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wintermute_oregon ,

Interesting. I am against the death penalty but even if the DNA comes back as not his, he is still eligible for the death penalty. Their debate is that the jury wouldn’t have given him the death penalty.

It’s Texas; they would have given him the death penalty. It’s what they do down there.

qjkxbmwvz ,

Pro-Life™

yeahiknow3 ,

What is the upside of keeping serial killers alive pray tell? I genuinely don’t get it.

chillhelm ,

What is the upside of allowing the government to kill citizens?

prettybunnys ,

I’m actually shocked the “limited small govt” crowd isn’t anti death penalty given it provides a legal avenue for state sanctioned murder.

Feels like they’d be against that sort of thing.

aidan ,

I’m actually shocked the “limited small govt” crowd isn’t anti death penalty

trust me a lot of them are

yeahiknow3 ,

Idk what’s the upside of killing rabid dogs? Most dogs are better than most humans, so how does the math work out there?

HubertManne ,

thats a mercy killing. rabies is fatal and the end is horrible.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

Rabies and psychopathy are diseases. The prognosis is terminal in both cases, and death would be a mercy. Rabies is also far less harmful than psychopathy, because it results in less collateral damage. After all, psychopathy is responsible for almost every evil you can see in the world today from famine to poverty and war.

Again, there is an argument against the death penalty but protecting psychopaths ain’t it.

HubertManne ,

No they are not both diseases. psychopathy is not caused by infection or is it communicable. They have no basis for comparison. Also do you know anything at all about rabies progression? Its about the worst disease you can have if you have gone passed the point of no return to treat it.

yeahiknow3 ,

Not all diseases are communicable or infectious. Psychopathy is a serious neurological pathology that robs humans of anything resembling humanity. That makes it a hell of a lot worse than rabies to my mind, but of course that’s debatable. Regardless, I’m not sure how ranking one horrible affliction against another makes much difference for this analogy.

HubertManne ,

I can agree with that. Its just not a good analogy because again they are just not really comparable things.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

Do you formulate your opinions based on reasons you can articulate or is this just a fleeting thought you’re having?

HubertManne ,

I already expressed it. rabies is a communicable disease. What most people think about with diseases. Diseases that can spread and cause an epidemic. Not like a genetic fault or from personal trauma. They are just not analogous. Or do you want to know about rabies in general from my earlier comment. Someone had a good writeup but I can't find it but this has it listed pretty well if it remains untreated and one dies from it. https://www.verywellhealth.com/rabies-symptoms-1298793#toc-acute-neurologic-period

yeahiknow3 ,

Are you… trolling right now, or do you genuinely not understand how analogies work?

HubertManne ,

This is sorta awkward as i feel I should be asking you this. Analogy is about comparing things that are analogous or that share a relevant property. Does your definition differ?

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

You know what, I’ll help you out. Why not. We put down rabid dogs for two reasons. They pose a danger to everyone around them, and we can’t cure them. Psychopathy has these same relevant features. If you want to defeat this argument, your goal should be to attack the dog-human component of the analogy, not the disease component. Why? Well, because even if I granted that rabies and psychopathy do not share the relevant features of being incurable and dangerous, we would just be back to square one, when I point out that:

  1. We put down dogs that attack children. And since dogs and humans are both animals, we should put down humans who attack children, too.

If you follow my advice and instead attack the human-dog comparison, you stand a better chance of defeating this analogy. Spoiler alert though, your efforts will fail. This is a really good analogy.

To succeed you’ll need to abandon your focus on moral justification and turn instead to the practical matters of administering a government. Why? Well, because despite your own feelings on the matter the vast majority of people have a strong intuition that evildoers should be destroyed, and you’ll have a better chance convincing them to get rid of the death penalty by pointing out that killing dangerous psychopaths is impractical rather than immoral.

You’re welcome. Don’t bother responding, because I blocked you.

HubertManne ,

thats fine but for others I never argued anything but that it was not a good analogy. You have blocked me so its to late but if you had used something better to begin with to argue your point then I would likely have had no part in the convo. that being said early on I said mercy killing. it sounds from your ending you view killing psychopaths as mercy killing but from their viewpoint they are not suffering. those with rabies from their own viewpoint are suffering greatly.

aidan ,

After all, psychopathy is responsible for almost every evil you can see in the world today from famine to poverty and war.

I don’t know, I think presuming you know the reasons and effects of things has led to some pretty harmful outcomes over the years.

yeahiknow3 ,

You’re right, none of us know anything. We can presume no facts, nor make even the most salient observations. All social science is false, and nihilists like you are right about everything.

aidan ,

We can presume no facts, nor make even the most salient observations.

Individuals can, “collectives” cannot.

All social science is false

A lot of it

nihilists like you are right about everything.

I am not a nihilist.

yeahiknow3 ,

I am not a nihilist.

Your words say one thing, but your other words say another.

aidan ,

Where did I say another?

