Lets talk about how fucked up and shitty the Death Penalty is - The Something Awful Forums

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Lets talk about how fucked up and shitty the Death Penalty is

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Dog Fat Man Chaser posted:

Ok, I'm getting a little frustrated with your interpretation of Kant. You're, ironically, trying to let there be exceptions to rules here, which isn't how the CI works; you're misunderstanding the categorical imperative and maxims here. The CI doesn't let you permit certain circumstances that would otherwise be forbidden. Basically, if you're attaching an "if" to it, it's not a maxim anymore. "You can kill people" would be a maxim. "You can kill people IF they do X, Y, or Z" isn't. "You can steal" would be a maxim, "You can steal IF you're hungry" isn't. Either an act is ok, or it isn't, and there's not a set of circumstances that suddenly makes an otherwise forbidden thing permissible. Either it's morally permissible to kill people, or it isn't. If you create the maxim of "Murderers can be killed," you're no longer universalizing. Try it out by swapping other people in there. "Black people can be killed." "Women can be killed." "Jaywalkers can be killed." The problem becomes obvious.

I don't know anything about Kant, but this doesn't make any sense. Presuming you believe that locking up criminals is acceptable, but that locking up random innocent people isn't use whatever it is that allows you to make that distinction to justify killing people who have committed murder, and not other people.

Also why do you have to generalize from murderers to people, but not from people to all life? There's definitely categories of life everyone thinks can be killed, there's got to be some sort of mechanism that lets us say "Things in this group should be killed, things in that group shouldn't, things in that group are permissible to kill".

quote:

Let's we take it further, the categorical imperative absolutely forbids killing. "It is permissible to kill" is absolutely not universalizable. The idea of killing relies on people being alive. If killing were universalized, there would be no one left to kill, and so the idea negates itself.

Again, we can't put everyone in society in prison, that would no longer be a functioning society, but we've still got prison.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2017 21:59

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:51

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

stone cold posted:

There is no such thing as absolute certainty, is there?

So, in no cases should anybody be executed, sounds good to me.

This is really not persuasive to me. I don't think we should have a death penalty, but it can't be because capital-t Truth doesn't exist. Innocent people die in prison (for reasons unrelated to capital punishment), we can't ever be sure any sort of penalty won't effectively be a death sentence, and we can't be sure anyone receiving a penalty is guilty of the crime they've been convicted of. If the standard you're pushing requires absolute certainty then I don't see how society can function.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 05:32

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

stone cold posted:

I have asked many questions unanswered ITT and outlined many reasons why I'm opposed to the death penalty, but I highly recommend you read the post I responded to which stated:

That is a statement of absolute certainty which renders itself both useless and specious. Hence, my response.

If absolute certainty did exist would that change your opinion?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 05:36

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

stone cold posted:

No

Then why the gently caress are you bothering to argue about absolute certainty in the death penalty thread if you can win the argument even in the presence of absolute certainty?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 05:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

stone cold posted:

If you would again read the original post to which I was responding:

This is how it came up. I'm not sure you saw it in the previous post? But that's what I had responded to. This is the context in which absolute certainty had come up? Did you miss that?

Is this post literally just acknowledging you're attempting to score points on technical details rather than present a unified framework that could convince people who disagree with you?
Edit:
Like I understand how you came up with it, I'm asking why you posted it.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 05:53

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

stone cold posted:

This is a post acknowledging that on forums we typically respond to other posts and do not post in a vacuum? I don't get what your problem is, but all I did was respond to hakimashou pointing out how stupid the idea of absolute certainty of guilt is, and I feel like you're misreading the exchange entirely. I don't quite think you understand what happened but hakimashou posted:

To which I responded:

I hope this matter is clarified, as I think your missing of the point must be rather tedious for others to read! On the other hand, I certainly hope that any ambiguities were cleared up.

I suppose my problem is that you didn't point out how the stupid the idea of absolute certainty of guilt is. They asserted it existed, you asserted it doesn't, neither of you bothered to define their terms or make an effort to show they were right or the other person was wrong. If you're attempting to convince people that think absolute certainty does, sometimes, exist, you are doing a complete poo poo job at it. In this particular case, it turns out you're right, but I have no clue why you would think someone who disagreed with you could read your post and be convinced you're right.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 06:02

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Mr Toes posted:

I feel that Ian Hislop sums up my view pretty well:

https://youtu.be/_DrsVhzbLzU

For you to use the death penalty, you must have perfect proof. You can't get perfect proof therefore you cannot use the death penalty because you will inevitably kill innocent people which is itself murder.

