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Should all laws made from gut reactions be abolished?
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Plenty on this board want that many, if not all, of our laws to be based on solid reasoning and not popular opinion or panicked emotion. That makes a kind of sense. Laws created with strong logic in mind usually benefit society the most by being fair to citizens and they stay on the books for decades whereas laws carried by gut feelings are usually prejudiced and fizzle out after a year or two. If a bill's line of reasoning can't stand up to scrutiny, the proposed law probably wasn't a very good one in the first place.
But let's not forget laws serve the people (not the majority, the whole people) and if there are no people, there is no law. If the people want things done a certain way that is contrary to solid reasoning, should the legal process accommodate them and create laws based on what 'feels right'? If you agreed with the previous paragraph, you'd say no, emotion shouldn't be a part of law-making. But consider these three points:
1) I can't pick up a pet from the shelter, take it home, douse it in gasoline, and light it on fire. Animal cruelty laws prohibit such savage behavior. The point of the law is clear - to prevent animals from suffering - but why do we extend protections to animals? Pets are property, legally. Pets aren't citizens. Assuming I bury the charred puppy carcass properly, there's no risk of disease spreading. So what's the logic behind animal cruelty laws? Emotionally, the answer is as plain as day - torturing animals is distasteful and murdering a defenseless dog is inhuman, showing a lack of control and empathy on my part. There are laws against animal torture and dog fights because that's the way people want it.
2) I can't walk around nude in public on a warm, sunny day. The men in white coats would take me away if I tried but what's the reasoning behind the decency law? I'm not in danger of dying from exposure. I'm not harming anything or anyone with my clothing-optional lifestyle. No one can strut around nude in public because that's the way people like it.
3) Separation of Church and State. Church is a big organization. State collects taxes from big organizations but not from Church. Religious institutions enjoy a tax-exempt status (though I believe some minimum charity/community service is required - I might be wrong on that) because that's the way people feel it should be.
Abolishing all laws not based on solid reasoning means the best we could do is discourage dog fights, public nudity, and taxing churches but these things wouldn't be illegal. Is there a place in our society for laws based on 'it just feels proper'?
But let's not forget laws serve the people (not the majority, the whole people) and if there are no people, there is no law. If the people want things done a certain way that is contrary to solid reasoning, should the legal process accommodate them and create laws based on what 'feels right'? If you agreed with the previous paragraph, you'd say no, emotion shouldn't be a part of law-making. But consider these three points:
1) I can't pick up a pet from the shelter, take it home, douse it in gasoline, and light it on fire. Animal cruelty laws prohibit such savage behavior. The point of the law is clear - to prevent animals from suffering - but why do we extend protections to animals? Pets are property, legally. Pets aren't citizens. Assuming I bury the charred puppy carcass properly, there's no risk of disease spreading. So what's the logic behind animal cruelty laws? Emotionally, the answer is as plain as day - torturing animals is distasteful and murdering a defenseless dog is inhuman, showing a lack of control and empathy on my part. There are laws against animal torture and dog fights because that's the way people want it.
2) I can't walk around nude in public on a warm, sunny day. The men in white coats would take me away if I tried but what's the reasoning behind the decency law? I'm not in danger of dying from exposure. I'm not harming anything or anyone with my clothing-optional lifestyle. No one can strut around nude in public because that's the way people like it.
3) Separation of Church and State. Church is a big organization. State collects taxes from big organizations but not from Church. Religious institutions enjoy a tax-exempt status (though I believe some minimum charity/community service is required - I might be wrong on that) because that's the way people feel it should be.
Abolishing all laws not based on solid reasoning means the best we could do is discourage dog fights, public nudity, and taxing churches but these things wouldn't be illegal. Is there a place in our society for laws based on 'it just feels proper'?
emnmnme on
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There are no laws based on pure "reasoning." You need a set of assumptions on which situations are better than others, and the reasoning entails which type of enforcement will get you your ideal situation.
Now, I do support banning laws based on the moral axiom "what the Bible says is true."
Ideally the fundamental axiom for a system of laws is "suffering is bad." Also, possibly, "the strong should not oppress the weak," though that can be construed as a corollary of the first in most cases."
False premise
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
It isn't because it "feels right" and to suggest so shows extreme ignorance of reality.
but they're listening to every word I say
Nudity is (in certain places) and should be legal. I'm not going to rock out with my cock out but there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to, none at all.
