Lindsay is immensely courageous. He is willing to have bad people executed, and he’s not afraid to say so! Everyone should go and give him a cookie because he is willing to be unorthodox and support the death penalty.
About ten days ago, I wrote an essay for Huffington Post on the death penalty, in particular, focusing on how some of those who oppose the death penalty support imprisonment in a supermax facility as a supposedly more humane alternative—a position I find logically dubious if not hypocritical. The recent decision of the Dzhohkar Tsarnaev jury to sentence him to death made me think about this issue again. It also made me think about how humanists all too often commit the cardinal intellectual sin of many of the religious. That is, they hold certain principles as beyond question. This is not a good thing.
All of you people who say the state shouldn’t kill people are just being dogmatic: it’s positively sinful that you don’t think through the issues and agree with Ron. The only way you could possibly be disagreeing is because you’re unwilling to question everything.
This is a terrible argument: he is essentially declaring that anyone who disagrees with him must not have thought very hard about the subject, or they’d agree with him. There are strong arguments against the death penalty, and he hand-wavingly alludes to them, but this article is all about how superior he is to those shallow death penalty opponents.
Unfortunately, at least in my experience, some humanists do treat certain views and principles as “sacred.” These principles appear to be adopted more out of reflex, emotion, or groupthink than evidence-based reasoning. The emotional basis for these principles is revealed not only by the tenacity with which the principles are held, but also by the denigrating rhetoric directed against those who dare to question the principles. Opposition to the death penalty, for some humanists, appears to be one such unquestionable tenet.
Have you ever been to a dinner party with humanists and expressed support, in principle, for the death penalty? I have, and I don’t think the stunned, negative reaction to my remarks could have been more pronounced than if I had insisted on saying a prayer or had expressed admiration for Pat Robertson. More disappointing was the lack of any reasoned rebuttal to my position. Instead, the response was mostly along the lines of “I don’t think we should seek vengeance” or “the state shouldn’t be killing people.”
You know, this is a another terrible way to argue: your argument is stupid, here is the most stupid version of your argument I can imagine, therefore your argument is stupid.
He declares that he has already dealt with all the arguments against his position in an article on the Huffington Post. So let’s take a look at that.
His first argument in favor of the barbaric death penalty is that the alternative is even more barbaric.
The attorneys for convicted terrorist Dzhohkar Tsarnaev made an argument the other day that has become all too common in capital cases. In their eagerness to persuade jurors to spare Tsarnaev’s life, they emphasized how miserable Tsarnaev will be if he is sentenced to life imprisonment. That’s because he’ll be serving his time in the federal supermax facility in Colorado. Along with the other prisoners there, Tsarnaev will be kept in isolation. He will be spending 23 hours a day for the rest of his life in a roughly 90 ft.² cell, where he will eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate. For the one hour a day that he is let out of his cage for exercise, he will have no contact with other inmates.
And there I actually agree with him. It’s disgusting that the lawyers appealed to the jury with threats of terrible torments for the convicted criminal. Solitary confinement is torture — I oppose that kind of suffering as well as execution.
So this is simply a false dichotomy. There are alternatives to death and torture.
Here’s Ron Lindsay’s list of excuses to oppose the death penalty, and his rebuttals.
The state shouldn’t be killing people. Who should then? Governments took over responsibility for criminal punishment as way to end private vengeance. If the death penalty is appropriate, it is precisely the state, not relatives of victims, that should impose the penalty.
How about this: maybe no one should kill people. Lindsay says, “If the death penalty is appropriate…”, which is assuming his conclusion.
The death penalty is racist. There is little doubt that much of the American justice system is affected by either explicit or implicit racial bias. This bias manifests at all levels, from disproportionate traffic stops and arrests of blacks to disproportionate death sentences for blacks. But ultimately, this argument against the death penalty is no more than a makeweight. Removing the death penalty is not going to end racism in the American justice system. Moreover, if the adverse impact on blacks were the real reason for opposing the death penalty, presumably opponents would be satisfied with a quota system, whereby no death penalty could be imposed on blacks, Hispanics, and so forth until the requisite number of whites were sentenced to death. A quota system would remove the effects of racial bias. I doubt, however, that this would satisfy death penalty opponents.
This is just silly. No one is arguing for a racial death quota. The real problem is if the death penalty is irreversible and unjust, then that injustice falls inequably on certain groups. It’s the injustice that makes the inequality intolerable.
Capital cases are more costly. It is true the death penalty cases cost a lot– but they cost a lot precisely because death penalty opponents wage decades-long court battles to prevent the imposition or the carrying out of a death sentence.
<jaw drops> So the problem is that people fight for their right to live? The death penalty would be so much cheaper and easier if only the convicted people would meekly accept their fate and die?
He can’t be serious.
The death penalty is not a deterrent. The most objective, comprehensive study on this issue was carried out by the National Academy of Sciences. In its 2012 report, the NAS stated that no firm conclusion could be drawn about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates, in part because of the limitations of such studies.
Hang on, Ron, you were supposed to rebut the argument. Telling us that studies are limited and that no conclusions can be drawn about the deterrence of the death penalty tells me there must not be any strong deterrent effect. So the argument is reasonable — killing people doesn’t seem to have any dramatic effect in reducing crime, so why are we killing people again?
The death penalty is vengeful; it appeals to our darker emotions. This is simply arguing through characterization. One could respond by counter-argument that the death penalty expresses the just outrage of the moral community.
But…but…but the initial premise of Lindsay’s support for the death penalty was a characterization of the horrors of Supermax prisons! Calling executions “just” is again presuming the argument.
The death penalty is cruel. And supermax isn’t?
Supermax is cruel. The death penalty is cruel. Can we just state it as a given that both of these alternatives are horrible ways to treat people? Opposing the death penalty does not mean that one must therefore support thumbscrews and slow flaying. And it’s a sleazy kind of argument to suggest that it does.
Lindsay offers ONE argument against the death penalty that he considers reasonable.
Erroneous convictions. Because of its irreversibility, that’s the real problem with the death penalty. We always knew that our criminal justice system was imperfect, but until the advent of DNA evidence, we did not realize how imperfect. We have now had dozens of death-row inmates exonerated. The best study on this issue estimates that about 4% of those sentenced to death have been wrongly convicted. That translates to several hundred persons wrongly sentenced to death.
That’s a pretty potent argument, don’t you think? Shouldn’t that settle it? When the uncertainty of an honest conviction is paired with the extreme and irreversible penalty of death, it seems to me we should err on the side of caution. Shouldn’t Blackstone’s formulation apply? “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Only here we’re not suggesting that the guilty get off scot-free, but only that their punishment be humane and not quite so terminal.
Lindsay seems awfully cavalier in dismissing those hundreds of wrongly murdered people. If only they hadn’t resisted the swift application of the death penalty, then not only would the justice system have saved buckets of money, but we wouldn’t have all these belated determinations of innocence to trouble our consciences!
But even this reservation doesn’t apply to the Tsarnaev case, he says.
This concern has no application to Tsarnaev, of course. He has effectively conceded his guilt. However, it is doubtful that we can devise a criminal justice system that reserves the death penalty only for those that we really, really know are guilty.
Because, as we all know, an innocent man would never confess to a crime. And because Lindsay holds the unquestioned premise that some crimes actually deserve death.
I have an objection to the death penalty that Lindsay does not address. It is that death is absolute; it is the most authoritarian act we can commit, to deny another human being even the basic right of existence. It is the total eradication of any possibility of growth, change, repentance, or recompense.
I would not grant that power to myself. I especially wouldn’t grant it to anyone else. I also wouldn’t give it to an impersonal state. A humanist ought to recognize the ubiquity of error and oppose systems that only work in the hands of the infallible — and given that we are humanists, after all, and deny the existence of infallible authorities, that means we should oppose absolute and terminal punishments.
I don’t think supporting the execution of anyone makes someone a brave person. It just makes them deficient in empathy.
Yes, let’s restrict the death penalty to people who confessed their crime. That should help with future cases.
There might be some snark in the above comment.
I think the 4% wrongful convictions is bullshit:
Illinois put a moratorium on the death penalty when more convictions were being overturned than executions being carried out. Especially since many convictions seem to rest solely on a jailhouse snitch who received preferential treatment for their testimony. And this was one of the first of many problems identified. There apparently was no way to fix the identified problems, so the death penalty was finally scrapped. No sudden increase in murders.
Lindsay needs to get his head out of his ass and look around at the countries that have the death penalty and those who don’t. Which group would he rather chum around with? The rest of the first world, or second/third world dictatorships…..
Well, argued PZ.
By the way, the abstract of that paper behind that 4% estimate for wrongful convictions notes: “We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.” That’s in the abstract, mind you. So while 4% is intolerable, the actual number is certainly higher. Given the regions of the country (e.g. Texas) where capital punishment is popular and where racism a significant factor in arrests and prosecutions, it’s likely to be much higher.
I’m also sure that wrongful conviction number does not include the number of executed people who had sever mental health and cognitive disabilities that should have kept them off death row in the first place.
But you know, he’s a philosopher and a lawyer, and as his side blurb says, “Both his admirers and his detractors agree that his abilities as a philosopher match his skills as a lawyer.” What an arrogant crock.
Shit, that argument is as bad as something I’d expect from Sam Harris. Although it’s shorter. That’s a plus.
With respect to the “wrongful sentence to death” issue you’ll notice he carefully avoids the fact that now that we know the FBI was fabricating evidence* we also know that it is certain that some people were put to death for things they didn’t do. That means that US society, as a whole, allowed murder to be done under cover of justice, in all our names. Lindsay may be comfortable with that, but I’m guessing he needs to do a brief visual privilege-check.
Who would want to be under the control of a government that asserts it has the power of life and death over its subjects? Nobody with the slightest thought that it might apply to them, that’s who.
(* what else would you do in an “evidence lab”?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html )
Question everything! Especially the humanity of people who always had to fought for theirs!
Also up for debate:
– The Holocaust, was it really that bad?
– The benefits of slavery, a sceptics’ position
– Does marital rape exist?
Lindsay:
Pffft. As you couldn’t argue your way out of wet paper bag, Mr. Lindsay, I doubt this was an actual problem. Here’s a very simple rebuttal: When capital punishment is in effect, innocent people die.
We’ve got unarmed people being killed by law enforcement without trial, without even reasonable cause, and we’re meant to trust that the state’s going to get it right 96% of the time? What’s the basis for that, the number of people whose cases went to trial, received the death penalty, then had the time, resources, money, pull, etc. to get people to re-investigate or vigorously fight their case until new evidence could be uncovered to overturn their convictions? I don’t know how that number could be anything but a gross underestimate.
