First of all, retaliation clearly has its place. If someone acts in a way that wantonly hurts others, it is the correct choice to inflict some suffering on them, for the sake of setting the right incentives. It is indeed extremely common that from this perspective of fairness and incentives, people “deserve” to suffer.
I don’t see why it’s good to punish people. If you threaten to punish me if I do a particular thing, I’ll just get upset that you might hurt me and likely refuse to interact with you at all. But you do sometimes have to hurt someone’s reputation as a side effect of some other necessary action, like warning other people that they’re untrustworthy.
In the high stakes case: MAD makes sense and retaliation is a better equilibrium than not threatening retaliation.
In the low stakes case: If you punch me, I will likely punch back (or otherwise try to get you punished). This generally works as a fine deterrent for most cases.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly rare or weird concept. Really as basic game theory as it gets.
I think there’s a difference between consequences and suffering (as written in the OP) though.
If a child plays too many videogames you might take away their switch, and while that might decrease their utility, I’d hardly describe it as suffering in any meaningful sense.
Similarly, in the real world, people generally get quite low utility from physical violence. It’s either an act of impulse not particularly sensitive to severity of punishment (like in people with anger management issues), or of very low utility. It’s therefore easy to imagine that the optimal level of punishment for crime might be a decrease in access to some goods, and seperation from broader society to decrease the probability of future impulsive acts harming anyone.
If a child plays too many videogames you might take away their switch, and while that might decrease their utility, I’d hardly describe it as suffering in any meaningful sense.
Not sure this is important to discuss, but I definitely would. If I remember correctly, this kind of thing had a pretty strong effect on me when I was small, probably worse than getting a moderate injury as an adult. I feel like it’s very easy to make a small kid suffer because they’re so emotionally defenseless and get so easily invested in random things.
I don’t see why it’s good to punish people. If you threaten to punish me if I do a particular thing, I’ll just get upset that you might hurt me and likely refuse to interact with you at all.
Try to apply this logic to law enforcement, and you will see at once how it fails.
I don’t see why it’s good to punish people. If you threaten to punish me if I do a particular thing, I’ll just get upset that you might hurt me and likely refuse to interact with you at all. But you do sometimes have to hurt someone’s reputation as a side effect of some other necessary action, like warning other people that they’re untrustworthy.
In the high stakes case: MAD makes sense and retaliation is a better equilibrium than not threatening retaliation.
In the low stakes case: If you punch me, I will likely punch back (or otherwise try to get you punished). This generally works as a fine deterrent for most cases.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly rare or weird concept. Really as basic game theory as it gets.
I think there’s a difference between consequences and suffering (as written in the OP) though.
If a child plays too many videogames you might take away their switch, and while that might decrease their utility, I’d hardly describe it as suffering in any meaningful sense.
Similarly, in the real world, people generally get quite low utility from physical violence. It’s either an act of impulse not particularly sensitive to severity of punishment (like in people with anger management issues), or of very low utility. It’s therefore easy to imagine that the optimal level of punishment for crime might be a decrease in access to some goods, and seperation from broader society to decrease the probability of future impulsive acts harming anyone.
Not sure this is important to discuss, but I definitely would. If I remember correctly, this kind of thing had a pretty strong effect on me when I was small, probably worse than getting a moderate injury as an adult. I feel like it’s very easy to make a small kid suffer because they’re so emotionally defenseless and get so easily invested in random things.
Try to apply this logic to law enforcement, and you will see at once how it fails.