A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic.
Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives.
[...] He said laws designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect”, since the vast majority had merely taken knives from a cutlery drawer.
[...] He asked: “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?
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Knives are too Sharp and Filing Down their Points is Solution to Soaring Violent Crime, Judge Says
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Friday June 01 2018, @04:12AM (102 children)
Sure, kitchen knives technically don't need a point. There are not a lot of things in the kitchen you normally stab. Not that it doesn't sometimes have it's usages. But it seems like a kind of stupid solution, how about just sending all the idiots that go around stabbing people to jail (or hanging) instead of going around to every kitchen in the land and dull their knives. That said even if you remove or round the point of a knife you can still slash and cut with it. So is the next bright idea to just dull the knives on all edges? or is it just a complete outlaw of all things stabby and points?
If he wants long term change it might be better to just make the knifemakers not make pointed knives for kitchen usage, and make that into a law. I still don't believe it will have much of an impact, even if you took the knives away I'm sure there will be a hammer-violence epidemic or something similar.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:21AM
The end game of this is to restrict the sale of everything for weapon, pollution, or healthcare reasons. Start with various plants and chemicals, then guns, then plastic straws/bags/whatever, then knives, then soda and juice, then...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:33AM (11 children)
Idiots like this just give people on the right in the US ammo to oppose gun control even more vehemently.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Friday June 01 2018, @04:36AM
Where would gun control be in the first place, if there weren't idiots like this? My take is not much of anywhere.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @02:06PM (2 children)
Asshat who wants to violate the constitution, LAW OF THE LAND, gets modded Insightful?
If you do not like guns, don't buy them dumbass.
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday June 01 2018, @05:07PM (1 child)
If you do not like abortion, don't get them dumbass
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Sulla on Friday June 01 2018, @05:11PM
Guns and abortion are both used to kill another non-consenting person. The difference is that you are not required to pay for my firearm out of your pocket, while I am required to pay (in some states) for your abortion out of my pocket.
I am totally okay with free and legal abortion, but I will not be compelled to pay for it.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 01 2018, @04:33PM (6 children)
No need to have gun control.
Just need ammunition control.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @07:00PM (5 children)
How about self control? That covers all weapons at once.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:14PM (3 children)
Most people don't have your level of self-control (and there is a sentence I never thought I'd type about you...). Face it, most people suck. Smart people tend to be a bit solipsistic about this, as we sort of assume everyone else thinks more or less the way we do. Not true, unfortunately.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:28PM (2 children)
Think back to the whole "ADHD folks experience emotions more strongly than normal type folks" thing a while back and you should see why. You either get good at self-control or you spend your life in prison.
Incidentally, this is what you're always on my ass over as well; the whole forcing my emotions to remain under the control of my logical mind thing. Believe me when I say that you really don't want me the other way around. Consider what a motivated someone way off on our end of the intelligence bell curve could do if their reason served their emotions rather than the other way around. As an intellectual exercise and for a few laughs, I like to try to figure out how to release a million chickens in NYC some night. There's no real reason the chickens couldn't be used as a ricin delivery system as well though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:21AM (1 child)
Hmm...you'd need to commandeer a few thousand delivery trucks on the way to slaughterhouses. This would require either a very large social-engineering hack or somehow having hundreds of your buddies hijack every live-poultry shipping vehicle for 50 miles around the city. Actually releasing them is the easy part; it's just a matter of where. "The subway" sounds like a lulzy first idea, but the birds would mostly just get smashed or electrocuted. Central Park would be hilarious.
One possible alternative: dress up in a green forest ranger costume, steal exactly *one* chicken, and smack it with a sword a few times. Reliable sources (and bitter experience...) tell me that you'll be absolutely swarmed with chickens in no time flat.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:20AM
You'd think so but no. Getting a million chickens surprisingly isn't all that difficult. You'd be amazed at how many yard birds are sacrificed upon the altar of dinner just in the US every single day. Most of them come from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Louisiana too, so easy access. Buy them up over the course of a year and the poultry industry would only notice a small uptick in profits.
The biggest problem is you can only get about two thousand per trailer and expect most to survive the trip. That means you need around five hundred twenty-five (5% loss margin) tractor trailers full of birds all getting to their respective destinations around NYC within no more than two hours of each other. Any longer a time span and the authorities are going to catch on and start stopping trucks.
