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Right, but that's why I said the sentencing part because to the best of my knowledge one doesn't become "more unlawful" in either case, rather if found guilty o

Right, but that's why I said the sentencing part because to the best of my knowledge one doesn't become "more unlawful" in either case, rather if found guilty of the "lesser" of the two evils(?) you are unlikely to get capital punishment. The nuance is in the severity, not the crime Err, having written that out I now guess there is also some social component to it: you may still be received at a party if convicted of manslaughter but maybe not murder so we need different words to describe the act for purposes outside of the legal system

dghlsakjg 2y ago
I mean… they represent two very different acts, albeit with the same outcome. It makes sense that we use different words for it. We even draw the distinction between degrees of murder since sitting down and planning a murder in cold blood (murder in the first degree) is far different than a road rage incident with a gun (murder 2) which is different still than a shove in a bar where someone falls down and hits their head and dies (manslaughter). Hell, some places even distinguish between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. The point is that all these words have meaning, and we deeply care about the nuance.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  Apologies, I wasn't trying to say "English can get bent for having nuance" I was speaking about them from a legal point of view, and (again) I emphasize that based on your examples the difference matters solely in sentencing not "how illegal" they are To circle back to the "if law were programming" idea, I think of all the nuances you cited as belonging in any "then" clauses, not the "if" clauses of legalese if made_dead: # determine punishment if premeditated: ... elif road_rage and crime_scene.contains({"gun"}): # a kind of very, very slightly premeditation ... else: # and here one can get into [in]voluntary made dead because (as I ham-fistedly tried to get at) there are very, very few cases in the law where one human can legally end the life of another human so it's silly to try and split hairs about "why" except for how much revenge(?) society wants to extract from them for the wrongdoing

dghlsakjg 2y ago

I mean… they represent two very different acts, albeit with the same outcome. It makes sense that we use different words for it. We even draw the distinction between degrees of murder since sitting down and planning a murder in cold blood (murder in the first degree) is far different than a road rage incident with a gun (murder 2) which is different still than a shove in a bar where someone falls down and hits their head and dies (manslaughter). Hell, some places even distinguish between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. The point is that all these words have meaning, and we deeply care about the nuance.

mdaniel 2y ago
Apologies, I wasn't trying to say "English can get bent for having nuance" I was speaking about them from a legal point of view, and (again) I emphasize that based on your examples the difference matters solely in sentencing not "how illegal" they are To circle back to the "if law were programming" idea, I think of all the nuances you cited as belonging in any "then" clauses, not the "if" clauses of legalese if made_dead: # determine punishment if premeditated: ... elif road_rage and crime_scene.contains({"gun"}): # a kind of very, very slightly premeditation ... else: # and here one can get into [in]voluntary made dead because (as I ham-fistedly tried to get at) there are very, very few cases in the law where one human can legally end the life of another human so it's silly to try and split hairs about "why" except for how much revenge(?) society wants to extract from them for the wrongdoing