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hakimashou posted:I'd say he does deserve to be punished because he did something wrong. I don't think it would be wrong to give him the death penalty for it. This answered exactly none of the questions you responded to. What does anyone gain by executing a murderer? I don't care about the morality of it, for this purpose, just explain what is gained by killing him instead of letting him go. Metaphysical considerations like the categorical imperative don't count, there are no brownie points for self-consistency. What do I, Infinite Karma, gain by implementing the policy of executing murderers, over a policy that is similarly severe, but not irrevocable? I don't think we gain anything from capital punishment. The victim who was murdered gets no restitution or comfort. The criminal has no chance to rehabilitate. Deterrence has already failed, he committed the crime. The only thing gained is that we are protected from him killing people in the future. So as long as we are protected from the criminal, shouldn't we choose a penalty that offers more in other areas? Consider it a bonus that there's less moral hazard than state-sponsored killing. Unless you truly think that killing is a positive for its own sake?
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Mar 13, 2017 21:12
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Infinite Karma posted:This answered exactly none of the questions you responded to. I don't know that anyone would get anything out of it, I just don't think it would be wrong to do.
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Mar 13, 2017 23:15
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IMO we should go back to stoning people, so that if you want the criminal to be executed you at least have to help do it. Also because the state shouldn't kill people.
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Mar 14, 2017 02:34
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hakimashou posted:I don't know that anyone would get anything out of it, I just don't think it would be wrong to do.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:20
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Infinite Karma posted:That's pretty loving faint praise for a policy of intentionally killing people. If you say so. It's all I've been saying the whole thread. There are some practical reasons for executing rather than imprisoning murderers. They can't reoffend and you don't have to pay to keep and feed them, which frees up money to spend on something else. There are also compelling ethical reasons to do it. It is plausibly a less harsh and more fair penalty than life imprisonment/enslavement. It is a radical way of respecting the murderer's dignity and equality and agency. And if you think its good for people to get what they deserve, then it's good for that reason.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:34
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hakimashou posted:If you say so. It's all I've been saying the whole thread. No justice system is infallible. Any state which executes people for crimes will end up executing innocents. There is no recourse once someone is dead. Are you fine with that?
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Mar 14, 2017 09:18
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Of course. Utilitarianism is batshit. Most of the complaints I've seen towards utilitarianism either require that some really dumb/wrong assumptions be made about the utility of various things or involve bizarre hypotheticals (like the utility monster). For example, when people complain about "the ends justifying the means" being bad, they're usually referring to situations where the ends either aren't actually good or have a bunch of negative side effects. As an example, if you had a situation where government censorship of a particular topic might reduce the chance of rebellion, you would also need to take into account the long term effects of censorship becoming normalized (for example censoring this one thing now might increase the chance of other things being censored in the future). Also, in reality you usually can't guarantee a preferred outcome, so if you do some evil thing with the intent of yielding some good outcome, if you fail you've just done an evil thing for no reason (and that risk needs to be included when evaluating the utility of such a course of action). Basically, if you magically 100% knew that an action would truly cause more good than harm in the long term, it would absolutely always be the right thing to do. But in reality it's impossible to clearly define what constitutes "good" or to accurately predict the long term result of actions.
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Mar 14, 2017 09:45
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Seems like most people in this thread are representing utilitarianism as some kind of Benthamite equation. Newsflash, a lot of thought has been put into it since, and there are far better ways to make it a more accurate descriptive (and normative) system. J.S Mill's Archangels, introducing the concept of Maslowe's hierarchy and diminishing marginal utility, or the approach that I personally favour, which is that humans are not perfect utility calculators. We should aspire to bring about the best possible consequences, but because we are imperfect beings and can't see the outcome of our actions perfectly, we create heuristics, or rules, that we believe will act as a general rule of thumb. Someone correctly pointed out that there are four main goals of the justice system. Deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution. Deterrence has been shown to generally not work. What deters people generally is how likely it is they feel they will be caught, with a smaller modifier on the severity of the punishment. In other words, the severity of the punishment is generally not as effective as high quality, high coverage policing. Lots of expense on the death penalty could be spent elsewhere on improving the deterrence effect. Incapacitation is pretty obvious. It's to stop further crime from being committed. Rehabilitation. Believe it or not, this method is generally significantly more successful than deterrence in that it does reduce recidivism rates. No, rehabilitation is not 'indoctrination' most of the time, where someone can't be effectively rehabilitated, they ought to be in prison solely for the purpose of incapacitation. An example of a successful prison rehabilitation program would be the 'prison puppies', where inmates are given puppies to raise (who will then go on to become dogs for veterans). Recidivism dropped amongst this population a staggering 90%. This approach often conflicts with the final goal, retribution, which is what hakimashou is talking about. Society has urges to punish wrongdoers, and it is itself wrong to deny them that. The problem I have with this argument is that it comes at a cost. If I told you that this approach caused more crime, relative to a rehabilitative approach, would you say sating those urges is still worth it? If you killed my loved ones infront of me, yes, I would want to put a knife through your throat. But that urge is not justice, it's revenge. On balance, if the cost of satisfying that bloodlust is that more people get hurt (not just the criminal, but others through a system that does not combat recidivism and instead satisfied retributivists), then it's probably not worth it. ...and that isn't even taking into account false positives/cost to the state arguments that other people have ably made.
