Moral luck

I hate this to an incredible extent. You might even say that I loath it. Loath.

However, I cannot deny its veracity. I believe (as much as I hate it) that there is truth in it, thus I'd like to inquire how the law might more realistically handle it.

You cannot charge everyone who speeds with vehicular manslaughter, even though that is what they brush with.

Why should the one person who speeds and does hit someone receive so much more punishment than the thousands of people who speed every day and get tickets?

Because the morality of an action is determined both by intent and consequences. Consequences are not fully under any one person/factor's control.

EDIT: This post was stupid and poorly-thought-out

edited 18th Feb '11 7:15:45 PM by Tzetze

Because then you have less incentive to speed.

But the man who is unlucky behaves just the same as the people who are not.

He makes the exact same decisions. Either the lucky people need to be punished more, or the unlucky man should be punished less.

Or if not those, some other system should be in place. And if that is so, then what system?

Of course, the law's ultimate goal is preventing people from getting run over, not to be fair to those who run others over.

edited 18th Feb '11 7:22:19 PM by TheMightyAnonym

He makes the exact same decisions.

... nooooo. Is he speeding in an area that he knows there are a lot of pedestrians? Is he not a very skillful driver? There's more to car accidents than just luck.

There are varied ways it can work. Constitutive moral luck, for example, is much different from just two drivers in cars:

Constitutive moral luck concerns the personal character of a moral agent. There can be little argument that education, upbringing, genes and other largely uncontrollable influences shape personality to some extent. Furthermore, one's personality dictates one's actions to some extent. Moral blame is assigned to an individual for being extremely selfish, even though that selfishness is almost certainly due in part to external environmental effects.

... nooooo. Is he speeding in an area that he knows there are a lot of pedestrians? Is he not a very skillful driver? There's more to car accidents than just luck.

Very well then, if that is not enough, then:

X and Y people do Z action absolutely without variables, other than one completely outside and unseen force, called J.

X person receives B harmless result, person Y receives C harmful result.

Both harmless result B and harmful result C are administered by authority K who has observed the process and knows they behaved the same.

edited 18th Feb '11 7:38:31 PM by TheMightyAnonym

Because hitting people and speeding are not directly causally related. People speed and never hit anyone, and other hit people without ever having sped.

Sometimes, you just get screwed. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, worse things happen to some bad people than other, equally bad, people. It's unfortunate, but there doesn't seem to be much that can be done about it.

I suppose if it were a perfect world with perfect knowledge, then I would say that Y should not be punished harsher.

Even if there isn't anything that can be done about it, it's still worth looking into. That is true though.

I like truth. I like consistency. Consistency can be found even in an inconsistent world. "How should act in this scenario?" or "What should I do right now?". Such are things that I'd rather hold to.

Indeed. That isn't how life works unfortunately. What I want to know is why life doesn't work that way.

Why can't they be punished equally?

edited 18th Feb '11 7:50:34 PM by TheMightyAnonym

Well, if you punished speeding as severely as you punished vehicular manslaughter, you'd either be overburdening the legal system to the breaking point (not to mention fucking up a lot of people's lives); or, if you went the other way, you'd be giving out slap-on-the-wrist penalties for more serious crimes. It's basically a matter of what we can do with the resources we, as a society, have, and what people, most of whom have never heard of "moral luck" (many of whom go so far as to believe in a "just world") will put up with.

That seems reasonable.

So then, the singular problems are resources and human irrationality?

You could take a third option, and invent roads and vehicles that are less accident prone.

That's not entirely the point though. The idea is that punishment to begin with is meant to prevent the speeding from ever happening, or to take someone who can't control their actions away from something they can drive.

Punishment for punishment's sake is just violence. But the entire hypothetical situation had very little to do with traffic regulations.

I certainly agree that everyone should take time to deliberate just how much of the fault is an individual's in these kinds of situations. Especially before they think worse of them.

They won't be punished equally because they made a choice and it resulted in harm. Same action different results. They are basing it on the possibility that if they had been going the speed limit the person might not have been struck. But because they chose to ignore guide lines and laws their choice resulted in someone's death they will receive stiffer punishment.

Hm, that seems like a solution here, to an extent.

The people all agreed that there is a possibility that they could run over a pedestrian, and ignored that. One person gambles, and they lose.

edited 18th Feb '11 8:28:15 PM by TheMightyAnonym

Pretty much. I also noticed on the page the various categories of luck. There is a point though where the things work out it can't be avoided no matter which decision you made. I am not sure how well that would apply.

edited 18th Feb '11 8:36:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Which would seem to place it such that we can only solve so much.

I guess we can take three things away from this:

1. The law is about prevention, not "justice".
2. You cannot use a single blanket morality to cover everything; each situation is unique.
3. Before you try to beat the odds, make sure you can survive the odds beating you.

edited 18th Feb '11 8:34:44 PM by TheMightyAnonym

Again very true.

The third option would be to actually bother punishing speeding with tickets, instead of just turning a blind eye altogether. That way you have a mild but noticeable punishment for the dangerous behavior, and a serious one for when it actually hurts someone.

Which is what most places do.

Your troopers actually bother giving speeding tickets to everyone who speeds and aren't just infuriatingly arbitrary about it?

We have speed cameras at notable places!

There is an actually an ongoing debate about if they are actually effective at preventing collisions, are just way for the government to raise money (because they make a lot of money from fines).

I would agree that auto accidents are kind of terrible about this, considering the sheer number of deaths that regularly crop up. In theory the potential punishment should always reflect the 'average worst case scenario that can come out of a bad decision; that's the concept of deterrence.

Of course, in practicality, it's not entirely clear how often this works. In order for a deterrent to register in someone's mind, they have to think of the consequences if the law bears down on them, and while you'd normally recognize the danger of driving recklessly, when you're madly trying to make it to a job or appointment or some other major event, then you're obviously going to be thinking about a lot of things which may or may not be related to hitting that old lady in the intersection in front of you.

In that sense, other methods of deterrents and prevention are probably needed, but at the very least, I'd still say certain penalties of the law would make sense in reparation to major damages that occurred during the crime...

But suddenly I can't remember if I'm on topic anymore. Which is probably a good sign that I should wrap this up.