> Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
> I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today.
I don't think you hear it much these days because the punishments are extremely harsh and the best you can hope for is the state merely extorting thousands of dollars out of you and a life-long black mark for employment. Ive had jobs grinding raw castings in 100+ degree environments that full time that paid less than $30K which required background checks.
Unless you got $10K+ to drop on a private lawyer before hand, going to court in the US is a HUGE risk that in most cases is going to cost you many thousands of dollars in court fees and fines regardless with the risk of more jail time and more fees if you can't pay it off on their schedule.
> I don't think you hear it much these days because the punishments are extremely harsh
Civil rights activists, including King, lost their lives for daring to challenge injustice. The penalties are no more severe today than they were then.
The incarceration rate today is 4x that what it was in MLK's day. And im willing to bet the monetary punishments are similarly increased, if not even higher.
It’s pretty classic civil disobedience. In my mind it’s really the founding principle of the states. There is a difference between what is legal and what is just. For the past 250 years what is just has continually evolved and expanded.
> Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
And the "unjust" principle works in the opposite direction, nowadays, for ICE / certain US Federal employees.
Justice is supposedly enabled / supported by the law against second-degree murder. And it's is unlikely to be applied to the ICE officer who shot Renee Good unnecessarily:
ICE is actually routinely breaking both the letter and the spirit of the law. There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.
A spokesperson for DHS just last week openly said that they're allowed to arrest people based on "reasonable suspicion" which is unambiguously illegal.
> There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.
Show me one. I have already seen countless claims of this sort, only to later line them up with video footage that clearly demonstrates that "exercising protected speech" was not the cause of action and that the response was clearly justified.
For example, freedom of speech does not allow one to block traffic for protest purposes, or blocking entrances to buildings, or preventing pedestrians from passing by on the sidewalk (https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_pdf_file/kyr_...). And it certainly does not allow violence against ICE officers or other citizens, both of which I've seen a fair bit of.
I have even seen multiple examples of protesters enacting their own Terry stops against people they suspect of being ICE agents.
> openly said that they're allowed to arrest people based on "reasonable suspicion" which is unambiguously illegal.
Show the quote, and show the relevant law.
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Whoever flagged this comment while it's at +3, please feel free to explain how you think it's in any way counter to HN guidelines.
Hi @zahlman - we are here to figure stuff out - less to demand answers to rhetorical questions! I'll respond to one of the concerns you share, that Ice 'beating' people for exercising protected speech - (which they are not to judge anyhow, they're Immigration not Police).
Being pushed down, from standing, in the street .. is that illegal for ICE to do .. when no enforcement action is underway?
E.g. protesters standing around, ICE marching forward for no discernable emergent law-enforcement (Law within their remit) reason, and then pushing a protester who's also in the same street-area, knocking them to the ground
- @ 12 seconds an ICE agent in camoflage and helmet violently knocks man standing, wearing an orange knit beanie, with a sign. Then the leader of ice .. with the crew cut, walks forward. As if it's a royal procession. This is in the middle of the street, outside their facility, with no ICE vehicles being impeded. Police are nearby.
So, there you go! Looking for your personal determination if that's lawful behavior by ICE.
> Hi @zahlman - we are here to figure stuff out - less to demand answers to rhetorical questions!
Sorry for the delayed response. I put this aside and then of course more things happened.
I don't know who "we" are, but your questions sound very rhetorical despite this disclaimer.
It comes across that ICE are functionally being expected (because it would otherwise be impossible to do their job) to do double duty as riot police, which is presumably not part of their training.
----
1. Regarding the main question of "determination if that's lawful behaviour".
The most important objection here is that you establish physical force, and you make a case for protected speech, but you do not establish that the force is "for" (i.e., specifically in response to) the exercise of protected speech. The simple fact of making a free-speech statement at the time that you do something else wrong, does not excuse the other wrong. In this case, that wrong is physical obstruction. To the best of my knowledge, nothing happened to the protestor shown in the video at :33 with a subjectively very offensive sign (also reported on in many other sources) — which is as it should be, because that protester didn't cause a similar obstruction. (But I will note that when similar language is used online by right-wingers, it commonly is incorrectly called a "death threat" in an effort to suppress that speech.) You can also see that people who are more to the side, and who don't have the same kind of obstructive body language, are not dealt with as harshly.
I don't think an "enforcement action underway" is required, because the officers are on duty and still clearly have a vested interest in getting from point A to point B (even if point B is just their own facility — the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Henry_Whipple_Federal_B... if I understood correctly?), and it appears that protesters are physically attempting to prevent that from happening. The knocked-down man has his hands spread out and appears to be walking towards the line (although there is barely any context after the jump-cut to the incident).
You'll also notice that starting at 7:07, the producer of the video goes up and deliberately antagonizes someone with a "Police - Homeland Security" vest on, proposing the theory that the other agents in olive drab might "not have their papers". And nothing happens to him at all, as he exercises his protected free speech in a more or less responsible manner. This follows on from a segment where they're directly asking the agents for their papers (even as someone in the background shouts "You're supposed to be de-escalating!"). And again nothing bad happens.
They have one incident of physical force (shown on two separate occasions) being used in the entire video, which is clearly cut down from a lot more footage, interviewing a crowd full of people holding inflammatory signage; and they have themselves directly approaching officers and talking to them; the only person getting knocked to the ground is the one who clearly did something beyond simply speaking freely.
Conclusion: If the man in the beanie were being pushed "for exercising protected speech", you would expect many other things to have happened in this video that didn't actually happen. If, on the other hand, he is being pushed for physically obstructing officers who are making a show of their right to not be physically obstructed, you would expect to see pretty much what you actually do see. This is not a good way of doing things (the right way is "you're under arrest for obstruction of justice", and physical force only if arrest is resisted), but I don't see a 1A violation. (The video presenters also appear at times to be trying to make something out of the agents exercising their own 1A rights by "filming and laughing". It's also fun watching them interview masked protesters about why they think the agents are masked, but I digress.)
----
2. Regarding other quibbles with your comment.
When you say "they're Immigration not Police" you are factually incorrect (and so are Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, and possibly other Minnesota officials when they make similar arguments). ICE agents qualify as federal LEO; this is extremely well established and any number of readily-searched sources will explain this. They are even explicitly given power of arrest in federal statute (in particular https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357), which in limited circumstances extend as far as arresting US citizens without a warrant.