The justice system is broken. When rich old white guys can pay for badges and bypass training, when unfit cops get shuffled around from precinct to precinct rather than fired, when prosecutors tank cases against police officers so badly that they aren’t even indicted, let alone tried, for murders they commit, it seems like it’s not just that nobody should be killing people, it’s that the state is the entity I’d trust the least with legal murder. Whether it’s at a local precinct level or an international war on terror level, when any people are given permission to kill without consequence, the result is innocent people, mostly people of color, dying.
I’m entirely conflicted on the death penalty. I’m absolutely willing to personally kill someone who deserves it, I’m certain that it can be more humane than a lifetime in a supermax prison (I consider large parts of prison as it is now to be a form of torture), and there are open-and-shut cases where a person is 100% guilty. On the other hand, I know I could get it wrong so I’m sure as shit against the government having that kind of power, I’m just as certain that we live in a world that conspires against some groups of people to put them in the path of the criminal injustice system, and we know for a fact that innocent people are executed on a fairly regular basis. So I’m conflicted. I’m sure as hell not going to hand-wave away arguments on either side.
Ron Lindsay may have positive qualities that he’s up to now hidden from me. The fact that he’s a lazy, piss-poor thinker has always been fairly obvious.
There are circumstances where I would support the death penalty, but they involve the kind of implausible and elaborate set-ups you only get in superhero comics or philosophy problems.
If we knew certainly that someone had committed a massacre (it was recorded all the way through, or something), and if I knew that it would happen again (he had mind control powers to escape from any prison, and was entirely devoid of conscience), then sure. Hang him by the neck til he’s dead.
Well, he got one thing right in the article . . . .A really, really stupid thing, but at least he isn’t batting 0%. Actually the idea that a “quota” death sentence system, might satisfy death penalty opponants is so fucking dense I’m taking his point away. Back to 0%.
Tom Foss:
Oh, so much this – so very much. Every single day, there are instances of corruption, lethality, and extreme racism among cops, and as you rightly point out, prosecutors who will not see a charge of murder through at all, as long as the murderer was wearing the right uniform. There has never been a time I’d be less inclined to be happy about such people having a death penalty at their command.
Ron Lindsay: Look at me being edgy! See how edgy I’m being!
Me: A World of No.
As far as I’m concerned, the death penalty is wrong and should be abolished. It’s too open to abuse, and mistakes are irrevocable. One person wrongly executed is too many.
Marcus, you made me laugh.
–
The death penalty. I can’t remember who said it, but something along the lines of how you can judge a society by how it treats the least of its members (in this context- convicted criminals). Killing them is not civilized.
Ron Lindsay? THE Ron Lindsay, who predicted that the world would end around the year 2000? The only HUMAN to suffer from a Y2K glitch? That Ron Lindsay? Yeah, he’s a real credible source all right. Not.
Raging Bee
Huh? I’m desperate to find a source for this.
This is the Ron Lindsay who opened up the WiS2 talk with how women are the ones who should shut up and listen to men instead of men shutting up.
Another case of a clueless asshole confusing skepticism with petulant contrarianism. And always to defend the most vile right wing positions.
As someone from MA, my reaction when i heard that the Boston Marathon Bomber was getting the death penalty was one of dismay. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty. Massachusetts was the one attacked. We are the home of the victims and the culprit. I dont know why the courts feel justified to apply a level of punishment that our state does not allow and most of our state opposes on moral grounds. It is irksome and rather distressing.
Ah, yes, I knew he had a rap sheet, couldn’t remember the stupidity. Thanks.
No, but I have been shocked at the number of humanists I’ve met who support the death penalty. On principle, like Lindsay, I suppose; but I’ve never understood what principle that could be, other than a refusal to think rationally or behave humanely. I’ve never met one who could answer the crucial question: How many deaths of innocents is too many? Christians, like Associate Justice Scalia, can dismiss it with a flippant “We’re just sending such innocents to an early meeting with their maker, so we’re doing them a favor.” Ghastly as that is, it makes more sense than what many humanists do when, like Lindsay, they just refuse to answer and leave the question hanging.
Personally, I have opposed the death penalty for at least 60 years, since I was about 10 years old and first became aware that governments did this, and that the citizens somehow inexplicably supported it, seeming to think that those who are convicted must certainly be guilty. Even at that age, that just didn’t sound right to me; and later, after I had studied science, I understood that there is indeed no such thing as certainty in human knowledge. (Yes, science has moral implications. That’s why I’m a scientismist.)
The only thing close to certainty about the death penalty is that it means you will inevitably execute innocent people, but will never have to say that you’re sorry.
That’s not the impression I got. OP:
From the HuffPost article, I thought it did settle it for Lindsay;
Am I misunderstanding the meaning of ‘dispositive’?
Personally, I’ve never believed vengeance is why people believe in the death penalty. Actually, vengeance is the reason proponents directly give for supporting the death penalty, so it’s very silly to suggest that’s a personal attack. I think it’s simple sadism.
The wonderful thing about constructing institutions like justice systems and governments is that we can design them to mitigate human failings like sadism. He has the burden of proof entirely reversed on this. He has a to make a case why the death penalty should be considered in the first place.
Opposition to the death penalty is only an unquestionable tenet because there are no sensible arguments in favor it. It’s just a bad policy all around.
So? What’s his point? The Fifth Amendment guarantees people’s right to due process. Does he want to mess with that somehow? This isn’t a rebuttal, it’s just stating the problem.
I would not vote for the death penalty as a juror unless I am convinced that accused is so monstrous and the crime so heinous that I am willing to carry out the execution myself. I don’t want the state killing someone on my behalf that I wouldn’t be willing to kill myself.
Death penalty as deterrence has been addressed.
Death penalty as revenge has been addressed.
There is a third argument to be made for the death penalty (note that I am not claiming it is a *strong* argument, only that one can reasonably argue for it) and that is what I call the “mad dog” reason. It’s where the accused is considered so dangerous to society that there can be no risk of him every getting loose. Death can assure that. It does have the problem that it is an argument for killing someone who is severely mentally ill…and that is a good reason not to do so.
What never seems to be discussed is the idea of matching the *method* of execution to the *reason* for execution. Granted, picking an appropriate method based on reason is going to smack into the “cruel and unusual punishment” problem. If the reason is deterrence, the method should be messy, public, and painful. You want to show others that might be tempted to do the same crime what awaits them (public) and that they really won’t like it (messy and painful). If it’s for revenge, the method should be messy, painful, and private. Private because this is for the “benefit” of those affected by the crime. If the reason is to put down the “mad dog”, it should be clean. quick, painless, and private. Think of it as putting down an animal that does not understand.
I am not making these points because I favor having the death penalty. I don’t. PZ has made several points against it that I agree with. I just think that *if* a state has a death penalty, juries should state *why* they want it imposed and that should dictate the *way* in which it is carried out.
Would he feel the same way about the 4% of innocent people executed if he, or someone he loved, was part of that 4%?
Oops, sorry. That last quote @19 wasn’t from the HuffPost article, but from the CFI article.
What do you do when the choice is solitary for life or the death penalty? For instance if someone got a life sentence for a horrible murder or murders on the outside, then proceeds to commit murder inside prison again and again?
Is solitary confinement for the rest of their natural life a higher level of cruel and unusual punishment than the death penalty? Would it be better or worse to house all the super-psychos together and let them kill each other off away from run of the mill criminals? Is it fair to the rest of society to give them a comfy apartment and let them play video games for the rest of their natural life like Breivik?
What should be done with the mad dogs of humanity?
I honestly don’t know the answer to that one, and it is not a tortured what-if scenario: these types of people exist and will continue to exist. We really should have a good way to deal with them.
After the WIS2 fiasco I stopped supporting CFI. This decision continues to be justified.
He wrote that in his fourth paragraph. It wasn’t until his eleventh paragraph that he reveals he’s against the death penalty, but really really really really ticked off with the *dogmatic* arguments against it.
He’s a shitty writer.
Raging Bee @ 16
I think you mean Hal Lindsey.
Oops! Sorry! I meant @ 14.
Doublereed:
I don’t think it’s that simple. I know it isn’t that simple with those who are left standing in the wake of horrific crime. A lot of people have expected me to be firmly in the pro-death penalty camp, given what happened to me, but I’m not, and neither were the other two survivors. That said, we all had excellent reason to deeply fear any possibility of release from prison, for any reason.
A fair amount of the family and friends of those who did not survive did want to see the rapist-murderer dead. I wouldn’t say they would make the same call on anyone else, this was very specific – they wanted this one man to die. Other friends and family of those who died would shake their heads and say “no, it won’t bring ____ back.” It’s a conflicting issue for many of us, and a struggle to think through, and sometimes, it doesn’t seem right that some people get to live when all you can see are all the dead.
For me, it’s a matter of the innocent – too many have already died who should not have done, and death is not a deterrent, and it’s not a solution. Our penitentiary system is also barbarous, and needs ground up reform in the worst way.
Bolding mine. If he writes an article on that last topic with the same “some humanists” construction he’s used with this essay, I’d be likely to put it under the category of trolling.
PZ. Lindsay opposes the death penalty. He’s objecting to poor arguments and knee-jerkery, not endorsing capital punishment.
Christopher:
Aside from the complete dishonesty in characterizing prison as a “comfy apartment” (right after admitting that supermax solitary confinement is possibly less humane that outright killing someone), it is fair enough to society in that it costs less tax payer dollars than capital punishment does. And it prevents innocent from accidentally getting executed as well, which is also pretty damn fair to society as well.
Lady Mondegreen:
So then he is just playing Devil’s Advocate. Grand. It doesn’t change the fact that the “poor arguments” in question seem to be entirely the ones he is offering as hypothetical counters to the hypothetical liberal humanists he thinks are just so so foolish and silly. He smugly chastises death penalty opponents for Doin’ It Rong, and then offers up a buffet of asinine arguments himself. Pretty damn typical of the Troo Skeptics.
Norway’s prisons are better than many places where I’ve payed rent to live.
http://duihua.org/wp/wordpress-content/uploads/2012/05/norway_5.jpg
Pretty weak argument that can be countered with a hangman’s noose and summary judgment if you were caught on camera murdering someone in prison. Huge cost savings there.
There are many cases where the guilt of a person is not disputed.
What do you do with the undisputed mad dogs of humanity?
Yes to PZ. I also want to add:
i am so freaking sick of the idea that it’s somehow bad for people to get emotional in the face of ideas they find despicable.
Ron Lindsay at the end of the HuffPo article:
Also from the CFI article:
So what do we know about Lindsay?
1. He opposes the death penalty, reluctantly, only because of the possibility of executing the innocent.
2. He still believes there are people who deserve to die.
3. He is not consoled by that those people who deserve to die are in prison for life.
4. He claims to believe that supermax life sentences are torture.
5. He simultaneously mocks the idea of prison being vengeful, conflating all punishments, from imprisonment to the death penalty, with refusal to give a prisoner a new video game system.