I'm not particularly worried about the morality or hypotheticals at the moment because we don't live in a hypothetical world, so until you can get Ultra Proof it's just so much window dressing.

(Keep in mind, too, that even if you point out cases where people where totally guilty, massive miscarriages of justice are totally a thing).

Why the double standard? There's a bunch of activities the government does which definitely kill innocent people sometimes. I've never heard anyone argue that the government either needs to acquire perfect knowledge, or Ultra Proof, whatever we call it, that what it's doing won't kill an innocent or not perform the activity for anything else. There's trade offs certainly. The fact that the police occasionally murder innocent people doesn't mean we should throw out the concept of patrols. And very arguably the innocent person murder rate of the death penalty is high enough to not justify whatever benefit people think it has (very arguably it actually has no benefit, but if you thought that you wouldn't need to argue about standards of proof). But I don't see why the government needs to meet an impossible standard in whether an innocent person dies as a result of the death penalty versus any other activity that can foreseeably kill innocent people.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 22:39

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Mr Toes posted:

That was a bit rambly, but the tl;dr is that the difference between those cases and someone in court is that people are (supposedly) having to act immediately to prevent further harm -stopping a gunman / terrorist / what have you. Once someone is caught and in prison, that immediate threat is gone, so why kill them?

This is true some of the time, but not all of the time (or even most of the time). Driving a car has inherent risk to it. Anytime the government directs someone to drive from point A to point B it knows for a fact that there is some risk an innocent person will die as a result of that action. Government employees routinely drive cars without an immediate need to prevent further harm. I'd argue that, in general, the benefit of that car trips outweighs the risk of innocent loss of life, but we're still accepting the fact that the government does engage in a risk analysis that innocents might die with imperfect information.

Fruit Smoothies posted:

I think the difference here, is there isn't really a better system of doing police patrols; accidents and mistakes will happen. However, there is a better way of handling justice, and that is to not use the death penalty.

I've been saying all along that it's pretty easy to argue that the death penalty is bad policy compared to alternatives. I've been arguing that the "We can only have the death penalty if we have impossibly perfect information, because any amount of innocent deaths is intolerable" argument sucks because it doesn't map to any other policy.

Ytlaya posted:

But this is actually basically the case, and that is why we should try to compromise by not giving punishments that are either inhumane or that can't be undone (such as death). Our system is set up under the assumption that being found guilty isn't necessarily proof that someone did the crime. This is why the appeals process exists.

This doesn't make any sense to me. You can't undo prison time. You can't undo missing your kid's birthday. I can let you out of prison, I can give you money, but in no sense is the punishment undone. You can't even really undo fines. You can't get reimbursed with interest, but who knows what opportunities you've missed between being fined and being reimbursed. The arrow of time only points in one way, and committing to punishments that can be undone is committing to no punishments.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 18:57

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WampaLord posted:

Yea but that person is now alive and free, wouldn't it be nice to be able to offer that instead of a "oops, we killed ya."

I've said many time it's easy to argue the death penalty has outcomes worse than other options, it just doesn't have a property of non-undoableness that other punishments lack.

Ytlaya posted:

That's why I said it's a compromise. There are downsides no matter what, but at least you can make some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost if they're imprisoned and later found innocent.

edit: And there are actual tangible downsides to never imprisoning people, whereas the same isn't true for never giving them the death penalty, so the "pros" side of the equation doesn't really exist with the death penalty in the same way it does with imprisonment/fines/whatever.

Eh, "some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost" looks pretty squishy to me. Giving money to a dead person's family looks like some sort of attempt to compensate someone to me, and it's a thing our legal system does already. I think you need a rigorous definition of compensate if you want to rule out the death penalty based on our ability to compensate wrongly killed innocents.

That said, if you think the death penalty is strictly worse than other options than why bother to argue about burden of proof or undoableness? You can just say that it's a worse option. I think it's really silly people talk about abstract properties of the death penalty instead of what it actually does.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 19:20

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WampaLord posted:

I do as well, so why is there so much emphasis on the "justice" of it from its proponents?

