Knowing why and when to use math is equally as important as knowing it. One of the reasons I lost my love for learning it was this missing information.
What I found very annoying with calculus specifically was the previous 15 years I had been memorizing formulas. Formula to get the area of something remember this thing. Formula to get the volume of something remember this formula. Formula to get the angle of something remember this formula. But if I had known the way of calculus and derivatives I could make those formulas. I now have the ability to have a formula factory instead of devoting tons of mental space to keeping those formulas. I feel I wasted 15 years rote memorizing things instead of understanding the N spaces things live in and how to get the formulas.
But you--or at least most of your classmates--probably weren't in a place to just learn calculus before taking high school physics or even simple geometry. And this happens at a lot of different levels with math, physics, chemistry, etc. There are a lot of inter-relationships and often moving forward requires taking some things on faith (for now).
Illustrative point for the “the value isn’t explained” issue: I’ve spent two years on calculus in school plus some more time on my own and don’t know how or why I’d e.g. use it to derive the formula for the area of an oval (I think that’s the kind of thing you’re getting at?)
Actually, I can count the times I’ve applied math from later than 6th or 7th grade on one hand. I’m almost 40 and have been writing code for pay since I was 15. I struggle with this with my own kids and dread their reaching those later classes because I have no compelling answer for “why do I have to learn this boring shit?”
As a former software engineer for over a decade and current corrections officer in a max level state facility, this is a very interesting topic. My facility has a large college presence within it. While there are problems with it, I think overall it is probably a net positive for the staff and inmates. At the same time, I don't believe that we have more than maybe a small handful of nonviolent/drug offenders; anybody on the outside advocating for murderers, rapists, and those in for armed robbery to have access to more of the normal comforts of the outside world is going to have a hard time and not much support. Even the medium level prisons have those types of people in them. So what facilities would wider access to remote learning and work become available? There would need to be honor facilities inmates must work towards proving they're responsible enough to be transferred to. Right now budgets are being slashed, we're at 60% staffing as it is, and the whole state is in the shit. And this is a "progressive liberal" state. It would probably take the federal government to start throwing money around for pilot programs, no state is going to increase their prison budget to accommodate this.
I think for all the criminals that are going to be released back into society at some point, recidivism should be at the top of our mind, not punishment.
If you can stop them from doing it again by locking them up in comfort for 10 years instead of discomfort for 20, then that is what we should do (assuming that doesn’t cause more people to do it in the first place).
> If you can stop them from doing it again by locking them up in comfort for 10 years instead of discomfort for 20, then that is what we should do.
You're never going to stop many of them from reoffending. Even the "best" rehabilitation programs have crime rates far above the general population.
The additional 10 years is 10 more years where they can't hurt innocent people. The justice system exists for the benefit of society and innocent citizens, not criminals.
> assuming that doesn’t cause more people to do it in the first place
Why would you ever assume that? Punishments absolutely have a deterrent effect.
If locking large numbers of people up for inordinately long times prevented crime, the United States would be the safest place in the world. We have 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. We are one of a dwindling number of countries that will lock up a child for life (there was a SCOTUS case baring automatic life sentences for minors, but it leaves a loophole wide enough for a semi to allow judges to still impose life without parole to children). We've doubled down on it again and again. Looking at the results, this approach obviously doesn't work.
Given our status as a massive outlier, could it be that our current system of mass incarceration is a driver of crime? I see signs that point to yes. Many people I have talked to have said the main thing being locked up taught them was how to be a better criminal. Prisons break families. Children grow up without parents. At one of the conferences for the heads of the Departments of Corrections for US states, a question was asked of all 50 heads: are prisons effective at making society safer? About 8 said yes. About 7 said they were unsure. The remaining 35 said no.
We've tried highly punitive mass incarceration for decades and it's failing horribly. I'm not smart enough to know the correct answer, but I can say that it seems obvious that the answer is not to lock more people up for longer.
> If locking large numbers of people up for inordinately long times prevented crime, the United States would be the safest place in the world.
Comparing between countries with massively different demographics is pointless. The US simply has far more criminality than other wealthy nations.
> We've tried highly punitive mass incarceration for decades and it's failing horribly.
That's not my take-away. We had a massive and growing crime problem in the US in the 60s and 70s and pursued a policy of mass incarceration as a solution.
It worked. Crime went down a lot since we started mass incarceration.
Over the last decade, and particularly since 2020, we've been reversing that policy and seeing the impact: spiking violent crime and unsafe cities.
I don't know how you can possibly look at this and think it "doesn't work." I'm sure criminals prefer a policy of catch and release, but I'd rather bring back mass incarceration.
>Comparing between countries with massively different demographics is pointless. The US simply has far more criminality than other wealthy nations.
Yes, that is exactly related to the point OP was trying to make? Where does this crime come from? Maybe instead of useless, if not counter-productive mass incarceration, we should focus on rehabilitation and more importantly improving social injustices that are the causes of the higher crime rate sin the US.
Yes. And not only life sentences, but life sentences without the possibility of parole. For minors.
We are literally the only country that does it. It is a heinous and barbaric practice. And, like all of our mass incarceration system, is it vastly disproportionatly applied to Black children. We are a backwards country in many, many ways.
> The additional 10 years is 10 more years where they can't hurt innocent people. The justice system exists for the benefit of society and innocent citizens, not criminals.
By this logic we should just never release them. Should we keep the 80% that would not reoffend locked up to prevent the 20% that would from doing so?
Should we increase the sentence from 10 to 20 years to make that ratio 60% to 40%? Then we prevent more crime, and the would be criminals are off the street longer.