As for religious organizations' tax-exempt status, this serves to prevent government from using taxes to restrict religious practices. No harm there, either.
Should I be able to call the cops on the annoying college kids who are having a party and blaring loud music and keeping me up at 3am when I really need to sleep because I have work in the morning?
Edit: Public nudity could also be considered a public disturbance too I suppose.
I'd say there actually is quite a bit of difference between your two scenarios.
Most sport hunters also then eat the deer they kill. They also don't intend to make it suffer.
Yeah, basically this.
Core values - freedom, comfort, security, happiness - are largely emotional and arational. I use the word "arational" to imply that they are outside of rational thought, not necessarily contrary to it.
We can use rational thought and empirical evidence to work out which values are dependent upon others, thereby determining which values are most important. We can use thought and evidence to work out the best way of maximizing these values and do our best to guarantee that our efforts today will not backfire later on.
But peel back enough layers and you eventually get to a set of values that we old dear because of feelings.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is exactly how the law is structured in the UK. Situations where someone there is a sexual motive are covered under different laws (sexual assault, IIRC), but public nudity isn't illegal, it only becomes illegal if it is deemed to be a breach of the peace, which requires someone to complain.
On topic, There are a group of former civil servants in the UK that have been making noises about exactly the issue the OP raises: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8481943.stm
In particular it has been noted that the sheer volume of new legislation passed under the current administration is massive compared to previous governments.
Let me get this straight: I can go to the pound, pick up a dog, bring it home, set it loose in the backyard and shoot it as long as I,
a) eat the dog afterwards
and
b) kill the dog quickly
That's legal? 'Cause if so, hot dog!
Point I'm trying to illustrate, it doesn't matter if sport hunters eat and kill quickly. The point being made in the original quote is that killing dogs (pets) is a social taboo, and hunting deer is not. One requires a person to break a social taboo while the other doesn't.
At least, I can see how a credible case could be built were any prosecution to result, and I wouldn't expect such a case to be prosecuted, depending on the wording of the laws in question.
There's no such thing as "separation of church and state" per se; you're looking for the first amendment, which dictates that "Congress shall pass no law restricting... the free practice of religion..." Passing tax law that restricts churches from operating would fall vaguely under this. I believe that churches must also qualify as an NPO -- they can't turn a huge ass profit, they have to qualify as an NPO charitable organization.
That said, you're pretty much head on here. We have decency-driven laws because issues must be addressed, but they're all based on fuzzy concepts of civilization.
Let's assume we don't have animal rights. This seems proper to me; animals have no rights. That being said, I'm sympathetic to the general idea that you shouldn't be horribly mistreating animals. Moreover, our society would develop much differently if we didn't actively discourage immoral and savage practices.
Think about this: If we didn't discourage drug use, everyone would smoke pot and possibly use cocaine or heroin, in a more controlled but still destructive manner, and still erode society's ability to function. In the past, we entertained ourselves by watching human beings be put to death by hanging, and prior to that by gladiator fights (big guy with a sword killing little guy) and feeding to lions.
Do you think it's a stretch for us to raise an entire society on the national past time of torturing animals? Do you think the behavior would be isolated? Less of a problem than universal use of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or even alcohol?
On the other hand, we have a lot of fast-reaction laws where we've decided we need to protect ourselves from witches, terrorists, and pedophiles. We have laws against holding "obscene" material; pornography, possibly, but not obscene pornography. One case involved a picture of a woman naked painted like a cow on her hands and knees... this might be illegal, because it's obscene. We have the Cyberbullying laws now too. We have the entirely ineffective COPA, which has been deemed illegal itself.
All of these laws form at a finger-snap to react to an immediate issue, not a developed issue over time. This is not something PETA lobbied for for a decade, which we've enjoyed for decades, and then one day decided we need to sit down and examine ourselves as a people and decide if we really want to continue this way. We woke up one day and said, shit, liquid explosives! Ban water from planes! (okay that's not a law but you get the point)
Some of our "warm and fuzzy" laws are functional. Some are non-functional (COPA). Still, there are those that are reflexive, poorly-conceived reaction to a problem that just made itself known last week, and already had a bill written up 2 days later. There are also those that continue along the line of flawed thinking, because that is the norm; they take a partially implemented policy and implement it further as times change, to catch up. Eventually we find out society or technology loses its momentum but the laws don't.
