The point of course is that it's not about whether or not guilty people escape.
It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing.
If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal.
This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense.
Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part.
People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering.
Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.
It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing.
If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal.
This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense.
Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part.
People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering.
Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.