Presumably because they believe in retributive justice systems, but I don't know why you're asking me.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 19:29

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

tin can made man posted:

Is it morally wrong to punitively rape sexual predators? Should private citizens be able to lobby to volunteer to be a state-sanctioned Rapist in the way they can for Executioner?

This style of argument always seems bad to me. What do you do if they just say "Yeah"? It's already apparent there's some sort of irreconcilable different in moral systems between you two, it's not difficult to double down, and it's not like that person has a constituency they need to worry about offending. Forcing people into more consistent and more morally offensive positions just doesn't seem smart.

quote:

If you litter or speed, is it the obligation of the state to enter your home and start throwing garbage around or move around your house in ways that could potentially be hazardous for you and its inhabitants? Why do all other crimes receive an abstracted punishment but murder receives a literal, reactive one?

It seems probably really expensive and annoying to have a complete specialized list of reciprocal punishments, the question you're supposed to be asking is would it be moral for the state to throw a bunch of trash into litter bugs' houses, and I think the answer to that is "Yeah, but it seems dumb".

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 19:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Peachfart posted:

The point of the argument is to show how absurd 'an eye for an eye' style punishments are.

But it doesn't do that, it just says "Are you willing to double down y/n?". I don't think retributive justice is good, but "Have you considered that retributive justice involves making retributions against people!?" can't be an effective argument.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 20:40

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ogmius815 posted:

Like all arguments, the point is not to persuade the other party, but to persuade bystanders. It works because if they double down they and by extension their reasoning look bad.

Liking retributive justice isn't bad reasoning anymore than liking vegemite is bad reasoning. Doubling down is the consistent position for those people. Like maybe you can get the bad guys to say something sufficiently horrible that onlookers will have an emotional reaction, but the hypothetical onlookers we're talking about are waffling on "Should the state kill people who present no immediate danger to anyone whatsoever?", so that seems unlikely to me. What seems more likely is our hypothetical onlookers is going to think "This idiot can't even understand and address the basic tenets of hakimashou's philosophy and is plainly trying to provoke an emotional reaction to score rhetorical points rather than discuss the actual issue at hand."

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 23:31

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VitalSigns posted:

The number of people who believe in corrective rape is obviously much smaller than the number who agree with retributive justice arguments for the death penalty. Following that chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion and arriving at corrective rape will conceivably get at least some number of them to reconsider the assumptions that lead us to that abhorrent conclusion.

Yeah, I'm going to stop you at "obviously", this isn't obvious at all. I have no clue how support for the death penalty breaks down by justification. Personally I think the most common one I see is families shouldn't have to live with knowing their loved one's killer is still alive, which I don't think slots cleanly into any theory of justice system. To the extent it is retributive, it avoids the "Well do you also want corrective rape?" question, because the families of rape victims can presumably get by knowing the rapist is possibly un-raped.

Ignoring we've got no data on how many people actually follow retributive justice, we've also got no data on how many people think corrective rape is good, and I don't know why you think that number is small. At a minimum, at a societal level, there's clearly no desire to even attempt to reduce how much rape happens in prison. Media is very casual about it as though it's just a price of doing business, and there's lots of jokes that would be frowned upon in other contexts.

For all the data you've presented, maybe most people will see "Do you also think rapists should be raped by the state" and think "Hell, yeah!".

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 00:11

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VitalSigns posted:

The people who don't agree with haki's defense of the death penalty are irrelevant because they already don't agree with him. The argument obviously is only relevant to people who agree with him.

Sure, I'm just saying we don't know what that number is, so claiming that an unknown number of people that X is obviously smaller than an unknown number of people that Y is dumb. Maybe there are less Xers than Yers, but it's not obvious at all.

quote:

As for the risk that I will convince some people to be okay with retributive rape: some people already do and arguments for this exist already. The number of hypothetical people who like the death penalty and are so close to saying "hell yeah" to retributive rape that one post from me will tip them over the edge, but who have somehow never and will never encounter a pro-rape-jail argument anywhere else is probably exactly zero because that is an absurd set of circumstances.

