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Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

nytimes.com

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Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#31

Post by cperciva »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

A couple things leaped out at me reading this. What about insulin resistance? Do people with high insulin resistance have less of an effect from sugary snacks? On the flip side, how about exercise? Do people with a lot of sugar stored in muscles and a more optimum processing of sugar do better on these things? To put this more generally, the author seemed to be reporting from a deterministic viewpoint, i.e., whatever…

What about insulin resistance? Do people with high insulin resistance have less of an effect from sugary snacks?

Nope. The dopamine response from eating sugar is completely independent of the insulin response. Unfortunately people with type 1 diabetes still get a dopamine response from eating candy and don't get one from injecting insulin -- life would be so much better if those were reversed!

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#32

Post by altrego99 »

heyadayo wrote: post #2

This is a much more interesting article than the title suggests. I'd rather see the title reference decision fatigue.

I found the title interesting to look into it, and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the article deals with something deeper than I expected.

I agree though if there are those who don't find the judge's behavior strange nay not be attracted by the title and will miss out on a great story.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#33

Post by michael_scheibe »

nazar wrote: post #27
pella wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Extraneous factors in judicial decisions" http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/29/1018033108 --- "The science of justice I think it's time we broke for lunch… Court rulings depend partly on when the judge last had a snack" http://www.economist.com/node/18557594

>The science of justice That reminds me of the youtube series about justice. There is one channel on youtube, they upload videos from Harvard lectures about justice and law system. That one was very interesting and insightful. Sometimes students would even cry while debating with professor. Sorry cant post a link, since Youtube is also blocked here. Maybe some of you guys can post the link, there might be ones who ar…

http://www.justiceharvard.org/

If you want to get a bit more out of the series, there are links to readings and discussion questions on the right of an episode page.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#34

Post by tlb »

From the PNAS article (costs $10): "the ordinal position of cases is, with rare exception, determined by the arrival time of the prisoner’s attorney."

Although the researchers claim otherwise, I'm sure that eager and optimistic attorneys arrive for early slots. Prisoners expecting a favorable hearing probably demand that their attorneys be there early. This needs a properly randomized controlled experiment.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#35

Post by jholman »

cletus wrote: post #24
michaelochurch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google rose to a prominence in an era of portal pages. Yahoo in particular had a home page without hundreds of links. Google presented you with a logo, a text box, two buttons and Yep. Also consider the superior experience of reading a news article (like this one) in single-page mode instead of page by page. Clicking on a link feels a lot more like "a decision" than turning the page of a book, which flows naturally.…

> I agree. Windows, as far as I can see it, is the worst of both worlds. You have to do a lot of work (make a lot of decisions) to get a half-decent experience but if you want to control it at a low level, the way you can with Linux, you can't. I have a slightly different take on this. While I agree that Windows is an example of how trying to be all things to all men leads to a confusing mess, at least in Windows 7 i…

> But Linux on the desktop just goes to prove time and again just how bad a user experience it is to give true "freedom". I don't want to figure out what the best way of playing video or audio files is and choosing between N (where N is typically a fairly large number) options.

Actually, the flip side of this is one of my favorite things about Linux on the desktop. If I'm looking for some new software to do some new-to-me task X, as long as they're properly packaged in the repositories, it's usually very low-cost to just give them a quick 2-minute test. Partly because no one is monetarily gaining from tricking me, I don't even have to worry about being tricked! On Windows, I have to do quite a lot of digging before I'm even willing to install a free trial, because the culture of producing free trials that are really malware is so prevalant.

I love the Linux desktop because it makes the necessary choices (e.g. which low-res pixel-art image-editing software should I use?) so much less draining.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#36

Post by blahedo »

> His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. ...they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices.

This rung a bell for me because I've noticed it's often easier to enforce a rule on myself if it's A) an actual rule and B) pre-decided (by me). It's not that I'm handing over the decision-making to anyone else. It's that I've set myself a rule (like, "no Facebook at work", a personal choice, not imposed by my job), so I'm not deciding right now "do I have time to check FB? Will it suck me in too far?" and so on. Looking back over my various self-improvement "diets" (usually more technological than food-related) I can see that the most successful ones were those for which I could set a hard-and-fast rule and for which I could convince myself that "the rule is set, can't break it now".

Which is, of course, still a mental discipline, and a nontrivial one. But it's easier than the ones that involve more deciding on the spot, and a lot easier than the ones where I think, "I will try to mostly avoid...", which usually don't last very long. I'd never really thought of that in terms of number of decisions before, or decision fatigue, but it's an excellent explanation for a phenomenon I was already pretty familiar with.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#37

Post by ars »

tlb wrote: post #34

From the PNAS article (costs $10): "the ordinal position of cases is, with rare exception, determined by the arrival time of the prisoner’s attorney." Although the researchers claim otherwise, I'm sure that eager and optimistic attorneys arrive for early slots. Prisoners expecting a favorable hearing probably demand that their attorneys be there early. This needs a properly randomized controlled experiment.

They mentioned what happened after lunch.

Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole

#38

Post by mdda »

brador wrote: post #7

Interesting that they mention the Dell website for decision making. 4 times this year I've decided to purchase a new computer and spent hours trying to figure out what to buy from the Dell website. I have yet to upgrade.

That's one reason that I lie in wait for Refurb deals from buy.com or woot. Every so often, a $300 Quad core comes along : The lack of decision points is a huge win.

Upgrade something when you find the weaknesses. Or ditch it (pass it to a deserving relative) and move on.

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