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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31887 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I don't really understand your point.

I recognize that, and that is what I'm talking about when I talk about "inferential distance"

You appear to be acting on the assumption that "you can't prove X" and "X didn't happen" are equivalent statements and the point that I am trying to make is that they are not.

A bit down thread you ask whether people should be punished for believing bogus information provided by government officials and for my part the answer is an unequivocated "yes". People should absolutely be punished for trusting bogus information because that's how you nip that shit in the bud. If you want people to trust government officials your first, last, and only priority should be ensuring that government officials are trustworthy.

You appear to be acting on the assumption that "you can't prove X" and "X didn't happen" are equivalent statements and the point that I am trying to make is that they are not.

I have no clue how you arrived at this interpretation, and if you can point to what I said that made you think this that would be helpful. No, I do not believe those statements are equivalent. I also don't believe "you can't prove X didn't happen" and "X did happen" are equivalent statements either.

People should absolutely be punished for trusting bogus information because that's how you nip that shit in the bud. If you want people to trust government officials your first, last, and only priority should be ensuring that government officials are trustworthy.

Uh, what? Nip what in the bud? How does prosecuting the people who believed the government help encourage the government to be more trustworthy? Shouldn't you direct your efforts towards...the government?

I have no clue how you arrived at this interpretation,

Explain to me then how you made the jump from absence of evidence to evidence of absence.

A big chunk of this argument has always been about the book-keeping. Things like requiring ID to vote, having documented chains of custody for ballot boxes, third party observers in the counting rooms, etc... are put in place specifically to keep people honest and act as evidence against fraud. Elections are by nature adversarial, and as such the absence of such evidence can be interpreted circumstantial evidence in itself.

For a less emotionally fraught example, imagine a dealers' service agreement that explicitly excludes the car's transmission from the warranty. What would your immediate suspicion be? I can tell you what mine would be.

Shouldn't you direct your efforts towards... the government?

In an ideal world, maybe. But in the real world asking a government agency to oversee itself is almost always a losing proposition.

For a less emotionally fraught example, imagine a dealers' service agreement that explicitly excludes the car's transmission from the warranty. What would your immediate suspicion be? I can tell you what mine would be.

Sure, I'd be suspicious of the transmission. What part of the voting system is this supposed to map to your analogy?

But in the real world asking a government agency to oversee itself is almost always a losing proposition.

This is bewildering. You haven't explained how prosecuting normal people for believing the government advances any interest. What problem does this solve? What behavior is this supposed to encourage?

He is saying almost the exact opposite of assuming that "you can't prove X" and "X didn't happen" are equivalent statements.

Yet his arguments seem to rely on them being equivalent, so which is it?

People should absolutely be punished for trusting bogus information because that's how you nip that shit in the bud. If you want people to trust government officials your first, last, and only priority should be ensuring that government officials are trustworthy.

Even granting your basic premise, how does your proposed remedy accomplish this? I mean... the suggestion is literally to punish more or less random third parties, who didn't do anything wrong other than believe bad information they were given. If anyone should be punished here surely it's the people who actually dispensed the misinformation. I fail to see how your proposed remedy does anything to disincentivize the behaviour it's supposedly aimed at, because it isn't even aimed at the right people. What I do see very clearly is that it's patently unjust, for the same reason. I mean... people shouldn't be punished for stuff other people did. It doesn't get more basic than that.

people shouldn't be punished for stuff other people did.

You're not punishing "random third parties" or "someone for something someone else did" though. You're punishing people for voting illegally. The question is whether "but some dude told me I could" ought to be considered an affirmative defense for casting an illegal ballot.

You're punishing people for voting illegally

It should be ~impossible to vote illegally by mistake. It's stupid to try to fix broken procedures which allow 'illegal voting' by just punishing citizens really hard if they make a mistake.

It should be impossible to vote illegally by mistake

Is vs ought.

Trying to fixing broken procedures is a position that will draw opposition because the opposition party benefits from them, punishing individuals does not, but still has the desired effect.

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this. If anyone did anything wrong here it's them.

I guess the disagreement is largely about what kind of mens rea requirement should hold here. I don't see why voting illegally should be a strict liability thing like you apparently do, especially if the underlying goal is to prevent *intentional *voter fraud (though such votes should not be counted, if there's a way to enforce that without de-anonymizing them). Doing it with conscious intent, sure.

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this. If anyone did anything wrong here it's them.

And yet, that doesn't absolve you from following the law.

If an undercover cop tells you to commit a crime, it's still a crime.

If a military officer gives an illegal order, it's still an illegal order.

If a bureaucrat gives you the wrong application form, it's still the wrong application form.

Legitimacy doesn't derives from the government authority, nor does government authority alone absolve one from following the legitimate rules of society.

I guess the disagreement is largely about what kind of mens rea requirement should hold here. I don't see why voting illegally should be a strict liability thing like you apparently do, especially if the underlying goal is to prevent *intentional *voter fraud (though such votes should not be counted, if there's a way to enforce that without de-anonymizing them). Doing it with conscious intent, sure.

