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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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Now KEN and BARBIE are PERMANENTLY ADDICTED to MIND-ALTERING DRUGS ...
(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.