u/NeonPolonium

I was shocked to find out

Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
David Hume
Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln
Karl Marx (kinda)

All believed in determinism to some extent

One issue I have with Sam Harris’s hard determinist view of criminal justice is that he argues murderers should be imprisoned not because they freely chose to commit murder, but because they pose a danger to society and need to be rehabilitated or quarantined. However, if the justification for imprisonment is primarily risk reduction rather than moral responsibility, then it seems we could apply the same logic to people who are statistically more likely to commit crimes in the future.

For example, people raised in extremely poor or high-crime environments are at a higher statistical risk of offending. If free will and moral desert are removed from the equation, what principled reason prevents society from restricting their liberty before they commit a crime? It seems that a purely risk-based model of justice struggles to explain why actual wrongdoing should matter more than predicted wrongdoing.

I am currently reading 1984 and just finished Part 1. While I appreciate Orwell's world-building regarding the dangers of totalitarianism alongside his critiques of unrestricted capitalism, I'm finding that most of the value I've derived so far is simply from the entertainment of the narrative.

It's a genuinely interesting story, but I'm worried I might be missing a larger moral lesson or deeper subtext. For those who have finished it, am I approaching the book correctly by just enjoying the plot right now, or should I be analyzing it more closely?