It doesn't make any sense to refer to the agents' dress as "camouflage". It doesn't have any particular pattern, camouflage of this sort would make no sense in an urban environment, and there is really no question that everyone can clearly see the agents. As you say, "as if it's a royal procession"; they are not in the slightest attempting to hide their presence.
You say "with no ICE vehicles being impeded" as if to imply that there is no obstruction to the officers, but this is not a valid argument. The officers are still physically impeded if they are walking and someone blocks their walking path.
This is the same sort of rhetorical game that was played when NYT asserted that Jonathan Ross was not "run over" by Renee Good, and then others treated the NYT analysis as proof that he was not struck by the vehicle at all.
To be clear, there is abundant evidence that Ross was in fact struck by the SUV. You can see it in the angle NYT is analyzing; they went through frame by frame to make it look as if Ross' feet are planted beside the vehicle at some point, but that's just where they happened to be as he tried to regain his balance. In the footage from behind the SUV you can clearly see him stumble and try to regain balance. This is also consistent with how his own cell phone footage goes way off target slightly before the shoot, because he no longer has the control needed to keep his left hand pointed at the vehicle. And it would be rather difficult to get a bullet hole in the front windshield like the one shown, firing right-handed, if the vehicle had fully cleared him. And while hospital records haven't been released as far as I can determine, there's good evidence that he was indeed checked out at hospital. ("Internal bleeding" technically could describe a bruise, which would be within the sort of puffery expected of the Trump administration.) And then there's the fact that a CNN analyst agreed early on that he was struck, and later they interviewed Good's former father-in-law and he also agreed.
What, a minor sarcastic remark and you throw out the evidence that you asked for? The video and documentation that you claim didn't exist? If you can't engage with an opposing viewpoint because of a single sentiment, well, I don't know how you expect to be taken seriously. Your partisan bias is on display here.
But just for the record: the first link is completely irrelevant to the claim it's supposed to evidence; and the second and third links are not much better, in that arrest often does not require a warrant. (And citing 4A like that is incredibly dismissive; it suggests that refuting the argument is trivial, but is completely mistaken in that supposed refutation.)
The claim was that ICE is going after people for protected speech. The link is a determination by a federal judge to that effect, with the allegation going all the way to the top of the food chain.
This is a person being hunted and swept into a van by masked federal agents on the basis of her protected speech. There's no ambiguity here. The administration has said that's why they did it, and a judge has affirmed that as well (see prior link)
I didn't claim arrest requires a warrant. I claimed it requires probable cause which is a far higher standard than DHS's claim to make arrests based on reasonable suspicion. The claim that arrests can be made upon reasonable suspicion is indeed flatly refuted by the text of the 4th Amendment.
> The claim was that ICE is going after people for protected speech.
No, it wasn't. The claim was:
> There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.
> The link is a determination by a federal judge to that effect, with the allegation going all the way to the top of the food chain.
No, it isn't. First off, your "food chain" logic is invalid. Trump is the one who wanted the activists in question deported; it's not "ICE" "going after" them. In fact, the judge explicitly:
> ...praised the homeland security officials who testified in his courtroom about their efforts to carry out their responsibilities to keep the country safe — and said their skills were misused by their leaders.
Second, this isn't the activists being "harassed, intimidated, beaten or detained"; it's them being deported.
Third, these are still non legally binding comments by the judge, not a "determination".
Fourth, there is nothing here to substantiate the judge's opinion — no reference to what was supposedly said or done by the activists, or how the judge came to the conclusion that any 1A violation occurred.
> This is a person being hunted and swept into a van by masked federal agents on the basis of her protected speech. There's no ambiguity here. The administration has said that's why they did it, and a judge has affirmed that as well (see prior link)
The video demonstrates nothing of the sort. She's approached on the sidewalk and, in the AP's words, "detained". There's nothing here that could reasonably be characterized as "hunted". There isn't even a van in frame. There is nothing in either the video or the article to corroborate the claim that "the administration has said that's why they did it".
And I don't care if the agents are masked.
> The claim that arrests can be made upon reasonable suspicion is indeed flatly refuted by the text of the 4th Amendment.
No, it is not, because 4A speaks of warrants and not of arrests, and as you cede, arrests do not require a warrant.
Haha, well I hope these gymnastics aren't actually fooling you, of all people. That'd be a major concern.
You can rest easy knowing they're not fooling anyone else though.
Just a few points of note:
* You mention Trump wanted the activist deported, and they were arrested in the street, but they apparently WERE NOT also detained or hunted? How did they find an activist based on an order from on high, if not by hunting them? How could they possibly deport someone without detaining them first?
* You describe this person as an activist, and federal officials have described the enforcement action as based on her activism. You can go ahead and read the 1st Amendment if you need a refresher, but "activism", and certainly signing an op ed, is protected speech, thus proving my original point.
* With regard to what substantiates the judge's opinion, you can go read the court filings, duh. Do you need page numbers for this one too?
* "She's approached on the sidewalk and, in the AP's words, "detained"." LMAO. I love the scare quotes ;)
* Re 4A/warrants/arrests, etc. Arrests can be made in lieu of warrants only in exigent circumstances (which approximately no immigration stop qualifies as), and they can never be made in lieu of probable cause. A person can be stopped under only reasonable suspicion, but again this is not what DHS said. DHS said they are arresting people based on reasonable suspicion. This is unambiguously unconstitutional. I think your motivated reasoning might be affecting your reading comprehension on this point.
I've been held ~24 hours by DHS under RAS, it is definitely a thing near the border where they don't need PC to jail you. They put me in jail but I was never under arrest, I later got my federal arrest record and there was nothing. Maybe that was what they were referring to?
Jailing citizens with no warrant nor PC was happening to me under Biden so it's not new either.
Correct you can be detained based on reasonable suspicion. You cannot be arrested on it. The difference might seem subtle, but 1) it's not, and 2) it certainly shouldn't be to actual DHS officials. It's literally in the text of the Constitution.
And yes, near the border has had shaky Constitutional protections for a long time. To suggest it's "not new" to expand that shakiness across the entire nation, eliminate time constraints on it, then scale up the "immigration" enforcement arm 100x is just laughable though. Of course it's new! It's new in scope, scale, and intensity. That makes it new!
