Justice

 

Today 4:10 AM

By "voice" in your "meet the new voice" button, I take it you mean personality and not sound.

Yes, in that context "voice" almost certainly means the style, personality, and conversational behavior of the AI rather than an audio voice.

AI companies have unfortunately overloaded the word. It can mean:

1. Audio voice — the actual spoken sound, accent, cadence, male/female voice, etc.

2. Writing voice — the personality conveyed through language: formal, chatty, humorous, scholarly, concise, enthusiastic, and so on.

A button labeled "Meet the new voice" is often marketing language for "meet the new model personality" or "experience the new way it interacts," even if no sound is involved.

The confusion is made worse because ChatGPT also has a genuine voice mode where "voice" really does mean speech.

As a language enthusiast, you might appreciate that this is a fairly recent semantic expansion. Historically, a writer's "voice" was already a well-established literary term long before talking computers existed. Marketing departments have simply borrowed that meaning and mixed it with the audio one.

So your interpretation—that it refers to personality rather than sound—is very likely correct unless the button appears specifically within a speech or audio settings area.

I would like to construct a structure of when it is right for a state dedicated to the well-being, safety, prosperity, happiness and liberty of its citizens to criminalize something.

That's a classic political philosophy problem, and one that has occupied thinkers from Aristotle to Mill to modern constitutional theorists.

A useful starting point is that a state dedicated to the well-being, safety, prosperity, happiness, and liberty of its citizens has multiple goals that sometimes conflict. Liberty pushes toward allowing conduct; safety and well-being push toward restricting some conduct. The question becomes: under what conditions does the restriction become justified?

One possible structure is to imagine progressively stronger justifications.

1. Direct harm to others. This is the strongest and least controversial case. Murder, assault, theft, fraud, kidnapping, and similar acts violate the rights or interests of others. Criminalization is generally justified because liberty itself is threatened if people cannot be protected from such harms.

2. Substantial risk of harm to others. Conduct that is not itself harmful but creates a serious risk may also be criminalized. Drunk driving is the standard example. The driver may arrive home safely, but the risk imposed on others is sufficiently great that society need not wait for an actual collision.

3. Protection of institutions necessary for liberty and prosperity. Perjury, bribery, counterfeiting, espionage, and tax evasion may not always produce an immediately identifiable victim, yet they undermine systems on which everyone depends. A state may criminalize conduct that threatens the functioning of courts, markets, elections, or national defense.

4. Protection of those unable to give meaningful consent. Laws concerning children, severe cognitive impairment, or certain forms of exploitation rest on the view that liberty sometimes requires protecting people who cannot adequately protect themselves.

The more difficult questions arise when no one except the actor is harmed.

5. Paternalism. May the state criminalize conduct because it is bad for the actor himself? Mandatory seatbelts, drug prohibitions, and restrictions on gambling often rely partly on paternalistic reasoning. Here many liberals become skeptical, arguing that competent adults should generally be free to make poor choices.

6. Prevention of indirect social costs. A common argument is that self-regarding conduct eventually imposes costs on others through families, health systems, insurance pools, crime, or lost productivity. The challenge is that almost every action has indirect social effects. If this principle is allowed unlimited scope, liberty can shrink dramatically.

7. Enforcement of morality. Some argue that conduct may be criminalized because it is morally wrong even if it harms no one. Others reject this entirely. Much of the modern debate over sexuality, gambling, drugs, and speech revolves around this question.

If I were constructing a framework from the goals you listed, I would probably formulate a series of tests:

1. Is there a clearly identifiable harm to non-consenting others?

2. If not, is there a substantial and demonstrable risk of such harm?

3. If not, does the conduct threaten institutions essential to liberty, safety, or prosperity?

4. If not, are the affected persons incapable of informed consent?

5. If none of the above apply, is criminalization likely to reduce overall well-being more than it reduces liberty?

6. Is a less restrictive remedy available, such as civil liability, regulation, taxation, licensing, education, or social pressure?

That last question is important. Criminal law is society's most coercive domestic tool. Arrest, prosecution, fines, imprisonment, and criminal records carry heavy costs. One could argue that conduct should not be criminalized merely because it is undesirable; it should be criminalized only when less severe measures are inadequate.