I agree it's an absurd set of circumstances, but they're absurd because you created them to be absurd and not at all reflect how human beings act. Why do you only care if your post pushes people over the edge instead of just being one post in a series of discussion about rape punishments for rapists that normalizes the idea?

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 00:36

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VitalSigns posted:

The logical conclusion of what you're saying then is we should never examine the negative implications of anything for fear that someone might decide they like them.

This does not seem reasonable or prudent.

No, I'm saying you need to actually explain why what you are examining is a negative implication. "Your philosophy suggests the state could morally rape rapists" is just a true fact, it's not an argument. You're hoping that emotion is going to override reason, and instead of doubling down on a consistent position they will randomly hop to a new position, but you haven't done any work to show why a moral system where the state can rape rapists is bad, or where the right place to jump is, assuming you succeed.

Ytlaya posted:

I mean, past a certain point you can basically just argue "morality is entirely subjective, the universe doesn't care about human suffering" but that isn't really a useful guiding principle for human societies. That's why "what are the practical impacts of doing this" is an important question to ask (and in the case of punishments like execution or other cruel/unusual things, arguably the biggest downside is the fact that the justice system is fallible and any existing punishment will inevitably be levied against the innocent).

Presupposing consequentialism seems rude. I agree consequentialism is great, but a lot of people don't.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 00:57

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WillyTheNewGuy posted:

This isn't true through. Sometimes a person chooses to murder, never gets caught, then dies of complications from getting too old. The choice to murder cannot also be the choice to be executed unless their correlation is 100%.

Eh, I can choose to do a thing, and then fail at doing it. Choosing to work for the government does not guarantee they will employ me.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 17:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ytlaya posted:

I imagine the problem is that it's hard to write the laws in such a way that you know exactly where the "this person super obviously did it" line is drawn. You can't just make a law that says "execute them instantly if it's super super obvious."

Why not? The justice system already has differing standards for different actions. We could introduce the "Even if the defense is 100% correct on every contested issue" standard to criminal law. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can't see any sort of obstacle to writing it down.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 18:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Plucky Brit posted:

So to be clear, you would be fine if one of your loved ones was executed for a crime which they didn't commit?

If the answer is no, you're a hypocrite. If the answer is yes, you're a psychopath.

Would you be fine if one of your loved ones was executed for a crime which they did commit?

If the answer is no, your example is irrelevant. If the answer is yes, you're a psychopath.

Also, psychopaths are capable of emitting true arguments, so I think asserting that your opponent lacks empathy isn't much of an argument.

To get back to my earlier examples, I would be very upset if one of my loved ones was struck by a government employee driving a car and died, but I still accept that government employees driving cars and predictably (in an actuarial sense) killing innocents is worth the damage it causes. The whole "You must only accept policies that have zero innocent deaths as a result" argument just doesn't scale for literally anything else.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 22:40

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WillyTheNewGuy posted:

So if someone was the son or daughter of an executed SS officer, and they agreed with the Nuremberg trials, you'd call them a psychopath?

I'm not actually a fan of that word, I'm using it in response to someone else using it, but in the context as presented, sure, why not? I'm the one opposed to the death penalty, if someone is thinking "Not only do we need the death penalty, we need to specifically apply it to my family members", there's something going on there.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 02:08

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Who said anything about excusing crimes? The scenario is, you've got a loved one that definitely committed a crime, they've been captured and are being held in prison, separated from society. Are you fine with the state also killing your loved one?

twodot fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Mar 15, 2017

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 02:48

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

hakimashou posted:

It would suck if a family member murdered someone and got the death penalty for it, but it's what they'd deserve so I would be 'fine with it,' even if it sucked to lose a family member.

Not sure why that would make someone a 'psychopath.'

Can you offer definitions of "fine with it" and "sucked" such that this makes any sense? I prefer to avoid circumstances that suck, and wouldn't say I'm fine with a circumstance sucking. If I felt a circumstance sucked, I'd actively work to make it not suck, and wouldn't be content for it to just suck.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 06:06

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ytlaya posted:

Eh, in some weird hypothetical world where killing criminals actually had a significant positive effect greater than the inevitable negative effect of killing the occasional innocent person, I think it would be okay (for the same reason as your government car analogy). Of course, that isn't the world we live in and there is virtually zero benefit to killing criminals over simply imprisoning them for life, so that calculus will never come out in favor of the death penalty (unless the person in question just doesn't care much about innocent people being executed). While someone could argue "well, if we reduce the rights of criminals to appeal the death penalty it would cost less, causing life imprisonment to be more expensive", such a change would also result in an increased number of killed innocents so there isn't really any way to toggle things so that it makes sense.