Maybe if we decrease the comfort of the cells and general state of the prisons, we can get the rate to 20% to 80%? Then we can practically say we’re justified to keep those 80% off the street.
> Why would you ever assume that? Punishments absolutely have a deterrent effect.
Because most people aren’t stopped by the deterrent effect. It’s perfectly possible the net negative effect of locking people up for a longer time is larger than the extra deterrent effect [1].
> By this logic we should just never release them.
The problem with that is it removes the deterrence effect—if you're going to get the same punishment for murder as for shoplifting, criminals will exercise no restraint.
> Should we keep the 80% that would not reoffend locked up to prevent the 20% that would from doing so?
Why are you just making up numbers? The majority of violent criminals reoffend after release, often very soon after. [0]
> Because most people aren’t stopped by the deterrent effect.
Sure, most people don't commit crime because they're not morally bankrupt criminals. The point of policies is not to prevent normal people from committing crime.
Deterrence absolutely has an impact on criminal behavior. Why do criminals brazenly rob and openly deal drugs in San Francisco, but not in Miami? They know they won't be published in SF.
I’m making a point. But numbers are more often around 20-40% in Europe.
> Deterrence absolutely has an impact on criminal behavior.
You just completely walked over the source I sent from the department of justice that said differently. Sentence length has no or minimal influence on criminal behavior.
> Why do criminals brazenly rob and openly deal drugs in San Francisco, but not in Miami?
You may notice that the same source indicates that the important factor is instead how likely you are to get caught, presumably SF police sucks at that?
Both can be true. Most violent criminals will commit another crime after release, but the severity and swiftness of that crime will depend on how likely they are to be punished for it.
Even if punishment had no deterrent effect on recidivism it could still be effective at deterring youths from going down a criminal path.
> _Most_ violent criminals will commit another crime after release
But are _most_ criminals violent? I would guess not. We were talking about "many of them from reoffending" not a small subsection. If it is the case that "many of them from reoffending" then this condtrdicts the other premis.
> Punishments absolutely have a deterrent effect.
There is also no eveidence that "it could still be effective at deterring youths" which seems to be socio-political and not based on age bracket.
You're replying to a six day old comment about the entire US prison system which is flawed on many many levels.
For future reference a good line of exploration is:
Denmark's recidivism rate is about 27 percent, roughly half the rate of the U.S., which ranges from 49 percent to 80 percent depending on the crime.
which raises many questions; how does this vary by country and what are the reasons?
The US prison system has a big issue with not being a simple punishment for a crime, it's very much a destruction of a persons life for the accusation of crime, once marked as a "former convict" a person in the US has difficulty regaining employment which leads to few options otherthan more crime.
Correctional Officer is the job that requires the least amount of work of any job I have ever encountered. You literally do nothing the entire day. If your facility is cool you can just play Angry Birds on your phone or desktop all day, or read a book if they're not that cool. You can get infinity overtime at double or triple pay.
Plus, you get the added bonus of making the lives of everyone around you as miserable as you desire.
My life circumstances were such that I needed a job in a new area where that's all I was qualified to do (meaning I can breathe) while earning enough to live on. Software engineering is not an option within 90 minutes of here. Even if I could get a job in software here and it paid the same, software is significantly more stressful than my current job, the future is unsure as tech is always changing, the people I work with are closer and more friendly/outgoing, and the time off is amazing. When I leave work I'm done, there's no reading up on/practicing the latest stack without any guarantees it's going to increase my employability. When I walk out of the prison, my own personal life is all need to think about. I'd probably not take the job for less than a 50% increase in what I make now. And wages here are so low it just wouldn't happen. I do still enjoy coding but I like it as a hobby. And honestly, I was probably never very good at it.
The prisoners are not our friends. The officers are stuck together without phones for 8-16 hours/day. We spend hours crammed into the same small area with no distractions but each other. We have to entertain each other or lose our minds. I've met the best and worst people at work.
One of the article's key points is that violent crime does not mean "caused physical harm" and that entire categories of crime are considered violent by law, whether or not any violence was perpetrated during the commission.
"The fourth myth: By definition, “violent crime” involves physical harm
The distinction between “violent” and “nonviolent” crime means less than you might think; in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse about crime, people typically use “violent” and “nonviolent” as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous."
I agree that all sides in every argument tend to twist language, statistics, the truth to their own ends. Nevertheless is there not a meaningful distinction between crime that involved physical violence to a person and crime that did not? And could we not endeavor to identify that distinction and use it to improve policy?
In case anyone was curious, the following text is from the section of the article discussing "violent crime":
> Burglary is generally considered a property crime, but an array of state and federal laws classify burglary as a violent crime in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So even if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of burglary could be punished for a violent crime and end up with a long prison sentence and “violent” record.
The article does not state this explicitly, but it suggests that someone who burgles a residence at night with a weapon should not have a long prison sentence, if the residence turned out to be unoccupied. (Perhaps even if it was occupied but the occupants were not "physically harmed"?)
Regarding the set it and forget it, I can reliably steam to perfection any of the vegetables we regularly eat just by setting the pressure cook time to one minute. I don't have to constantly monitor the firmness, worry about the pot running out of water, or have uneven results. The device is worth it for that alone.
Before I got my first and only COVID vaccine two years ago I'd had vertigo on and off here and there over the years. 15 minutes after the shot, after not experiencing vertigo for a year, I was pulled over on the side of the road, and have been suffering ever since. The same thing happened to a relative. I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all and think overall the vaccine was probably positive, but we aren't getting close to the full story on side effects.
The article said JPMorgan. No politician is stepping in anytime soon.
They are all complicit. At least in the UK, our politicians have a rich relationships with companies like these (ex - exployees, advisors, donors) and no one bat's eye.
