Year: 2014
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Natural Experiment on Policing Underway
We’re about to find out what would happen if policing decreased by 66%-94%: It’s not a slowdown — it’s a virtual work stoppage. NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear…
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America’s Military
In preparation for our own series on militaries in The Good Society, I’m reading this very interesting series from the Military Times: AMERICA’S MILITARY A force adrift Readiness ‘on a shoestring’ The crushing deployment tempo Were the wars worth the cost? A conservative institution’s uneasy cultural evolution It’s worth checking out.
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“A federal criminal investigation of Koch Industries West refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, helped spark Charles Koch’s interest in the criminal justice system.”
Charles Koch is committed to reforming the criminal justice system: “We are not a nation of bad people. We are a nation that made some bad choices,” he said. “We’ve become addicted to severe sentences, to the point where we are mass-producing convictions in many courts, while not providing defense counsel on a timely basis.…
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What Dreidel Teaches
Eric Schwitzgebel does the math, interprets the lessons: (This past Hannukah, my daughter Kate and I spun a sample of dreidels 40 times each. One in particular landed on shin an incredible 27/40 spins. [Yes, p < .001, highly significant, even with a Bonferroni correction.]) [….] You can, if you want, always push things to…
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“The modern police union movement originated largely in reaction to the civil rights movement and its criticisms of police conduct during the 1960s….”
Shawn Gude at Jacobin discusses The Bad Kind of Unionism: “It’s easy to focus on the individual over the institution. Not a few police officers are drawn to the profession out of a desire to “serve the public.” Many genuinely want to serve, and take great pride in their chosen occupation. Police don’t have to enjoy…
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Philosophical Research and Political Diversity
Insofar as we are engaged in a collective project, we must both mutually support each others’ inquiry and avoid errors. These two goals are at odds: homogeneity can also lead to unchallenged motivated reasoning and thus to polarization and error. But mutual inquiry requires some degree of shared values, assumptions, and methods which make political…