What you're trying to discuss here is a very, very difficult problem. We're again dealing with people, not machines; I can optimize it but you won't entirely enjoy it.
Loud music keeping you awake is disturbing but casually walking down Main Street in your Birthday suit isn't preventing other people from doing their thing.
EDIT: Here's another one. If I spray graffiti on my neighbor's fence, it's petty vandalism. Seriously vandalizing another person's property causing destruction and need of major repairs is a felony. I think there's a dollar amount in damages you need to cross to get into Felony Town. However, grave robbery is also a felony though it doesn't have that dollar amount attached. If I dug up your dear old great aunt Flo and used her corpse in my life-sized marionette play, I'd be looking at three years in prison. No real harm is done so why is the penalty so harsh? Because that's the way people enjoy it.
Logically communism is best, with a benevolent dictator.
No, not really. Logically, given no restrictions, communism with a benevolent dictator is best if and only if every single person is going to cooperate as per our model.
When we change the model of individuals and use that to model society, we find something very, very different. It's the difference between my stance that everyone should be armed, trained to use firearms, trained to use and defend against lesser weapons (a staff, a sectional staff, knife, sword), and trained for hand to hand; and the other (possibly more popular? I can't tell) argument that we should take all that away from people and teach them to avoid all violence to improve public safety.
In my model, I assume that you can't remove all firearms. I also assume that the nature of bad people is that they will find easier targets; make everyone an easy target and more people willing to take less risk will find the barrier to entry into the criminal world amiable. My solution, of course, is to structure society such that most people can and will kick your ass if you give them a reason to. Teach people that they should step in and defend others if they can, not cower back and wait for help (I was taught to never intervene myself, find an authority figure instead).
Now you have a situation where the risk of attacking, robbing, or raping someone is high-- high likelihood of being caught, and people are very much willing to use threats of violence and carry them out if you make them. Yes, if you continue to threaten someone at knife point, the first time you lose your footing and back the knife away I am going to be where you are, breaking bones on your body that you need to have in one piece to continue threatening anyone's safety.
In the other model, we assume that we can reasonably remove enough firearms AND that other weapons are ineffective enough for this to make a difference AND that people will call or somehow summon the police AND that the police will arrive fast enough to 'catch the bad guy" (this is the barrier to entry; we don't need to protect the victim) to offset the fact that we can't effectively remove all weapons. We also disincline people from being violent.
Now you have a situation where obtaining a gun is difficult and risky. You're also not so hot on being violent. You're also pretty sure the police will catch you if you actually murder someone. Hopefully, overall incidents will decrease and society will improve.
For obvious reasons, I prefer the first model to the second; besides that I think the second model is flawed (the risk isn't driven up enough versus my model), I feel a society of people with some backbone and will to stand up for what they feel is right is far more civilized than a society of cowards. This in itself is not a logical decision (well, the first half is; honor and valor and whatever are just bullshit).
Our entire society is based on things like this. In reality, people will fall into three classes: the rich and powerful, the middle class, and the poor. We repeatedly attempt to bring the poor up to a survivable level, but the fact is that once people are comfortable they will stay there; if we make it comfortable to be poor, such that you always have food, water, a shower, but no luxuries, then why not be poor? Social life is a pretty decent luxury, as is sex.
Still, this shows us something important: People don't want to be scared. They don't want to be out freezing on the street, wondering how they're going to get food. They want to have sex, yes. They want to be happy. If most people are not happy, they will band together under leadership that promises to make at least most of them happy. If your entire country is a body of abused serfs under a handful of rich noblemen, eventually the serfs will form their own government and then quickly behead all the noblemen.
That's the easy part. The hard part is, as above, figuring out things like gun control, terrorism laws, drug and alcohol laws, etc. I favor Britain's alcohol laws (parent can buy you drinks when you're 14; you can buy beer at 16; buy liquor at 18) because it avoids the shocking introduction of infinite access to alcohol when you turn 21 (remember when you realized you could cook bacon whenever you want, or just buy candy or icing and eat it out of the tube? And you got sick that week? Yeah it's like that).
Mind you I'm admittedly also more interested in sexually-driven societies like Greece. This isn't because of optimization or logical analysis; I just find sexuality fascinating. I don't even have sex much, and when I do I don't really enjoy it much on a personal level. So my opinions are not perfect logical analysis; I may talk as if they are, and cover both sides of an argument in a very structured way, but I have my attachments.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I'd like to keep food safety right where it is.
