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Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

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Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#81

Post by lr4444lr »

distantaidenn wrote: post #5

I'm a daily faster for the past 20 years, so I can attest (anecdotally) to the benefits of working while hungry. Once you adapt, after a couple weeks, instead of being irritable when hungry, you mind feels clear and focused. After all, despite the trappings of modern society, we are a predator species. Hunger gets shit done. When I was a kid, I recall the teachers always telling us to have a good meal before a test.…

I did this in college, and I had super focus during my morning classes, but after my first meal of the day at 11:30 or noon, I needed something like a 2 hour nap, and I definitely didn't recover the initial fasted performance level until the following morning. I don't deny fasting works better for some or many, but it depends what you're optimizing for. I prefer the steady energy of 3 meals a day spaced out 5-7 hours, all 3 macronutrients in each. Also, in trying to put on muscle as a rail thin person, there's no way I can imagine doing any fewer meals per day.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#82

Post by mattkrause »

public_defender wrote: post #19

I always wondered about the original study whether they controlled for the fact that courts control their case calendars. I can't count the number of times I've had a client's case shuffled to the back of the line because the judge didn't want to deal with it (or wanted to make me or the client wait longer). Also, Muslim countries commonly offer amnesty or executive clemency at the Eid to people who have been convict…

No, the original study didn’t—-and that was its fatal flaw.

They assumed that cases were randomly ordered and this equally likely to get the same sentence. However, they were actually done in blocks, each containing prisoners from one prison. Judges tried to finish a block before adjourning. Within each block, cases were ordered by attorney and those without an attorney were last.

For many reasons, people representing themselves tend to fare more poorly. Boom, there’s the effect!

PNAS published a commentary pointing this out but naturally it’s been cited 80x less: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1110910108

Another obvious tell that there was a problem is that ordinal rank (1st, 2nd, etc) was associated with severity but wall time was not (once you also include rank). The mechanism presumably isn’t linked to the number of cases heard (swinging the gavel isn’t *that energetically expensive!) but the passage of time since the meal. Thus, you’d expect the exact opposite effect.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#83

Post by ilyt »

jraby3 wrote: post #17
franciscop wrote: post #16

Interesting bias on the bias: the author of this article seems not to have experienced a prolonged fast themselves, otherwise they'd know this is not true at all: > "longer fasts – and thus, presumably, greater hunger" As anyone who has fasted for probably any reason can tell you, the longer the fast the less hungry you are overall AFTER an initial peak. Meaning, miss a meal and you are hungry, miss two and you becom…

I’ve gone on multiple 3-5 day fasts and disagree (or at least haven’t gotten to this point). My hunger seems to stabilize at very hungry after about two days.

What is mentioned in article (ramadan fasting) is essentially half day of fasting, not multiple day endeavour.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#84

Post by sdfghswe »

May I ask to the people talking about fasting on this thread:

Normally, when people talk about fasting do they literally mean to spend a long period of time not eating, or do they mean reducing the calorie intake, or both?

You can decouple them, right? You can take 12 hours a day to not eat, but make up for it afterwards.

And which one is the interesting one?

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#85

Post by leroy-is-here »

walnutclosefarm wrote: post #76

So many comments here claiming to understand the effect of fasting on humans generally through personal experience. Come on, people - your experience is a datum, it's not data, and your entirely subjective conclusions drawn from that datum are not analysis. People's response to fasting varies widely. Hunger is both a physiological and a psychological phenomenon - and like any phenomenon with a psychological component…

There’s no single experience of thinking yet I can say everyone has thoughts. Thoughts about what? _That_ is what varies. The body is similar, it speaks through signals to the brain. The only way to know your body’s voice is by doing. Dismiss your notion that individual experience has no value.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#86

Post by ilyt »

spion wrote: post #35
franciscop wrote: post #16

Interesting bias on the bias: the author of this article seems not to have experienced a prolonged fast themselves, otherwise they'd know this is not true at all: > "longer fasts – and thus, presumably, greater hunger" As anyone who has fasted for probably any reason can tell you, the longer the fast the less hungry you are overall AFTER an initial peak. Meaning, miss a meal and you are hungry, miss two and you becom…

If you look at the replies you'll see the huge variety of responses people have to this, which is absolutely fascinating. I think this might actually be different for different people.

Coz 90% of them missed the point in article that said they just "fasted" by not eating during day (Ramadan), and not some multiple day endeavour.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#87

Post by gjsman-1000 »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #85
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #76

So many comments here claiming to understand the effect of fasting on humans generally through personal experience. Come on, people - your experience is a datum, it's not data, and your entirely subjective conclusions drawn from that datum are not analysis. People's response to fasting varies widely. Hunger is both a physiological and a psychological phenomenon - and like any phenomenon with a psychological component…

There’s no single experience of thinking yet I can say everyone has thoughts. Thoughts about what? _That_ is what varies. The body is similar, it speaks through signals to the brain. The only way to know your body’s voice is by doing. Dismiss your notion that individual experience has no value.

I’m here before he responds with “what about people in a coma? Therefore we don’t know!”

We do know, and individual experience is underrated. If it weren’t for individual experiences we would have no science.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#88

Post by azan_ »

Jolter wrote: post #73
hgsgm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the scientist's ideal scenario that avoids the need the correct for a trait.

No, it’s the absence of a control because there is no control group. You can’t study whether it’s a religiously affiliated behavior unless you have a non-religious fasting control group. It’s called a confounding variable.

It's not confounding variable because this "variable" is actually constant in the entire group; the comparison is not fasting muslims vs non-fasting non-religious judges, but muslim judges with longer vs shorter fast or fasting at different hours

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#89

Post by glogla »

foobarbecue wrote: post #66
glogla wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video unavailable. This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds I hope LDS burns in hell, whoever they are.

Latter Day Saints??? The Mormons? (I get the copyright block message here in the USA)

I looked it up, and it's "content management company" Little Dot Studios, who seem to make money by claiming things on youtube to steal ad money and extort people.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#90

Post by ilyt »

distantaidenn wrote: post #5

I'm a daily faster for the past 20 years, so I can attest (anecdotally) to the benefits of working while hungry. Once you adapt, after a couple weeks, instead of being irritable when hungry, you mind feels clear and focused. After all, despite the trappings of modern society, we are a predator species. Hunger gets shit done. When I was a kid, I recall the teachers always telling us to have a good meal before a test.…

Not my experience. I eat one meal a day and I don't really get work going before that meal (which is usually around noon).

It's not even that I feel particularly hungry (unless I ate less than usual yesterday), peak of hunger is usually somewhere before I go asleep, I just feel a bit lethargic.

I only get "brain fog" some time after eating a lot of sweet or otherwise easily accessible sugars

> Anyway, I'm surprised this article (study?) didn't take into account "meeting fatigue". I know that for myself, after an hour in a meeting, I just want to get out so I can recharge. I know nothing productive will happen until I do so.

I swear I feel way more drained after a day of meetings than a day of brain work...

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