I don't see how this is an "eh". This is totally what I've been saying, the death penalty is bad because its costs outweigh its benefits, not because never risking an innocent life is any sort of sane policy guideline. We can and do routinely risk killing innocents whenever we think it worth the cost. Like this guy:

LeJackal posted:

......really?

The real-world, actual factual application of "its moral to give murderers the death penalty" leads directly to "the state will execute innocent people" precisely because our system is flawed and makes errors. That is the connection between those two points.

"it's moral to give government agents cars to drive" leads directly to "the state will kill innocent people", but no one accepts that as an argument against government agents driving cars.

Eletriarnation posted:

Nothing can be done for those who are executed, and their families are unlikely to view any monetary compensation as remotely comparable in value to the life of their loved one.

This is a weird sentence. Clearly compensating the families is a thing which can be done for those who are executed. Like why even bring it up if you think it isn't? Families might not view money as adequate, but that's equally true of innocent people who were imprisoned. Further, whether people think the compensation is adequate is wholly irrelevant if all we're trying to do is make a concrete acknowledgment of a moral debt. LeJackal's right that the consequences of a false execution are not as easily mitigated, but it's not impossible to try.

hakimashou posted:

I suppose?

There are no definitions in this post.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 17:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

When you swap 'kill' with 'execute' the meaning of the statement changes fundamentally, so naw, your argument is invalid here.

You're trying to equate the accidental, negligent, or maybe even reckless motor vehicle accident with agents of the state strapping a person down and injecting them with chemicals with the intent to kill them. These are not the same thing.

Why not? Government agencies know their drivers kill innocent people. They've got the stats, it's not mysterious. They give those orders with full knowledge that innocents will die because of it. Clearly they would prefer people not die, but those deaths are a completely foreseeable result of their actions. The same number of people wind up dead regardless of their intentions. They take steps ensure that as few innocents die as possible, much like our legal system does (or ought to), but they've accepted that the death of innocents is a necessary part of their jobs. Why can't executioners accept the death of innocents as part of their job? (The reason is that executioners produce close to zero value, but government agents being able to drive produces tremendous value)

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 18:32

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

There is no specific intent to kill when a government driver gets behind the wheel of a vehicle.
There is a VERY specific intent to kill when a government employee executes someone.

Sorry, I meant: what practical reason should anyone have for ever caring about this distinction?

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 18:50

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

You're the one trying to conflate the two. Explain why they are the same?

Because there exists no practical reason to care about that distinction for the purposes of being opposed to any innocents being killed as a result of government actions? Like if you say "Fuji apples and honeycrisp apples are different, and we should treat them differently" and I say "While I agree those are distinguishable types of apples, I see no reason to distinguish them for this purpose", I don't know what more you want from me.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 19:33

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

Uh, there is? If we stopped all government action that could potentially, by accident, end a life then the government could not carry out all its duties like infrastructure maintenance. We could easily stop the government from executing people and it wouldn't interfere with that. So there is a practical difference.

So government activities that will foreseeably result in ending lives is acceptable so long as those activities accomplish some goal you approve of? If that's the case we're back to it not being the case that you are fundamentally opposed to the government occasionally killing innocents, just that you don't think the value of the death penalty justifies it.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 20:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

I recognize that the universe is full of chaos and that any action, or inaction, may lead eventually to death. I don't believe the government should active try to murder its own citizens and, when possible, minimize the risk to them when going about its goals.

If this is your actual position why are we bothering to talk about innocents? Apparently your complaint was never that innocent people might die, but rather the government shouldn't attempt to kill citizens, regardless of guilt.

Submarine Sandpaper posted:

"accidental" death penalty killings exclusively impact the innocent demographic; a deprivation of civil rights. Random gvt deaths don't.

I don't understand the point. We agree that imprisoning innocent people is also a deprivation of civil rights, correct?

