3 ms·

Feels weird to get into a high-school debate about capital punishment here, but in essence: (a) Sometimes the wrong people get convicted. In this context, irre

by gmac 3y ago

Feels weird to get into a high-school debate about capital punishment here, but in essence: (a) Sometimes the wrong people get convicted. In this context, irreversible punishments suck. (b) “We’re going to kill you because killing people is wrong” is a weird look.

xvector 3y ago
(a) Sometimes the wrong people get put in prison or solitary confinement for life too, which is effectively decades-long torture. It is arbitrary to draw the line at the death penalty, which generally causes less suffering. (Read statements from prisoners in lifelong solitary confinement.) (b) It's not. Killing people that are evil is fine. Killing babies is wrong. You are intentionally simplifying the moral argument here to "killing people is wrong."
- jdietrich 3y ago
  >which is effectively decades-long torture Maybe don't make prisons so awful that they constitute torture? That's very much a thing that we know how to do. >Killing people that are evil is fine. Who gets to decide what is evil? What happens when the definition of evil changes? Practically every genocide in history has been justified by that logic - they are evil, therefore we are justified in killing them. Other than vengeance, there is little benefit to state-sanctioned killing for the purposes of punishment; all state-sanctioned killing carries the risk of justifying other kinds of state-sanctioned killing, by removing the simple and clear moral foundation of what a legitimate state can or cannot do.
lupusreal 3y ago
Killing innocent people is wrong, killing murderers is good. Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them.
- macintux 3y ago
  > Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them. There are many examples of accused murderers who received fair trials, were convicted, and yet were still innocent.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    As 'xvector points out, the alternative punishment - like long sentences in high-security facilities - can, in practice, be much, much worse. This is a theory vs. practice thing - theory could say that "there's always a chance", but actual numbers will say that the country is just making convicts - guilty and innocent alike - spend decades being tortured.
    - macintux 3y ago
      It's far more likely that we can fix prisons than we can fix the judicial system to guarantee that only the guilty are convicted.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Corporate crimes tend to be well documented. Even the communist Chinese can get these sort of convictions right. They did good work killing those bastards.

by gmac 3y ago

xvector 3y ago

(a) Sometimes the wrong people get put in prison or solitary confinement for life too, which is effectively decades-long torture. It is arbitrary to draw the line at the death penalty, which generally causes less suffering. (Read statements from prisoners in lifelong solitary confinement.) (b) It's not. Killing people that are evil is fine. Killing babies is wrong. You are intentionally simplifying the moral argument here to "killing people is wrong."

jdietrich 3y ago
>which is effectively decades-long torture Maybe don't make prisons so awful that they constitute torture? That's very much a thing that we know how to do. >Killing people that are evil is fine. Who gets to decide what is evil? What happens when the definition of evil changes? Practically every genocide in history has been justified by that logic - they are evil, therefore we are justified in killing them. Other than vengeance, there is little benefit to state-sanctioned killing for the purposes of punishment; all state-sanctioned killing carries the risk of justifying other kinds of state-sanctioned killing, by removing the simple and clear moral foundation of what a legitimate state can or cannot do.

lupusreal 3y ago

Killing innocent people is wrong, killing murderers is good. Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them.

macintux 3y ago
> Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them. There are many examples of accused murderers who received fair trials, were convicted, and yet were still innocent.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  As 'xvector points out, the alternative punishment - like long sentences in high-security facilities - can, in practice, be much, much worse. This is a theory vs. practice thing - theory could say that "there's always a chance", but actual numbers will say that the country is just making convicts - guilty and innocent alike - spend decades being tortured.
  - macintux 3y ago
    It's far more likely that we can fix prisons than we can fix the judicial system to guarantee that only the guilty are convicted.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Corporate crimes tend to be well documented. Even the communist Chinese can get these sort of convictions right. They did good work killing those bastards.