• NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Some people are just really lacking in impulse control. I imagine they are also more likely to end up in front of a judge for the same reasons.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is why Hell is such a stupid concept.

      There’s a literal “moral privilege” in that it’s much, much easier to live life in a good way depending on physical structures in your brain.

      You’d be surprised at the rates of TBI in incarcerated violent criminals.

      Turns out damaging people’s impulse control pathways leads to crime!

      Just yesterday I was walking past an old person on the sidewalk and had an intrusive thought about pushing them out into the street, followed by a thought of “man I’m really grateful that I have a functioning impulse control - it must be hell to go through life where thoughts like that could turn into terrible consequences because there’s no mechanism catching errant impulses”).

      While this guy should definitely not be out in public where he’d likely continue to harm people, I think we generally underappreciated just how little separates all of us from behaving just like him, and overestimate how much of his behavior is because of choice as opposed to circumstance.

      We shouldn’t try to be so punitive with criminal justice. A functioning society does need to keep violent people separated from potential victims, but we really don’t need to be such dicks about it.