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

Ex Falso Quodlibet. Your moral reasoning is inconsistent, which means that you’re either a nihilist or an idiot. I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.

aidan ,

Your moral reasoning is inconsistent

It may be, but not for the reason you claimed. I do not care about the lives of most animals, such as chickens, etc. Do you care about the lives of animals? Is it okay to kill them? What about torture them?

From my belief framework I suspect I could find inconsistencies in your morality, but I don’t really see the point in trying to force squeeze your moral views through my belief framework- because I suspect your morality informs your beliefs and vice-versa- just as my own.

yeahiknow3 ,

I do not care about the lives of most animals

That is called psychopathy and you should seek clinical intervention.

aidan ,

That is called psychopathy and you should seek clinical intervention.

Do you care about the lives of sardines? Is a chicken much different? How is that not arbitrary?

proudblond ,

I would not say there is specifically an upside to keeping a serial killer alive, but there are many downsides to the death penalty both ethically and in practice, not the least of which is the chance that you would execute an innocent person. For those of us who are anti-death penalty, that is usually where we’re coming from.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

I’m against the death penalty, and I know the best argument against it, something nobody in this thread has even approximately articulated.

Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.

proudblond ,

I don’t want someone to kill me; therefore I believe it is also not okay for me to kill someone else. It’s just the golden rule. I am not a student of ethics or philosophy but it seems pretty straightforward to me.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

In the event that I were guilty of causing great harm to innocent people, then I should be killed. Not in revenge, but as a matter of course, given that my life would no longer be worth living.

This is the golden rule in action, which is about how you would want to be treated in similar circumstances.

Burstar ,
@Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

it isn’t a deterrent,

It is cheaper to let them rot in prison for life,

nobody wants to make the drugs involved for the ‘humane way’ so it is really difficult to obtain enough where it is used,

it is fundamentally inhumane to kill someone that knows it’s coming (mental torture),

risk of executing an innocent, and as already stated

it is hypocritical to kill someone for killing.

yeahiknow3 ,

it is fundamentally inhumane to kill someone that knows it’s coming (mental torture)

That killing serial killers causes them harm isn’t a particularly compelling point, since we disagree over whether harming them is, in fact, good.

risk of executing an innocent

This is a good point and one I would explore further. However, it leaves open exceptions where the evidence is overwhelming.

it is hypocritical to kill someone for killing

Killing isn’t always bad. Killing innocent people is bad. Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals. Humans are, after all, literally animals.

Burstar ,
@Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’m against the death penalty,

So you’re dishonest. Got it.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

No, I am genuinely against the death penalty.

It’s important not to conflate moral facts with practical policy. Most of your arguments focus on how people should be treated, whereas the relevant question is how governments should behave and why. These are very different things.

Regardless of what people deserve, no government should go around killing its own citizens. That is because killing as a punishment makes a spectacle of death. It is profoundly unhealthy for any civil society to revel in death. That’s the answer. It has nothing to do with what serial killers deserve. They do not matter.

AA5B ,

Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals.

A serial killer can be removed from society and prevented from having an opportunity to kill. “Putting him down” is just you stooping to his level out of misguided self-righteousness

A rabid animal is suffering from the final hours of a horrible communicable disease that is 100% fatal. It’s in horrible pain, out of its mind, and you are doing a mercy to end its misery

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

Listen, if you want to keep a psychopath alive in your basement for some unknown reason, well, as long as he doesn’t get out and maul anyone that’s fine by me. But you’re insane if you think normal people should spend their hard-earned money contributing to that exercise in immiseration.

aidan ,

This is a good point and one I would explore further. However, it leaves open exceptions where the evidence is overwhelming.

And you trust the state to make that decision? Or a jury?

aidan ,

Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.

Nah I think not killing innocent people is a pretty strong argument, death being a spectacle doesn’t really matter to me- someone killing someone is much worse than the part where they post it on LiveLeak

yeahiknow3 ,

If you’re so against killing innocents, I assume you’re vegan. Or… is your morality as twisted and inconsistent as I suspect?

aidan ,

Or I care about human life and not chicken life?

yeahiknow3 ,

So your morality is arbitrary, and at least we can both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.

aidan ,

So your morality is arbitrary

Yours isn’t? Where does it come from?

both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.

You’re clearly not trolling

yeahiknow3 ,

Your morality isn’t arbitrary?

This is literally nihilism.

I’m genuinely happy to discuss metaethics, but I’m getting a sense that you don’t actually care about ethics very much, given your nihilism.

aidan ,

This is literally nihilism.

No, it’s not.

Nihilism requires intentionally rejecting morality. Accepting that any belief is inherently arbitrary, but still caring about that, is not nihilism

yeahiknow3 ,

Nihilism is the belief that morality is arbitrary, which is what you said.

Since human minds are incapable of genuine nihilism, I’ll assume you’re just a garden variety psychopath instead.