Now you could bring some or all of them in via cargo ship but that's not without its own problems. You'd still need them moved around the city in a very short time, so you'd still need just as many trucks but now you have to get them all loaded and moved from the docks to various spots in the city within a pretty small window. It's a bit of a pain in the logistics. And it's a single point of failure that could get you busted and or at least delayed long enough to bugger up the plan.
You also have everyone who isn't in the know on the joke. Five hundred twenty five drivers and loaders if you don't use a ship and that plus everyone else involved on the shipping side of things if you do. That's a pretty vulnerable attack surface.
You could cut the attack surface down some if you used two separate logistics companies (one to haul birds to the second while the second delivered and released them) and enough of a bribe to make sure the logistics companies lost the paperwork as soon as the last truck rolled out. That's better but hardly foolproof. You'd probably also need to include time-delayed bribes for each driver to make the chance of them getting busted while unloading worthwhile and reduce the chance they'll talk.
All that to say, it's not nearly as easy as it sounds.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 01 2018, @08:50PM
Wouldn't that be nice.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Fluffeh on Friday June 01 2018, @04:42AM (25 children)
Yes, they really do.
The tip/point is used for piercing and scoring as well as making small precise cuts - like cutting the outer fat off a leg of lamb.
The common "chef" knife which is the general shape of the large kitchen knives for for prep is a combination of a number of knives - and is made so that you can use the one single knife for a vast array of prep rather than having to use multiple knives.
You can have a look at the bits here [thekitchn.com] and what they actually should be used for.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @07:24AM (20 children)
I guess I should make it clear that I am not trying to argue in favor of that judge's idea, but:
What I still do not understand is why you'd need or want a sharp tip on a chef knife. On fruit knifes: Absolutely. But those have short blades for a reason. With a long blade (say 8+ inch), you are not going to do any precision work with the tip, anyway. Asian cooks seem to have arrived at a similar conclusion. For instance there is no pronounced tip on a santoku knife. And traditional Chinese cooks seem happy to do even the most delicate prep with a cleaver.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @08:47AM (19 children)
You were just told that the chef knife is the one knife does everything. A chef doesn't want to rummage through a drawer of five of each of ten different kinds of knives to find the one fruit knife that isn't in the dish washer. He has one kind of knife that does everything.
And yet you don't understand why a chefs knife would need the same features that you do understand are necessary on a fruit knife?
(Score: 2) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @09:23AM (12 children)
Let me repeat my main point:
Yes, a chef is going to do everything they need to do with a single knife. But that does not mean they are doing it with the tip of said knife. As also evidenced by the general purpose knifes that evolved in different cultures. The one thing they really have in common is a long sharp blade. (And don't tell me the santoku knife evolved due to a historical lack of blacksmith skills or lack of cooking culture).
A fruit knife is a type of specialty knife, and it is not needed, but can come in handy when you need to prep a lot of similar stuff at once. In that context its special features are useful, but that does not make them necessary on a general purpose knife. Other examples of specialty knives are peeling knifes and bread knifes. A chef will not shy away from using those every once in a while (and neither from cutting bread or peeling potatoes with the chef knife), but clearly twin blades or a saw blade are not desirable features on a general purpose knife.
Well, I'm not trying to stop anyone from using western chef knives. But hands up: Who of those reading is actually using the pointy tip on a blade of 8 inches or longer? (Note: Looking for uses that really require a pointy tip, here. E.g. "piercing a package in order to open it" does not really qualify, because it's perfectly possible with the "dull" tip on a santoku knife or even a cleaver.)
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:33PM (3 children)
I'll point out that a chef's knife is sometimes a two-handed tool. It's not exactly my style, but I've watched people put both hands on the back of the knife, and rock it. I prefer to lift the knife up onto it's point, and rock it one-handed, but those two handed people can mince stuff surprisingly small.
Point is, the chef's knife really IS a multi-purpose tool, and different people use it in different ways.
For that matter, taking the point off of the chef's knife would ruin my own mincing/rocking motion. I've just lost the two or three inches of the knife that gives the most leverage in the rocking motion. Thanks a lot!
You can have my pointy knives when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @06:34PM
So what you're saying is the pointed tip does not really serve an important purpose in itself, but is a side-effect of the curvature near the end of the blade?
Well, that, at least, makes sense to me. A santoku knife does have less curvature, there, and therefore can handle less height in a rocking motion. I can understand that people may have different preferences in that respect.