Reasonable articulable suspicion. In my case, an imaginary dog "alerted" an unnamed handler. So that gave them RAS to strip me naked, be jailed, and be made to poop in front of them to ensure there were no drugs that came out.
Contacted several lawyers, nothing to be done, no chance of fighting it. Girl that tried before me, lost.
Seems like it's worthy of being publicized. Sincerely .. as a point of protest.
E.g. "Do you want your children to be forced to poop in front of grown men, as many times as they want her to, and for there to be No Law Against This? Democracy..use it." Or something better?
Accompanied by a video illustrating a naked person pooping in front of satisfied Federal agents, and then a scene with a lawyer saying, "there's nothing you can do to fight having that done to you, lady."
It feels like USA needs a re-think around concentration of power in the Federal side of our government.
> To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s
case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors. Id., at 887.
Sure, but the intent and effect is to give cops more leeway in using perceived ethnicity as a factor. In the full passage, he explicitly says that given the prevalence in LA of undocumented immigrants from Latin America working in particular jobs, local police are permitted to detain such workers who appear Latine (i.e. to racially profile them).
A fuller quote:
> To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States ... Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and "considerably short" of the preponderance of the evidence standard ... Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances ... Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a "relevant factor" when considered along with other salient factors.
Yeah, you would need more than just ethnicity. You can read the Justice's examples directly in the case. Being or looking Mexican on a parking lot may be enough to justify a Kavanaugh stop, but just being Mexican or looking Mexican on it's own is not enough.
Kavanaugh's concurrence does not "expand" reasonable suspicion. It explains that a combination of factors including "apparent race or ethnicity" may cause reasonable suspicion. Which, in fact, as a basic matter of probabilistic reasoning, given the other information in https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf, it might.
And an important part of the decision is that (emphasis his):
> Plaintiffs’ standing theory is especially deficient in this case because immigration officers also use their experience to stop suspected illegal immigrants based on a variety of factors. So even if the Government had a policy of making stops based on the factors prohibited by the District Court, immigration officers might not rely only on those factors if and when they stop plaintiffs in the future.
and to affirm existing understanding of reasonable suspicion:
> Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and “considerably short” of the preponderance of the evidence standard. Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 274. Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 885, n. 10; Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Cf. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 884–885 (listing “[a]ny number of factors” that contribute to reasonable suspicion of illegal presence).
(In other words, he clearly lays out the reasons why such a "combination of factors" may create reasonable suspicion, per precedent.)
As for Kavanaugh "realizing" any such thing, I can't fathom why you think so. This is the same guy who has been very visibly protested by activists of a similar stripe from the beginning.
Footnote on Page 7, written by Kavanaugh mere weeks after the Perdomo decision, says the opposite: "the officers must not make interior immigration stops or
arrests based on race or ethnicity... “[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race”"
So is race a consideration or is it not? He says here that it's well-established that the Constitution prevents it.
Or did he just throw in that sentence as a complete non-sequitur, unrelated to the immediately preceding sentences?
Please articulate a scenario that bisects them, then.
And no, your "solely due to" vs "contributing factor to" does not satisfy this. The quoted text (from Whren v United States) is extremely clear: race cannot be a consideration.
Why people act surprised that an institution that was literally made to uphold the interests of the elite and is extremely undemocratic continues to act undemocratic?
You have to stop thinking these institutions are worth protecting when they have been the impediment to any progress this country has made.
People have too much to lose nowadays. Having a jail or protesting history gives you a black mark if you're middle class and you have to pursue alternate avenues to provide for yourself and your family. It's a last resort and has allowed a lot of insidious things to grow in US gov't and outside
The men and women who protested with MLK Jr. risked physical harm and death. Many of them paid the ultimate price. So it's hard to argue they didn't have much to lose.
I do take your point, though. Civil disobedience and a digital trail of "undesirable" behavior isn't compatible with a high-earning life in the corporate world.
Hmmm. When I was in college, I protested and went to jail multiple times in the US, though I was never convicted (the organization I was with provided for legal representation). I don't believe it has ever damaged my career. I'm curious if your experience has been different?
Well you weren't convicted, and a huge part of that is likely your free legal representation which would otherwise have cost you thousands of dollars that many people don't have to spend themselves.
Absolutely. If I hadn't been assured there would be a lawyer afterwards (he represented us as a group btw), I wouldn't have done it...
I strongly recommend that anyone doing civil disobedience join up with an organization which can provide training, logistical support, and at least some degree of legal support. The first two are if anything even more important given that these situations tend to be chaotic and tense. The book Waging a Good War documents the intensive training that activists underwent during the civil rights movement which was crucial for their success.
Of course the situation is much more lawless now in places like Minneapolis and ICE is much more undisciplined than the police, which makes civil disobedience much more challenging and dangerous. That just makes training and legal aid all the more necessary.
Well within the time period when even minor news was routinely posted to the Internet, so it's searchable. On the other hand I have a really common name.
Many of King's contemporaries died for this. He was shot and killed. The FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide.
I would rather people just admit they are cowards. It is fine, most people are. But saying people have too much to lose nowadays as if this is a contemporary phenomenon is just disingenuous. People always have much to lose, arguably "nowadays" less than ever before.
Maybe the real change is in how things are valued or what society sees as virtues. Perhaps our modern society values wealth more than personal integrity for example. I would suggest though a lot of this is just cope for the fact that people are learning they aren't fit for their heros, they don't belong in the same room let alone the same building. It's easy to valorize King when he's a voice from the past. The people who stay home today are the same who stayed home then. The American revolution was really instigated by a minority of the colonial population. Most people stay home.
It's just a basic fact of humanity - most people are cowards, and that is probably fine. If they weren't society would likely never exist in the first place. What does a polity even look like in a land where everyone is a hero?
The whole bus protest was AGAINST enforcement of the law. It was civil disobedience on the side of Rosa Park and it was all about them not wanting to accept the criminal consequences.
The activists generally did a lot to actually avoid criminal consequences of the time. It was not a suicide pact.
Your logic on the criminal consequences is simply bizarre. It's like you think if I put myself out there protesting a law and subjecting myself to arrest or other consequences by virtue of this opposition I really don't want to accept consequences. What do you think happens to people who protest against the enforcement of a law?