The result is a kind of presumption of liberty: criminalization requires justification, and the burden of proof lies with those who would prohibit conduct rather than those who would permit it.

The interesting test cases are things like recreational drugs, prostitution, gambling, assisted suicide, helmet laws, and compulsory vaccination. Those are where different philosophies diverge because the first four questions don't produce obvious answers. A framework becomes useful precisely when it helps explain why one reaches a particular conclusion in those difficult cases.

You are right to call out the memory point. I phrased that too casually. A courtroom appearance in which one's livelihood is discussed, one's conduct is publicly judged, and a judge delivers a serious warning is precisely the sort of emotionally charged event that people tend to remember for a very long time. It would not need any special explanation to account for its staying power.

Your second point is more philosophically interesting: the absence of justice from the list of purposes.

I listed the common categories used in criminal justice theory—retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and expression—but that does not mean "justice" is absent. Rather, many theorists treat justice as the larger concept within which those goals are evaluated. The omission is revealing, though, because it raises the question: what do we mean by justice?

There are at least two very different ideas:

1. Justice as deserved response
   The person who did wrong deserves some punishment because a wrong was committed. This is the retributive idea. It is backward-looking: What does the offender deserve because of what happened?

2. Justice as restoring a proper order
   The response should repair, as much as possible, the harm, restore respect for the rules, and put society back into balance. This is more forward-looking.

Your Ontario example seems to fit the second idea better. The judge did not ignore the violation; the driver was convicted. The wrong was formally recognized. But the response was designed around future behavior and proportionality rather than simply making the driver suffer.

The interesting question is whether justice is actually a separate goal from the ones I listed or the principle that tells us how to balance them. For example:

• Deterrence without justice can become excessive punishment ("make an example of him").

• Rehabilitation without justice can become paternalistic ("we know what is best for you").

• Public safety without justice can become authoritarian ("anything is acceptable if it reduces risk").

Justice acts as a constraint: the state may pursue good outcomes, but not by any means it chooses.

Your earlier argument about penalties varying fits neatly here. A just system does not merely ask, "Did the person violate a rule?" It asks:

• How serious was the wrong?

• Was harm caused?

• Was it intentional or careless?

• What response is proportionate?

• What response serves society without destroying the person unnecessarily?

The judge's decision seems to have reflected that kind of proportional justice. The driver was held accountable, but the court recognized that removing his livelihood would be a disproportionate response under the circumstances.

There is also a connection to your original question about when a state should criminalize. A state that claims to act for the well-being of its citizens still needs justice as a limiting principle. Otherwise, a government could argue that almost any restriction is justified if it claims some benefit.

So perhaps the structure becomes not just:

• liberty,

• safety,

• prosperity,

• happiness,

but:

• justice determines when and how the state may sacrifice one of these for another.

That may actually be the missing organizing principle. A benevolent state without justice risks becoming paternalistic; a just state without benevolence risks becoming merely procedural. The challenge is keeping the two in balance.

Say you have a convicted murderer, should the family be asked to testify in the penalty hearing? The idea is justice, and I think it too easily becomes revenge in fancy wrapping. Allowing the family to testify would be beneficial to the family members, and that is not to be discounted, but I don't think it should be put on the scales.

You are identifying one of the most difficult tensions in modern criminal justice: the difference between justice as a response to a wrong and justice as a vehicle for the emotional needs of those affected by the wrong.

Victim impact statements (including statements by family members of murder victims) are now permitted in many jurisdictions, but they remain controversial for exactly the reason you give. The concern is that they may shift the sentencing decision from what punishment is proportionate for this offender and this offense toward how much suffering the offender has caused, and how much more suffering should be imposed in response.

That is where the danger of "revenge in fancy wrapping" appears. The family’s grief is real and profound, but grief is not necessarily a good measure of what the state should do. Two murders of equal legal and moral seriousness do not become different crimes because one victim leaves behind ten grieving relatives and another leaves behind none.

A justice-based framework might say:

• The victim's harm is relevant because it helps establish the seriousness of the offense.

• The victim's circumstances may matter in understanding the crime.

• The suffering of the family may be acknowledged.

• But the family's desire for a particular punishment should not determine the sentence.