(But should I ever feel the need to pry your pointy knives from your cold, dead hands, I'll be using my santoku for that purpose ;-)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 01 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
You want to rock with control? Get a mezzaluna or an ulu. And there's no need to a have a pointy chef's knife just to make it rock for chopping.
(Note -- as I said below, there are lots of uses for long knives with points. Chopping with a rocking motion isn't really one that requires one.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:29PM
There's only one way to rock.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @03:59PM (3 children)
You clearly don't cook if you seem to think that someone using an 8" chef's knife doesn't use the point. I do a lot of prep work and use the point plenty.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
I'll have to admit that I started the hostilities, myself, but I still find it irritating that some people assume you cannot cook (ambitiously) without a western style chef's knife. A santoku is my general purpose knife of choice, in case you have not guessed.
That said I am totally willing to believe that you are using the point on your 8'' chef's knife, but I still fail to imagine, how. Runaway says it's to allow for better rocking, which I can understand, although it really makes the pointy tip a side effect of the curved design, and not a feature in its own right. So when you say you are using the point, plenty, what else are you actually doing with it?
(Just in case, I'll repeat that my point is not to defeat that judge's ridiculous idea. Just plain honest curiosity.)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 01 2018, @07:56PM
I replied below with a much longer list of reasons why I use a long knife with a point. But I do agree with you that you CAN certainly cook ambitiously without a western-style chef's knife. Many tasks might require more than one knife to do easily or well, but it's certainly possible. And while the chef's knife is a good all-purpose tool, it certainly isn't a necessary one.
That said, if you do certain more specific kinds of tasks, it's still really useful to have long knives with tips. Asian cooking has all sorts of knives like this -- they just tend to be more specialized than the western chef's knife.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:03AM
Who would that be? I think it more that someone who can't think of a reason for having a point on a knife, probably has some serious knowledge or imagination deficiencies as a cook.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 01 2018, @07:44PM (2 children)
[Raises hand tentatively...]
There are a few rare tasks where a long knife with a pointy tip is really handy. Cutting up watermelons and similar things comes to mind. Not that you couldn't do it with other knives, but a long chef's knife is easy.
The whole point (no pun intended) of using a traditional chef's knife is the diverse options. For most applications where you'd use the point, a smaller knife is better, but sometimes you just don't want to dirty another knife for a couple short cuts. I'm not going to hull strawberries with an 8-inch chef's knife, but if I'm cutting up a single tomato for dinner and need a piercing knife to cut around the stem end, I'll do it with my chef's knife rather than pulling out another knife just for that purpose. (And I'm using a chef's knife likely because I'm chopping up other vegetables already.) Or, if I'm dicing up potatoes and just need to cut out a couple eyes -- again, the point is useful. In a pinch, you can even grab the back of the knife closer to the blade with your hand and hold the knife briefly that way if you need precision for just a couple cuts. (I don't usually do that, but again it can avoid dirtying another knife.) When mincing onions or garlic, the point can also be really convenient, though you certainly can do it with an Asian-style knife too. I frequently use my nakiri for similar tasks (with no point), but will pull out my gyuto at times too (or my Western-style chef's knife).
But mostly the point is useful for larger pieces of food, and traditionally chef's knives have points partly to deal with the smaller-scale butchering processes in meat preparation. If you're cutting up a turkey or if you are cutting up large pieces of meat and sometimes need a tip to help trimming fat or cutting nearer to a bone or whatever, they can be very useful.
Again, in almost all cases, there are more specialized knives more suited to a particular task -- though for meat fabrication, if you take the point from my chef's knife, you'd better at least leave me with a decent-length boning knife that's going to have a sharp point (and would be just as dangerous for stabbing). I don't do a lot of fish prep, but since you bring up Asian-style knives, note that there are a few different long pointy Asian knives that tend to be used there too (like the yanagiba) -- again, if you actually work with larger pieces of meat (of any sort), having a tip on the knife is often really helpful at various times.
Bottom line is that the most common knife I pull out for random tasks in making dinner every evening is an 8-inch European chef's knife or gyuto. I can often get everything (or almost everything) done with just one knife. If I'll be doing more tasks or need precision work, I'll pull out various smaller knives, or if I'll be doing a lot of chopping/vegetable work, I'll use a nakiri. If I'm not doing a lot of chopping, I'll use a petty instead, but I'll still want the tip usually for something or other.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @08:43PM (1 child)
Thanks for the detailed reply (and I've modded you up). For quick hacks like cutting out a few stems or potato eyes, I'm often using my santoku, too. And while I'll have to concede a small advantage to the chef's knife, here, those use cases are not important enough to change my general preference. (And, as you say, if they were more important, we'd be using neither chef's knife nor santoku, nor any other long blade).