And let's not move the goalposts. I never said it was a suicide pact, nor did anyone else. Reads like more cope. Yes you can tailor your approach, as they did. But ultimately are you staying home or not? Let's take another example, was D Day a suicide pact? Or do you regard them as heroes? Did they not have much to lose?
The fact remains most people stay home. Most people are cowards, unless compelled otherwise. Let's also understand leadership is extremely important. A good leader makes people around them stronger. King made people resolute, and in turn they made him resolute.
Like Eisenhower and the paratroopers before D Day. They made each other feel better. Go read about the visit I'm sure you've seen the famous photograph. The real tragedy of today isn't about cowards, which again have always existed and always will. It's about a vacuum of leadership.
> It's like you think if I put myself out there protesting a law and subjecting myself to arrest or other consequences by virtue of this opposition I really don't want to accept consequences. What do you think happens to people who protest against the enforcement of a law?
In democracies, they are just protesters protected against the retaliation by laws and constitutions. In autocracies and wanna be autocracies, police can abuse them with various levels of impunity.
In fact, people are protesting the law and it enforcement. What they do not do is following this idiotic idea OP was promoting that all protesters should do and promote:
> One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. [...] willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice
No, of course not. No, civil disobedience does not have to imply you will let yourself be abused. That can be occasionally used as tactic, but is absolutely unnecessary for it to be valid.
And it was not even what most protesters in bus protests were doing this all that much. They were trying to avoid the penalty and they were not intentionally giving themselves up to the law.
"In democracies, they are just protesters protected against the retaliation by laws and constitutions"
This is a mind numbing statement to make in context. What do you think the civil rights fight was about? You think black people marching around freely in the pre civil rights South were treated as "just protestors"? You realize for a long time the Constitution outrightly failed to protect people who were black, right?
This is just one example. And sorry, it was part of their philosophy that exposing the country to this brutality would awaken the conscience of the nation. As it eventually did. That meant accepting the police brutality they knew was waiting for them. You are simply wrong, and frankly again, shockingly so.
1. Don't seem to understand the nature of civil disobedience - disobedience being a key word here.
2. Don't seem to understand how engaging in civil disobedience invites severe consequences - especially in the face of an aggressive state. We aren't just talking criminal penalties we are talking risk to life and limb.
3. Don't seem to understand the nature of nonviolence - it wasn't just about not being violent. It was about exposing the barbarity of the state as they attacked nonviolent people not responding even remotely in kind.
4. Don't seem to understand the nature of democracies in reality. Engaging in outright fiction re how democracies treat protestors vs autocracies, as if there is some obvious invisible line. Apparently ignorant of the fact that especially in King's time, protestors rights were often not protected by local authorities in the South.
5. Don't seem to understand that's kind what the entire movement was about, rights for me but not for thee.
I was kind of expecting this response given it was the only logical rejoinder after your previous statements, but it rests on a real misstatement and misunderstanding of the facts that even though was anticipated, is still disappointing.
Democracies can abuse protestors too. Always have, always will. It's why the founders feared the people's temptation for mobs as well as tyrants.
Most of the people today with nothing to lose are just self-medicating on weed, sports betting, Netflix, etc. I don't think there's much to be worried about.
> Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.
There is another side to this coin: jury nullification.
The fact that, most Americans, are unaware of the concept, or that it is a choice they can make is one of the tragedies of the modern era. Adams had much to say on the topic, and his take is still valid 200 years later.
I think that when you put most Americans in a jury box, they will learn that whether they vote to convict is their choice. Ask the guy who threw the sandwich.
> I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today
The landscape has completely changed. No authority in charge entertains the idea that the law should be respected, it's not surprising citizens reciprocate.
> One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.
I would not say this one, because I simply strongly disagree. Simple as that. No, nazi opposition did not needes to let yourself be tortured in camp to be valid. Nor communist one.
As a demand, it is absurd on its face. Yeah, you should weight the level of risk and loss. And you dont need to aim for self harm when opposing something bad.
There's a reason that due process is a thing, it's more commonly upheld than it's not, no matter what rhetoric you've been spun by a fear-mongering media.
If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
Also, included in those "plea bargains" are cautions, for children.
edit; I'm getting flagged but I should definitely mention that I'm intimately familiar with how the law can be for the underclass, I was an underclass and I have a laundry list of a criminal record from when I was a child.
People plead guilty because they can't afford the $10K in lawyer costs, and if you can't afford a lawyer and get appointed a state one, not only are you far more likely to lose your case, but if you lose you still have to pay that lawyer at the end plus the extra court costs and fees on top.
Often people are given "If you plea, you will pay a few thousand dollars and get to go home. If you don't plea, there is a 50% chance you go to jail, have a black mark on your record, and have to pay $10K in court fees and fines." And when people aren't even sure how they will pay a few thousand dollars, the risk of having to pay $10K+ plus serve jail time that will cost them their job and limit future employment opportunities is a HUGE risk.
You are the breadwinner for your household. A detective decides that you are the most likely person to have committed a nearby burglary. You have an alibi, but they charge you anyway. You cannot afford to pay bail; your options are to remain in jail until the case makes its way through the courts, or to accept a plea bargain that lets you out on probation. Your underfunded and overworked public defender advises you to take the deal, since a trial would be ruinous even if you do prevail. What do you do?
The issue with plea bargains is not that guilty people are given leniency for remorse; it is that they are used to coerce innocent people into confessing to a crime they did not commit.
In 98% of cases they bring for prosecution - they know the job, they know what works, and if they don't think they can follow through, they often just drop the case entirely, so it doesn't count.
Yes because we all know workers are the best judges of said work they do.
How often do you work on bug tickets and realize that the "simple one liner change" is actually more complicated? Okay now instead of it being a simple computer bug, you are dealing with real human lives and have the potential to destroy them quite easily.
Maybe the system isn't working as intended, maybe courts should be redesigned to be more accommodating to the needs of everyone and not just those with $100k in checking accounts.
Anyone who says "all of x is justified" or "all of y is unjustified" is usually wrong.
I thought we were smart enough to realise that on HackerNews.
Parent of mine claimed that the law as practiced is unjust, I said, largely that's not true and that there's a pretty strong propaganda campaign against the legal system (due to aligned incentives of stoking up rage for clicks).