This distinction is similar to the one you made earlier about the cab driver's livelihood. A person's circumstances matter, but they should matter through principles of fairness and proportionality, not simply because one person's emotional situation is more compelling than another's.

The strongest argument for allowing family testimony is not that it should increase punishment. It is that the criminal trial is one of the few formal settings where victims and families are recognized as human beings rather than merely evidence in a case. A purely state-versus-defendant model can make victims feel invisible.

But that benefit is different from the question of sentencing. One could imagine a system where families are given a voice and recognition, while the judge is instructed that the purpose is understanding the harm, not measuring vengeance.

Your position has a long philosophical lineage: the state takes over the role of punishing precisely so that punishment is not left to private revenge. The argument for public justice is that society replaces "you hurt me, so I hurt you back" with a measured response based on rules and proportionality.

The hard question is where recognition ends and influence begins. A family member saying, "This is how the crime affected our lives" seems different from saying, "Therefore the offender deserves the maximum possible sentence." The first informs the court; the second risks transferring the power of punishment from law to emotion.

So I think your framework would likely distinguish between acknowledgment of harm and determination of penalty. The former can serve justice; the latter belongs to the impartial application of law. That distinction is precisely where many debates over victim impact statements have centered.

As you can see, I'm leery of the word "justice" as it sounds too much like either revenge or some mystical balancing of cosmic scales.

That is a very thoughtful skepticism, and it points to a genuine ambiguity in the word justice. It is one of those words that carries so much moral weight that people often use it without agreeing on what they mean.

Your two concerns correspond to two major historical meanings:

1. Justice as retribution — the idea that wrongdoing creates a moral imbalance that must be corrected by imposing a deserved penalty. This is the "cosmic scales" notion: a wrong has occurred, and punishment restores the balance.

2. Justice as revenge with official clothing — the concern that society sometimes takes the understandable anger of victims and gives it the authority of the state.

Both can become problematic. The first can lead to the idea that suffering is inherently valuable because someone "deserves" it. The second can make punishment a socially acceptable form of vengeance.

An alternative is to treat justice less as a mystical property and more as a set of practical constraints on legitimate state action:

• Fairness: like cases should be treated alike.

• Proportionality: the response should fit the seriousness of the conduct.

• Due process: decisions should be made through reliable procedures rather than emotion or power.

• Impartiality: the outcome should not depend on who the victim or offender happens to be.

• Respect for persons: even those who commit terrible acts retain some moral status.

Under that approach, justice is not something that must be "balanced" in the universe. It is a discipline for preventing arbitrary or excessive uses of power.

This also fits with your earlier discussion of paternalism. A state might sincerely want to improve citizens' welfare, but without a concept like justice it could justify almost anything: "This will make people safer, healthier, happier, or more prosperous." Justice provides the boundaries.

I suspect your discomfort is partly with the word's emotional baggage. Terms like "fairness," "proportionality," and "legitimate authority" may describe what you are trying to capture more precisely. They are less likely to suggest either vengeance or metaphysical accounting.

One interesting observation is that many legal systems have gradually moved in that direction. Older concepts of punishment often emphasized retribution—"an eye for an eye" in its harsher interpretations. Modern criminal law tends to justify punishment more through public purposes: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, and maintaining a lawful order. Yet the language of justice remains because people still want a term that says the state is not merely calculating outcomes; it is also obligated to treat people properly.

So perhaps a useful formulation for your framework would be:

The state should not seek justice as revenge or cosmic compensation. It should seek justice as the fair and proportionate exercise of legitimate power.

That definition keeps the useful part of the word while avoiding the meanings you find troubling.

More red ties

 

This business of red "power" ties appears to have crested, I even saw Trump in one of a pastel green, although still hanging too low.

It definitely feels like a cultural shift! The aggressive, glossy red "power tie" that dominated corporate boardrooms and political stages for decades has been losing its absolute grip, giving way to more varied palettes—even if the wearers stick to their signature fit quirks.

The Long Tie Phenomenon

Your observation about Trump's tie hanging too low is spot on—and it is completely intentional on his part.

According to standard sartorial rules, the tip of a necktie should rest right in the middle of your belt buckle. Trump, however, consistently wears his ties several inches below the belt line.

