[lbo-talk] the virginina university massacre

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Apr 18 13:55:32 PDT 2007


Doug:

You're proposing to incarcerate people on the basis of a regression? Are you serious?

[WS:] I am not sure where the word "incarcerate" comes from, since I did not use it. I mentioned protective measures which covers a wide variety of means - most of them already in place and perfectly legal and based totally on predictions, such as orders of protection (which can trigger incarceration, if breached), monitoring devices, psychiatric observation, or medication - to name a few.

I also mentioned the philosophical grounds of my position, which is called Pascal's wager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager - which if stripped of the theological mumbo jumbo simply posits that it is more rational to incur a relative small and certain loss to obtain "priceless" gain that is only probable. Mathematically, a finite quantity times 1 (certainty) is still smaller than an infinite quantity times 0.000000..1 (very small probability).

Wojtek



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