I didn't claim that unfairness didn't exist, merely that it's not the default.
I have now been told that because plea bargains exist for those who show remorse, that the law never follows due process.
The DOJ, DHS, ICE, and judicial processes are losing credibility quickly. If ever they deserved the benefit of the doubt, I would say that time has passed, at least at national level.
> If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
On the contrary, I think that's one of the problems that makes plea bargains so egregious: in order to take a plea bargain, you have to plead guilty, which prevents you from further defending yourself if you didn't actually do what you were accused of. That creates the scenario where an innocent person who is not confident in the system's ability to defend them may find themselves having to plead guilty in order to stave off a much worse penalty.
The same thing applies to parole boards: maintaining innocence typically prevents you from being granted parole.
You're conflating "plea bargains exist" with "innocent people are systematically coerced into false confessions."
The vast majority of plea bargains involve people who are, in fact, guilty and are receiving a reduced sentence for saving the court's time and showing contrition. That's not a perverse incentive, it's a reasonable tradeoff that benefits both the defendant and society.
Yes, edge cases exist where innocent people feel pressure to plead. But the existence of edge cases doesn't prove the system is fundamentally unjust, it proves the system is imperfect, which no one disputes.
Regarding parole: maintaining innocence after you've been convicted and exhausted your appeals isn't "defending yourself"; at that point, you've had your defence. The parole board's job is to assess rehabilitation, and refusing to acknowledge your crime is evidence you haven't been rehabilitated. If you genuinely didn't do it, your remedy is post-conviction relief, not parole.
The burden is on those claiming systemic injustice to show that false guilty pleas are the norm rather than the exception. "98% plea bargain rate" doesn't demonstrate that.
I realize that "duress" probably has a specific legal definition, but colloquially speaking all plea bargains are made under duress. If I (a private citizen) kidnapped you, locked you in a cage and told you that I would continue to hold you captive if you didn't agree to my terms, no one would mistake that for a free or fair negotiation.
> The vast majority of plea bargains involve people who are, in fact, guilty and are receiving a reduced sentence for saving the court's time and showing contrition. That's not a perverse incentive, it's a reasonable tradeoff that benefits both the defendant and society.
What proof do you have of this? Estimates I’ve read range from 2-25% of people who accept plea bargains are innocent.
And what recent age of innocent people is it acceptable to send to jail via coercive plea bargains to ensure no guilty people go free?
> If you take a plea deal because you were convinced you'd be prosecuted otherwise, well, that also sucks
You are completely sidestepping the thrust of the grandparent commenter’s comment, which is that the cost of defending yourself from prosecution is prohibitively expensive and punitive in the sense that the outcome is worse than negotiating a plea deal.
> if you took one under duress, then that would be why the higher courts exist, to invalidate your guilty plea when taken under duress.
In this hypothetical the accused doesn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer; they aren’t going to be beating the case on an appeal.
You're defending zealously enough, and introducing so many variables yourself, that you have burden of proof too. Show some numbers for "vast majority" and "edge case".
No, I don't have burden of proof for defending the status quo. That's not how this works.
The legal system processes millions of cases annually. The claim being made here is that it's unjust more often than just... that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
I'm not the one who needs to prove the system works. You need to prove it's fundamentally broken. "Plea bargains could coerce innocent people" isn't evidence, it's a handful of cases in millions and heavy speculation about prevalence. I've taken a caution myself when I thought I might prevail at trial, not because I was coerced into a false confession, but because the pragmatic choice was obvious. That's the system working, not breaking.
The Innocence Project has exonerated about 375 people via DNA evidence since 1989. Tragic? Absolutely. Evidence of systemic failure? Do your own fucking maths. That's 375 cases over 35 years in a system processing roughly 20 million criminal cases annually. Even if we're generous and assume there are 10x more wrongful convictions that haven't been discovered, we're still talking about a fraction of a percent.
Show me data demonstrating that false guilty pleas represent anything more than edge cases, or accept that the system, whilst imperfect, generally functions.
The burden is squarely on those claiming otherwise.
> No, I don't have burden of proof for defending the status quo. That's not how this works.
Are you trying to win a formal debate or have a productive discussion?
Status quo is a starting point but still needs evidence.
> The legal system processes millions of cases annually. The claim being made here is that it's unjust more often than just... that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
Define "unjust".
If someone says it's unfairly biased most of the time, I don't think that's an extraordinary claim.
If someone says it's getting the wrong answer most of the time, yeah that's extraordinary claim, but nobody made that claim.
I'm having a productive discussion by not letting vague claims slide.
"Unfairly biased most of the time" and "unjust more often than just" are the same claim when discussing legal outcomes. If the system is systematically biased, it produces unjust outcomes. Don't play word games.
And yes, people absolutely have made that claim. The assertion that 98% plea bargain rates represent coercion rather than efficient processing is precisely claiming the system gets it wrong most of the time. The hypothetical about innocent breadwinners forced to plead guilty isn't describing an edge case, it's being presented as how plea bargains function.
If you want to argue the system has some biases that need addressing, fine. That's not what's being argued here. The argument is that plea bargains are inherently coercive and that maintaining innocence should exempt you from parole requirements. That's claiming the system is fundamentally broken, not merely imperfect.
Pick one: is the system broken or just imperfect? Because I'm arguing it's the latter and you lot keep trying to prove the former whilst pretending you're not.
> "Unfairly biased most of the time" and "unjust more often than just" are the same claim when discussing legal outcomes. If the system is systematically biased, it produces unjust outcomes. Don't play word games.
Then that's not an extraordinary claim.
I'm doing my best to avoid word games here.
If someone is claiming that the system is biased always, but not claiming that most outcomes are wrong, that is a reasonable claim.
Calling plea bargains inherently coercive is a reasonable claim. Yes they're broken in some ways.
> The assertion that 98% plea bargain rates represent coercion rather than efficient processing is precisely claiming the system gets it wrong most of the time.
No no no no no no no no. That's not what those words mean.
> Pick one: is the system broken or just imperfect?
Some imperfection will always be there.
But there are important imperfections that could be reasonably fixed, therefore I would say the system is broken. By my definition of broken; yours might be different.
I don't know what "fundamentally broken" means exactly so I won't comment on that term.
Fair enough, let me step back because I'm getting angry.