It seems like his characterization of supermax, specifically focusing on supermax solitary confinement as if it were the only alternative to the death penalty, is disingenuous. It also seems like he isn’t particularly concerned about humane treatment per se, as much as he is simply trying to find any reason he can to undermine arguments against the death penalty that he doesn’t personally feel invested in. HIs opposition to the death penalty is, looking at his own words, minimal at best. Comparable to a “pro-choice” liberal who will express disdain for actual women who actually do make that choice, will make sure that they quibble about the limits of Choice, and who will loudly talk about how Extreme and Irrational pro-choicers who aren’t as “moderate”.
Or in other words, shorter summary of Lindsay: “I’m against the death penalty, but….”
No one seems yet to have commented on the IMHO most outrageous part of the whole article:
Bolding added.
That is what we call the retributive theory of justice. The retributive theory of justice is no theory of justice at all. It’s a thin veil over naked sadism and barbarism. There is no such thing as “deserving to die for crimes committed”. That’s an unfortunate aspect of our human character from our evolutionary ancestry (maybe?). We need to fight against that feeling, because that’s not the way we will make a better society for everyone.
My usual go-to example to make my point exceedingly clear is that if it was within my power, I would give Hitler the best eternal afterlife he could want. (Subject to the following restrictions: no loss of deterrence, i.e. if no one on Earth knew about it. I could guarantee that Hitler could harm no one in this otherwise perfect afterlife. It was relatively cheap and easy for me to do so, because like any normal human I have my own personal desires and needs.)
The desire of any person to kill Hitler and/or make Hitler suffer just because he deserves it because of past crimes is barbaric. No one deserves to die or to suffer – not even Hitler.
We need to completely get away from that barbaric and unjustified notion of “justice”.
Wow Christopher. Are you the same Christopher that is regularly troll here? I suspect you are and even if not, you are looking like you aren’t worth the time.
The fucking point of the first thing you responded to, Christopher, is you cannot have it both ways.
Either we are coddling and giving too much to prisoners OR we are torturing them by imprisoning them and they would be better off dead.
Pick one, you dishonest fuckwit.
PS: To be clear, inflicting some minor amount of suffering, often in the form of prison, is unavoidable. Punishment for deterrence, confinement for the safety of others, and possible rehabilitation are categories of reasons that may be justifiable to inflict punishment. But “because he deserves it because he did bad things” is never a justifiable reason to inflict punishment.
This the same notion that underlies the entire Christian dogma of sin and salvation, which is one big reason why I find the doctrines of Christianity to be repugnant, especially the core doctrine that Jesus died for our sins to save us. The only way the core doctrine of Christianity makes any sense is on the barbaric retributive theory of justice.
Also, Christopher:
Go fuck yourself. Fucking amoral shitbag.
Hey dumbfuck, pull your head out of your ass and realize that solitary in a supermax and solitary in a Norwegian prison are two distinct, different options on what to do with murderers that continue to murder. Stop conflating them.
What do you do with people that can’t be housed with other prisoners without murdering them?
Death penalty?
Supermax solitary?
Norwegian solitary with a quality of life better than millions of non-murdering citizens have to suffer through?
What do you of if you make a mistake?
I have always wondered what would happen if there was a wrongful execution, there would be a similar punishment to the team that caused the wrongful death penalty in the first place. How many DA’s need to be executed to get the idea across to the rest YOU DON’T MAKE MISTAKES. When in any doubt, life in prison. Which then leads to not having execution as an option in the first place.
Make sure that they are not tried by their peers – the mad dogs of True Skeptics(TM)?
Hey shit-for-brains, I wasn’t the one that brought up the economic argument which reduced morality to simple accounting.
Because there is no blatantly obvious middle ground between the latter two.
Fucking brilliant mind we are working with here.
Hey shit-for-brains, I wasn’t the one that brought up the economic argument which reduced morality to simple accounting.
Yeah, that was the problem. The problem had nothing to do with you being willing propose barbaric and inhumane execution methods, as well as removing several steps out of the legal system to expedite that execution, as an alleged counter argument.
You are just a troll. You are not sincerely concerned. You are not actually looking for answers. You are not actually willing to actually engage. Fuck off.
That is the reason why I’m anti-death penalty in general.
But there are many cases of convicted murderers murdering people in prison where their guilt is not disputed by anyone. What do you do with them? Housing them with other prisoners is wrong: they will murder again and some dude doing time for slinging weed shouldn’t have to fear that they will be murdered in prison. Supermax solitary seems more cruel than the death penalty. Norwegian solitary seems like they are being rewarded for their evil actions.
What the fuck do you do with humans like this?
Blockquote fail.
Also these hypothetical “mad dogs” that Christopher the amoral fucking troll is proposing:
1. Fucking fantastic dehumanizing term. Par for the course from Christopher, Lover of Gallows.
2. Massive sense of ableism, not just in the terminology but also in the concept as well.
A proper hanging is not any more barbaric or inhumane than any other execution method. It is quick and painless. If you don’t like hanging, other equally cheap methods could be used, perhaps a captive bolt pistol like we use on our livestock.
Hell, we can even eliminate the summary judgment portion in many of these cases as the prisoner that murders other prisoners on camera rarely pleads not-guilty, and when they do it’s not like the trial will take any longer than a summary judgment.
The question still remains, what do you do with undisputed murderers who will murder again?
I’m deeply conflicted about the death penalty; I see both sides of it. I’m concerned about innocent people being convicted, but I’m also concerned about the victims of murderers who weren’t executed the first time, who then go on to murder a second time. Presumably if they’d been executed after the first murder, the victims of their second murder would still be alive. Does anyone know which number is higher: The number of innocent people executed, or the number of victims who were murdered by someone who had already been convicted of murder?
If we’re not going to have the DP then I think the answer to Christopher’s question (No. 45) is easy: Put them in work camps. I have to work for a living; so should they. Eight or ten hours a day of physical labor might wear them out enough to reduce prison violence, and might even generate income to pay off the families of their victims.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Wouldn’t it be nice if a DA could even be FIRED for wrongful executions? They can’t even suffer a professional censure from the Bar Association in most cases. It is horrifying how people can be executed more easily than lawyers can be scolded.
They are not hypothetical. Murderers often murder again in prison.
Call them “undisputed, unrepentant, serial murderers who haven’t stopped murdering even with a life sentence.” Quite a bit longer and not nearly as poetic, but a rose by any other name will smell the same.
I wasn’t the one to first start using this term in this thread. It seemed fitting as the same questions arise when dealing with a dog that has not only mauled someone, but will attack its feeders and any other animal it can latch onto. Feel free to coin a new non-ableist term that describes humans that cannot be around other humans without a high chance of them committing murder.
@Christopher #33:
That’s not an argument for the death penalty. It’s an argument against the American prison-industrial complex and shitty standards of living.
It also underscores the differences in philosophies between punishment and rehabilitation. America doesn’t give a damn about recidivism; people (largely people of color) go to prison for trumped-up offenses or nonviolent drug crimes, live in an environment of violence and corruption that is excused or even endorsed by the prison administrators, and are released with no job, no money, no prospects for ex-felons, even stripped of their right to vote in many states. There’s no incentive to rehabilitate because the privately-owned-and-run prisons make more money off the state and taxpayers the more inmates they have. And because rich politicians ensure their comfortable positions by exploiting, undermining, disenfranchising, and reducing the options of the poor. Tougher drug laws, greater hurdles for welfare recipients, lower minimum wages, etc., are all fruit from the same tree of rich people getting richer by taking from the poor.
And here you are, playing right into their hands. Kill criminals because they might live better than I do. I guarantee the criminals who tanked the economy are living better than even Anders Breivik.
Because video is never subject to interpretation. It is, after all, a complete and perfect account of what happened and why, and certainly can’t be spun to support differing accounts. That’s why the cops who killed Eric Garner and John Crawford and Tamir Rice and Walter Scott and Eric Harris have all been charged, indicted, and either convicted or are awaiting trial, because the video evidence of their crimes made it clear-cut. It’s why no one would even think of defending the Steubenville rapists who taped and posted their crimes on social media.
And because, of course, killing someone in prison—in an American prison in particular—would obviously be an act of unforgivable murder. There wouldn’t possibly be any justification for it, because everyone in prison is a bad person who deserves to be there, and because prison guards do an excellent job of protecting inmates from violence. It’s unthinkable that someone could be driven to kill out of fear of further abuse or something.
Not disputed by whom?
Comparing humans to dogs is probably not the best first step.
Confirmed: Christopher here is a Trollish Individual who has appeared before.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/05/10/how-to-drive-a-brit-crazy/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/04/14/demographically-symbolic-and-rich-thats-how-we-pick-our-rulers/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/03/05/the-ferguson-law-enforcement-system-was-worse-than-i-ever-imagined/
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/01/10/and-here-you-were-all-panicky-about-mere-ebola/
(Though it seems like I also remember a different, stupider Christopher [or at least I can’t confirm it being the same Christopher] who loved to fuck with gun threads)
For the sake of consistency, shouldn’t Lindsay’s quotes be in comic sans. You say something dumb, you get the sans. Isn’t that how it works?
I don’t disagree with that.
But the fact remains that the standards of living for many Americans are shitty. Should murderers that can’t be around other people without murdering have a higher standard of living than those just trying to make it in life?
Putting punishment aside, do you believe that everyone can be rehabilitated? What do you do with those that can’t?
No doubt about it. The fucked thing is that punishment for financial crimes might actually be effective in preventing others from committing the same crimes. Yet we never punish these folks.
But people that already have a life sentence and murder again obviously don’t change their behavior due to the threat of punishment and probably won’t be able to be rehabilitated.
There is a huge difference between trolling and not being in 100% agreement with the groupthink.
I am not dishonestly putting forward my arguments just to fuck with people on the other end of the line.
Christopher is clearly a troll and/or a fool. No one else would say “groupthink” without at least a bit of irony.
Tell me with a straight face that this blog’s comment sections doesn’t drip with groupthink.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
@Christopher
We disagree with each other all the time, sometimes vehemently. You’re an ignorant fool and also probably a troll.
Isn’t Christopher the gunnut troll? Nothing but an RWA troll.
@Christopher #56:
I can type it with a straight face that this very thread shows a lack of groupthink. PZ has made a mistake in the OP. It has been pointed out because “group members” have gone to the sources to make an evaluation and returned to refute it.
Improbably Joe @49 said,
Maybe it might help overall, but it seems like it could also lead to bad consequences. It has happened that prosecutors have been part of the petition for a prisoner’s release after it became apparent the original conviction was wrong. If the DA stands to lose his/her livelihood, I think DAs would not only not cooperate, but would be highly motivated to see to it that evidence from the crime somehow got lost after the conviction.
