5 ms·

This is preposterous. Did you ever go on the Silk Road? It was very clearly a large marketplace of nearly only illegal items (drugs, guns, etc). Your belief in

This is preposterous. Did you ever go on the Silk Road? It was very clearly a large marketplace of nearly only illegal items (drugs, guns, etc). Your belief in the law doesn’t change its status. What he did was very illegal, with all use cases to support illegal activity. This wasn’t about possession for an individual, it was a mechanism for large scale distribution of illegal products. It’s apples and oranges to compare the two.

sneak 4y ago
Something being illegal doesn't make that thing wrong.
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  Indeed. Consider the inverse situation: Imagine if Catholics who tithe were investigated, prosecuted, and convicted by the same standards. You’d have to imagine it because while many of us know about the child sexual assault scandals in the Catholic Church, those that tithe certainly should and usually do know. They’re generally understood to be paying money for the good parts of the Church and not the obviously illegal criminal conspiracies protected and promulgated by the Church. So while it’s probably illegal, it’s probably not directly wrong and certainly isn’t being treated as a serious criminal conspiracy normally would be. Meanwhile for making a website for an illicit market that explicitly sought to reduce violence between people who would otherwise buy or sell their drugs in a situation classically prone to violence — big U received not one but two life sentences. America has some extremely strange investigation, prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration priorities. One can reasonably call them absurd and unjust, but many Americans will simply tell you that he deserves what he gets. They don’t remark if the rest of us deserve it as well. We are all poorer for this kind of a railroading.
- dcow 4y ago
  As someone who's generally pretty morally relative, and abstractly, I tend to agree. But you miss the point. Call actions what you want but they will land you in jail if you are a citizen of a society which considers them wrong and you are caught performing them. What's interesting in the US is that we acknowledge this limitation of the law and have an ethical escape hatch. The law does not convict you, a jury of your peers does. And they can decide what you did is not wrong even though the law says it's not allowed. Unfortunately (for sympathizers and for your argument in this context) in this case the jury very much decided that the evidence presented in court proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions, which the law says are not allowed, were confirmed as wrong (the law applied correctly) and subsequently worthy of punishment. So arguing from a stance of moral relativism is a logical non sequitur and simply not relevant. If you don't think DPR actions were wrong go change the law or somehow move him to your society where he's a hero. Don't pine over how terrible this man's life now is because "he was just a drug lord on the digital streets and didn't technically kill anybody and people use facebook to sell drugs too see this guy is no worse than zuck and and who says breaking laws is even wrong anyway???".
  - kragen 4y ago
    - dcow 4y ago
      I actually wrote up a detailed response to your original comment but you appear to not be arguing in good faith after the addition of your last 3 paragraphs. Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you do you're not interested in a real rebuttal and have opted instead for the word soup let's feed it to GPT at best call it a fallacy but in reality just some lame snide attempt at internet points. All I'll say is this: I originally replied to sneak who rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism and I explained that when you live in a society your ethics are governed to some extent by your peers. So, while you can believe and in large part do whatever you want, illegal actions don't somehow become ethical because you found a few people who happen to be interested in challenging the moral framework behind the laws in question. I find it quite useless and unproductive to bring such a juvenile response to a serious discussion because it takes things to a place where you can just say whatever you want and be right, as evidenced by your inclusion of GPT-2.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - worik 4y ago
        > rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism It could be called "moral relativism". But I do not think it really is. The moral content of my actions is entirely independent of the legality of my actions. There is correlation, a lot of bad things and few good things are illegal. But legality does not imply good and vise versa.
        dcow 4y ago
        I understand that. My argument is that, practically, we're talking about the past actions of a certain individual within a certain legal context on a social scale where societal justice has already been served so you necessarily have to tie the two together otherwise society falls apart. What DPR did is not allowed by the laws of the land in which he did it. Therefore it is logical to assert that his actions are unwanted in that society. It's a bad idea to do illegal things and get caught. The semantics of it doesn't change the principle.
kragen 4y ago
A system where an unaccountable pseudonymous warlord tries to hire nonexistent hitmen to kill people who steal from him isn't a very good system, but it's better than the system we have, where the US imprisons 2 million people, where heroin addicts die of fentanyl overdoses, and where at unpredictable times those addicts are forced into agonizing withdrawal when their dealers are arrested. The undisputed fact that DSR existed to help people do all kinds of illegal things doesn't make those things wrong, and it doesn't make it bad for DSR to have helped them do those things. Fortunately, I wasn't a user, but as I understand it, DSR dramatically reduced the violence and risk of contamination involved in illegal drug use—the next best thing to actual full legalization of those drugs. The US's drug laws are morally utterly indefensible, and the fact that DSR was violating them on a massive scale is something to be proud of, not ashamed of.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  You are absolutely correct. The doublethink is real.
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  Your comment is my favorite in the entire discussion because you don’t trip over the supposed moral flaws in his character. I appreciate that you focus on why the state tried to entrap (or frame him if you want to assume the claims are totally baseless) him with murder for hire charges in the first place. I am sorry I have only one upvote to give Kragen.
- sneak 4y ago
  DPR didn't hire, or attempt to hire, anyone to kill anyone. This was a fabrication by those prosecuting him to turn a set of exclusively nonviolent offenses into (supposedly) violent ones.
  - kragen 4y ago
    While that's a plausible possibility, you seem to be stating it as a definite fact, which doesn't seem justifiable on the basis of the public evidence. What do you know that isn't public?

