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Comment by antidesitter | Hacker News Reader

You assume rehabilitation is always possible or cost-effective. From a utilitarian viewpoint, it might be best to simply rid society of some people forever. I’m not arguing for or against that view, but it’s a possibility. The issue of “free will versus determinism” doesn’t settle the question of capital punishment like you think it does.

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Some societies have made a rehabilitation model work.

https://www.mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-...

In the end from a cost perspective it's a lot cheaper to have a productive member of society living on their own than it is to lock someone up for life. You have to weigh the recidivism rate vs. the cost of the program, but there isn't any country in the world with a more expensive criminal justice system than the US. We can definitely do better.

As a philosopher I tend to approach all things as objects and similar to humans with their properties that happen to be unique because of the life events not being equivalent in order or even with outcomes because of mixed order. Dehumanization happens when we treat objects as broken and not fixable or worth fixing. I think we should try to be above nature.

We can’t be above nature because we are part of nature. And some things are not fixable at all or even worth fixing without diverting significant resources away from better uses.

I ask you how you think the case of being fated into a reality where your life events, turn you into a person who is eventually labeled a criminal because of the predetermined actions in a system not designed to prevent it and thus you're placed behind bars or even executed... Is that not worth fixing or not one of the better uses of resources? It seems really perplexing to me. How wouldn't it be one of the highest pursuits for humanity to defeat by resourcing a better system for these tragic outcomes of a current system making it occur.

> Is that not worth fixing or not one of the better uses of resources?

At all costs? No. Otherwise? It depends.

You said it yourself: Some people are dealt terrible cards, and that can include (as yet) unfixable aspects of brain function.

I didn't write anything of the sort by you referring to unfixable.

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