Don’t bother replying, I blocked you.

aidan ,

Nihilism is the belief that morality is arbitrary

No, that simply isn’t the definition of nihilism.

idiomaddict ,

It’s cheaper

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Because that makes the state a serial killer. In fact, the state has murdered far more people than even the most prolific serial killer.

Whether or not they are innocent is often an afterthought. A way too late afterthought.

aidan ,

Yet being suspicious of the state makes you a radical or a narcissist

curbstickle ,

How often people are wrongly convicted is the only reason I need to not want the death penalty to be used.

AA5B ,
  1. Why stoop to their level? We’re claiming to be better than a killer
  2. No take backs. One mistake is too many mistakes
  3. It’s actually cheaper to keep them alive
yeahiknow3 ,

If you hate killing so much, you must be vegan, right? Or do you kill some non-human animals but not other non-human animals?

aidan ,

2, 3

yeahiknow3 ,

Now that we can agree about your hypocrisy, there’s not much left to discuss.

aidan ,

What? I care about human lives, I don’t really care about the lives of other animals

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

Since human beings are also just animals, I assume you have some non-arbitrary reason for favoring one species over another?

Keep in mind that speciation is technically arbitrary, and that we can just as easily decide that you and I are not the same species. Go ahead, explain to me why I’m entitled to farm and eat you. I can’t wait to hear this.

aidan ,

non-arbitrary reason

Do you have a non-arbitrary reason for opposing murder?

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

“Murder” is an illegal killing. I don’t oppose murder; I oppose immoral killing. That’s different.

If you simply claimed that you’re against pointless killing I wouldn’t consider that arbitrary, since I share your strong intuition that causing meaningless suffering is deeply wrong. That is, in fact, precisely why I find it confusing that you would violate this intuition.

An arbitrary moral distinction would be like claiming that you are against ending innocent lives, unless they’re a different race, gender, species, nationality, or color than you, given that none of these factors have any moral relevance.

What is the moral significance of a creature’s nationality or species? Moral philosophers consider this question fairly settled, so let me know if you have some novel insights.

aidan ,

If you simply claimed that you’re against pointless killing I wouldn’t consider that arbitrary, since I share your strong intuition that causing meaningless suffering is deeply wrong. That is, in fact, precisely why I find it confusing that you would violate this intuition.

And that is where you will find your answer, I have a personal intuition both about what lives I value- I don’t believe all pointless killing is bad, regardless of life form, I don’t care if someone pulls up the plants in their yard because they feel like it. And you clearly value some life less than human life given that you eat to exist.

An arbitrary moral distinction would be like claiming that you are against ending innocent lives, unless they’re a different race, gender, species, nationality, or color than you, given that none of these factors have any moral relevance.

What? You understand an intuitive belief can exist for all of those things right?

What is the moral significance of a creature’s nationality or species?

Pretty obvious, I care about the lives of some species and not others. (Do you take antibiotics?). It is based on some framework, that is ultimately based on intuition as well.

yeahiknow3 , (edited )

I don’t believe all pointless killing is bad

In the example you gave, the plant killing wasn’t “pointless” (meaning unjustified). If a person is pulling up weeds because they like how things look without the weeds, that’s potentially justifiable.

A reason is a fact that counts in favor of some belief or course of action. The reason that you like something could be such a fact. But the reason that it might cause suffering or end an innocent life would be a countervailing fact. Human beings are capable of rational judgement. We do this all the time in science, and we have to assume that our judgements aren’t arbitrary, or we descend into nihilism, which would undermine your capacity even for logic (whose axiomatic structure is also based on intuitions).

This is why nihilism is not a position any serious philosopher defends. It’s self undermining. You would need to reason your way to the conclusion that nihilism is true in order to conclude that reasoning is impossible.

You understand an intuitive belief can exist for all of those things right? (Nationality, race, speciation.)

The meaning of the word “intuition” in philosophy is a bit different. It’s an intellectual given, part of a web of belief that would ideally be free of contradictions. Your belief that 1+1=2 is an intuition.

We don’t think of people as having an “intellectual given” that being a different nationality is morally relevant. We think of them as having a bias (or a prejudice), because the whole concept of a nationality is made up, and any intellectual examination of nationalism will reveal it’s not an intellectually coherent category.

Even if it were, it would be a very weak intuition, because the whole concept of nationality is made up. Race and speciation are like that. We made up these categories out of convenience and they have no real meaning.

Suffering is not made up. The goodness of life is not made up. How do I know that? Because I have suffered and I have lived. I am in direct contact with these phenomena.

commie ,

killing people is bad

yeahiknow3 ,

killing innocent people is bad*

commie ,

who gets to decided who is innocent?

yeahiknow3 ,

Are you serious with this question?

commie ,

it’s a rhetorical question.

fartington ,

I agree with George.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/53f43eb9-4b9b-4045-972e-2bf77b38942c.jpeg

some_guy ,

Incredibly, even this atrocious court has the ability to hand down a reasonable ruling once in a great while.

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