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Mar 14, 2017 10:33
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Plucky Brit posted:No justice system is infallible. Any state which executes people for crimes will end up executing innocents. There is no recourse once someone is dead. Are you fine with that? See above, I'm not convinced we should have the death penalty on the books, but I strongly diasagree with the idea that it is morally wrong to punish murder with execution.
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Mar 14, 2017 12:43
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Ytlaya posted:Most of the complaints I've seen towards utilitarianism either require that some really dumb/wrong assumptions be made about the utility of various things or involve bizarre hypotheticals (like the utility monster). Put it this way: if you're not a consequentialist (i.e. thinking "what will be the result if I do X?") in your reasoning about how to behave, you're insane. But if the foundation of your moral framework is an absolutely egalitarian maximisation of happiness units/preference-satisfaction/cummies/whatever experiential thing, you are equally insane. In order words, "Utilitarianism" connotes certain notions of Good that are batshit, which are what I take issue with, not the basic idea of thinking about what will happen if you do a certain thing and deciding whether to do that thing based on how much you like the predicted outcome. That's just not being cognitively broken. Plucky Brit posted:No justice system is infallible. Any state which executes people for crimes will end up executing innocents. There is no recourse once someone is dead. Are you fine with that? I am. At least, in theory. Permanent, cheap neutralisation of extremely bad people could easily be well worth some false positives. Smudgie Buggler fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 13:38
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Smudgie Buggler posted:
Well i guess if it's cheap it's ok
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Mar 14, 2017 14:03
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bitterandtwisted posted:Well i guess if it's cheap it's ok "I can pretend that the social is not necessarily the economic with no consequences" Smudgie Buggler fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 14:04
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hakimashou posted:See above, I'm not convinced we should have the death penalty on the books, but I strongly diasagree with the idea that it is morally wrong to punish murder with execution. Well the question isn't 'is it morally correct to execute a murderer' but 'is the death penalty as practiced currently morally wrong' and if you addressed the question that would be great. Instead of coming up with insane hypotheticals about infallible lie detectors and such.
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Mar 14, 2017 14:12
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Smudgie Buggler posted:"I pretend that the social is not necessarily the economic with no consequences" What are you even trying to say here I can't parse it
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Mar 14, 2017 14:18
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Why even have trials? If a cop's sure he knows who the bad guy is he can shoot them and we'd save loads of money for the cost of a few false positives.
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Mar 14, 2017 14:22
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bitterandtwisted posted:What are you even trying to say here I can't parse it I dropped an operative verb, but I'm sure you were really quite able to piece it together. quote:Why even have trials? If a cop's sure he knows who the bad guy is he can shoot them and we'd save loads of money for the cost of a few false positives. You have trials because you're not willing to tolerate as many false positives as you'd get without them. Pretty obvious really. Stupid question.
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Mar 14, 2017 14:54
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LeJackal posted:Well the question isn't 'is it morally correct to execute a murderer' but 'is the death penalty as practiced currently morally wrong' Yes, it is, because keeping someone alive for decades on the public dime with execution looming over them is stupid, pointless, and a colossal waste of resources. Shooting an unrepentant serial rapist with no means to make a meaningful contribution to society ever in the back of the head the morning after he's convicted on multiple samples of his DNA left in victims who all independently ID'd him is none of those things.
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Mar 14, 2017 15:00
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Smudgie Buggler posted:I dropped an operative verb, but I'm sure you were really quite able to piece it together. what's the cutoff point for amount of innocent people you are happy to kill?
