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The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

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Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#21

Post by hntrader »

Retric wrote: post #20
hntrader wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with this is that our recognition that there's extenuating circumstances (e.g a brain tumour in the prefrontal cortex) says more about our capacity to recognise such situations than it does about actual differences in agency between individuals. For example, we might say that a serial killer who was born into a life of wealth and advantage and has no macroscopic brain damage has more agency than the i…

This assumes you define a person as a constant irrespective of everything else. In effect an 8 year olds must therefore be judged as harshly as anyone else. It’s a consistent standpoint, but justice isn’t about punishment. It’s a belief that the world despite all evidence to the contrary should be fair. As such people’s internal thought process is inherently part of the judgement process, the same action with differe…

I believe circumstance should be taken into account, but not for the purposes of assigning agency, which is a fantasy concept.

It should inform the probability of recidivism, the chances that rehabilitation will work, etc, and therefore inform what type and duration of sentence/treatment is appropriate for a given case.

To your example, belief that something is an emergency means that P(recidivism) is effectively the same as if they hadn't committed the action, which is the real reason why there shouldn't be any sentence given to that individual.

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#22

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

hntrader wrote: post #15
ip26 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the short summary is we are coming to understand circumstances where an individual has lost their agency. In which cases the nature of justice changes. if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing... If we are not aware of a reason they did not posses agency, then we must assume they still had it.

The big problem with this is that our recognition that there's extenuating circumstances (e.g a brain tumour in the prefrontal cortex) says more about our capacity to recognise such situations than it does about actual differences in agency between individuals. For example, we might say that a serial killer who was born into a life of wealth and advantage and has no macroscopic brain damage has more agency than the i…

> Going further, we're all slaves to determinisic or stochastic physics playing out in our brains and environment, and our agency is just a useful fiction. >The justice system should be premised on pragmatic concepts of deterrence, rehabilitation, protecting society, etc, and not on fantasy notions that person A had more agency than person B.

Without a concept of agency it is pointless to talk about “justice”. At the very least, by advocating a notion of justice, you are saying that members of society as a whole have agency to implement that concept of justice.

If we all have no agency, how is a feeling that we should immediately execute all criminals unjust?

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#23

Post by gowld »

vkou wrote: post #5

He did not take prior offers of amnesty, that went back to 2000, and only surrendered when his position in the LRA became untenable. This seems enough to condemn him. It's a complicated issue, which is why blanket amnesty gets offered in these kinds of situations - to people who want to re-integrate back into society. He did not do so until he had no other choice. The split personality disorder is a beautiful story,…

The "split personality" theory was ripped off from the Primal Fear movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primal_Fear_(film)

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#24

Post by gowld »

throwanem wrote: post #19
nugget wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t “a Catholic lay priest” how you’d best describe the person, in colloquial terms, to a readership that wasn’t familiar with the definition of catechist?

No, I'd define the term. That's not hard to do - especially if you're willing, as the article is, to spot the reader knowledge of the difference between laity and ordination. To be clear, I'm not OP, and I don't judge the quality of the article on this basis. It's commonplace to see a journalist do sloppy work, especially in parts of an article less critical to its thesis. But the article already defines the term 'ca…

Catechist is defined, inside of one line, using terms the audience knows: "Catholic", "lay", and "priest".

The silly objection here is like objecting to the statement "he was a pilot, an airplane driver", because a "driver" drives a car, not a plane.

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#25

Post by smogcutter »

hntrader wrote: post #15
ip26 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the short summary is we are coming to understand circumstances where an individual has lost their agency. In which cases the nature of justice changes. if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing... If we are not aware of a reason they did not posses agency, then we must assume they still had it.

The big problem with this is that our recognition that there's extenuating circumstances (e.g a brain tumour in the prefrontal cortex) says more about our capacity to recognise such situations than it does about actual differences in agency between individuals. For example, we might say that a serial killer who was born into a life of wealth and advantage and has no macroscopic brain damage has more agency than the i…

> But this killer is also very much a slave to their brain in the same way as the tumour individual.

