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By god, is the human race so savage that we resort to killing so quickly. This is a life, something some people would consider priceless. Not something you can

By god, is the human race so savage that we resort to killing so quickly. This is a life, something some people would consider priceless. Not something you can view arithmetically, calculating the hours in damage caused versus somebody's time left.

Crito 13y ago
Do we actually think that a human life is priceless, or is that just something that we say that we think to make ourselves feel good about ourselves? We regularly put a price on human life in civil cases, and that price always seems to be finite and fairly low.
- trekky1700 13y ago
  Which is a truly disparaging fact, while a human life may not be priceless, putting a value on it draws a very interesting ethical line in the sand. I agree with you, but I would say the life of any human should be worth a hell of a lot and the idea of taking one should be met with the utmost seriousness and avoided at all costs. The last thing this planet needs is more death and killing.
  - Crito 13y ago
    I can't disagree with any of that.
- barbs 13y ago
  Related blog post: http://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html By the way, very insightful discussion here!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- Crito 13y ago
  I don't think that attempting to maximize suffering is a good idea. If you go down that path, then finding creative ways to lawyer our way around "cruel and unusual" will become the name of the game (say for example, claiming that a plainly cruel punishment is acceptable so long as we do it a lot, making it not unusual. This has been argued before on HN...[0]) I honestly find the suggestion that we should use life imprisonment instead of execution because it is more cruel to be far more disturbing than suggestions that we should just use execution. You are proposing that we do something that you consider more cruel then execution... I'm not good with that. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5951315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5951315
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
msandford 13y ago
If taking a life is savage, how much more savage is it to systematically, wrongly deny people their freedom for the sake of promotions? Is that any less barbaric than denying people their freedom because some people needed their labor in order to enjoy comfortable lives? When that used to happen it was called slavery and from what I can tell it's been abolished worldwide (or nearly so) because we've mostly agreed it's savage and barbaric and the opposite of civilized. Denying people their freedom through a fair court system is also kind-of barbaric since violence or the threat thereof is what holds the system together. But it's supposed to be "justice" in that there's a fair trial and the hope is that guilty people are properly denied their freedom and innocent ones are not. Obviously there are false positives and false negatives but everyone is supposed to act in good faith to ensure that there aren't systematic biases. This person introduced a systematic bias which has wrongly denied people their freedom. If she had kidnapped ~600 Americans for 1.5 years she'd be called a terrorist. That's precisely what some Iranian folks who did that to American embassy workers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis How is this so vastly different?
- FreezerburnV 13y ago
  On kind of a tangent to the actual topic of the article being discussed, but I saw you mention how you think slavery has been abolished worldwide. I'd like to correct that thinking and let you know that slavery is still a very active thing, with millions of slaves around the globe, and people being captured even in the USA as sex slaves to be sold around the globe. The nearest count I know is at least 27 million people still exist as slaves. http://enditmovement.com/ http://enditmovement.com/
  - Crito 13y ago
    And perhaps more to the point, the 13th Amendment explicitly leaves slavery on the table for those convicted of a crime: "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Does this mean that plainly barbaric things may be justifiably used as punishments? Does this perhaps suggest the possibility that "killing a man", and "killing a man after convicting him of a crime" are morally distinct? Or does this mean that a serious revamp of how we view and run our justice system is long overdue?

Crito 13y ago

Do we actually think that a human life is priceless, or is that just something that we say that we think to make ourselves feel good about ourselves? We regularly put a price on human life in civil cases, and that price always seems to be finite and fairly low.

trekky1700 13y ago
Which is a truly disparaging fact, while a human life may not be priceless, putting a value on it draws a very interesting ethical line in the sand. I agree with you, but I would say the life of any human should be worth a hell of a lot and the idea of taking one should be met with the utmost seriousness and avoided at all costs. The last thing this planet needs is more death and killing.
- Crito 13y ago
  I can't disagree with any of that.
barbs 13y ago
Related blog post: http://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html By the way, very insightful discussion here!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Crito 13y ago
I don't think that attempting to maximize suffering is a good idea. If you go down that path, then finding creative ways to lawyer our way around "cruel and unusual" will become the name of the game (say for example, claiming that a plainly cruel punishment is acceptable so long as we do it a lot, making it not unusual. This has been argued before on HN...[0]) I honestly find the suggestion that we should use life imprisonment instead of execution because it is more cruel to be far more disturbing than suggestions that we should just use execution. You are proposing that we do something that you consider more cruel then execution... I'm not good with that. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5951315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5951315

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

msandford 13y ago

If taking a life is savage, how much more savage is it to systematically, wrongly deny people their freedom for the sake of promotions? Is that any less barbaric than denying people their freedom because some people needed their labor in order to enjoy comfortable lives? When that used to happen it was called slavery and from what I can tell it's been abolished worldwide (or nearly so) because we've mostly agreed it's savage and barbaric and the opposite of civilized. Denying people their freedom through a fair court system is also kind-of barbaric since violence or the threat thereof is what holds the system together. But it's supposed to be "justice" in that there's a fair trial and the hope is that guilty people are properly denied their freedom and innocent ones are not. Obviously there are false positives and false negatives but everyone is supposed to act in good faith to ensure that there aren't systematic biases. This person introduced a systematic bias which has wrongly denied people their freedom. If she had kidnapped ~600 Americans for 1.5 years she'd be called a terrorist. That's precisely what some Iranian folks who did that to American embassy workers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis How is this so vastly different?

FreezerburnV 13y ago
On kind of a tangent to the actual topic of the article being discussed, but I saw you mention how you think slavery has been abolished worldwide. I'd like to correct that thinking and let you know that slavery is still a very active thing, with millions of slaves around the globe, and people being captured even in the USA as sex slaves to be sold around the globe. The nearest count I know is at least 27 million people still exist as slaves. http://enditmovement.com/ http://enditmovement.com/
- Crito 13y ago
  And perhaps more to the point, the 13th Amendment explicitly leaves slavery on the table for those convicted of a crime: "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Does this mean that plainly barbaric things may be justifiably used as punishments? Does this perhaps suggest the possibility that "killing a man", and "killing a man after convicting him of a crime" are morally distinct? Or does this mean that a serious revamp of how we view and run our justice system is long overdue?