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Mar 14, 2017 15:01
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Shooting an unrepentant serial rapist with no means to make a meaningful contribution to society ever in the back of the head the morning after he's convicted on multiple samples of his DNA left in victims who all independently ID'd him is none of those things. This is, again, another highly contrived circumstance that doesn't mesh with reality. Shooting a man that claims innocence even as the tainted, overworked crime lab (which would never ever misrepresent evidence) presents DNA evidence against him, and several victims 'positively' ID him (because eyewitness accounts are always correct) who would never contribute to society (we have a magic mirror that tells us the future) gets shot in the head with no ability to appeal or present representation because he's a poor minority (obviously a rapist then, right?) and the system is perfect. Right?
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Mar 14, 2017 15:13
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Shooting an unrepentant serial rapist with no means to make a meaningful contribution to society ever in the back of the head the morning after he's convicted on multiple samples of his DNA left in victims who all independently ID'd him is none of those things. 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."
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Mar 14, 2017 17:54
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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."
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Mar 14, 2017 18:05
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The evidence against you is lovely so I sentence you to 1 year for murder.
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Mar 14, 2017 18:17
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Smudgie Buggler posted:I am. At least, in theory. Permanent, cheap neutralisation of extremely bad people could easily be well worth some false positives. 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.
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Mar 14, 2017 20:57
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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, 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.
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Mar 14, 2017 22:40
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twodot posted:Would you be fine if one of your loved ones was executed for a crime which they did commit? 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?
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Mar 15, 2017 01:12
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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?
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Mar 15, 2017 02:08
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bitterandtwisted posted:what's the cutoff point for amount of innocent people you are happy to kill?
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Mar 15, 2017 02:33
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Also excusing the crimes of someone just because they're related to you is far, far closer to psycopathy than holding them accountable - you're refusing to empathize with the victims, just because they're not blood relatives. That is evil, and you should be punished.
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Mar 15, 2017 02:37
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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 |
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Mar 15, 2017 02:48
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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? Being OK with unfortunate things happening because you think the alternative is worse does not mean you have to be comfortable with the unfortunate things happening to you or people your care about. What a retarded question.
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Mar 15, 2017 04:29
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LeJackal posted:This is, again, another highly contrived circumstance that doesn't mesh with reality. Not at all. But I think it's probably a little less lovely than it was before.
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Mar 15, 2017 04:31
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LeJackal posted:Well the question isn't 'is it morally correct to execute a murderer' but 'is the death penalty as practiced currently morally wrong' and if you addressed the question that would be great. Instead of coming up with insane hypotheticals about infallible lie detectors and such. I thought the context of that was pretty clear, why don't you think it was? Anyway I was responding to someone who said it was wrong to execute murderers.
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Mar 15, 2017 05:09
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twodot posted:Would you be fine if one of your loved ones was executed for a crime which they did commit? 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.'
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Mar 15, 2017 05:10
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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.
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Mar 15, 2017 06:06
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I am pretty sure you can be unhappy with a situation while ultimately conceding it is necessary twodot. I think it "sucks" that OJ went free despite being obviously guilty, but I don't think we should start passing bills of attainder even though we could use those bills to make this specific situation not suck.
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Mar 15, 2017 06:21
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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. That's not the point; I'm talking about executing people who didn't commit a murder, but were convicted through a miscarriage of justice. Are you content that the state will execute innocents, in the pursuit of justice?
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Mar 15, 2017 07:02
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twodot posted: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. 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.
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Mar 15, 2017 07:39
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twodot posted: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. I suppose? I'd be fine with the death penalty, since the family member would deserve it. I'm fine with people getting what they deserve. Ie, I don't have a problem with it. But it would feel terrible to lose a family member. Because it would feel terrible, it would suck. Sometimes when the right thing happens, it sucks for someone. The same would be true of a jail sentence. "We shouldn't jail people anymore because I don't want my relative to go to jail, since I would miss him or her" is not a respectable position. I would care a lot more about a family member or friend than about a total stranger, especially if the stranger was a murderer. But my personal feelings toward the condemned wouldn't change my views about capital punishment. An easy way to understand why is to consider that my beliefs about capital punishment aren't "I think it is ok because it isn't anyone I know." hakimashou fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Mar 15, 2017 |
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Mar 15, 2017 12:36
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Plucky Brit posted:That's not the point; I'm talking about executing people who didn't commit a murder, but were convicted through a miscarriage of justice. I'm not content that the state will execute innocents, in the pursuit of justice. However, I don't think it is morally wrong to give murderers the death penalty. I don't see what the two have to do with one another.
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Mar 15, 2017 12:37
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hakimashou posted:I'm not content that the state will execute innocents, in the pursuit of justice. FWIW I agree with you. I don't favor the death penalty, but not because it's morally wrong to execute people.
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Mar 15, 2017 14:24
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