But so I guess I now understand that the primary reason that I don't miss a (pronounced) pointy tip on my santoku is that I'm not cooking a whole lot of meat. Well that, and probably some random luck with the respective specimens of chef's knives and santokus that I've tried.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 01 2018, @11:29PM
Yeah, even if you cooked more with meat, you generally won't *need* a very long knife with a point unless you're working with larger bits of meat. Usually for smaller work a good flexible boning knife (and/or fillet knife if you do a lot of fish) and a sturdier knife (I prefer a honesuki over a western-style butcher's knife) are fine... And don't need to be 8 inches (or more) long. But these knives are pointy, which you really need for boning and trimming.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:59AM
And the point of the chef's knife example is that you are wrong here. They do use 8+ inch knives for precision work with the tip, such as stripping meat off bones or piecing hard-skinned vegetables.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @09:38AM (5 children)
(yeah, right, believe what you've been told in spite of examples to the contrary)
There's no such knife for a chef. True, most of the operations can be done with a chef knife, but not all (yes, fruit carving is an example).
And your assertion doesn't answer to the example of Chinese chefs mainly preferring a cleaver.
On the other side, I don't know what i'd chose: being stabbed with a chef's knife or hacked with a cleaver.
This last bit is to say banning an everyday used tool only because it might be used as a weapon is stupid beyond limits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @10:47AM (2 children)
Time for some science then. This is exactly the kind of question the scientific method excels at answering.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)
Direct experimentation doesn't work, I tried. Sometimes I prefer being stabbed, other times I like hacking better.
It boils down to psychology, and we all know that's not a science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @03:09PM
Perhaps its seasonal. For some reason hacking seems like more of a winter thing and stabbing a summer thing. Perhaps due to hacking firewood? You may be more depressed in the winter due to lack of UV and more pumped up in the summer due to ad lib exposure to it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 01 2018, @12:48PM (1 child)
Amateurs. You'd obviously go with a filleting knife.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:38PM
I like that in a psycho!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 01 2018, @04:36PM (2 children)
All this piercing and scoring that you talk about with pointy knives in the kitchen is being done to poor animal flesh! Dead animals!
Next you'll be using facts and stuff like that to argue our teeth are evolved to eat animal flesh, cooked or not. But we don't believe no evolution hear. No.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Sunday June 03 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
Oh... I see. Well clearly you would agree with me to say that our teeth were designed intelligently (see what I did there!) to be the most efficient at devouring and cutting through meat like the good lord intended for us to do.
*sips coffee*
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 04 2018, @01:33PM
:-)
Heh, heh.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday June 01 2018, @07:38PM
Or like getting into the bastard plastic packaging they put chicken in these days.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday June 01 2018, @04:49AM (51 children)
how about just sending all the idiots that go around stabbing people to jail (or hanging) instead of going around to every kitchen in the land and dull their knives.
And pray tell, how does that help a victim? Just about every study shows that criminals are not deterred by longer, harsher sentences.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:00AM (7 children)
Well, if you go with the second option stated by the GP poster then you do not get any repeat offenders.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:39PM (5 children)
Agreed. Execution is a helluva deterrent!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @06:45PM
At least it has very low recidivism.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:19PM (3 children)
No it isn't. It's very effective at making sure there are no repeat offenses from the same person, but the death penalty is near-zero deterrent to most of the crimes it's typically meted out for.
And a little thought should show why: most of those crimes will be committed either in the heat of passion, wherein people aren't thinking rationally and so won't be deterred by hardly anything, or they're committed by people who are sure they'll get away with it and therefore aren't deterred for that reason.
I have an idea: the death penalty ought to be applied to massive white-collar fraud. You would see a deterrent there because this class of crime by definition needs a fair bit of sober thought and planning to pull off, meaning if someone like Madoff knew he was going to end up strangling at the end of a rope, he might not have bilked all those people out of their savings.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Friday June 01 2018, @11:14PM (2 children)
So what would be a better deterrent? A 100 dollar fine?