You're right that "biased in process" and "wrong outcomes" aren't the same thing. A system can have unfair disparities (wealth based, racial, whatever) without necessarily convicting innocent people at scale. That's a reasonable distinction.
But that's not what sparked this thread. Go back to the top: the original claim was "when is the law just in its application?" implying never or nearly never. My position is that it's just more often than not. That's the disagreement.
If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.
The issue is when people use "98% plea bargains" or "inherently coercive" to argue the system is fundamentally broken. If that's not what you're arguing, then we're likely closer to agreement than it seemed.
> But that's not what sparked this thread. Go back to the top: the original claim was "when is the law just in its application?" implying never or nearly never. My position is that it's just more often than not. That's the disagreement.
> If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.
An unjust system can still get the right answer most of the time.
And I think it's very likely our system applies so much pressure to take a plea bargain that it is unjust. That it is making mistakes at scale that we could avoid with reasonable effort.
I would say it's fixably broken, but it probably is broken.
And I don't think anyone on this comment page was arguing that a majority of convictions are innocent people.
Dylan, you're a masterclass in saying nothing whilst appearing to argue.
You invented that "7%" stuff in a sibling thread from thin air. You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions whilst spending a dozen comments defending why plea coercion is a massive problem. You say the system gets the right answer most of the time but insist it's still unjust. You won't define "broken" but you're certain the system is it.
Every time I pin you down, you redefine terms. "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes, it means procedural pressure. "Broken" doesn't mean failing, it means needs improvement. "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.
This is a thread about MLK describing actual injustice: arresting peaceful protesters under correctly applied laws. You've watered "unjust" down to "I don't like some aspects of plea bargaining" and expect that to carry the same moral weight.
Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. Because if they don't, then your entire argument collapses to "the system works but could be nicer," which isn't a disagreement worth having.
My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which is it?
Yes. I said I did. Because when I openly talk about a hypothetical number, people have to focus on whether my logic is correct or incorrect. Because that part of the post was about what implies what.
> You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions
No. I said nobody argued MOST convictions were innocent.
Because you keep talking about MOST convictions to make your arguments.
> "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes
Doesn't mean a specific number of wrong outcomes.
This is the key miscommunication that has caused the entire argument.
A system can be unjust in 100% of cases, but only give the wrong answer in a smaller percent of cases.
> "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.
coerce: To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an attempt to compel one to act against their will.
Edit: To make a clearer statement, whether it's coercion is about whether there is an unreasonable amount of pressure being applied. This has no connection to whether the confession is true or false.
> Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions.
Yes.
> My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which. is. it?
Ugh, this is annoying when we're disagreeing about what "just" means.
The way you're using it, the law is just more often than not.
But "more often" is an absolute garbage threshold. We need way way way better than that.
You're arguing that a system can apply the law unjustly even when it reaches correct outcomes. I think that's only meaningful if the "unjust application" materially affects people's lives in ways that matter beyond process.
So: plea bargains. You say they apply unreasonable pressure. But what makes the pressure unreasonable? A prosecutor offering a reduced sentence for pleading guilty isn't force, threat, fraud, or intimidation. It's a straightforward trade: save the court's time and resources, get a lighter sentence. That's pressure, but it's not inherently unreasonable.
You could argue it becomes unreasonable when the alternative is so severe that even innocent people feel compelled to plead. But that's an empirical claim. How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?
On thresholds: you're right that "more often than not" sounds low for a justice system. But the question is compared to what? Every alternative has error rates. Jury trials have wrongful convictions. Bench trials have wrongful convictions. The question isn't whether the system is perfect, it's whether it's better than the realistic alternatives and whether the error rate is acceptable.
What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.
The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?
> So: plea bargains. You say they apply unreasonable pressure. But what makes the pressure unreasonable? A prosecutor offering a reduced sentence for pleading guilty isn't force, threat, fraud, or intimidation. It's a straightforward trade: save the court's time and resources, get a lighter sentence. That's pressure, but it's not inherently unreasonable.
The biggest issue these days seems to be that people can't afford a proper trial. So instead of a relatively fair exchange of simplifying out the risk of trial for a certain outcome, reducing hassle for everyone, there's a five figure monetary weight tipping the balance. The prosecutor isn't causing this but the design of the system is.
> How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?
I don't know where the evidence is. Remember my first comment was saying you should bring in evidence for your strong claims. I don't have strong claims right now, I have worries.
> What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.
We need a lot more information before I can say what an acceptable error rate.
But there's some obvious factors pushing us away from that, so we're very likely not where we should be.
> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?
If the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial, then the law is not being applied in a just way. And I think that is a very common feeling. The amount it pushes error rates is smaller, because a lot of those people are guilty. But often they're not guilty of the full accusation, and sometimes they're not guilty of anything.
So I think a lot of people are going through an unfair process, and some of them are getting incorrect sentences.
I think a general sentiment that the law is unjust, or that people are not getting due process, is a reasonable opinion to have about that process.
If you have a specific comment you want to refer to by "the law is rarely applied justly", I can look at that specific one, because I'm not sure who you are referring to. verisimi's crack was a pretty vague implication, and jakelazaroff was arguing that people don't get proper due process. Neither of those statements is making an extreme claim about error rates.
You're right that cost is a real barrier, and it's a legitimate concern. If people can't afford proper representation, then the "choice" to take a plea isn't fully voluntary. That's a structural problem worth addressing.
Where we differ is on scale and characterisation. You say "the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial." That's a strong empirical claim that needs evidence. Feeling unsafe and actually being coerced are different things, and both matter, but they're not the same.
The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that to "the process is unfair for people who can't afford defence, and this produces some incorrect sentences." That's a much more limited claim, and one I'd largely agree with. Structural inequality in access to justice is a real problem.
But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.
So: agreed that cost barriers create real injustice. Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.
I put an "if" on vast majority. I put confidence on "very common".
> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that
> Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.
Well again, if you tell me which specific comment you mean then I'll address that specific comment.
> But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.
You are the only person that has used the word 'fundamentally'. And yes the plea bargain thing needs evidence but should not be rejected for lack of citations.
You demanded I provide numbers for "vast majority" and "edge cases" in your first reply. I provided data: 375 exonerations over 35 years in a system processing 20 million cases annually. You then spent two dozen comments redefining terms and refusing to commit to any position.