I think there’s an element of, ironically, survivorship bias there. We notice psychopathic serial killers because they kill people, and then we say they lack agency like the tumor victim. But the psychopaths who don’t kill people are invisible. We just call them CEOs (jk, but only kind of).

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#26

Post by swinnipeg »

solutron wrote: post #17

Evil doesn't have to have remorselessness or have awareness of it's evil to be evil. Ongwen is clearly traumatized. But, he is also the trauma. The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him, regardless of whatever reformations or personal developments he might make. Some things can't be undone and the consequences have to be lived with, fore…

It is curious how the trauma from his kidnapping is considered different than if he had been a 2nd generation war criminal.

Presumably the child of a war criminal would also have suffered trauma in youth, but there would no consideration of mercy, or sympathetic longform articles for the 30something 2nd generation war criminal. They would be simply be treated as evil.

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#27

Post by hntrader »

smogcutter wrote: post #25
hntrader wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with this is that our recognition that there's extenuating circumstances (e.g a brain tumour in the prefrontal cortex) says more about our capacity to recognise such situations than it does about actual differences in agency between individuals. For example, we might say that a serial killer who was born into a life of wealth and advantage and has no macroscopic brain damage has more agency than the i…

> But this killer is also very much a slave to their brain in the same way as the tumour individual. I think there’s an element of, ironically, survivorship bias there. We notice psychopathic serial killers because they kill people, and then we say they lack agency like the tumor victim. But the psychopaths who don’t kill people are invisible. We just call them CEOs (jk, but only kind of).

I believe this perspective is appealing because of our current inability to recognize what are the actual factors that drive psychopath A to become a killer and psychopath B to be a CEO.

Agency is like the God Of The Gaps at the moment. We don't know what makes A and B differ and we magic that knowledge gap away with "agency".

Over time, as we understand more about the brain and psychology, the serial killers who don't have any macroscopic impairments are going to look very much like the ones that do. And the psychopaths that become killers are going to look very different to those that become CEOs (either brain and/or environment).

Only then, we will be able to point our fingers towards the precise causal pathway at play (genetics+environment). Until then, the best we can do is recognize that such a pathway exists, which the individual was gifted at birth, even though we're ignorant of the specifics.

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#28

Post by anm89 »

solutron wrote: post #17

Evil doesn't have to have remorselessness or have awareness of it's evil to be evil. Ongwen is clearly traumatized. But, he is also the trauma. The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him, regardless of whatever reformations or personal developments he might make. Some things can't be undone and the consequences have to be lived with, fore…

>The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him

Well I'm glad that solutron from Hackernews has figured out the one true morality for everybody. Thanks solutron from hacker news!

Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander

#30

Post by throwanem »

gowld wrote: post #24
throwanem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'd define the term. That's not hard to do - especially if you're willing, as the article is, to spot the reader knowledge of the difference between laity and ordination. To be clear, I'm not OP, and I don't judge the quality of the article on this basis. It's commonplace to see a journalist do sloppy work, especially in parts of an article less critical to its thesis. But the article already defines the term 'ca…

Catechist is defined, inside of one line, using terms the audience knows: "Catholic", "lay", and "priest". The silly objection here is like objecting to the statement "he was a pilot, an airplane driver", because a "driver" drives a car, not a plane.

That's not a comparable example. There's a lot more to the priesthood than teaching the catechism - Mass and most sacraments, for example, I believe save only viaticum - and "lay priest" is oxymoronic in any case. To someone knowledgeable in the faith, it sounds like the writer is trying to say "deacon", which would still be wrong anyway, and missing nonetheless; to someone lacking such knowledge, it confers an entirely false impression.

As I said, I think OP makes too much of the phrase, but I agree it's entirely risible.

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