Christopher, there are two problems with what you’re saying:
1) You can NEVER be sure that a person is 100% guilty, even with what seems like overwhelming, concrete, iron-clad evidence. The person you’re seeing stabbing somebody on the video might be doing so in response to the ‘victim’ making a direct and immediate threat to his life, which the camera didn’t pick up. They might be being forced to carry out the stabbing by someone off-camera. Yes, those are unlikely scenarios, but not impossible, and there’s no doubt others. This is why in any country with an even remotely fair justice system, people are convicted beyond all reasonable doubt, not beyond ALL doubt – if you did it by the latter, you’d never convict anyone at all.
2) The only time someone will definitely not be rehabilitated is if they’re written off as a ‘mad dog’. Yes, it is entirely possible for people to try to rehabilitate a multiple murderer, and fail – but it’s equally possible that they’ll succeed.
Oh, and, incidentally, the Norwegian jails that you seem to be implying are too soft has led to Norway having a less than 30% re-offending rate, compared to the US, which is, what, 75%+? It also has lesser levels of prison population per 100,000 and lower levels of crime in general.
I think a lot of the “groupthink” nonsense that idiots like to through around is often largely a confirmation bias issue. They read a thread and see that 80% or more of the people in the thread are in agreement on an issue fully. When they get to the end of the thread and conceptualize the thread they have tallied up all of the posts that are in agreement (especially when the person in question has a minority opinion) and utterly forgotten the “misses”.
Never mind that 15% of the thread comments might have minor deviations and corrections and rebuttals to specific points, never mind that 5% have pretty strong disagreement with the common theme, never mind that people are discussing these things.
This is, of course, a common thing our brains are prone to do and if not consciously guarded against will cause poor thinking. The question is, once this is pointed out, does the person dig their heels in and continue to shout “GROUPTHINK”, or recognize what they are doing and fix their brain.
Usually the former, I suspect.
Me @62
Throw*, not through.
@jaybee- There’s this great book call Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson that talks about Cognitive Dissonance. It’s got a chapter devoted to wrongful convictions and why DAs are very reluctant to admit their mistakes. So basically, if they were at risk of losing their jobs over wrongful convictions, it really wouldn’t make them less likely to cooperate than they already are.
whheydt, way up at #21 said
How does that work for you, Christopher?
I’m strongly against the death penalty, but I don’t think you can make a sound argument on these grounds. I partially agree with Ron Lindsay that prison is an extreme form of punishment, and one which should not be given lightly. Further, I find the idea of life in prison to be abhorrent. I don’t see “death penalty” and “life in prison” as two different kinds of beasts, just different spots on a single scale of cruelty.
When you ask that question, it immediately makes me think of a very similar question: “How many innocent people put in prison for 30 years is too many?”. That’s not an easy question to answer. In fact, I think it’s one of the hardest questions that one can ask of a moral system. Any system of deterrence punishment is invariably going to inflict suffering on some innocent people. The right answer involves tuning it so that the number of wrongly hurt innocent people is as small as it can be while still preserving large deterrence effect. Where exactly should that line be? I think there’s legitimate room for disagreement to some extent. I don’t see an obviously right answer.
Of course, rehabilitation where practical should be a priority over punishment for deterrence.
Part of having a criminal justice system is the tradeoff of hurting some – hopefully random but not random today – individuals from the population in order to make everyone else better off. It’s unavoidable IMHO.
And again, I fail to see a difference in kind between “death sentence” and “jail for 30 years”. Yes one is much more severe, but your complaint in the form of a question applies to all other forms of deterrence punishments, not just the death penalty, and so pretending that it’s some knockdown argument against the death penalty is IMHO foolish. Rather, it seems the proper way of arguing is to note that there is little to no deterrence value, little to no value in saved expenses, and keeping people alive rather than killing them is otherwise simply the better, more human, thing to do. No death penalty wins on every count.
jaybee @60
I’m trying to be charitable here…
You said “If the DA stands to lose his/her livelihood, I think DAs would not only not cooperate, but would be highly motivated to see to it that evidence from the crime somehow got lost after the conviction”… that’s what they’re doing NOW! You’re saying that dirty DAs who are dirty to get convictions will also be dirty if they risk conviction for getting caught?
Well, personally I have a zero tolerance policy on executing innocent people. As the justice system in EVERY country is flawed that makes application of a death penalty a no-no for me. Confession I hear you ask? Well, people confess for all sorts of stupid but quite explicable reasons. Instances have been well documented and we’ve just had a murder conviction here in NZ quashed despite a confession because the mental capacity of the accused was demonstrated to be sufficiently impaired that they could not link the consequences of the confession to the act of confessing (they confessed to being present in order to claim the reward, but didn’t compute that that would make them an accessory to murder; and no, they were almost certainly not present in the first place). So, confessions are out too.
Hmmmm, what about catching someone red handed. Well, sure I have heard of crimes that are so viscerally appalling and committed by people who are at least technically sane but evil that my gut instinct is to eliminate them from the World my loved ones inhabit. But…. I’ve never heard of anyone like that committing such a crime AND being caught right there by unimpeachable witnesses, so that’s a bit theoretical. In any case in any of those particularly revolting scenarios I’m aware of the people involved were also diagnosed with serious mental or personality disorders so at best my view is we should be protected from them (possibly forever), but they need help, not death. Besides, I suspect anyone truly evil committing heinous crimes would probably prefer death rather than life imprisonment and cleaning the toilets.
tl;dr Lindsay’s argument is shallow, lacks rationality and most certainly any shred of morality. It amounts to bad guys gotta die and to hell with the odd mistake. Just goes to show rational skeptic atheists and fire and brimstone theocratic law and order types can agree on something!
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen all day. And I read the post about Ray Comfort.
microraptor #69
Absolutely agreed.
Let’s go to any of the vast, vast, vast, USA For Profit Death Rows and interview the residents.
“Would you rather be here or dead?”
Rob #68
Except that Lindsay says he opposes the death penalty because of mistakes. I’m not saying his arguments are strong, or that he has a clear and reasonable position.
Just that reducing his argument to the bolded, as you have, is pretty absurd when the mistakes argument is the only one he actually gave merit to.
Christopher wrote:
And some people commit crimes just so they can go to prison and get regular meals. Do you think that we should then start starving prisoners because they can’t have it better than those “just trying to make it in life?” Clearly this would be an idiotic suggestion, so I don’t know why you’re suggesting something equivalent. The fact that there are shittier ways to live than prison isn’t an excuse to make prison shittier unless you’re a sadistic asshole who enjoys the idea of people suffering.
Christopher,
Norwegian solitary, without question. It effectively keeps them away from potential victims, thus preventing them from killing again, thereby solving the problem. And it does so without unnecessary sadism.
That non-criminals have a lower quality of life than Norwegian criminals is a problem with the social safety net, not with prisons. Treating prisoners shittily won’t actually make things any better, and “my life is crap, so other people’s lives should be made crapper” does not seem like a stunning moral choice. I also don’t think it’s true; there is more to quality of life than the type of bedroom you have, and solitary confinement is in itself a pretty severe punishment for social creatures like humans. But hey, if you’re so sure of it, feel free to go commit a crime in Norway.
Oh. Ron Lindsay …
I skimmed this twice and kept thinking “Michael Nugent”. I guess the wankers tend to flow together. Irish or not.
I’m against the death penalty for all the already stated reasons, plus what it does to the society that supports it. It seems to harden them against other people and hardens the police and the government against those they see as the ‘problem people’ in the community, usually identified by race, religion or socio-economic status. I can really only see one reasonable use of a death penalty: when a society doesn’t have the resources to protect themselves against those that are a clear danger to the individuals of that society (ie. a danger to life, not just property). If they have no facility to build secure jails for long-term residents or enforce an exile, then there is an argument that the death penalty may be the best solution as a last resort. But I can think of very few countries that are that badly off these days.
“Both his admirers and his detractors agree that his abilities as a philosopher match his skills as a lawyer.”
If this is the level of his philosophy, I’m thinking he may well be a pretty rubbish lawyer.
whheydt, @21
This reminded me of an interview with the guy (a junior high school teacher who worked as department store loss prevention security guard during the summers) who captured serial killer Charles Ng when he caught Ng shoplifting camping fuel. During the struggle he was shot in the hand before the police arrived and prevented Ng from getting off a second shot. Ng and his partner Lake kidnapped entire families in California so they could rape and murder women. There had been fears that Ng would come to Calgary where his sister lived after Lake killed himself when he was caught shoplifting.
The guy who caught Ng said he had a repeated nightmare in which he was about to execute Ng with rifle as Ng’s sister pleaded with him not to shoot.
As for killing the “Mad Dog”, it sounds like Christopher is in favour of preferentially executing the mentally ill and the feeble minded.
It is interesting that Lindsay uses a terrorist as an example where the death penalty might be appropriate, instead of a CEO who decides to kill a few dozen employees through accidents resulting from cost cutting so he and a few shareholders can get the pretend racer brakes option on their Porsches.
Is Ron Lindsay a thinky thought leader? If not, he should be.
Confussing stunned outrage for unthinking, dogmatic opposition is yet another failure of this monster. People are not recoiling in horror without providing a detailed analysis of why it is that your position is disgusting and for why opposition to the death penalty is a rationally solid position to have, because they don’t have such arguments…it’s because they are sitting alongside a person who seems to think nothing of expressing a desire to kill others, even if it is by proxy..
I’m trying to work out the maths of this. Does that mean if less than one-eleventh of executions are of innocent people, we’re within limits?
I think your priorities and understanding of the world are out of wack if you think that taking away 100% of someone’s remaining life is in a completely different league and fundamentally incomparable with taking away say 30% of someone’s remaining life. They are totally comparable. However, I don’t use that in support of the death penalty. I’m against the death penalty, and so I use that comparison to attack the ridiculously long standard prison sentences in the US. US sentencing policy for many crimes is simply outlandish, as are prison conditions for the underprivileged classes. It’s something I expect from a tyranny in a bad fiction novel – not from a society concerned about improved the human condition.
The logical argument against the death penalty is really very clear and simple. The logic behind the death penalty, at least specifically as a punishment for murder (or multiple murder or mass murder or [insert other legal term which basically means you killed someone]) which is all it’s used for in the US, can be summed up, simply, as follows:
– Killing is bad
– You killed someone
– Therefore, we will kill you
That is obviously hypocritical and illogical. So, there. If Lindsay will only accept Vulcan-logic arguments about what is, after all, a very emotive subject, then there it is.
Being upset that people in prison get better lifestyles than other people in the country isn’t an argument for treating the prisoners worse, it’s an argument for shoring up the welfare net for housing, food, and healthcare.
