yet, and you want us to define that to a computer? How are you going to form a legal argument that can lead to a new precedent to a computer?

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#25

Post by anexprogrammer »

hackuser wrote: post #16
anexprogrammer wrote: post #11

Given there's research showing harshness increases over time until lunch then dropping markedly, then increasing again over the afternoon this isn't terribly surprising. We're not likely to eliminate these factors any time soon.

> We're not likely to eliminate these factors any time soon. I disagree. Knowing about them can make a big difference, and training can teach people to avoid these errors.

We can mitigate them to some extent with awareness and training.

With research seeming to show subconscious biases remarkably difficult to remove, I sincerely doubt they can be eliminated. We haven't managed it in society and the workplace despite significant legislative effort.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#26

Post by corecoder »

dogma1138 wrote: post #23
corecoder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about running these statistics (correlating decisions with day of week, hour of day, etc.) for each judge, and then just tell them: see, in the past year you acted in this not very bright way; maybe you should think about the way you do your job? And, by the way, we'll keep running these statistics on how you judge. Being made aware of our own biases is often the most effective way to make the situation better.

Could be but statistics are tricky. Hour of day / day of week can easily be skewed by the system at large. For example more bar fights over the weekends, more violent crime during the heat waves in the summer, more prank crimes involving young first time offenders during school breaks (e.g. spring break), more cases of spousal abuse during the holiday season etc. Just having the numbers and saying here you are biased…

That's true, mine was an oversimplification and the numbers would require more analysis; it would be a worthwhile analysis nonetheless, IMO.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#27

Post by JackFr »

dogma1138 wrote: post #4
jdminhbg wrote: post #2

A 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.

Make judges reconfirm sentences 14 days after the initial sentencing.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#28

Post by dogma1138 »

pc86 wrote: post #15
dogma1138 wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

I'm pretty opposed to having computers issuing legal judgments for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that I spend a pretty large part of my day surrounded by government-written and government-sponsored software. But if we were going to go that route eventually, perhaps a system where a judge is provided the "impartial" judgment as additional information or where the decisions are reviewed by a judge…

We could have a different definition of "impartial", there is a difference between a judge being impartial by not allowing outside interference which is not related to the direct matter and subject of the case from influencing their judgement.

However we do take account for both the letter and the spirit of the law when making a judgment, and we take account of the circumstances and the nature of the crime, the offenders and the offended parties.

We also make arguments based on the spirit of the law that do appeal to our human nature and empathy at large and this is a very important part of our legal system.

You would not want to see a judicial system where this isn't possible, you see this usually under martial law and other authoritative regimes were all crimes and all offenders are equal to the law and receive the same and often harsh punishment.

Even tho in the US the execution of the legal system might not be perfect, or quite far from it depending on how you look at it the principles of it are pretty important, if was pretty much the first legal system where we said we will not throw people to jail for being in debt, it was one of the few legal systems that did hold itself to higher standards of justice and equality.

And you can't have that with computers, not only because you can't teach them those things but because a legal system isn't some static list, it isn't the 10 commandments.

Our legal system is a living and breeding organism and judges, arbiters and lawyers are it's organs without them debating and arguing the legal system would "die". You won't have new arguments, you won't have new precedents for the most part the entire legal system would grind to a halt and the only thing you'll have remaining is a penal code.

And trust me you do not want to live under a legal system which is in a effect a static and impartial penal code.

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#29

Post by mangeletti »

dogma1138 wrote: post #24
Veedrac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't want "impartial" judgements Why? Your argument seems to be that without empathy in the legal system people would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That doesn't really make sense, My argument would be that with empathy in the legal system, unlikeable people from the wrong minority with an unhappy judge would go to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. There is so much disproportionality in the lega…

How would you formalize it without it being exploitable? And what about other things, how about a father who killed the man who raped his daughter? Or a woman who hired some one to kill her abusive partner? How would you estimate damage? it's easy to do with itemised goods but how do you estimate the damage of being abused, raped, how do you put a value on someone's life? These are things we haven't even managed to f…

Certainly not with Ethereum :)

Of course what I just said is kind of comical at first glance, but in all honesty, and to absolutely agree with and add to your point, the exploits related to Ethereum are great examples of how something seemingly infallible that is set in stone can easily turn out to be an Achilles' heel, which then, just like in the case of Ethereum, requires human intervention, bringing it back full circle.

Also, to add to this, as @hackuser mentions[1], the system, even if set perfectly in stone, will still be based on somebody's biases.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12462653

Re: Louisiana Judges Issue Harsher Sentences When the LSU Football Team Loses

#30

Post by 67726e »

JackFr wrote: post #27
dogma1138 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Make judges reconfirm sentences 14 days after the initial sentencing.

What about judges too stubborn to admit they were wrong?
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