If we can find no deterrent for people commiting murder, as some are claiming here ("It's done in the heat of the moment" etc etc), then we might as well stop discussing ways of trying to stop future murders. However, we might as well execute people who have actually commited a murder already to make sure they don't do it again, as such people have a tendency to make a habit of it, and the autorities have a tendency to release murderers from "life imprisonment" to save money. Here are some of many examples : http://www.execulink.com/~kbrannen/, [execulink.com] http://aboutforensics.co.uk/harold-shipman/, [aboutforensics.co.uk] http://murderpedia.org/male.N/n/nilsen-dennis.htm [murderpedia.org] . It's much cheaper than keeping them inside for life (my local hardware store offers suitable rope at around 30 pence per metre), although I'm told not with the USA's silly way of dealing with these cases - that needs sorting.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:17AM (1 child)
Oh, I'm with you on that. But what you're pointing out here is that *the system itself is corrupt.* That doesn't mean the idea behind it is wrong, that means it's badly-implemented. The solution is to make the "justice" in "justice system" actually mean something. Which is another reason I'm for execution for white-collar criminals: it's them and their buddies that bend the law into eldritch origami for their own purposes and allow things to get this bad.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:24AM
Lawmakers who do the same as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday June 01 2018, @06:29PM
Unless those who believe in reincarnation are right. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Friday June 01 2018, @05:02AM (1 child)
Contrariwise, they ARE deterred by -likelihood- of punishment (unless the intent is a swansong anyway i suppose)
As our societies become progressively complete surveillance states it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 01 2018, @05:24PM
Really? Your source for that claim? From what I've read most people commit crimes working on the assumption that they won't get caught - even bank robbers, a crime where the chance of getting caught already approaches 100%.
It's something like the Dunning-Kruger effect in action - every criminal assumes they're good enough to getaway with it. Or in the case of mass shooters and the like, many apparently have no intention of getting away with it - being caught or killed may even be part of their motivation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @07:58AM (29 children)
Really? How many subsequent murders are committed by a murderer doing a real life sentence? Seems like a successful deterrent to me so "just about every study" is clearly wrong.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @09:03AM (26 children)
No, there's a difference between "deterrent" and "stopping repeat offenders".
If we had a perfect deterrent, there would be no crimes. If we had a perfect way of stopping repeat offenders, there will still be plenty of crime. As demonstrated by e.g. several US states with the death penalty.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday June 01 2018, @09:12AM (24 children)
This is confused.
Are you saying deterrence can in principle be 100% effective? That doesn't seem right. Even with torturous capital punishment and good enforcement, crime still happens. Humans are not perfectly rational beings. We're not even close.
If by 'perfect deterrent' you mean 'some system whereby no crime happens', you aren't talking about deterrence, you're talking (circularly) about some other kind of hypothetical perfect crime-prevention system.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Friday June 01 2018, @12:15PM
>hypothetical perfect crime-prevention system
Precrime.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 01 2018, @04:39PM (4 children)
You're fixating on an irrelevant part of this hypothetical. AC never spoke on whether a perfect deterrent was plausible or likely.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:51PM (3 children)
No, it's a genuinely invalid premise to AC's point. Even if we maximise deterrence to its hypothetical ideal, we still wouldn't bring crime to zero.
It's like saying Suppose my car has a perfect steering-wheel and then continuing and given that we're supposing my car is perfect...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 04 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)
You apparently don't understand how hypotheticals work.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:27AM (1 child)
No, I appear to be the only one who does. The point of a thought-experiment is to carefully explore the consequences of a hypothetical situation. It is exactly the right time to be explicit about definitions, and to insist on clear reasoning when we use terms like 'perfect'. Which is exactly what I (and apparently I alone) am doing.
No-one has pointed out anything wrong with my reasoning here, they've just ignored my point that some crime cannot be prevented by any deterrence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:23PM
[...]
No one has ignored that point. In fact, several posters have gone out of their way to agree on that point for real world deterrence (of the sorts we can come up with).
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Friday June 01 2018, @07:44PM (4 children)
You're missing the point. Usng the word "if" in a hypothetical doesn't mean to imply it's plausible or even possible.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:08PM (3 children)
I just replied to tangomargarine who made the same point.
(Score: 2, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:16PM (2 children)
And you're still missing the point.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:15AM (1 child)
So go ahead and make a point...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:10PM
I already did, and you still missed it, so what's the (uh) point?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:06AM (12 children)
He is saying perfect deterrence would be. Not much point in disagreeing because it's perfect not real world imperfect deterrence.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:02PM (11 children)
And that was exactly my point: it wouldn't.