If claiming ignorance was a shield from all other laws, this might hold water, but without it it's a selective appeal for magic words. If you operate a law that only those who know the law perfectly beforehand can be penalized for, then it's not a law, it's a legal cludgeon for selective application of when 'should' applies to 'should have known.'

Not all of that (indeed, hardly any of it) is strictly true. For example:

If an undercover cop tells you to commit a crime, it's still a crime.

Sometimes. At some point it becomes entrapment; the relevant question is generally whether you showed the intention to commit some similar crime. If the cops merely provided means or informed you of a potential target, enjoy your time with bubba. But if they actively goad you into it, that's a different thing entirely. The case here is somewhere in between, it seems to me.

More generally, there are different levels of mens rea requirements already. This is not some weird form of special pleading, it's already well-established legal doctrine. For example, here's a quick summary I found on a quick Google search:

https://www.tombruno.com/articles/the-four-types-of-mens-rea/

I would argue that none of the four standards listed there are met here. Ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, true, but a total lack of morally culpable intent is.

Legitimacy doesn't derives from the government authority, nor does government authority alone absolve one from following the legitimate rules of society.

We're talking here about a "crime" that only exists because of a(n intentionally confusing) bureaucratic rule, not some well-established "legitimate rule of society".

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this

Does it? Should it?

I'm not being flippant here, that is a serious question, and part of that inferential gap that I've been talking about.

Yes. You made a good-faith effort to make sure you were on the right side of the law. That's more than most people do most of the time.

EDIT: If you check the link in the other post I'm about to put up as I type this, there's four types of mens rea listed there and the person in this example doesn't even meet the lowest one, negligence, described as "fails to meet a reasonable standard of behavior for her circumstances". Going out of your way to make sure what you're about to do is not a crime certainly meets any such standard.

Can you please connect the dots from “punishing people for trusting bogus information” to “ensuring government officials are trustworthy”? If the officials were misleading people, then they are the ones who should be punished, not the victim.

Imagine a police officer who writes tickets for speed limit violations but claims that the person caught speeding is signing a ‘warning form’ or something. The person then doesn’t show up in court, as they had no reason to believe that they needed to, and is later thrown in jail. The fix for that situation is not to tell people they shouldn’t trust cops, just like the fix in FL isn’t to tell people that they can’t trust county clerks.

Can you please connect the dots from “punishing people for trusting bogus information” to “ensuring government officials are trustworthy”?

At the most basic level this thread is about whether "a government official told me I could do X" ought to be considered an affirmative defense for illegally doing X. @ymeskhout appears to be taking the position that, yes it should, but to me this position seems untenable. To flip your scenario on it's head, If a cop pulls me over driving without a no license or insurance on a car with expired tags and I tell them that the lady at the DMV told that I didn't need any of that stuff, would you expect the cop to just say "my mistake" and let me go on my way? I wouldn't. Fact is that regardless of whatever some unnamed official at the DMV might have said, the cop has his own instructions.

There's a line of thinking here (Scott's posts on In Defense of Fauci and Bounded Distrust being central examples) that seems to go; the public trust is a public good ergo there is a moral obligation to trust public officials regardless of the truth value of their statements.

While this makes a certain amount of inductive sense if one takes the view that hierarchies as imposed, and that public officials are on the balance impartial. In practice it creates an environment that erodes trust because what real incentive does some unnamed official have to ensure that they get things right?

and I tell them that the lady at the DMV told that I didn't need any of that stuff

This discussion has been particularly frustrating because it seems that people are just assuming facts about a system they're not familiar with. This is not a case of a felon caught voting claiming someone "told" them they could vote. The problems with Florida's voting restoration system have been well known for a really long time. It would be helpful if you were at least somewhat familiar with the system, and you can learn a lot by just skimming this court opinion. Here's the 125-page court opinion that details the problems on Pg 53:

The case of one named plaintiff, Clifford Tyson, is illustrative. An extraordinarily competent and diligent financial manager in the office of the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court, with the assistance of several long-serving assistants, bulldogged Mr. Tyson’s case for perhaps 12 to 15 hours. The group had combined experience of over 100 years. They came up with what they believed to be the amount owed. But even with all that work, they were unable to explain discrepancies in the records.

And see page 65 about the workload the state estimated for itself:

Even without screening for unpaid LFOs, all the Divison’s caseworkers combined can process an average of just 57 registrations per day. The LFO work, standing alone, is likely to take at least as long as—probably much longer than—the review for murder and sexual offenses and for custody or supervision status. Even at 57 registrations per day, screening the 85,000 pending registrations will take 1,491 days. At 261 workdays per year, this is a little over 5 years and 8 months. The projected completion date, even if the Division starts turning out work today, and even if screening for LFOs doesn’t take longer than screening for murders, sexual offenses, custody, and supervision, is early in 2026. With a flood of additional registrations expected in this presidential election year, the anticipated completion date might well be pushed into the 2030s.

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