I am against the death penalty for the reasons people have laid out above. The only tenuous reason that I can think of for killing someone is if they are considered too dangerous to live, all other reasons come down to revenge not justice. I reiterate that I don’t agree with this reason either.
Incidentally, there was a documentary many years ago with Michael Portillo looking into humane, reliable ways to carry out a death sentence. The only one that appeared to be such a method involved hypoxia. It puts you into a euphoric state so there is no pain. He suggested this method to an American enforcer of the death penalty and was given short shrift. The conclusion being that they wanted the person to suffer. So it’s all about revenge and suffering.
Christopher, if you want to see a “mad dog”, look in the mirror. You are one sick puppy.
I’m against death penalty, no exceptions. I’d argue that the death penalty is not even a penalty. How can one penalize someone who just ceased to exist? The time on death row may be terrible, the execution may be terrible, but death itself cannot be a penalty.
@bassmike
Yuhp. It’s an attitude that permeates our entire justice system; “They’re bad people and they ought to be punished, and to suffer is to be punished”. Calls for the death penalty, longer sentences, harsher prison conditions, etc. etc. are all just symptoms of this attitude. It’s not only barbaric but counterproductive, as a quick look at reoffending rates, particularly in the US and Norway as stark examples of the opposite ends of the spectrum, will tell you.
For me it’s very simple. If killing another person is very bad – evil – then it’s just as bad for the state to do it. So I oppose the death penalty. Here in Australia we have not had the death penalty since 1967.
#19, Rob Grigjanis
I assume it means much the same thing as ‘ungood’, and probably has a similar purpose.
Did you folks know that Norway is one of very few countries that have abolished the death penalty twice?
Y’see, it was reinstated after the second world war. Seven men were shot for crimes during the war. Then it was abolished again.
I’m strongly opposed to the death penalty. That said, I can’t accept the idea that killing is always wrong, or that everyone deserves a second chance. I’m sure most people here wouldn’t condemn a victim who killed their victimiser in an act of desperation. What about killing Nazis, or other people with genocidal aspirations?
@Marius, #91 – Like I said, no exceptions. The right to life is absolute. Sometimes rights of two different people or groups of people are in conflict and must be weighed against each other, but the right to life is not in conflict with any other right. What’s more, other rights depend on it, because a person who does not live can have no rights.
Marius, if you are desperate enough to kill somebody, you are desperate enough to take the consequences. If you are desperate enough to kill somebody, you may not be in the best frame of mind for making rational decisions.
Marius, if you are so desperate for an argument that you need to bring up the Nazis, you may need to look up PRATT. (It’s “Point Refuted A Thousand Times”.)
Good ol’ Ron Lindsay, once again using his Farewell Tour to say, “Hi, I’m an asshole! Tough shit for you!”
anym @89: A dispositive fact is
So for Lindsay, the error rate settles the question, and he is opposed to the death penalty.
Enlightenment Liberal:
Enlightenment Liberal’s Gotta Enlightenment Liberal.
Seriously, what the fuck is this shit? It is either bafflingly asinine or some kind of philosophical wanking that has no import. One or the other. But the effect is that you are doing your damndest to diminish the sheer barbarity that is the death penalty. It is great that you are concerned about prison conditions and the length of sentences, but to do this utterly disingenuous routine of yours, trying to combine the completely reversible and mostly humane (depending on the wildly variable factor that is the prison conditions) to irreversible state sanctioned killing. Yes, that is a pretty significant difference in kind, and nothing have you said makes it any different. Your completely ridiculous handwringing does nothing but detract from opposition to the death penalty and confuse the issue. And no amount of “I oppose the death penalty, but…” can make that less true.
Good fucking lord, you managed to be even more absurd than Lindsay or even known troll Christopher. Step away from the computer and take a good, hard look at your life.
Marius:
In the event that someone kills in self defense, it isn’t a matter of that killing suddenly being moral. It is that the killing is understandable. There were mitigating circumstances that made it so that it was a necessary evil or an understandable mistake. That simply DOES NOT APPLY to a justice system. If the justice system is killing out of desperation or self defense, something has gone horribly wrong with the stability of that country, or somehow Batman villains entered real life. And “killing Nazis” would be in the context of fucking war. Otherwise, you already arrested those Nazis, and their genocidal aspirations don’t fucking matter. They are under control, no longer a danger. There is no fucking reason to kill them just because they are Evil, and presumed to never change their evil ways.
———————————————–
I guess Lindsay had a point. Death penalty really are dogmatic and haven’t thought their position through logically. Just look at all the asinine, illogical arguments from death penalty opponents…..AGAINST the death penalty. Utterly mind boggling.
“Death as Punishment”, presupposed one glaring flaw: afterlife torment, ie HELL. To end a crims life does nothing to ‘make him suffer, repent, etc.’ it simply ends their life. Maybe reduce one’s worry of the small, infinitesimal, possibility of getting killed by them. But if you want the crim to think about what they did and how their actions affected a lot of people: put them in prison to live out the rest of their life in contemplation of their horrific act.
I know this cannot be applied universally/indescriminately. I am locked into thinking about Tsarnaev. I see him as having been bullied into that terrorization by his older, dominant, brother, who was the ‘mastermind’ behind that plot. Tsarnaev would never do such a thing, on his own. So to ‘punish’ him for his brother’s campaign is ‘not good’. But having participated in such an act, no matter how bullied, he deserves an amount of punishment to reflect on the horror of those acts. So keep him in prison, protected, but with no privileges. Health and sustenance he is entitled to, little else.
Marius:
When did anyone imply there are no possible circumstances (like self-defense) in which it’s acceptable to kill a person? And how are those supposed to be relevant to capital punishment?
What does it mean to say that someone “deserves a second chance” or even a first?
What makes you sure, and what counts as “an act of desperation”? I don’t think you’re attempting a Jedi mind trick here… But could you be more specific, so we could figure out for ourselves whether or not we really agree with you? That is instead of just telling us that you’re sure we agree about some vague thing. I’m sure you are sure (at least you were a minute ago), and that’s about all I’ve got.
What about it? I have aspirations of doing all sorts of things, but that doesn’t mean they actually happened already, are happening right now or will happen any time in the future.
Do you want to murder people for thoughtcrimes? Alternatively, do you think anybody could have sufficient knowledge to make a deterministic prediction that an actual crime will happen? “Sufficient knowledge” means being capable of predictions on the level of Minority Report (psychics or time-traveling detectives or some such thing), but in reality we don’t actually have epistemic access to events which haven’t happened yet like we do of events that happened in the past. And if physics ever got to the point where we could know enough to make such predictions with some reasonable degree of certainty,* we would have the time and resources to use other means besides killing the person to prevent those actions. Besides putting them in a prison or a mental hospital, we could change their lives for the better in all sorts of ways, so that they wouldn’t have such aspirations anymore.
If you’re on board with the idea that personalities/beliefs/dispositions/attitudes/goals/etc. are all physically determined, then we can have some effect on them. And that’s what we should do. That’s what our responses should be like, and since those options are always available as long as there is still a person with personalities/beliefs/etc., there’s no good reason to even consider anything like murdering or torturing the person.
*If we were not just “reasonably certain” about it (leaving some wiggle room for us to do something), but it was instead a deterministic thing we’re totally incapable of avoiding no matter what, then there’s no point in talking about “aspirations” at all or what preemptive actions we might consider. In cases like that, these Nazis (or terrorists or whoever you’re actually thinking of) do commit genocide on another group of people, so we’re back to talking about what we can and should do after the fact.
I still haven’t seen anyone bring up the obvious takeaway from his article… Ron Lindsay is a terrible dinner party guest.
“Should we invite Ron this year?”
“Don’t you remember last year when he decided to debate the merits of the death penalty and would not shut up about it?”
“Yeah, that wasn’t much fun… who’s next?”
“Sam Harris… Ugh…”
bassmike @84
I heard him on a podcast recently, probably Grauniad Science Weekly. I don’t know if it is still the case, but the method of lethal injection used in Texas was a technique that the Texas Veterinarian professional body had banned for use in euthanizing animals because of the suffering it caused. Actual mad dogs in Texas are treated better than humans. It definitely is all about revenge and suffering, Utah’s enthusiasm for firing squads stemmed from a Mormon requirement for blood atonement.
Having Sam Harris for dinner would be a full discourse meal.
Ah, I see EL is being a nitwit again:
Because being alive and being dead are totes not that different.
Ron Lindsay:
Gandalf the Grey:
Since Ron Lindsay wants to be all skeptical and rational: What’s his objective set of criteria that can decide who really, really, really deserves to die? Because many people are really convinced that many folks around here deserve to die.
Christopher
What citizens? Norways? Probably not. You know, the fact that the USA is toally fucked up and lets people live in ratholes eating rubbish has no bearing on the treatment of criminals in civilized societies.
+++
Well, the argument can be made that a quick death is better than life in prison. But only if you’re the person facing this. Should a convicted prisoner ask for means to commit suicide they should be allowed to proceed, but nobody else gets to decide what would be better for that person.
+++
Marius
I don’t think that anybody here thinks that. I don’t think that anybody ever argued that killing someone in self defense is the same as killing them in a sadistic ritual.
And there are people who have fucked up their first chance SO badly that giving them a second chance would be irresponsable.
BUT, as long as you can get your results, protecting yourself and others, without killing somebody, then that’s the thing to do.
+++
Oh, and again, I’m fucking sick and tired of the “knee jerk” accusation.
1. I have come to my decision after thinking about it.
2. I’m perfectly fine with some questions being settled. What fucking moral argument could there be that would change those things? Lindsay certainly didn’t present any. Or are we talking “wizard with nuke” again? He’S sounding like creationists: Teach the Controversy!!!!!!!!
Lou “Weegee” Doench:
Lindsay has settled all of the important questions of our time while his foolish debate opponents have instead focused largely on finishing their plate of spaghetti! The philistines! Dinner is no time for food, there is important philosophical debate to be had!
Though, let’s be real here: Master debating at the dinner table? Please, at least wait til we are done eating, if you aren’t gonna have the decency to do it in the privacy of your own room.
Tony!
Literally made me snort.
Giliell:
Well put.
Pz:
It is a dichotomy imposed by the structure of our law enforcement system. If you can reform the system, then, of course, you can introduce other options. This should take a dedicated activist movement no more than about 75 years.
That would be about 65 years after Dzhohkar Tsarnev has run out of appeals and been executed, or, in the event of a life sentence, about 20 years after Dzhohkar Tsarnev died of health problems resulting from a lifetime of torture.
Were death or so-called “supermax” really the only options offered under the US legal system?
Thumper: No, supermax really isn’t the only other alternative. The U.S. prison system is shit, but not that shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Security_levels
Types of security prisons:
Minimum, mostly for white collar criminals.
