"Liability"

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+Title: Liability
+Date: 2020-12-24 18:15
+Category: commentary
+Tags: morality
+
+We can't change the past. When someone does something wrong, the act of saying "Sorry" doesn't help. Actually feeling sorry doesn't help, either. Saying or feeling sorry can only help as part of a process that _decreases the measure_ of the wrong across the multiverse. We can't change _our_ past, but we can update on its evidence—use the memories and records of it as input to a function that _changes who we are_ in a way that makes us perform better in the future (which is somebody else's past). And we can create timeless incentives: if people _know_ that history (and the court system) has its eyes on them, they might do things differently than they would if they knew no one would ever hold them to account.
+
+The _update_ part is more important than the timeless-incentives part. The first duty is to investigate exactly _what happened_ and _why_. If you can learn the causal graph, you can compute counterfactuals: _if_ this-and-such detail had been different but everything else had been the same, what would have happened instead? If you can compute that if this-and-such detail had been different, then something better would have happened, then you can make advance plans and take advance precautions to make sure the analogous detail takes a more favorable value in analogous future situations.
+
+And, yeah, in addition to making better plans, you can also do incentives (to timelessly influence the past) and restitution (to try to make up for the past): punish the guilty, give them bad reputations, make them pay cash damages to their victims, _&c._ But you have to get the facts _first_, so that you can compute _what_ punishments, reputations, and restitution to impose.
+
+You must thoroughly research this, not only when your actions participated in disaster, but also when your actions participate in a near-miss "warning shot." It is _not_ the case that all's well that ends well when you're playing for measure in many worlds. If you were in a situation where disaster had probability 0.5, and disaster didn't happen, that just means _this_ copy of you got lucky.
+
+And just because _this_ copy of you doesn't have blood on her hands, doesn't mean you're innocent.
+
+Wanting a fair trial isn't the same thing as claiming to be innocent. It's wanting an accurate account of _exactly_ what you're guilty of.