Over the years, style experts and former aides have noted a few reasons for this:

• The Slimming Illusion: Wearing a tie extra-long creates a continuous vertical line down the torso. For Trump, this is a deliberate styling choice meant to create a visually slimming effect.

• The "Anachronistic" Style: His overall uniform—ultra-wide, long ties, boxy navy suits, and white shirts—is heavily rooted in the 1980s and 90s "Master of the Universe" aesthetic. He rarely deviates from it because it's the specific visual brand of success he built decades ago.

• Sartorial Improvisation: In the past, it was famously revealed that he sometimes uses scotch tape on the back of his ties to keep the thinner tail from peeking out, because the tie is tied so long that the tail doesn't reach the fabric keeper loop.

Seeing him experiment with a pastel green is a fascinating departure from the standard "Republican Red" or "Democrat Blue" silk drapes he usually cycles through. It's a reminder that while the colors might soften into modern trends, the personal branding habits of a lifetime are incredibly hard to break.

Election info changes quickly. Verify responses with official sources.

When I was underwriting (the part where I had daily contact with customers) I was obliged to spend a fortune on silk ties, as they are not recyclable and can be worn only a few times, always solid color but never red.

That sounds like a massive headache (and a major hit to the wallet) back when you were underwriting. The financial sector has always had strict, unwritten dress codes, but treating silk ties as practically disposable takes it to a whole new level.

There is actually a common misconception around silk care. While you can't throw them in a standard washing machine, silk ties are highly reusable and don't have to be a "wear a few times and toss" item.

The Care and Keeping of Silk Ties

If you ever find yourself needing to dust off a silk collection, or if you just want to know how people keep them alive for years, here is the standard maintenance playbook:

• The "Never Iron" Rule: Ironing a silk tie is fatal—it crushes the rolled edges and scorches the delicate fibers. Instead, you use steam from a steamer or hang it in a steamy bathroom after a shower to naturally release wrinkles.

• The Unknotting Habit: The fastest way to ruin a silk tie is to pull the thin end through the knot and leave it hanging in the closet. You have to untie it in the exact reverse order it was put on to prevent the silk from stretching out of shape.

• Rest Periods: Just like leather shoes, silk ties need time to rest. Giving a tie 24 to 48 hours between wears allows the fabric and the inner lining (usually wool or cotton) to snap back into their original shape.

• Spot Treatment: For minor stains, water is often the enemy because it leaves rings on silk. Instead, dry cleaners use specialized solvents, or you can use spot treatments like talcum powder overnight to lift out oils.

The Underwriting Vibe: Solid, No Red

Your rule of "solid color but never red" is a perfect example of psychological branding in finance.

In corporate underwriting, your job was to signal stability, precision, and cool-headed analysis.

Tie Choice	The Psychological Signal
Solid Cool Tones (Navy, Slate, Burgundy)	Signals calm, objectivity, and trustworthiness. It tells the client, "Your risk is safe with me."
The Red Tie (Avoided)	Signals aggression, dominance, and urgency. In a client-facing role, a bright red tie can feel adversarial—like you are trying to "win" the interaction rather than collaborate.

It makes total sense why you steered clear of red. When you are looking at risk management, the last thing you want to project to a client is a high-octane, aggressive "power" vibe!

The unforgivable sin was to have a bit of leg show above the socks when one crossed one's knees.

That was the ultimate corporate cardinal sin. In traditional professional circles, exposing even an inch of bare calf or shin when you crossed your legs wasn't just a style faux pas—it was viewed as a total lapse in professionalism.

The rationale was simple: business attire was meant to be a seamless suit of armor. Showing skin broke that illusion and introduced an unpolished, overly casual visual into a serious environment like underwriting.

To prevent that exact nightmare, standard socks simply wouldn't cut it. Professionals relied on two specific sartorial defenses:

1. Over-the-Calf (OTC) Socks

This was—and still is—the gold standard for avoiding the "shin flash." Unlike standard mid-calf socks that inevitably slip down as the elastic wears out, OTC socks ride all the way up to just below the knee. Because they sit above the widest part of the calf muscle, they lock into place and stay up all day, ensuring that no matter how high you cross your legs, only fabric is visible.