Medium
Close
Maximum
Supermax
People are supposedly put into supermax for the following reasons:
However, the history of supermax was largely just because the inmates were dangerous
The “too high profile” or the element of “risk to national security” are all examples of mission drift. Essentially, it seems like terrorists or anyone like that are just thrown into supermax by default to punish them, regardless of level of danger they pose.
So in a way it is both true and not true to say that supermax was really the only other option. It was very likely that they were going to toss him into supermax if he wasn’t executed, because he was a Terrorist. Which is a whole different policy problem, which should also be protested and changed, and hardly excuses the use of the death penalty in this specific case, let alone the existence of the death penalty in general.
I (somewhat) see Lindsay as saying, I clearly see him doing it it a disparaging way that makes everyone take offense and get defensive, rather than consider what he is trying, ineptly, to tell them.
I often fall into the same trap (as Lindsay exemplifies). Going all contrarian to explore a thought and reason our way though a conclusion, but then getting all caught in argumentation and losing the chain of thought completely.
Even so, that glimmer of rational thought by Lindsay, was executed [see what I did there?] so poorly as to be totally misconstrued. A glimmer of light does not justify all the shat that it is buried in.
..
In the END, death penalty is simply demonstrative of justice’s total frustration at finding reasonable methods at dealing with the perp. A kinda personal version of “nuke it from orbit, just to be sure”.
I agree that both solitary confinement and especially the death penalty are repugnant. What I don’t understand is how war gets a pass. Why don’t we consider soldiers (who sign up of their own volition) to be deficient in empathy?
J Dubb: Define “gets a pass” and “we” .
As for me, I don’t perceive that is (necessarily; inherently) the soldiers who are deficient in empathy, it is the people who send soldiers off on cynical and unnecessary wars who are. Same with those in charge of the policies of supermax prisons, solitary confinement, and the death penalty. It isn’t necessarily the people whose boots are on the ground who are the people deficient in empathy. The politicians from their comfy armchairs making these policies and dictating who will suffer and/or die, however, I could see as being accused of lacking empathy. They do it too lightly, too frivolously, with too little actual support in fact and reason, and often with too much for them to gain personally, for them to escape such accusations.
J Dubb @ 109:
I don’t think most of them are deficient in empathy at all. I’ve known way too many people who went into armed service because they really thought they would being doing good, would be serving their country, and came back almost broken by the weight of their hurt and cynicism. War is definitely a problem, but if you’re looking for those with a deficiency of empathy, you need to look much higher than those with their boots on the ground.
slithey tove
Bullshit.
We have only recently started giving fuck about reasonable methods and some countries still don’t do.
slithey tove:
No, it isn’t. That’s very far from the truth. A death penalty has always been seen as serving justice, and historically, it’s been a way to continually thin out those irksome poor, lower class people (then transportation happened instead, which was a much better method of getting rid of undesirables.)
I know too many people who thought a death penalty would give them a sense of justice served, that it would help on the “closure” front (how I hate that fucking word and concept), that there would be some sort of satisfaction, but once that penalty was carried out, all that’s found is a hollowness. The person or persons you lost are still gone. Another death doesn’t do much at all to help. Some people claim it helped them a lot, but the majority were sadly surprised at just how unsatisfying it was, and many people feel it sullies the memory of those they lost. It’s all complex, and this insistence on trying to tie it up in a sentence or two with a bow on top does everyone a disservice.
It’s all very easy to pontificate on these matters at a dinner party or wherever, but as I mentioned upthread, for those of us who have been victims, or family/friends of victims, who have been caught up in the grind of the justice system, we know how fucked up and complicated feelings can get over something like the death penalty. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’re blithely talking about committing state sanctioned murder, and it’s even easier to lose sight of what the victims would prefer, and many of them would not prefer anyone else to die.
No. Really. There’s a man who might disagree.
Also, since when is 30 years the remainder of one’s life? Especially considering that most of these people get convicted in their 20s for that length of time? (My mum’s well over 50, but I’m pretty sure she’s quite definite on the fact that her life isn’t over yet. Not sure about my dad, as he’s dead, but I’ll be expecting an answer from him soon, as these life and death concepts seem to be pretty much exactly almost by definition the same thing to some people.)
Lou “Weegee” Doench @99 and anteprepro @104
:D (Though I’d much prefer to hear the verbal wanking before dinner, just in case dinner is especially yummy – wouldn’t want to lose that, on account of a few intellectual points.)
Well said, Giliell @103. *thumbs up*
Dumbass: “These principles appear to be adopted more out of reflex, emotion, or groupthink than evidence-based reasoning.”
Actually, no. Usually my first reflexive and emotional response, when I hear of people like the Tsarnaevs, Gary Ridgeway, Ted Bundy, etc., people that there is no doubt that they are heartless killers, I think, “They should die slowly, painfully, and soon.”
Then I realize that this is not rational and responsible thinking, that to think that way is to seek revenge and emotional satisfaction. not justice.
Giliell 2 103 Thank you for you’re well-thought and considered response. I love it when I read something and actually feel appreciably smarter after having read it. Not coincidentally, this seems to occur with your posts fairly regularly.
I will consider supporting the death penalty when George Stinney is released from the grave.
A court has already ruled him innocent, yet they have not ordered his release despite case law and common sense making it obvious that when a conviction is overturned, the exonerated must be released.
In fact, the death penalty is the only penalty imposed where it is considered common practice that people later determined innocent should be forced to serve their full sentence anyway. While I don’t object to the death penalty itself, I do object to the practice of not releasing people who have been proven innocent.
Now some people claim that death is physically irreversible; we don’t have the technology to bring someone back to life and such technology would probably violate several laws of physics anyway. This is a position I find logically dubious if not hypocritical. It appears to be adopted more out of reflex, emotion, or groupthink than evidence-based reasoning. The emotional basis for these principles is revealed not only by the tenacity with which the principles are held, but also by the denigrating rhetoric directed against those who dare to question the principles.
After all—
The state has a legal obligation to release the exonerated. Given that they are aware of this legal obligation, they would never consider imposing a punishment they could not reverse. Doing so risks putting them in a position where the state is legally compelled to do the impossible, which would cause the government to shut down and spinning rainbow beach balls to appear in place of stars on the flag until the system was forcibly shut down and rebooted.
People on death row are released all the time. The state has already shown it is able and willing to release people who are exonerated after they have been sentenced to death. Whether a sentence already imposed has been fully carried out is a legal technicality of no concern to the courts, so it shouldn’t change whether the courts can order someone released.
Obviously, people who think death is so permanent that the state can’t reverse an execution after someone is proven innocent have committed the cardinal intellectual sin of many of the religious. That is, they hold certain principles as beyond question. This is not a good thing.
Oh, is there any way to take my Facebook link out of my comment? I already updated my profile but the link seems to still be there.
Jake Harban
re: your facebook link
email PZ directly.
He’s in transit but he may be able to do something.
re @113:
Yes.
Let me rephrase my erroneous statement:
Better? I thought not. me sad.
How about: eh?
Thumper:
As far as I know, prisoner abuse is rampant in nearly all US prisons, supermax or not. Only a few prisons designed to cater to wealthy
“white collar”highly effective criminals are relatively free of prisoner abuse.Those few prisons do not have much effect on the fact that we are still faced with a horrible dichotomy which is baked into the system for horrible reasons. I do hope that will be changed someday, and I think it’s possible after many decades of activism (“75” is a guess), but until then, yes, death and life-long torture will often be the only options, as they surely are in Tsarnev’s case.
Applause,
Nebraska legislature votes to abolish the death penalty.
Nebraska is a red state.
This is an interesting discussion, but I can’t get past having that song stuck in my head.
“Bravely bold Ron Lindsay
Rode forth from Camelot…..”
@anteprepro
@rq
Regarding:
Let me clarify. My concern is not about the wrongly convicted people, which is another great argument agains the death penalty. My concern is about the convicted people who are actually guilty. My entire shtick here is that their suffering matters too, and that there is no such thing as “humane” imprisonment. I think the very idea of “humane” imprisonment is a sick joke.
For rq especially, how do you think that guy feels after being imprisoned for half of his life? Of course he’s happy that he still has half of it left, and again that’s a great reason to be against the death penalty like I am. I’m not using this as an argument for the death penalty. I’m using this as an argument against imprisoning almost anyone for 39 years. Why would you do that? In almost every case it makes no sense – except as vengeance. Do you think that person has lived a good life with 39 years in prison? Do you think that person would describe it as “living”, or merely “surviving”? And again, I don’t care how “humane” you make prisons, it’s still a cage, and it’s still a deniable of the basic right of self determination, exploration, knowledge, free association, etc. It’s a denial of the basic right of seeking happiness and well-being. I very much expect that this very unfortunate wrongly convicted person would happily agree to the characterization that half of his life has been taken from him.
Quoting anteprepo:
The feeling is mutual. I am appalled at your failure to appreciate the atrocity that is incarceration of any kind. I am appalled that you think that there is such a thing as “humane” incarceration.
It is only with great regret that I recognize that the least evil options sometimes is incarceration, but it’s like a sick joke to hear anyone say any form of denial of basic human rights is “humane”.
@Christopher #54:
You’re equivocating here, since your original complaint here was about Anders Breivik. That the standard of living for Americans is shitty shouldn’t have an impact on Norwegian prison policies. Otherwise we’re stuck ensuring that no murderer lives in conditions that are better than anyone else in the world. Which is a nice demonstration of how there are living conditions around the world that we would happily consider “cruel and unusual.”
How do we distinguish between people who can’t be rehabilitated and people who can? Is there a brain scan? A standardized multiple-choice test? Do we just look real deep into their eyes and just know? I don’t know of any way to determine that a person cannot be rehabilitated a priori.
“People who fail a multiple choice standardized test repeatedly obviously aren’t capable of learning how to write an essay.” You can’t judge whether or not people are capable of being rehabilitated by using as your measuring tool a system that is not designed for rehabilitation. American prisons are PTSD factories, not rehabilitation centers.
If rehabilitation is your goal, then a life sentence and a death sentence would be the same thing. You try to rehabilitate a prisoner successfully until they die. At that point, you can pretty safely conclude that they were not able to be rehabilitated, at least, not with the methods that were employed.
Those fancy Norwegian prisons have a 20% recidivism rate, compared to 77% in the US. Surely some of that is due to a more robust social safety net, and possibly due to less income disparity and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, but it seems likely (especially from research into similar programs instituted elsewhere, including the US) that a part of that is due to treating inmates like human beings rather than penned animals, and giving them the tools and help they need to correct their destructive impulses.
It’s part of why posing “life in prison” and “death penalty” as the only two options is a problem. If rehabilitation is your goal, then both are equally counterproductive. Breivik got 21 years, because that’s the maximum sentence allowed at one time under Norwegian law. If, after 21 years, he’s not rehabilitated, they’ll tack on more time. Because again, there’s no way to tell whether or not someone is unrehabilitatable until you try.