Would it be a stretch to say anything could be a disturbance if it ticks people off. A Black man and a White woman walking down the sidewalk holding hands would distract drivers in Racist Land and cause a disturbance.
I also remember reading about how the SCOTUS couldn't ban pornographic movies from playing at drive-in theaters even though the screen could be seen from public highways. Their advice was for drivers to look away.
Witness the frequency with which the media bemoans an acquittal "on a technicality", with the relative significance of various aspects of the applicable law apparently gauged by whether or not the public think the person in question is guilty.
Bull fights. The old style where they spear the bull twenty times and then stab in through the brain. Are the people who attend bull fights showing warning signs of being sociopaths?
Yes, that is what I was getting at. I was not intending to imply that hunters are sadists.
No. The "rules" of human behavior change completely in large crowds. People will do things under the cover of, say, a riot, than they ever would on their own.
KANT ATTACK
KANT ATTACK
I want to say that was Sublime, but I Kant.
I say nay!
By the way, there are plenty of places where you can walk around nude on a warm, sunny day without fear of arrest. Perhaps you should move to one of them?
obsolete signature form
replaced by JPEGs.
Nobody wins in that scenario.
Sex offender laws do need to be fixed. There's literally no way to bring that up and not ruin your political career though.
Laws that encourage human flourishing are good
Laws that don't, suck ass
Go go gadget Virtue Government!!
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Silly goose, I know it's a false dichotomy. The exaggeration is meant to highlight there are laws made without logic entirely. Most laws can be justified by reason, a few can't. So I agree not to try to kill you and you agree not to try to kill me and we make the government enforce the agreement so we get more accomplished at the end of the day. Ta da! Murder is illegal for a good, emotion-free reason. Murder is also monstrous and emotionally distressing so we keep it illegal by choice, too.
EDIT:
The hell? Can you explain this because it sounds like, to me, you're saying good intentions make good laws.
Fixed that there.
laws can have logic behind them even if there isn't an immediate danger. the laws that you've brought up here DO serve purposes, they are just purposes that are harder to see if you're looking for instant gratification.
1) cruelty to animals desensitizes a person to cruelty in general. We don't want that in our society
2) there are very few reasons why you would NEED to be nude in public, so making this illegal prevents sexual assault to some degree with minimal societal cost. Beyodn that, we as a species have evolved to the point where we really NEED clothing in many climates, so requiring clothing in public is also for your own protection, so that you do not die of exposure.
3) giving churches tax-free status makes perfect sense so long as the church is operating not-for profit. There are plenty of other not-for-profit organizations out there that have nothing to do with religion.
I like that "separation of church and state" is a "gut reaction".
Like there wasn't much in the way of thinking of discussion they were all "ewwwww can you imagine a steeple all up in our congressional dome? EWWWWWWWW!"
I define morals as "rules governing animal behavior"; laws are morals which are enforced. Humans are animals. Like any other animals, certain behaviors increase our fitness on an individual level, or on a social group level, or both.
For any given society, there is probably a set of morals and/or laws that result in the optimal "fitness" by whatever standard you want to use to define it. This set of morals can be discovered through reasoning. The catch is figuring out what standard you want to use. This too can be negotiated through reasoning. I think the standard "whatever causes the least amount of suffering" seems the most reasonable.
However, on a macro-scale, morals and laws clearly evolve based on fitness within changing social and technological environments. Slavery fell out of fashion, not uncoincidentally, around the same time industrialization rendered slave-based economies obsolete. Women suffrage gained traction as new technologies enabled women to enter the workforce.
Also, I am uncomfortable with the idea that there is a set of unchanging ideal morals devised through reasoning. Because as society changes, what constitutes "fitness"—even by the same standard—changes. A society where birth control and abortion are available is different from a society where it hasn't been invented yet; ideal morals based on the rational standard of "avoiding suffering" will be different. Likewise for a digital society with little scarcity and a physical society with lots of scarcity. The ideal morals for governing an internet message board are different from the ideal morals governing a tribe in Afghanistan.
I also like that seperation of church and state apparently just boils down to "church don't pay taxes", but whatevs. I am just responding to the points in front of me.