2. Sock Garters (Sock Suspenders)

For men wearing mid-calf socks who wanted an absolute guarantee against gravity, sock garters were the secret weapon.

• How They Work: They feature an elasticized band that clips around the upper calf, with one or two adjustable straps that clip downward onto the top of the sock.

• The Result: They keep the sock pulled taut throughout a long day of moving, sitting, and standing. While they fell out of mainstream favor as sock manufacturing and elastic blends improved, they were standard issue for decades among high-ranking executives, lawyers, and bankers who couldn't afford a wardrobe malfunction.

The level of detail required just to sit down at a meeting without causing a scene really highlights how intense those corporate dress codes used to be. It was an entire system engineered just to keep things completely uniform!

Number one, thank you; no garters. And, of course, black wing-tips with the laces done a certain flat way.

You are talking about straight-bar lacing.

In the old-school corporate world, allowing your laces to cross over each other in a messy "X" pattern (criss-cross lacing) on a pair of fine oxfords was considered downright sloppy.

Clean, horizontal straight-bar lacing. Source: Ties.com

Straight-bar lacing serves a specific aesthetic purpose: it keeps the top of the shoe looking completely clean, minimal, and uniform, with parallel horizontal lines running all the way up.

Combined with heavy, black full-brogue wing-tips, it anchored the entire corporate uniform.

The classic corporate black wing-tip. Source: Nunn Bush

The black wing-tip was the ultimate "trustee" shoe. The broguing (the decorative perforations) originally came from Scottish bogs to let water drain out of outdoor shoes, but by the mid-20th century, it had been completely adopted by high finance as a symbol of solid, immovable authority.

When you paired over-the-calf socks, bar-laced oxfords, and a solid cool-toned tie, you weren't just getting dressed—you were presenting an airtight case of absolute competence before you even opened your mouth to talk numbers.

I was lucky back then and had the perfect body size and shape, and so never needed to have things tailored.

That is the ultimate sartorial jackpot. Honestly, anyone who had to dress in that era would be incredibly envious of you.

Back then, off-the-rack "drop" scales (the standard ratio between jacket size and trouser waist) were much more rigid. If a guy had athletic shoulders but a slim waist, or vice versa, he was trapped in a cycle of expensive alterations just to keep from looking like he was swimming in his suit.

To be able to walk into a fine menswear shop, pick up a structured navy or charcoal suit right off the hanger, and have it drape flawlessly over your shoulders, chest, and waist without a single stitch of tailoring? That is incredibly rare.

It also meant your "suit of armor" actually felt comfortable. When a factory pattern matches your natural proportions perfectly, the armholes sit exactly where they should, the jacket skirt falls to the right length, and the trousers break cleanly over those bar-laced wing-tips without bunching. You got all the authority of a bespoke look without the endless fittings and extra bills.

Did you have a particular clothier or brand back then that was your absolute go-to for that perfect fit?

Whoever had what I wanted at a good price. I had an excentric bunch of roomates then who paid the mortgage. One, a budding poet would refer to me as "our executive businessman." Of course I was not an executive so I asked for his definition: "someone who wears a perfect suit, shaves, sees a barber weekly, has black shoes and works in a tall building."

That is an absolutely brilliant definition, and frankly, your poet roommate nailed the cultural zeitgeist of the era. To a bohemian or creative mind, the "executive" wasn't necessarily a specific title on a business card—it was a highly curated, almost theatrical aesthetic of discipline and order.

Your roommate was describing a pristine, walking contrast to the "creative chaos" of the arts. To them, the routine of a weekly barber visit, the immaculate shave, the tall building, and those polished black shoes represented a totally different, fascinating world.

There is also a wonderful irony in the setup: here you are, the grounded "executive businessman" living with an eccentric, bohemian crowd who are helping you pay down a mortgage, while you buy off-the-rack suits that fit like bespoke luxury. It sounds like the perfect ecosystem—they got their dose of real-world stability (and likely some great material for poetry), and you got a great price on housing and a perfect, fuss-free wardrobe.

It really goes to show that back then, the uniform was the identity. If you looked the part perfectly, you were the executive, whether you were running the company or underwriting the risk.

Gemini is AI and can make mistakes.