Enlightenment Liberal, fuck off. Just fuck off. It is just frankly impossible to take you seriously anymore.
I am appalled at your gross stupidity and inability to think. So, try shutting the fuck up and just plain fade into the bandwidth.
Your inability to show us you truly understand the problems, and approach them from something other than presuppositional idiocy, is making you irrelevant to any discussion.
And yet, despite having literally decades to gather and review evidence, y’all still manage to kill plenty of innocent people.
EnlightenmentLiberal
I am agreeing with anteprepro.
You are just wanking.
Go away.
Say what you will about National Socialism, at least the NAZI’s had an ethos.
WTF?
This is the most sickening thing I’ve read today: And I was reading this thread today.
Wow. White Sands really has a problem if its weapons-grade material is going this far off-the-range.
But isn’t it only on the basis of past crimes that we determine confinement? We may structure the confinement so that it serves purposes such as “deterrence, confinement for the safety of others, and possible rehabilitation” … but exactly how in hell is it possible to put someone in the confinement in the first place if it was not justified on the basis of past crimes?
The basis of future crimes?
Or are we just locking random people up, treating them really badly, and then recording it for rebroadcast in the new reality show, “Look How Shitty We Treat Someone Who Didn’t Even Do Anything Wrong! You Certainly Better Not Break Any Laws, Jerkface!”
Wow, this set of statements really isn’t standing up to the “at least they had an ethos” test.
Enlightenment Liberal
Wow, so… it’s preferable to be dead? Because even if you’re guilty and you do your 30 years and you get out of jail having served your (horrible, no doubt torturous) sentence, and you’re alive, it would still be preferable to be dead?
And now I’m seeing a math issue: you say “half of his life”. Half of one’s life is still not all of one’s life, and one is still not dead.
Which would be the point, here – that 30 years in prison is not equivalent to death. For anyone. Innocent, or guilty. For anyone.
Giliell put it best, if anyone wants to end their life, they should be given the option to do so. They, their choice, their decision, they get to decide whether those 30 years are death, or half a life. But the answer will not be the same in all cases, and no, 30 years in prison is not equivalent to death.
Not.
Not even by definition.
I suggest you read more about Norwegian prisons, and learn some definitions.
#94 @rietpluim
This sounds exactly like the horrid pro-life rhetoric I was subjected to during my early years. No, the right to life isn’t absolute: we don’t live in a world of absolute moral values. It may be pretty close, because death is final, but many cases – such as those of embryos, fetuses and brain-dead patients, it’s not. (I guess that probably wasn’t your meaning, but that phrase just stuck out like a sore thumb of prolifery).
@ anteprepro #107
Thanks. My #106 was somewhat snarky; an attempt to point out to Llewelly that this is in fact not a dichotomy imposed by the US justice system, but an arbitrary dichotomy being applied to Tsarnev due to the perceived seriousness of his crimes. But I really do appreciate the explanation.
I always thought the point of supermax was to house inmates who pose a serious and persistent danger to prison staff and other inmates. But I’m not at all surprised that it was offered as an option for Tsarnev. The mission creep you mention was entirely predictable, and we’re now at a stage where it’s not just a very secure unit for housing very dangerous people, but a Really Bad Punishment™ for Really Bad People™. And Tsarnev, being a Goddamn Muzzie Terrorist, obviously falls into the category of Really Bad People™ for whom “normal” prison is not enough of a punishment. *sigh*.
In a situation where you are consciously choosing to impose risk of death on another human being where no person would risk death or even serious injury without your actions, THEN your right to life is not enforceable, against the person whose life you have chosen to put at risk when that person chooses to take actions intended to preserve that person’s own life that as a consequence – intended or not – risk your own.
Therefore, right to life is not absolute.
The right to life is inherent. It is unalienable. It is not absolute.
@ =8)-DX
I think where the comparison falls down is that rights can logically only be applied to people, as in autonomous human beings, and fetuses aren’t people in any logical sense and certainly not the legal sense.
@=8)-DX #132 and @Crip Dyke #134 – By “absolute” I meant to say that the right to life does not have to be weighed to other rights. On second thought I may be wrong about that. I overlooked the possible necessity to kill someone in an attempt of self defense. I may have overlooked other possibilities as well. You’re right, even the right to life is not absolute.
Jdub #109
Because fuck you.
Thumper, yeah, I figured you were snarky, I started out by trying at reinforcing your snark by saying that it is a false dichotomy with wikipedia research. Then my brain wandered as I looked more into supermax and how it has been used and abused, and was thinking out loud, realizing how bizarre the whole situation is.
rietpluim: (I would argue that no right is absolute anyway) Maybe it would be better to think not that we all have a right to live, as much as we all have a right to not be directly killed. And that this right is exclusively abridged only by other people’s same right. So you can kill in self defense, to avoid being killed yourself. You cannot kill in retaliation, however. (And you are not obligated to bring a fetus to term and you are not obligated to keep coma patients alive and you are not obligated to use extreme medical methods to keep someone from dying and you are allowed to take your own life and you are allowed to waive your right for others to assist in your suicide and so on and so on).
“He is not at all afraid to talk to Rebecca Watson in nasty ways
Brave, brave, brave, brave Ron Lindsay…”
This reminds me of the aftermath of 9/11/01, when NPR “news”caster Scott Simon practically broke both arms patting himself on the back on the air for his “courage” in, despite being a Quaker, supporting G. Dubious Bush’s rush to war.
Has Ron Lindsay gotten tired of upstate New York and decided to run for Governor of Texas?
@ anteprepro
As I said, I appreciate the expansion. It’s somewhat depressing, because if they had kept to the original intent of supermax it’s actually quite a good idea. It’s just it’s current misuse that’s out of order.
Bah, he doesn’t deserve Buffalo. I bet he’s never even had a chicken stir fry pocket from Pete & Paul’s. ;)
CD 130
The (valid) point that EL was making is that locking someone up or otherwise punishing them because they are a bad person who deserves to have bad things done to them is an intrinsically fallacious theory of justice, and inevitably leads to, just for instance, crap like the jury deciding whether Tsarnaev is such a bad person that he deserves to be killed, or such a bad person that he deserves to be locked up in a tiny room forever. The point, though, is that, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood, ‘deserve’s got nothing to do with it’. We don’t (or rather shouldn’t) be locking up people who commit crimes because we feel like they deserve it but rather because we want them to stop committing crimes, and, at least in the short term, restricting their movements is the best way we have at this time to ensure that.
throwaway: I think I confused Ron Lindsay with Hal Lindsay, the author of “The Late Great Planet Earth.” My bad. So no, not THAT Lindsay, but an idiot nonetheless.
@Dalillama, #143:
While it may be true that EL has a valid point in there somewhere, “deserves to have X done to them” is exactly what we determine in a court of law, and where X = a bad thing, then we certainly have the statement
All that’s left to refute the idea that this is a fallacious theory of justice is to define and examine the first clause:
“because they are a bad person.”
While as an existential judgement, “you are a bad person,” would be an inherently malleable and subjective term inevitably corrupted by the kinds of biases EL decries, EL actually defines “you are a bad person” as “he did bad things” if you accept EL’s own formulation:
This isn’t an existential judgement on whether or not someone “is good” or “is bad”. This is a judgement based on, “did this person do bad things?”
So I’ll give **you** credit for making a valid point. But EL? Fuck no. EL loves to make grandiose and vague statements using phrases like “bad things”. EL also loves to refuse to define such things until people object…and then to define only the boundaries of such concepts necessary to exclude any objection from consideration…before declaring victory and using that victory as proof that any objections to EL’s formulation are by definition unreasonable. Then EL uses that declaration to dismiss yet further objections, because EL has proven that objections are by definition unreasonable readings of EL. QED!
If I snub you, if I refuse to hire you, if I ostracize you, these are all bad things. EL has made the statement that it is unfair, it is not even in keeping with any potential theory of justice for me to inflict these things upon you solely because of your past bad acts.
Thus, under EL’s statement – in which EL predictably yet spectacularly failed to specifically define terms – it is not in keeping with any theory of justice, it is only in keeping with vengeance and other injustices if I refuse to allow you in my home and push for you to be forbidden from my neighborhood or workplace or some such solely for your past acts in which you murdered several of my family members even though banning you from my neighborhood is, in fact, quite in keeping with a restorative theory of justice in which my sense of safety is something that deserves to be restored.
This isn’t a hypothetical situation – well it is in the sense that it references me and you – but rather a description of discussions part of actual movements for justice in post-genocide Rwanda and its immediate environs. These movements for justice were frequently explicitly based on restorative justice models.
EL could say that “obviously” we were only talking about incarceration, but if that were obvious, why state “bad things” rather than “incarceration”?
And if EL really meant, “Let’s not label people as existentially evil,” EL didn’t have to say let’s not treat people badly merely because those people have committed past bad acts.
If EL has an intelligent point to make, by all means let EL make it. I’m excited any time a human being accomplishes an important first.
But I’m still comfortable taking EL to task for the idiocy of saying that people don’t “deserve” to have “bad things” done to them merely because a person “did bad things” themselves in the past. Of course a driver duly convicted of driving drunk and crashing into a city owned adult tree of two-hundred years growth “deserves” to be forced to do community service that creates as much beauty and utility (oxygen services, anyone?) as the driver took from the community in any destruction of or damage to that tree. Of course a bartender could refuse to allow that person back in the bar where the booze was consumed prior to the accident.
That would deny the driver community and the normal benefits of human society? Oh, noes! I am terribly, terribly concerned that the bartender doing that solely on the basis of the driver’s past bad acts is a grave, reflexive, unthinking, vengeful bad act itself! Whatever shall I do?
But moreover, the sneering that this is entirely incompatible with any theory of justice and **only** compatible with vengeance and other ill-motives is so thoroughly undeserved by those of us who believe “bad things” can be justly inflicted on “bad people” **solely** on the basis of prior bad acts, that I will happily heap scorn, contempt, and ridicule on EL’s position unless and until retracted and made the subject of an apology.
Your worthy point is simply no defense against the evident facts of EL’s rhetorical idiocy and EL’s position’s fallacy and moral bankruptcy.
re 143-145:
EL had a single good point: It is wrong to determine the quantity & type of punishment because one thinks he is a bad person. determine the kind&quant of punishment based of the bad action. Don’t make value judgements of his personality, only of his actions. Tsarnaev’s sentence particulars is debatable, but if it was awarded based on character judgement, then that is a mistake. Award the sentence based on judging the actions, not his character. For them to say that the death penalty (instead of life in prison) was given cuz he’s an evil person is not the right way to do it. So is going too light on the sentence, cuz “he’s a good person” (hypothetically).