Now you claim your speculation "should not be rejected for lack of citations" whilst having opened by demanding exactly that from me. That's not intellectual honesty, that's having it both ways.
On "fundamentally": you've argued the system is unjust in 100% of cases, that plea bargains are inherently coercive, and that false confessions happen routinely. Whether you used that specific word is irrelevant. Those are claims of fundamental dysfunction.
You ask which comment I mean. Here's the thread: verisimi asked "when is the law just in its application?" implying rarely or never. I said more often than not. You've argued with that for two dozen comments whilst refusing to state your own position. When pressed, you admitted you "don't have strong claims, just worries." That's fine, but it's not a basis for a dozen-comment argument.
The pattern here is clear: you make strong implications without committing to them, demand evidence from others whilst providing none yourself, redefine terms when pinned down, and retreat to semantic quibbles when substantive points fail. That's not productive discussion.
I engaged seriously when you made your cost barrier point. That was substantive. But you've chosen to return to arguing about whether you said "if" and who used which word.
I'm done. You've had multiple opportunities to state a clear position. You haven't. Readers can judge for themselves whether that's because you don't have one or because you're unwilling to defend it.
>In the eyes of the law, if you have been found guilty "you are guilty".
Yes but this is just another way to describe the problem, invoking it as a justification becomes tautological.
The patent office has a similar issue where they tend to consider prior work to be just what they see in other patents so the first person to patent is declared to be the first person to express the idea. To turn that view from the default position takes a lot of resources.
Laws should be unambiguous, but they shouldn't achieve this simply by defining the resolution of the ambiguity to be different from reality.
You've misunderstood the point I was making. I'm not claiming legal findings are objectively true in some metaphysical sense, I'm saying that for a legal system to function, there must be finality to proceedings.
The alternative is what, exactly? Perpetual relitigation? Every convicted person maintains their innocence indefinitely and the system just... accepts that as equally valid to the jury's verdict?
We have mechanisms for when the system gets it wrong: appeals, post-conviction relief, habeas corpus. These exist precisely because we recognise legal findings aren't infallible. But the burden is on the convicted to demonstrate error... and rightly so, because the alternative is paralysis.
Your patent office analogy inadvertently supports my point: yes, there are edge cases where prior art is missed. But the solution isn't to abolish patent finality, it's to have robust review mechanisms, which we do.
The claim upthread is that the system is unjust more often than just. That's a far stronger claim than "the system sometimes gets it wrong."
If you go to trial you are saying you are not guilty of the offence.
If you are not guilty the ideally you are acquitted.
if you are guilty, you’re hoping to get away with it.
I struggle to see how hoping to get away with it, is showing remorse. If anything I certainly think it says that it shows little or no remorse, since you believe that other people should receive no justice for crimes that you committed against them.
I'm not saying it doesn't logically follow, I'm saying it shouldn't legally follow. Exercising your legal rights should never have negative legal consequences.
Consider pleading the fifth. You can't be compelled to incriminate yourself. That doesn't just mean they can't coerce a confession out of you. It also means that the law does not infer guilt from a refusal to testify, even though logically a person who refuses to testify is more likely to be guilty than one who testifies freely in their own defense. If you couldn't be compelled to testify, but at the same time your refusal could be considered evidence of guilt, then you don't really have the right not to testify.
Same sort of thing here. If exercising your right to a trial increases your penalty then in what sense do you actually have that right? To put it in starker terms, imagine if people who previously spoke critically of the President were given a harsher penalty than those who spoke positively. That's a clear free speech violation. If exercising your free speech rights can't increase your penalty, exercising your right to a trial shouldn't either.
I understand the constitutional point you're making, but I think we're conflating two things: exercising your right to trial, and showing remorse for what you did.
The right to trial isn't being penalised. You get a fair trial either way. What's being rewarded is accepting responsibility and saving the court's time. That's not the same as punishing you for exercising a right.
I'll grant that when the sentencing gap is extreme, the distinction becomes academic. If you're facing 20 years at trial versus 2 for pleading, then functionally you're being coerced regardless of the theoretical justification.
But in principle, rewarding people who show remorse is part of justice. Someone who accepts what they did and shows contrition is different from someone who forces the state to prove its case. Both have the right to trial, but treating them differently at sentencing isn't inherently unjust.
The question is whether the gap has become so large that it's effectively coercive. That's an empirical question about how plea bargains operate in practice, not a constitutional one about whether they can exist at all, which, if I understood it right, is your position.
I'd argue that any gap is coercive, just as I'd object to giving criminals even one minute of additional prison time for being critical of the President.
Someone who forces the state to prove its case is merely exercising their legal right to do so. Giving them a harsher sentence for this is effectively punishing them for exercising their legal rights. You can word this as rewarding people who don't force the state to prove its case i.e. people who don't exercise that particular legal right, but it's the same thing.
> If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
Showing remorse is good, yes, but holding that over someone's head as a way to force them to plead guilty is disgusting.
Also pleading guilty does not imply showing remorse.
If we can't disentangle plea and remorse, then factoring remorse into the sentence does more harm than good. It would be better to ignore it entirely and pretend everyone said they're deeply sorry.
The point is we don't really know who is innocent or not, because the incentives are so fucked. If you're poor and need to get on with your life, you take the guilty plee almost every time. Trial takes fucking forever, and it's very expensive.
What this means is the you can be charged with almost anything, and the odds are very high you will plea guilty, regardless of your innocence. There's basically no incentive for the police or prosecutors to show any restraint, they have a "get out of jail free" card in the form of plea bargains.
Let me make up a number. 7%. I think that number of plea bargains would be a huge problem if in 7% of cases the person is in fact innocent. Would you disagree?
And even generally assuming guilt, a number that high gets worrying. Maybe we're only prosecuting the strongest of strong cases or something, but some of the other factors that could be reducing the rate of trials are really bad for justice.
Writing a calculus book that's more rigorous than typical books is hard because if you go too hard, people will say that you've written a real analysis book and the point of calculus is to introduce certain concepts without going full analysis. This book seems to have at least avoided the trap of trying to be too rigorous about the concept of convergence and spending more time on introducing vocabulary to talk about functions and talking about intersections with linear algebra.
As a math professor who has taught calculus many times, I'd say there are many different things one could hope to learn from a calculus course. I don't think the subject distills well to a single point.
