poli-sci (06/26/82)
>From JoSH@RUTGERS Fri Jun 25 19:36:54 1982
Poli-Sci Digest Sat 26 Jun 82 Volume 2 Number 148
Contents: Insanity Plea
Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace (3 msgs)
Poll Tax
Repressive Local Government
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Date: 23 Jun 1982 1929-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS at USC-ECL>
Subject: Insanity Plea
The simplest way to solve the problem of the insanity plea
is to completely seperate the issues of guilt and punishment. A trial
could be done in two phases: Phase I would consist of a straightforward
determination of whether or not the alleged actions took place, ignoring
all considerations of motive, sanity, quality of evidence, etc.
Phase II would be the "punishment" phase, and would decide what to do if the
alleged actions did take place. In the case of gross misconduct by the
authorities, this could result in an award to the "guilty" defendant.
If society wanted to take into accountwhat the "guilty" party had for
breakfast that day, I would oppose that, but at least the issues
of guilt and punishment would be rationally seperated.
T.C.Savage
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Date: 23 Jun 1982 1935-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS at USC-ECL>
Subject: NEUTRALITY
The idea that someone supports an idea if they do not oppose it is
absolute nonsense. Everyone, either consciously or subconsciously,
evaluates the net value of possible actions. If someone makes an offensive
comment, it may or may not be worth responding to, even if the listener
strongly disagrees with it.
If someone (or some group, or some government) puts forward an idea,
there is some amount of "influence" behind that idea. Keeping silent
may tend to support the idea, condemn it, or ignore it, depending on
the context, but in any case says nothing about the attitude of the
silent listener.
T.C.Savage
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Date: 23 June 1982 22:46-EDT
From: Gene Salamin <ES at MIT-MC>
Subject: The information content of remaining silent
I disagree with Richard Lamson's claim that remaining silent constitutes
implicit agreement withe the speaker; it simply constitutes zero information.
There are lots of situations where silence is consistent with disagreement
with the speaker: (1) The person does not wish to start an argument.
(2) The person does not want to reveal his views to the audience. (3) The
person is really a spy. (4) The person prefers to present his opposing views
at a later time, perhaps with more preparation. Of course, it is quite
common to believe that silence implies implicit agreement, but this has as
much to do with actual truth as did the common belief 500 years ago that
the Earth is flat.
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Date: 24 Jun 1982 1132-PDT
From: WILKINS at SRI-AI (Wilkins )
Comments on a couple of things from the last digest:
Terry C. Savage on Rights:
As an initial stab, perhaps we could define rights as the freedoms
needed by DNA to reach its full potential in human bodies.
It is desirable to try different social structures, laws, etc. in
small communities where everyone agrees. As you point out, it is
hard to change an existing community since no everyone will agree.
But as we proceed to colonize outer space, the possibility of such
social experiment can blossom. (Though with military rather than
civilian control of the space program it may not.) People who all
agree upon some new social structure, can go live in their own
self-sufficient space colony and try it out without bothering anyone
else.
Richard Lamson on With us or against us:
You oversimplify. It is often obvious that disagreeing aloud with someone
you disagree with will accomplish nothing positive for anyone present.
Remaining silent in such a case is not implicit support of "the pig-headed
bigot who won't listen to rational argument", rather it is intelligent
conservation of resources.
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Date: 25 June 1982 00:18-EDT
From: Daniel Breslau <BRESLA at MIT-AI>
This is a bit late,but...
From: Gene Salamin <ES at MIT-MC>
Subject: Poll tax
What is so horrible about poll taxes? One man, one vote, one dollar;
it sounds like a fine way to finance the electoral process. I wish the
rest of our taxes were so neatly compartmentalized, and that we could
choose to accept or decline individual government services.
Voting is *not* a government service; if anything, it is a service
from the voters for the government, and a duty of citizenship. No one
should be denied his say in government simply for inability to pay,
for to do so would be to deny full citizenship to the poor.
From: Schauble.Multics at MIT-MULTICS
Subject: Voting rights act
What do y'all think of having the states representation in Congress
determined every ten years by the average actual vote in the
Presidential election during the previous decade.
What happens when local (political and legislative) pressure comes to
bear to get people to vote (the opposite problem from what the Voting
Rights Act was written to prevent)? The right not to vote should be
as well-respected as the right to vote, which does not contradict what
I've said above.
Literacy tests I feel are a good idea.... Again, this seems to be
what the framers had in mind.
From where do you draw this inference?
This assumes that these requirements could be properly and fairly
administered. The experience with the old-style literacy tests shows
that this is very hard. But I think it no harder than administering
the present voting rights act.
I am not very familiar with the Act's contents. Yet it seems to me
that they allow for less discretion and arbitrary judgement in their
enforcement than any competency test would. In any case, being
literate does not make one wise, nor is illiteracy necessarily a sign
of stupidity (although it does make filling out the ballot difficult).
It's easy to think the world would be a better place if only the
most literate had power -- but trying to institute such a system would
open a huge can of worms. Better and easier, I think, to try to improve
the system we've already got, by ensuring that no one will be denied
the right to vote.
Dan Breslau
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Date: 25 June 1982 02:18-EDT
From: James A. Cox <APPLE at MIT-MC>
Subject: With us or against us
Richard Lamson is apparently advocating the curious theory that,
unless a person speaks up when he hears comments with which he
disagrees, he displays his "implicit agreement with the sentiment of
the speaker." What nonsense! You hypothesize that a person
\disagrees/ with some sentiment uttered, and then conclude that the
person \agrees/ with it! How's that again?
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Date: Thu Jun 24 19:39:18 1982
From: decvax!utzoo!henry at Berkeley
Subject: local vs Federal government
Somewhere, years ago, I saw a most excellent comment on the problems
with transferring power to local governments. It ran something like:
If local governments were given complete autonomy, there
are many places where the government's first action would
be to erect a whipping post for nonconformists.
This is particularly true of very small communities and rural areas.
"City air is free air" is as true today as it was centuries ago, and
the same principle applies on still larger scales.
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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