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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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To be more precise, I think that 10 000 000$ is enough to offset damage caused and a bit higher than that but not enough to be absurd (I would definitely not take deal to get such harassment and 1 000 000$)

Saying "I wouldn't take such a deal" is kind of a red herring, because when you make a deal it's to your benefit. That is, if someone said "I'd make the deal to let someone abuse for $10m", that indicates that they will actually come out ahead by getting $10m for the abuse. But the law isn't there to help you turn a profit, it's to make you whole. So at best, whether someone would make a deal to exchange $x for harassment is irrelevant. At worst, it indicates that the amount is too high because they feel the deal is in their favor. Either way, it's not a good benchmark for the law.

So at best, whether someone would make a deal to exchange $x for harassment is irrelevant.

not really

If typical person in such situation would not take it at all and it would be awful deal then compensation is too small (say, 5$ for cutting off both hands)

If for typical person in such situation it would be amazing deal (1 billion for cutting out single finger of a left foot) then compensation is overly large.

If deal would be not going in either extreme then compensation is sane (though still may be overly large and overly small).

You're ignoring the fact that a person would not take a deal where they break even, even though that's what the law is trying to achieve. So yes, I wouldn't take a deal to cut my hands off for $5. But I also wouldn't take a fair deal where I get the value of my hands, either. I'm only going to take a deal where getting my hands cut off nets me a profit.

For example, let's take money out of the picture, since we can't really figure what the value of my hands is. Let's say that someone wanted to cut off my hands (which are in perfect shape and I have no reason to get rid of them), but that they would replace them with perfectly functional artificial hands. These artificial hands wouldn't be an improvement or a downgrade in any way compared to my natural hands. Furthermore, the procedure would take only seconds, be completely painless, and I would even be able to have my memory of the procedure erased if I wanted. In short, my life after getting my hands cut off would be the same as it was before.

Nobody would take this deal, or almost nobody would. Because - why should you? It benefits you nothing. I have perfectly good hands now, I don't need or want to replace them with hands that will do the same exact thing. Yet this is also a completely fair deal, the exact kind of deal the law strives to achieve. Even though it's perfectly fair, nobody would actually take it.

So then, since a person isn't going to take even a fair deal (only a profitable one), the fact that someone won't take a deal can't actually tell us anything. It could be that the deal is unfair, but it could just be that the deal is fair and therefore not worth the bother.

the fact that someone won't take a deal can't actually tell us anything

If typical person would not take the deal it tells us that compensation is not drastically overvalued.

No it doesn't. It's possible they just rate their chances of getting drastically overvalued compensation pretty high.

$9 million seems like a big margin of error.

I was looking for order of magnitude estimate as far as forum posting goes. I am happy about "50M per person is definitely too much, 1M per person definitely not enough"

If I would be on jury or judge or my opinion would matter I promise that I would put more effort into that.

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