One unusual feature of calculus is that it's much easier to understand at a non-rigorous level than at a rigorous level. I wouldn't say this is true of all of math. For example, if you want to understand why the quadratic formula is true, an informal explanation and a rigorous proof would amount to approximately the same thing.
But, when teaching or learning calculus, if you're willing to say that "the derivative is the instantaneous rate of change of a function", treat dy/dx as the fraction which it looks like (the chain rule gets a lot easier to explain!), and so on, you can make a lot of progress.
In my opinion, the issue with most calculus books is that they don't commit to a rigorous or to a non-rigorous approach. They are usually organized around a rigorous approach to the subject, but then watered down a lot -- in anticipation that most of the audience won't care about the rigor.
I believe it's best to choose a lane and stick to it. Whether that's rigorous or non-rigorous depends on your tastes and interests as a learner. This book won't be for everybody, but I'd call that a strength rather than a weakness.
The rigorous form of the non-rigorous version is non-standard analysis: There really are tiny little numbers we can manipulate algebraically and we don't need the epsilon-delta machinery to do "real math". It's so commonsensical that both Newton and Leibniz invented it in that form before rigor became the fashion, and the textbook "Calculus Made Easy" was doing it that way in 1910, a half-century before Robinson came along and showed us it was rigorous all along.
> The rigorous form of the non-rigorous version is non-standard analysis
This is quite overstated. There are other approaches to infinitesimals such as synthetic differential geometry (SDG aka. smooth infinitesimal analysis) that are probably more intuitive in some ways and less so in others. SDG infinitesimals lose the ordering of hyperreals in non-standard analysis and force you to use some non-classical logic (intuitively, smooth infinitesimals are "neither equal nor non-equal to 0", wherein classical reasoning would conflate every infinitesimal with 0), but in return you gain nilpotency (d^n = 0 for any infinitesimal d) which is often regarded as a desirable feature in informal reasoning.
One of the dangers of a non rigorous approach is not being clear about relative rates. If you're not being precise you're going to confuse people when you say eg that in the limit this triangle is a right triangle. Or look at Taylor's theorem. In different limits you can say a curve is a line, a parabola, a cubic, etc.
Anyway you've already got Apostol - if it's just calculus as such get an older edition. Modern ones have extra goodies like linear algebra but have modern text book pricing (cries softly in $150/volume).
Getting an old enough edition of Apostol's "Calculus" to not include linear algebra might be a bit challenging. Linear algebra was added to both volumes in their second editions, which came out in 1967 for volume 1 and 1969 for volume 2.
The second editions are still the current edition, so no worry that you might be missing out on something if you go with used copies. If you do want new copies (maybe you can't find used copies or they are in bad shape) take a look at international editions.
A new copy of the international edition for India from a seller in India on AbeBooks is around $15 per volume plus around $19 shipping to the US. Same contents as the US edition but paperback instead of hardback, smaller pages, and rougher paper. (International editions also often replace color with grayscale but that's not relevant in this case because Apostol does not use color)).
You can also find US sellers on AbeBooks that has imported an international edition. That will be around $34 but usually with free shipping.
Indian editions sometimes have different question sets to prevent students from using them in other countries' coursework.
They also have a hologram sticker alongside a printed warning that they are not for sale or export outside of India, Nepal and a couple of other countries.
i bought a compilers book that was an Indian edition. The paper and print quality was so bad (like smudgy) that I could not read it and I didn’t think I was particularly picky about this. Not sure if I just got unlucky or if this is generally true?
I tried and failed to find some kind of concrete methodology that they used to get to the number 30 months. I'm still waiting for quadratic algebra to make my knowledge of linear algebra obsolete.
I like the subway analogy. I'm sure I've heard some version of it before, but maybe because I was younger I didn't really get it. It really is a little strange to tell kids who have never really directed their own lives before to start doing it all of a sudden.
There is a bit of a transition period; you have a lot more choice about what classes you're going to take in college than prior to that for example, and you're to a large degree choosing your own path there. But graduating is still the end of a structured path that you've been in nearly your whole life, so I think it's always going to feel pretty abrupt subjectively despite the fact that you have been acclimated a little bit over time.
It sounds like you might be confusing different parts of the stack. NVIDIA Dynamo for example supports vLLM as the inference engine. I think you should think of something like vLLM as more akin to GUnicorn, and llm-d as an application load balancer. And I guess something like NVIDIA Dynamo would be like Django.
1. Balance / schedule incoming requests to the right backend
2. Model server replicas that can run on multiple hardware topologies
3. Prefix caching hierarchy with well-tested variants for different use cases
So it's a 3-tier architecture. The biggest difference with Dynamo is that llm-d is using the inference gateway extension - https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api-inference-ext... - which brings Kubernetes owned APIs for managing model routing, request priority and flow control, LoRA support etc.
That's a good example - I can at least answer about why it's a difference: different target user.
As I understand the Dynamo SDK it is about simplifying and helping someone get started with Dynamo on Kubernetes.
From the user set we work with (large inference deployers) that is not a high priority - they already have mature deployment opinions or a set of tools that would not compose well with something like the Dynamo SDK. Their comfort level with Kubernetes is moderate to high - either they use Kubernetes for high scale training and batch, or they are deploying to many different providers in order to get enough capacity and need a standard orchestration solution.
llm-d focuses on helping achieve efficiency dynamically at runtime based on changing traffic or workload on Kubernetes - some of the things the Dynamo SDK encodes are static and upfront and would conflict with that objective. Also, large deployers with serving typically have significant batch and training and they are looking to maximize capacity use without impacting their prod serving. That requires the orchestrator to know about both workloads at some level - which Dynamo SDK would make more difficult.
In this analogy, Dynamo is most definitely not like Django. It includes inference aware routing, KV caching, etc. -- all the stuff you would need to run a modern SOTA inference stack.
You're right, I was confusing TensorRT with Dynamo. It looks like the relationship between Dynamo and vLLM is actually the opposite of what I was thinking -- Dynamo can use vLLM as a backend rather than vice versa.
This project appears to make use of both vLLM and Inference Gateway (an official Kubernetes extension to the Gateway resource). The contributions of llm-d itself seems to mostly be a scheduling algorithm for load balancing across vLLM instances.
> I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today.