Even if we maximise deterrence to its hypothetical ideal, we still wouldn't bring crime to zero. Humans are not rational actors.
It's like saying With a perfect system of deterrence, ants will no longer bite us. It's plainly untrue. An ant is going to do what an ant will do, whether or not you're standing ready to destroy his colony. Similarly, deterrence is of limited use against crimes of passion and desperation.
If we have some hypothetical system which does bring crime to zero, it's clearly not purely deterrence-based.
There is a point in disagreeing, because the thought-experiment is invalid. If all thought experiments were useless simple because they aren't 'real world', we wouldn't bother using them in the first place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:00PM (10 children)
Actually we would. Because any crime at all indicates that the level of deterrence wasn't at the hypothetical ideal.
And that would be right.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:13AM (9 children)
You're so focused on the 'hypothetical' and 'perfect' that you're ignoring what the word 'deterrence' means. It doesn't mean Any and all crime-prevention systems. Its definition is narrower than that.
Like I said elsewhere in the thread: it's like saying Suppose my car has a perfect steering-wheel and then continuing and given that we're supposing my car is perfect...
No, it does not. You are wrongly assuming that there is no such thing as a crime which cannot be prevented by systems of deterrence. I have already explained at some length why this assumption makes no sense (indeed, we know it is false), but I'll give it another go.
An ideal system of deterrence is, rather trivially, a system that maximally deters crime by means of reliably imposing harsh negative consequences on guilty parties (and not on the innocent).
Certain categories of crime can be prevented by deterrence. Organised crime would be reduced to zero, for instance.
Crimes of passion, however, cannot be prevented by deterrence.
If we follow this line of thinking, we end up concluding that under a perfect system of deterrence, we would be protected from inconvenient weather, right? Otherwise the system couldn't truly be perfect, right?
This is nonsense, of course. Weather is unresponsive to the threat of punishment. Ants are similarly unresponsive. Enraged and psychotic human beings can be similarly unresponsive.
Consider the man who, on discovering his wife's infidelity, murders her in a blind rage and then commits suicide. Our perfect system of deterrence would not prevent this from happening.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 03 2018, @04:17AM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday June 03 2018, @10:58AM (7 children)
Did you even bother to read my comment? Rather than responding to my points, you're unthinkingly parroting your old position again and again. Is that really the best you can do?
For what feels like the millionth time: a system which prevents emotions arising in the first place, cannot possibly meet the definition of 'deterrence'. Such a system couldn't possibly be based on imposing negative consequences for the commission of crime (which is the definition of deterrence).
It is simply not the case that as the effectiveness of a system of deterrence approaches its upper limit, the crime-rate approaches zero.
Do you disagree with my definition of 'deterrence'? If so, why don't you just say so? If not, you're not making any sense.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 04 2018, @02:48AM (6 children)
Again, we're not speaking of real world deterrence. I have no idea why you bothered to tilt at this imaginary windmill in the first place, but it is an utter waste of your time. By definition, perfect deterrence means no violations of the deterrence occur. The deterrence would not be perfect otherwise. Your arguments are meaningless in the face of semantics.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:23AM (5 children)
If it detects, it isn't deterrence.
For heaven's sake, look at the definition I just gave. Do you disagree with it, or not?
There's a reason I already asked you that question...
Ah, then we're speaking of different things. That's our whole disagreement, then. That took long enough.
Your definition is a contradiction - by definition, it cannot exist (due to the existence of crimes which cannot ever be prevented by deterrence). There's no point trying to build a thought-experiment around a contradiction. It's like trying to reason about the inverse of a non-square matrix.
I was going with a different meaning of 'perfect deterrence', where it instead means it cannot be made any more effective. Such a system would not reduce crime to zero, for the reason I've repeatedly stated.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:12PM
Deterrence is a complex process which does many things, including detection. You can't deter, if your deterrence process doesn't understand what crime is. You can't deter, if your deterrence process can't detect crime. This is silly to continue.
Once again, your argument is semantically invalid. You are claiming that perfect deterrence is imperfect and then giving a bunch of irrelevant reasons why. A perfect process is not a real world process, and thus doesn't follow those rules. It is not constrained by anything you can come up with - by definition. You're not even wrong here.
Keep in mind this whole thing started because someone started babbling about "perfect deterrence" in the first place.