Eletriarnation posted:

I brought it up because if I said "we can't do anything, at all" it would be the obvious response and as a general rule I try to anticipate potential counters to my arguments, not just wander into them blindly.

I missed the counterargument. You said "Nothing can be done for those who are executed", but I don't see any explanation for how "giving money to their family" isn't a thing that can be done for those who are executed.

quote:

I do not think that "all we're trying to do is make a concrete acknowledgment of a moral debt," because I don't think a token effort is worthwhile - if (when) our system harms people, it should make reasonable efforts to try and compensate for that. Causing unnecessary levels of harm because "we can't really fix it either way, why does it matter" is counterproductive.

This is begging the question, clearly we shouldn't cause unnecessary levels of harm, whether it's necessary or not is the thing you need to demonstrate.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 21:02

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

Murder is the killing of an innocent.

Now I know you're trolling.

Sorry, I thought you were speaking informally. Formally, murder is the willful unlawful killing that isn't otherwise mitigated. State executions are by definition never unlawful.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 21:48

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WillyTheNewGuy posted:

That's doing something for the family of the wrongfully executed person, not for the wrongfully executed person. What about people who had a lovely, abusive family whom they wouldn't want collecting benefits from their unjust execution? Or people who simply have no family?

It's still doing something for them. Maybe it's not something they like, but I don't see how anyone can declare it's categorically impossible to do something for a dead person.

LeJackal posted:

That is a first.

Contrawise, just because agents of the state execute a person does not make it de facto lawful.

I thought for the purpose of this conversation we were talking about agents of the state that lawfully execute people. Do you think there's a productive conversation to be had about whether it's good for agents of the state to unlawfully kill people?

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 23:19

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

LeJackal posted:

Yes, I do, because they have done so in the past and continue to do so.

Who is the poster in favor of agents of the state unlawfully killing people?

Eletriarnation posted:

This seems tangential and pointless unless you're willing to argue that the ability to give blood money to the family of the executed makes it OK that occasionally someone gets wrongfully executed. I only brought it up to try to avoid the tangent in the first place, fat lot of good that did.

It certainly doesn't make it OK that occasionally someone gets wrongfully executed, but I'd also argue that being able to transfer money directly to released prisoners doesn't make it OK that occasionally someone gets wrongfully imprisoned. Like no one has looked at the imprisonment system and said "It's really hard to tell which people are guilty and which people are innocent, let's just lean towards assuming people are guilty, and if we're wrong we'll just give them a bundle of cash, no harm, no foul".

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 23:50

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Eletriarnation posted:

You're right because, as I said earlier, we generally accept that some form of imprisonment is necessary for a criminal justice system to be effective at preventing criminals from causing further harm to society. I do not consider this to be the case for execution, as a similar level of prevention can be achieved with life imprisonment. What part of that do you disagree with or, if you agree, why do you think the necessary evil of wrongful imprisonment justifies the unnecessary evil of wrongful execution?

What does the issue of necessity have to do with whether compensation can exist or not? If we can arrive at your position without considering compensation, why bring it up?

Eletriarnation posted:

Like, you're basically saying "Sure, that thing (that we could prevent) is bad but there's this other thing over here (that we can't prevent) and it's bad too!"

No, you're saying compensation can't exist for the death penalty, and I'm saying it can. (edit: Or that if compensation for the death penalty can't exist, it's because there can never be compensation for any punishment)

VitalSigns posted:

I'm sorry, could you explain how "giving money to still-alive people who are not me" helps me, if I am wrongfully executed?

That helps my family, which is good, but it doesn't help me, I am still dead and money doesn't help that.

I certainly wouldn't consider it just compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned if you gave money to my parents and did nothing for me.

And I certainly wouldn't consider it just compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned if you released me and gave me money. So either compensation for wrongful punishment can't ever exist, or we have to accept that subjective standards for what just compensation constitutes are irrelevant.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 17:28

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WillyTheNewGuy posted:

Again, that's for the family, not for the dead person - dead people can't utilize money. Did you know some people don't have a family (Im asking because you ignored that aspect last time)? If a person who doesn't have a family is wrongfully executed, they're just out of luck, too bad for them?

No, it's for them. If I do a thing, I get to decide who it is for. If there's no one to give money to, we can plant a tree for them.

