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You haven't actually answered my question, which is: what do you do with someone who has done severe, irreparable damage to society and has sociopathic feelings

You haven't actually answered my question, which is: what do you do with someone who has done severe, irreparable damage to society and has sociopathic feelings about it? It seems that you don't like continuous internal exile via imprisonment, and that you're in favor of "re-integration", but you have no real plan for what happens when re-integration proves impossible besides "create a massive, resource-intensive cycle to continuously attempt to re-educate violent criminals and then put them back in the communities they terrorized". If you put them in other places, it's exile. If you put them in prison only, it's internal exile. As I've stated, the only real options are death, exile, or re-integration into the community they came from. You have not provided another option. It doesn't matter what the frequency of "murder-by-nitwit" is; if your society experiences that phenomena, you have to handle the "nitwits", although "dangerous sociopaths" is the phrase I would use. Murder rates depend on historical epoch. Is living in a cartel-controlled area in Mexico any more or less dangerous then living on the same patch of land before the invention of the country of Mexico? It doesn't matter what era it is or whether or not your technique for controlling it is "old-fashioned". The important legal and moral practices are the ones that lead to the protection, safety, and flourishing of people who collaborate with the rest of society in good faith. You said elsewhere that "the definition of civilized behavior is defending humanity in each person, even the wickedest and worst among us". I disagree; I think the definition of civilized behavior is "the deliberate, collaborative practice of law, agriculture, and retention of wisdom via knowledge transfer". We seem to have little common ground on this idea, and as a result of our ideological differences you are willing to welcome people who have committed murder, rape, thievery, slavery, intimidation, corruption, etc. back into your community and I am not. It's also curious that you choose to paint the man I described as a "nitwit", lessening his moral culpability for what he did by alleging his stupidity. If I, an intelligent and educated man, committed the same crime, would you call me a nitwit, or would you grant me enough humanity to actually hold me responsible for my narcissism and cruelty?

rendall 4y ago
Very well done! You got me to answer back. I'm a bit upset with myself for engaging on this, to be honest. Your question is a poison pill logical fallacy. It elides essential detail to channel your interlocutors into your predetermined conclusions. These conclusions are bundled with other assumptions. You might as well ask if torture is ok when you have only 24 hours to stop a planet-busting bomb in which billions will die. It sounds very serious and sober but is fundamentally unserious. Rather than clarifying, these questions are designed, intentionally, to prompt dramatic, emotional answers. Answering "well of course in the very unlikely scenario you describe, we should [execute|torture|sentence-to-life-plus-cancer]" and then the slippery-slope chipping begins, leading inevitably to "well, sure execution can be useful to deter bread-stealing". It might help your case if you, first of all, abandon that kind of rhetorical trickery, really define your terms and then grapple with the edge cases yourself, such as: What do you mean by exile? How is that different from jail? Is exile permanent? What happens during exile? Can someone earn a living? Are they physically safe? Who is a "dangerous sociopath"? Is it someone who is predisposed to violent behavior and is completely resistant to any intervention? What interventions were tried? Medication? Gene therapy? Hormones? Threats of exile and death? What did this dangerous sociopath do? What defines her as a sociopath in this case? No expression of remorse? What if the expression of remorse is fake? What if it is real but comes off as fake? What about the case of someone who robs her adoptive parents? What if the parents had inflicted 20 years of horrific abuse? What if the abuse were sexual? What if her abuse were filmed for distribution? What if she murdered them? What if the murder were accidental, occurring in the course of the robbery? What if she asked her boyfriend to help? What if the adoptive daughter and boyfriend are themselves loving and caring parents? What to do with their children? Should the children also go into exile? Should the children also be executed, as fruit of a poisoned womb? What about false accusations? What about prosecutorial misconduct? What about the case of stealing food to feed a starving child? What about when something that you think is beneficial to society is redefined as a crime? What happens when "dangerous sociopathy" is redefined in political terms to control political opposition? What if, in order to address these issues, a well-meaning judge had only "Death. Or exile!"

rendall 4y ago

Very well done! You got me to answer back. I'm a bit upset with myself for engaging on this, to be honest. Your question is a poison pill logical fallacy. It elides essential detail to channel your interlocutors into your predetermined conclusions. These conclusions are bundled with other assumptions. You might as well ask if torture is ok when you have only 24 hours to stop a planet-busting bomb in which billions will die. It sounds very serious and sober but is fundamentally unserious. Rather than clarifying, these questions are designed, intentionally, to prompt dramatic, emotional answers. Answering "well of course in the very unlikely scenario you describe, we should [execute|torture|sentence-to-life-plus-cancer]" and then the slippery-slope chipping begins, leading inevitably to "well, sure execution can be useful to deter bread-stealing". It might help your case if you, first of all, abandon that kind of rhetorical trickery, really define your terms and then grapple with the edge cases yourself, such as: What do you mean by exile? How is that different from jail? Is exile permanent? What happens during exile? Can someone earn a living? Are they physically safe? Who is a "dangerous sociopath"? Is it someone who is predisposed to violent behavior and is completely resistant to any intervention? What interventions were tried? Medication? Gene therapy? Hormones? Threats of exile and death? What did this dangerous sociopath do? What defines her as a sociopath in this case? No expression of remorse? What if the expression of remorse is fake? What if it is real but comes off as fake? What about the case of someone who robs her adoptive parents? What if the parents had inflicted 20 years of horrific abuse? What if the abuse were sexual? What if her abuse were filmed for distribution? What if she murdered them? What if the murder were accidental, occurring in the course of the robbery? What if she asked her boyfriend to help? What if the adoptive daughter and boyfriend are themselves loving and caring parents? What to do with their children? Should the children also go into exile? Should the children also be executed, as fruit of a poisoned womb? What about false accusations? What about prosecutorial misconduct? What about the case of stealing food to feed a starving child? What about when something that you think is beneficial to society is redefined as a crime? What happens when "dangerous sociopathy" is redefined in political terms to control political opposition? What if, in order to address these issues, a well-meaning judge had only "Death. Or exile!"