Words have meaning.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)
More on this. When it became clear that nobody else was going with that meaning, why continue butting heads? It would have been simple to describe explicitly the definition you used ("What I mean here is"), instead of coyly dragging this out and speculating ad naseum on why you're the only smart person in the thread. You have ten posts on this so far, and you have yet to state what you mean by "perfect deterrence".
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday June 28 2018, @02:54PM (2 children)
Well, yes, I did. Repeatedly. I'll quote you the exact words and give you a link to the comment, but somehow I doubt you'll bother to take it on board.
Source. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 29 2018, @04:21AM (1 child)
And of course, if a system doesn't fully deter crime, then it is not maximal and hence, not ideal. You're begging the question by assuming that a perfect (or "ideal") system is not perfect and going from there. This has nothing to do with the futility of designing perfect systems. If you have a system and it allows for flaws that the system is intended to prevent, then it is not perfect. That's all there is to it.
Further, I don't agree with even your assertion that you defined a "perfect" system above. You already moved the goalposts by introducing constraints on the operation of the system. It's no longer perfect.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:23PM
Wrong. As I have already explained to you, we are discussing an ideal system of deterrence, which is more constrained than merely a crime-prevention system.
The word 'deterrence' exists for a reason. It has a specific meaning.
Deterrence isn't the only means of reducing crime, and deterrence alone cannot reduce crime to zero. I have repeatedly explained this point: a crime of passion cannot be prevented by deterrence, as we aren't dealing with a rational actor. If your system simply jumps in and tasers our would-be-criminal, that isn't deterrence, that's force-based prevention.
Wrong. I am using 'ideal system of deterrence' in the sense of a system of deterrence that cannot be further improved, without making into something other than a system of deterrence. You are using it in an imprecise sense where it must by definition reduce crime to zero, whether or not it still actually qualifies as a system of deterrence (as opposed to some other kind of crime-prevention system).
Wrong.
Consider a museum with two ticket gates, each manned by an attendant. Suppose the first attendant is perfect, and never lets anyone through without buying a ticket. Suppose the second attendant is imperfect, and sometimes lets people through who haven't bought a ticket.
Your position is that Well the first attendant isn't really perfect, as people are still getting into the museum without buying a ticket. This reasoning is clearly unsound. Only the first attendant is perfect, not the system as a whole.
This mistake even has a name: the fallacy of composition. [logicallyfallacious.com]
It's not moving the goalposts, it's clear thinking. We were discussing systems of deterrence specifically.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by jmorris on Friday June 01 2018, @07:39PM
You really can't point to the modern U.S. death penalty and say anything about whether the death penalty is a deterrent. If you commit a crime there is really no way of knowing ahead of time if you will receive it, if you do there is no way to know if or when it will be carried out other than to say it will take a minimum of a decade from crime to punishment but it could just as easily take thirty years. Nobody who is likely to be deterred by the punishment is likely to still be in their prime crime years by the time a criminal is executed. All of this is explicitly by the design of the anti-death penalty forces. Read their writings.
Now imagine a functioning criminal justice system where the penalties for crimes was crystal clear, capture highly likely and punishment known to be swift and certain. We do not need to run the experiment, only open a history book. It worked. It would work again because people haven't changed in a Century.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday June 01 2018, @10:41PM (1 child)
In the UK a "real life sentence" is very rare. There is always a psychiatrist who will sign on to let the perp go free after a few years as some sort of experiment. Further murders by the same perp are then not unusual. Only really high profile murderers get real life sentences because there would be such public outcry if they were released, such as the Kray twins, and the Brady/Hindley moors murderers.
When the death sentence was abolished in the UK, it was by hoodwinking the public into thinking that murderers would never be released, but of course that would have cost more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02 2018, @05:03PM
IPP was scrapped in 2012 [theweek.co.uk] unfortunately.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @10:55AM (10 children)
Prison isn't going to deter a punk with a knife. You know what will though? The sound of a 12 gauge pump shotgun chambering a shell, a bright red dot on his hoodie, or getting a nice, close look at the rifling in the barrel of a .45.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @01:18PM (3 children)
I can play that sound on my mobile and shine a red pointer on his hoodie.
See? Why would you need guns for that?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @02:02PM (2 children)
That actually is my SMS notification sound. Which is how I can say with authority that phone speakers don't do it justice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:21PM (1 child)
Somehow this comes as a complete non-surprise...wonder why?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:33PM
It sounded like a hilarious idea inside my head. Out at Chili's having a few drinks and a burger, get a text, watch people's heads jerk around trying to find out WTF. I was really disappointed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @01:28PM
i picture the punk with a wife-beater, not a hoodie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @02:11PM (1 child)
Says all we need to know about TMB.