sneak 4y ago

Something being illegal doesn't make that thing wrong.

throwaway654329 4y ago
Indeed. Consider the inverse situation: Imagine if Catholics who tithe were investigated, prosecuted, and convicted by the same standards. You’d have to imagine it because while many of us know about the child sexual assault scandals in the Catholic Church, those that tithe certainly should and usually do know. They’re generally understood to be paying money for the good parts of the Church and not the obviously illegal criminal conspiracies protected and promulgated by the Church. So while it’s probably illegal, it’s probably not directly wrong and certainly isn’t being treated as a serious criminal conspiracy normally would be. Meanwhile for making a website for an illicit market that explicitly sought to reduce violence between people who would otherwise buy or sell their drugs in a situation classically prone to violence — big U received not one but two life sentences. America has some extremely strange investigation, prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration priorities. One can reasonably call them absurd and unjust, but many Americans will simply tell you that he deserves what he gets. They don’t remark if the rest of us deserve it as well. We are all poorer for this kind of a railroading.
dcow 4y ago
As someone who's generally pretty morally relative, and abstractly, I tend to agree. But you miss the point. Call actions what you want but they will land you in jail if you are a citizen of a society which considers them wrong and you are caught performing them. What's interesting in the US is that we acknowledge this limitation of the law and have an ethical escape hatch. The law does not convict you, a jury of your peers does. And they can decide what you did is not wrong even though the law says it's not allowed. Unfortunately (for sympathizers and for your argument in this context) in this case the jury very much decided that the evidence presented in court proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions, which the law says are not allowed, were confirmed as wrong (the law applied correctly) and subsequently worthy of punishment. So arguing from a stance of moral relativism is a logical non sequitur and simply not relevant. If you don't think DPR actions were wrong go change the law or somehow move him to your society where he's a hero. Don't pine over how terrible this man's life now is because "he was just a drug lord on the digital streets and didn't technically kill anybody and people use facebook to sell drugs too see this guy is no worse than zuck and and who says breaking laws is even wrong anyway???".
- kragen 4y ago
  - dcow 4y ago
    I actually wrote up a detailed response to your original comment but you appear to not be arguing in good faith after the addition of your last 3 paragraphs. Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you do you're not interested in a real rebuttal and have opted instead for the word soup let's feed it to GPT at best call it a fallacy but in reality just some lame snide attempt at internet points. All I'll say is this: I originally replied to sneak who rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism and I explained that when you live in a society your ethics are governed to some extent by your peers. So, while you can believe and in large part do whatever you want, illegal actions don't somehow become ethical because you found a few people who happen to be interested in challenging the moral framework behind the laws in question. I find it quite useless and unproductive to bring such a juvenile response to a serious discussion because it takes things to a place where you can just say whatever you want and be right, as evidenced by your inclusion of GPT-2.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - worik 4y ago
      > rhetorically questioned whether illegal actions are always wrong. That's called moral relativism It could be called "moral relativism". But I do not think it really is. The moral content of my actions is entirely independent of the legality of my actions. There is correlation, a lot of bad things and few good things are illegal. But legality does not imply good and vise versa.
      - dcow 4y ago
        I understand that. My argument is that, practically, we're talking about the past actions of a certain individual within a certain legal context on a social scale where societal justice has already been served so you necessarily have to tie the two together otherwise society falls apart. What DPR did is not allowed by the laws of the land in which he did it. Therefore it is logical to assert that his actions are unwanted in that society. It's a bad idea to do illegal things and get caught. The semantics of it doesn't change the principle.

kragen 4y ago

A system where an unaccountable pseudonymous warlord tries to hire nonexistent hitmen to kill people who steal from him isn't a very good system, but it's better than the system we have, where the US imprisons 2 million people, where heroin addicts die of fentanyl overdoses, and where at unpredictable times those addicts are forced into agonizing withdrawal when their dealers are arrested. The undisputed fact that DSR existed to help people do all kinds of illegal things doesn't make those things wrong, and it doesn't make it bad for DSR to have helped them do those things. Fortunately, I wasn't a user, but as I understand it, DSR dramatically reduced the violence and risk of contamination involved in illegal drug use—the next best thing to actual full legalization of those drugs. The US's drug laws are morally utterly indefensible, and the fact that DSR was violating them on a massive scale is something to be proud of, not ashamed of.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
You are absolutely correct. The doublethink is real.
throwaway654329 4y ago
Your comment is my favorite in the entire discussion because you don’t trip over the supposed moral flaws in his character. I appreciate that you focus on why the state tried to entrap (or frame him if you want to assume the claims are totally baseless) him with murder for hire charges in the first place. I am sorry I have only one upvote to give Kragen.
sneak 4y ago
DPR didn't hire, or attempt to hire, anyone to kill anyone. This was a fabrication by those prosecuting him to turn a set of exclusively nonviolent offenses into (supposedly) violent ones.
- kragen 4y ago
  While that's a plausible possibility, you seem to be stating it as a definite fact, which doesn't seem justifiable on the basis of the public evidence. What do you know that isn't public?