> I'm genuinely at a loss for how this doesn't make sense

I'm really not trying to be mean or making charged comments in any of the following, I apologize if it reads that way. I really appreciate your investment in this thread, it wasn't a driveby, you mean what you're saying, you're not trying to score points AFAICT. I think working through my discomfort is the best way to pay that forward. I save the most concise / assuming / judgey version of this for the end of the post.

There's just something very...off....with the whole thing. Like it reads like an intellectual exercise, I get the same vibe as watching someone work really really hard to make a philosophical argument to stir conversation.

You have these absolutes and logical atoms that seem straightforward and correct, but they're handwaving away a whole field and centuries of precedent.

There's this shuttling back and forth between wide scope and narrow scope thats really hard to engage with. Like, yes, we know "crime" is a nominal thing. My mind immediately jumps to "yes, calling things 'bad' is nominal and subjective" ---

Then, my mind transports me back to my sophomore year english class where someone starts free-associating about how nothing can be 100% confirmed to be real. I'm frustrated there, because, yes, that's true but doesn't shed any light, there's nothing to be gained from mining that vein, and doesn't map to how people have to engage with the world day to day.

You also have a very hard time accepting that this isn't reducible down to "unlawful search and seizure via 4th amendment violation" --- I don't mean to be aggressive, here: after a day and a lot of your thoughts, I still genuinely don't know if you understand that these things have ambiguities and that's why there's a whole industry around them.

I think we agree on:

- calling things bad is subjective.

- similarly, calling things "crimes" is subjective, and part of that is contextual (ex. we allow some people to do some things, but not others)

Then from there, I bet you'd agree to:

- therefore, we need some sort of dispute process to sort these things out

- lets say that's called the current legal system

Then from there, it feels like you're asking us to agree to:

- if something is declared judged to be bad moving forward, it is okay to punish those who did the bad thing in the past, no matter the circumstances

- now lets apply that specifically:

- if cops did a thing that's not allowed moving forward, then it is a moral imperative for the cops to drop every case that involved doing the thing that's not allowed moving forward

That's just way too far for anyone who isn't doing a philosophical exercise.

ex. Miranda v. Arizona established what we call "Miranda rights" -- now that a judge says there's a specific incantation to recite that courts will accept as proof criminals were advised of their rights. Are all cases where the Miranda rights were not read suddenly dropped? No, that'd be laughable, no society would tolerate the legal system dropping every case where someone was arrested in that scenario.

The most concise thing I can say, which unfortunately is judgemental due to the conciseness, is the whole thing reeks of an engineering mind expecting their understanding of the law to be an absolute, somehow overlooking that the whole point of the legal system above entry-level courts is there are no absolutes. From there, lets say you know that and accept that, because that's very likely. Then what happens with the Miranda rights thing? That's one of countless examples, but it's useful because A) I'm sure you grok Miranda Rights if you're in USA B) the principles you're espousing being applied there would lead to an obviously unacceptable outcome, so if your instinct is to say "yeah, do it, free everyone who talked to the cops!" I know you're just killing time doing a thought exercise --- which I do sometimes too! Not judgement.