Eletriarnation posted:

I brought up compensation because I don't think that it's a relevant argument against the harms of the death penalty, and wanted to preemptively avoid tedious posts about it. You somehow missed this and are asking me why I think it's relevant.

We agree that you can't fully compensate for the harms of either imprisoning those falsely found guilty or of executing them. The salient difference is that you can avoid the harm altogether with execution by just not executing anyone.

Please, in the future don't make affirmative declarations like "Nothing can be done for those who are executed" that are irrelevant to your argument, and we won't have to argue whether anything can be done for those who are executed, because it's plainly true something can be done. You should instead say things like "I don't care whether anything can be done for those who are executed".

VitalSigns posted:

Maybe subjectively you wouldn't consider it sufficient compensation for being imprisoned, but objectively you did receive compensation.

The same isn't true if you're killed, paying money to your family (if you have one) isn't compensating you, it's compensating someone else. So these situations aren't equivalent and we can't claim that "well we would pay you if you were imprisoned, therefore we'll just pay someone else if you're executed wrongfully" are equivalent remedies.

"Someone who is dead can't be compensated at all" is a serious problem that can't be handwaved away so easily.

No, they were objectively compensated, you just think they were compensated in a way that isn't useful to them.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 16:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Orange Devil posted:

OK I've changed my mind. I'm now in favour of executing people who make disingenuous and terrible arguments on the internet.

Seriously, through a whole bunch of semantic bullshit you're now trying to define giving money to person B to be something which benefits person A, who is dead. The gently caress is wrong with you?

I don't think it's semantic, since I think core mechanic of compensation here is the acknowledgement of an institutional failure, not that we want particular wronged people to specifically have $50k or whatever, since it's fundamentally impossible to truly pay back lost time, broken careers, neglected relationships, whatever abuse they might have endured, and such. But you apparently think its semantic, so what does giving a freed prisoner $50k practically accomplish that giving the heirs of an executed prisoner $50k doesn't?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 18:07

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

wateroverfire posted:

I mean...

In the first case the prisoner gets to enjoy $50k and whatever satisfaction comes from ultimately being vindicated.

In the second case the prisoner isn't able to enjoy anything, ever, at all.

From the POV of the prisoner in the second case there's no difference between giving their heirs $50k, fining their heirs $50k for execution supplies, or executing their heirs to get an RL achievement. The prisoner ceased to have a POV when they died.

I don't understand the practical distinction you're trying to make. The practical goal of giving the prisoner $50k can't be specifically that we want that particular person to enjoy $50k. If we hand them a bag of money and they turn around and accidentally destroy it, I don't think anyone would argue that society needs to hand them another bag of money to avoid denying them their due enjoyment. If they spent the money in a foolish fashion, no one would have debates over whether they actually got to enjoy the full value of their bag of money and if so whether we needed to hand them more money to make sure they got the full enjoyment they deserved. If they were a person who hated money, we wouldn't attempt to find another thing that they could enjoy that would be equivalent to the enjoyment the average person gets from a bag of money.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 19:40

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:51

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Eletriarnation posted:

Look man, if you want to be all turbopedant about it nothing can be done for them unless you can raise them from the dead, giving money to someone else doesn't help them. I told you multiple times I only brought it up because I wanted to avoid wasting time discussing it in depth and you decided you wanted to beat that horse to death all by yourself.

Of course it doesn't help them, but it's doing a thing for them. If I do a thing for someone, that person is in no way guaranteed to be helped, or even affected at all.

quote:

You still haven't made any kind of relevant response that I saw to my real argument of "execution doesn't help a criminal justice system to actually accomplish any goal except revenge, considering that life imprisonment is an option" so if you want to keep going give that one a whirl too.

Why would I argue against the argument that is correct instead of the argument that is incorrect? This comment is weird to me. You made two claims, I'm posting about the claim you made that is incorrect. If you don't need that claim or want that claim, stop talking about it. Your "real" argument isn't even a complete argument. Someone who supports the death penalty can just see that and think "Yeah, and revenge is an important/primary goal of our justice system, so we should keep killing people". I'd disagree with that person, but my point here is the only interesting thing to say about your "real" argument is that it's only persuasive to people who already agree with you.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 21:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Lets talk about how fucked up and shitty the Death Penalty is

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