Have there ever been a greater meme concepts than Tabula Rasa and the myth of absolute equality? Why the fuck are these challenged more often?
Because science answers those questions now.
>>1150269
Lots of things are more like guidelines rather than absolute truths. Semi-truths that are needed to make some society function properly.
That said everyone implicitly holds those concepts to be faulty yet holding them true makes life a lot easier and justifiable.
>>1151186
It's annoying when they bleed over into real life, for example the whole 'every aspect of society has to reflect the census' meme. It's never fucking challenged, it's just a given that everyone is absolutely equal and born with the exact same capabilities with any discrepancies chalked up to -ism, e.g. '50% of scientists aren't female because sexism'
>>1151186
To give an example of the law.
Blue eyed people are more resistant to the effects of alcohol but also more prone to alcoholism. Now say Billy-Bob from tennessee ploughs his semi truck into a bunch of pre-school kids while absolutely shitfaced. He has alcoholism and was statistically speaking more likely to get alcoholism, now should we take that factor into account when sentencing him to jail? Should he get say a 20% reduction in jail time because he was more prone to alcoholism and drunk driving than say a green or brown eyed person? From a scientific point of view you could argue that absolute equality does not exist and defend a reduction in jail time. Would 21st century America agree with this? I think not.
We used to do stuff like that and probably still do so without realizing it but equality is our guiding principle. Well into the early 20th century Women got acquitted for murder more often because they were held to be more passionate creatures. Would you defend such reasoning in this day and age? I mean aside from the fact of whether it is true or not you would probably not agree to letting women get off with lower jail times because they are more passionate or emotional would you?
Now once you say that everyone is equal before law you kinda have to accept that in other aspects of life you will also have to hold that as true.
>>1151269
I am not sure it would use -ism's to explain everything but sometimes there is a hint of truth to what they say. I don't really doubt that slavery and segregation until the 1960s had a negative influence on the Black population on the whole.
The fact that women earn less can be explained because it has historically been that way in many countries and that can be explained by the whole pregnancy thing. Even to this day women are more likely to work parttime and quite their job after having kids than men which could well explain why men earn more.
It could take a couple of generations to change this and it probably will.
>>1151288
>Should he get say a 20% reduction in jail time because he was more prone to alcoholism and drunk driving than say a green or brown eyed person? From a scientific point of view you could argue that absolute equality does not exist and defend a reduction in jail time.
[Slight derail] Actually, this will depend on the punitive theory you're applying. For a simple "debt to society" model, we can agree that Billy-Bob's being more prone to alcoholism reduces the extent of his personal transgression, which points to a reduced sentence.
But on a deterrent model, where we are iterating our consideration of the impact of the sentences, it's actually much easier to defend giving Billy-Bob a harsher sentence, rather than a milder or even equal sentence. This is because we also accept that all blue-eyed people are more prone to alcoholism and thus more prone to cause accidents of this sort. But we rather conclude that this means blue-eyed people are in need of more deterrence than the general population and should therefore be punished more harshly, not less harshly (or equivalently).
As to the OP, well, there's pic related.
>>1151374
That's a good one and it slipped my mind for some reason.
I think we are experiencing something of a shift away from the deterrence model here in Europe, especially since science is starting to poke a few holes in it and tries to establish an optimum amount of punishment needed for deterrence and how that does not always correspondent to the amount of vindication someone deserves.
Or we could reinstate capital punishment a la Steven Pinker and kill off people with crime genes (That is his theory more or less isn't it?)
>>1151169
>Because science answers those questions now.
The science more often than not is ignored in this issue.
Another problem is that there are certain studies that have a problem with publication bias, since researchers really want something to be true and will ignore experiments that go against what they want to believe or do p-hacking until they reach their goal.
One example of this is "stereotype threat".
>>1151813
Not to get too off topic, but the European system (at least I should say the European system a la Sweden) has a tendency to ignore the victim/victim's family, which I don't think is a good thing. Even if there is a focus on rehabilitation, they need to fulfill the other party's need for retribution.
>>1151943
Well I live in the Netherlands and I believe they recently introduced a new right that allows victims or the victims family to speak in court and adres everyone.