Where is Ralph Macchio when you need him?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @02:38PM
If you haven't watched the new show by that name, I highly recommend it. It made it into my top five shows of the past ten years by the first episode.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:45PM
I'm a believer in the rifling of a .45. Did you know that you can probably roll a watermelon down the barrel of a Thompson? Anyone who has ever stared down that .45 caliber barrel, uncertain whether it would be fired or not, will probably agree.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
You want the punk with the knife to get so close that he can see the pistol's rifling?
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday June 03 2018, @01:59PM
No, this is why you need a larger caliber pistol.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday June 01 2018, @05:04AM (3 children)
My gerber blade is fashioned of the very finest steel but I haven't had it sharped in eons.
When I diced up a tomato to top this evening's chili, I had to pierce its skin with my geber's point so as to start a cut that I continued with the now-dull edge.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by tfried on Friday June 01 2018, @07:43AM (2 children)
Do yourself a favor and sharpen that blade at least some. It may sound paradoxical, but over time you'll avoid a lot of cuts to your fingers that way. For one thing, with a sharp blade you will need to apply much less force, which allows for much more control. For another, you'll avoid risky maneuvers such as the one you describe. For the most part, you want your left hand (assuming you are right handed) to stay close beside the blade. Large relative movements between blade and left hand are both slow and prone to accidents.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
The sharp blade also makes better cuts, in your hand, as well as your food.
Forcing a dull knive to travel through your flesh produces ragged tears, rather than a clean cut. Those take forever to heal. A clean cut, in comparison, heals rapidly, and far less painfully. So, not only are you less likely to cut yourself with a sharp blade, but if you do cut yourself, you'll suffer less.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 01 2018, @08:12PM
That's absolutely true (and I modded you up), though I still would caution people who aren't used to really sharp knives. A clean cut can heal faster. That's generally true. But I've seen how lots of people handle knives, and it scares me. Lots of people have knives that are too dull to push-cut through a tomato skin or an onion skin, and which would likely have difficulty push-cutting through vegetable flesh in general.
Those sorts of knives will rip a small tear in your flesh if you accidentally slip, but unless you rock them and continue slicing, you're probably not going to get a deep wound. For the same reason they can't cut vegetables, they often won't make it deep into your hand.
On the other hand, take one of my sharp knives and use it with force the wrong way with your hand in the wrong place, and you'll easily slice directly to your bone without even feeling it. Dull knives may create more minor accidents (due to people using them with excessive force and maneuvers to get basic cutting done), but sharp knives also ARE very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday June 01 2018, @06:21AM (4 children)
They'll have to pry my J.A. Henckels chef's knife, deboneing knife and my Black Tip filleting knife out of my cold dead hands.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @09:50AM
At a minimum, you either have huge hands or three of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @01:47PM (2 children)
You Nazi bastard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:39PM (1 child)
You rich [zwilling-shop.com] Nazi bastard.
FTFY.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday June 02 2018, @12:29AM
Who? Me?
Actually, I got my large Zwilling Chef Knife with a bonus-point collection rebate from a local supermarket. At not quite the going rate for the damascene version. Still, a hobby-chef friend of mine praised it greatly when he got to use it. For me, it sits in the drawer most of the time and I do all the kitchen work with a Santoku knife from the same Zwilling series, which was (up)sold to me (literally) decades ago by a salesman at a kitchenware store. No regrets about the upsell, though. My then girlfriend put it into the dishwasher repeatedly, so its blade isn't as sharp as it should be anymore - but I get along really well with it.
Also, as far as the bastard part is concerned, neither of them has "Meine Ehre heisst Treue" engraved, they just have the works laser marking. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @07:03AM
well at least kyocera ceramic knives don't have sharp points. good luck unsharpening one of those tho. (quick rap with a sharpening steel instead?)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 01 2018, @05:30PM
Unnh...I think your experience in the kitchen is rather limited. Admittedly there are lots of uses for which knives don't need points, but there are also many uses for which they do, or you need a separate tool that has the point at the end of a long stiff bar with a sharp edge near the tip.
Opening packaging and jointing meat are two of the uses. (And for jointing meat the separate tool would be really inconvenient.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.