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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

471–480 of 497 posts

Re: School or Prison

#471
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something got left off the list, unless "retribution" is supposed to cover it. When people see crimes go unpunished, they form lynch mobs. An unsatisfied angry population is a dangerous thing to have.

That's exactly what "retribution" covers, a sense that justice has been done for the victims and the community. Rehabilitation: should be obvious, nordic countries are well known for prioritizing this. Deterrence: again obvious, as noted elsewhere imprisonment has been found to be a poor deterrent in studies but the concept remains as a political argument in favor of harsher sentencing. Incapacitation: keeping the pu…

> Rehabilitation: should be obvious, nordic countries are well known for prioritizing this.

Only on paper (or more accurately as a self delusion). E.g. Iceland still uses excessive solitary confinement, even though it has shown to have negative rehabilitating effects and is under every definition a form of torture. The fact that the Icelandic prison system still engages in torture suggests that they are still in the retribution camp of punishment.

I don’t know about the other Nordic countries but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear similar stories from there.

Re: School or Prison

#472
post #462

As someone who's been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder/rape, you'll prob…

> solitary confinement If the environment is so violent, why wouldn’t you want solitary confinement? (Is there a downside?)

Yes there is a huge downside. Solitary confinement is torture by every definition of the word torture. In fact I think every humanitarian organization has solitary confinement on their list of common torture practices.

Excessive and prolonged solitary confinement will pretty much result in the death of the individual. The psychological damage inflected upon the victim will be so great that they will return another person (and not in the reformed sense).

Humans are social animals, to deprive us of company for a prolonged periods is as dangerous to our health as depriving us of food. We need love to survive just as we need warmth.

Re: School or Prison

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your perspective. Hopefully one day we can change this system.

Keep dreaming. You’ve got to be one hell of an optimist to hold onto that hope at this point.

I bet John Brown was called “one hell of an optimist” when calling for the abolition of slavery in the 1850s.

Re: School or Prison

#474
I didn’t do so good here. 4 out of 10.

Schools really should be given a makeover. They do look too much like prison. But what, round corners? I dunno. I guess they’d look too much like giant iPhones.

Unrelated but in case the simulation changes theme to “post-apocalypse”, what’s better to use as HQ: the school or the prison?

Re: School or Prison

#475
post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post this sort of internet cowboy comment here. "I would not object to your summary execution" is not curious conversation, it's inflated rhetoric that will only provoke worse from others. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: Also, it looks like you've only been commenting on HN for the purposes of ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, it's against the rules, and we ban…

It's a statement of my honest belief. I'm not being hyperbolic or rhetorical. Edit: I go on to elaborate that I see their value as lower than that of pets and farm animals, whom we summarily execute all the time. Edit: I should clarify that I was using "you" in the general sense, not referring to the parent specifically.

Honest belief is not sufficient for a good HN comment. Inflated rhetoric and flamebait can just as easily be "honest belief" as anything else. In fact they're easier that way, since then one can feel satisfied with oneself as one breaks the rules. It's the rules that matter, though, so please follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

That includes not using HN primarily for ideological or political battle any more.

Re: School or Prison

#476
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ban accounts that post like this. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended spirit of the site.

I didn't mean to be snarky, that is my unironic take. Our current prison system delivers a horrible punishment, but in a way people can pretend it's not occurring. It would be better to deliver a less horrible punishment and make it public so people know it is occurring. Not only would this be more humane, it also improves the deterrent value of punishment. With the current justice system, people can pretend like doi…

The issue wasn't snark. You broke the rule against flamebait, as well as this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." HN users need to follow all the rules, not just one of them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: School or Prison

#477
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call this "outlier driven policy"; one single instance of some thing happening some where at some time within the past 100 years means that everyone for perpetuity has to follow some new rule because the lim(x -> 0) risk is simply too much . For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on ev…

I mean, speaking of the shoes, yes it was one time. But once it was shown to work, there would probably have been many copycats without a countermeasure.

In the EU they use none of that security theater and it hasn't happened.

You're doing the thing I just talked about

Re: School or Prison

#478
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a statement of my honest belief. I'm not being hyperbolic or rhetorical. Edit: I go on to elaborate that I see their value as lower than that of pets and farm animals, whom we summarily execute all the time. Edit: I should clarify that I was using "you" in the general sense, not referring to the parent specifically.

Honest belief is not sufficient for a good HN comment. Inflated rhetoric and flamebait can just as easily be "honest belief" as anything else. In fact they're easier that way, since then one can feel satisfied with oneself as one breaks the rules. It's the rules that matter, though, so please follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . That includes not using HN primarily for ideological or politi…

Can you kindly clarify what exactly constitutes "inflated rhetoric and flamebait" and how to distinguish it from what I see in this case as a statement on the value or lack thereof of human life? Can the subject be discussed without it falling into this category?

Re: School or Prison

#479
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are dreaming. Have you done that? Sue the powerful (a school board) from a position of powerlessness (black working class in the ghetto)? Probably not, unfair question. Do you really think it is a realistic prospect? Really?

There are toll-free hotlines for reporting teachers engaging in child abuse. Obstructing a child from using the bathroom who needs to is a form of abuse. If that teacher then physically restrains or otherwise contacts/touches the child to prevent them, especially if it culminates in their wetting/soiling themselves, this starts resembling something along the lines of sexual abuse. If there's one thing the USA can be…

Have you any data for how well that works for poor black children?

I hear people with theories, but child services the world over are famous for nice theories and systematic abuse. Especially for minority and poor children

Re: School or Prison

#480
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most delightfully overblown quotes of all time. But Herbert Marcuse went one better: he compared amusement parks to concentration camps.

I don't think Marcuse should be taken lightly on this point. As a Jew during the second world war and an immigrant to the US, he worked with Adorno and others who regularly (and correctly, in my opinion) viewed the Holocaust as humanity's greatest horror and a turning point of modernity.

Marcuse wasn't a Jew, actually. But yeah, I don't really find the analysis convincing. I mean... amusement parks have towers, and queues, and walls round the outside, like concentration camps? And they're... organized and administered? Somehow this isn't quite getting past the laugh test. (Isaiah Berlin was absolutely outraged by the Marcuse quote, incidentally.)

Update: Marcuse was a Jew, actually. My bad. I'd misremembered this from Martin Jay's book.

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