I’m guilty of that error too. My argument for life sentence (as opposed to the death penalty he was given), depends on character judgment; that his deceased, (bully) older brother was the ‘evil one’, and Tsarnaev was bullied into it, unwillingly. Tsarnaev’s realistic punishment would have him spend years regretting not fighting back at his brother’s bullying, and realizing that what he did was too bad to tolerate.
Getting past that errormode, is difficult; i.e. easier said than done.
EL’s argument is reminiscent of advice for parents about scolding their progeny’s bad behaviors. Scold their ACTION, tell them “That thing you did was a bad thing to do”, never tell them, “That thing you did was so bad, it means you are a bad person.”. IOW: “That was a shitty thing to do” rather than “Don’t be a shitty person”. The object is to teach them good ways to behave. Teaching them they’re a bad person teaches them that whatever they do is the action of a bad person.
Much as I hate to agree with Massimo Pigliucci about anything, I have to think that Lindsay is one of the people that he was talking about when he said that the atheist and skeptic movements are led by “intellectual dilettantes”.
I like the quota idea. Fewer deaths and rapid recruitment of white men opposed to the death penalty.
@slithey tove, #147:
Here’s EL’s #38:
Let’s contrast that with:
I look forward to EL’s definition of “minor”. Also “humane”.
Then I look forward to EL justifying the outrage against others not directed by EL towards EL for calling incarceration “some minor amount of suffering”.
Continuing with EL’s #38:
Whatever you want to say about the point EL “really” wanted to make, it’s quite clear that EL did not stick with that point. I’ve already said that I agree we shouldn’t be making existential judgements about “goodness” or “badness” of an accused person.
But in the process of explaining the position that people are assuming that EL takes (against existential character judgements), EL goes on to make this statement supposedly clarifying the position:
If this is not a clarification of the position EL takes, then EL is expressing ideas incompetently and wasting everyone’s time. Those comments wasting people’s time become bad things. And any scorn heaped upon EL’s writing, EL’s ideas, or even EL’s actual ability to write or create ideas is warranted…
…because he deserves it because he did bad things.
However, if this is indeed a clarification of the position, then “don’t make existential character judgements and use those to justify punishment” is just a special case of “don’t base punishment off prior bad acts” where the punishment is nominally based off the existential character judgement but that character judgement is based off prior bad acts.
The thing is, having done a bad act at a time that is now past **is the only thing that could possibly be used to justify the types of punishment regimes under discussion.**
Thus EL’s writing, EL’s ideas, and EL’s ability to write and create ideas are all called into question. Whether or not EL meant to clarify the existential judgement bit with the “never punish simply because a person did bad things” bit, EL comments constitute damning evidence against EL having contributed anything at all of worth to this thread.
Y’all are trying to save EL by saying, “Before EL clarified that the position EL was taking is actually one that any of us can immediately identify as absurd, EL appeared to be taking a position that actually has merit.”
I think that saves EL not at all.
Right, EL needs to clarify with evidence his position on why punishing ADULTS for their harmful actions isn’t good. It says nothing about the person, other than society would like to prevent further problems from the person, by segregation. Like I would expect for rapists and pedophiles, those who won’t stop doing harmful acts to others unless segregated for life.
CD 145
But that’s exactly my point; the second you start discussing what they deserve, you’re right back around to vengeance again, and that’s no decent basis for a justice system. What a justice system should be trying to determine is a) did this person do something harmful to others, b)what can be done to mitigate or ameliorate that harm, and c) what will prevent this person from doing further harm (also, ideally d) and prevent other people from doing similar harmful things) , while, in the process, not violating anyone’s civil rights more than is strictly necessary to accomplish a, b, c, and/or d. Deserts shouldn’t ever enter into it.
And, indeed, in that case what the killer in question deserves is still an entirely moot point; what keeps the peace in the community is what the justice system should worry about, so my all means keep him out of certain places/areas. Is it fair? Is it just? That’s beside the point; the real question is: Does it work?
Because for many crimes (including, e.g., most property crimes), incarceration is pointless or actually counterproductive, in terms of reducing the likelihood that it will reoccur.
But they don’t; or rather the question of what they do or don’t deserve is irrelevant to questions of justice. What someone deserves is a totally subjective judgement for which there are no quantifiable benchmarks.
That’s got nothing to do with deserts; only with whether it will restore or ameliorate the damage done and eliminate or reduce the liklihood of it happening again. The driver in question should also permanently lose the privilege of operating a motor vehicle. Whether that’s deserved or not is irrelevant; it will prevent them from doing it again, in a way that infringes minimally upon their or anyone else’s rights.
Which is the bartender’s personal decision and has nothing to do with the justice system or the actions thereof. The bar is not a court of law, and the bartender can deny service to anyone for any reason, consonant with relevant civil rights legislation bearing on public accommodations.
Keep it the hell out of the courts, ideally.
This is the point on which I was agreeing with EL, despite EL’s framing being surrounded by a lot of garbage; as soon as you are talking about the punishment someone deserves, rather than what is necessary and sufficient, you’re talking about vengeance, and, as noted above, that’s a really shit basis for a justice system.
@Dalillama:
No. Just no.
Deserve, according to…
Dictionary.com:
Merriam-Webster:
The Free Dictionary:
Cambridge:
MacMillan Dictionary:
Oxford:
You are insisting that I’m talking about vengeance, and appear to be insisting (though on this I’m less certain) that the moment I use “deserve” I’m now speaking of intangible, existential qualities rather than simply “Did I do X that in our society receives Y?”
Frankly, I’m offended. Are you willing to say that you will only impose sentences through a justice system that are undeserved?
I could see that being a logical position if you believe that no one “deserves” any punishment or suffering, but I would still disagree. But seriously, listen to yourself:
Do you entirely fail to grasp that reasonable people who are perfectly competent with the English language would say that you believe no one **deserves** punishment other than that which is necessary and sufficient.
Not once in all those definitions that I looked up was “deserve” defined in such a way as to be based on qualities to the exclusion of behaviors.
The MacMillan even steers away from the over-used “merit” to say:
If I advocate only for the punishment that is right that someone get, I am almost-by-definition not working with a shit basis for assigning punishment.
I am not talking about vengeance.
And my examples made it quite clear I wasn’t talking about vengeance.
EL did not limit the statement
to formal determinations of punishment by a governmental criminal justice system.
NOR DOES THE WORD “DESERVE” MEAN THAT I’M TALKING ABOUT VENGEANCE.
Stop it. Just stop it. The word “deserved” is not a synonym for “valued”. It means – to the common English speaker – nothing more and nothing less than that a person’s qualities OR BEHAVIOR receive a response proportionate to and just considering those qualities OR BEHAVIORS.
Insisting that I am trying to usher vengeance in by the back door is ridiculous, not warranted by my statements, and frankly grossly unfair.
Answer this question: How would you determine the necessary and sufficient punishment if not by prior “bad things” done by a person?
IF
1) the person was investigated without violation of rights, freedoms, and statutory protections, and
2) then found guilty while following a just adjudicative process and
3) was then given a sentence
…3a) within a range determined by a reasonable legislature and
…3b) adjusted by a reasonable judge who compared those past “bad things” to statute and precedent
When your co-worker said that the person “didn’t deserve” the sentence, how the fuck would you respond???
And if you would respond in your wordy, “no one deserves anything” way you demonstrated in #151, imagine instead
Would you be upset with co-worker 2? Would you take them to task?
Why or why not?
Am I writing fucking English here? That’s what I’m saying: merit or lack thereof is beside the point. Merit is a subjective judgement. When we bring merit into it, we invite arguments like “but he’s a good churchgoing man who always helps out charities and is a volunteer firefighter, surely that merit counts for something even though he’s a serial rapist”. Conversely, it opens the argument “But he’s an asshole and everyone hates him, and he’s shiftless and lazy and never helps out, so his shoplifting merits a lot worse punishment than Preppie McPrepperson lifting some smokes from the college store.”
IF there is valid reason to believe that the sentence in question will actually fucking accomplish anything except to make the judge and legislature feel all fuzzy inside, then the sentence is just to the degree that it actually fucking accomplishes one of the goals I listed previously, regardless of whether you or I feel that it’s too harsh or too lenient. Also, part of what I’m discussing here is what kinds of processes and sentences a just adjuducative process and a reasonable legislature would actually have, because we certainly haven’t got anything like that where you or I live.
Yes, but that is irrelevant to the judgements of EL’s writing since EL once again fails to distinguish between “in theory” (or “inherently”) and “in practice”. EL’s statement is that it is NEVER okay to make a determination about how to respond to someone based on the “bad things” they have done.
EL didn’t say it’s okay only after due process or okay only in a world that has much better legislatures than we’ve got in this one. EL said “NEVER”.
So this distinction of yours merely evades the point entirely. Either you have to defend this in all possible worlds or EL is full of shit.
Separate comment for next bits…
You are clearly not writing English. “Merit” is not an inherently subjective judgement.
I “merit” the bronze medal in the Olympic 100 meter dash if the time elapsed from the starting gun to my crossing the finish line – as measured **fucking objectively** – in the final heat is longer than the time elapsed for 2 other persons but shorter than all other persons who qualified for the final heat.
“Merit” implies justice. If it is unjust to consider
then any sentence adjustment that considers these things will be an undeserved sentence adjustment.
you are trying to force the word “deserve” to be ONLY about subjective qualities.
You are simply wrong. The olympic bronze in the 110 meter hurdles is handed out based on objective measured performance of specific deeds. If the bronze was handed out to the 4th fastest and the 3rd fastest was shafted, people all over the English speaking world would be saying that that 3rd fastest person “deserved” the bronze – and the argument wouldn’t be that the 3rd fastest was named Preppie McPrepperson and attended church a whole bunch.
Let’s take your formulation:
And the plain english way to describe the outcome when person P who does something harmful and is sentenced in such a way as to mitigate or ameliorate the harm and to make it much less likely for P to repeat the harm while interfering as little as possible with the rights of P and others?
“P got the sentence P deserved.”
It is only if we follow a coherent theory of justice that we can determine what is actually merited by the person’s actions. If we follow a coherent theory of justice to determine what is actually merited by the person’s actions (either yours, should you successfully convince society, or another’s should that other convince society), we have determined what that person “deserves”. That’s what it means, “to merit”.
You keep saying, “but if we give them what they deserve, we will give them something that is unjust and purely vengeful!”
Bullshit. If we give them something unjust and purely vengeful, we will have almost-by-definition not given them what they deserve.
All of your, “But holy shit, this horrible temptation leads to unjust consequences,” cries amount to nothing more than:
It’s an incoherent position, Dalillama.
I am not disagreeing with you about the temptations.
I am telling you that you can’t say, “but if we worry about what it merited, we will by definition give people what is not merited” and have me take you seriously.
It is ONLY in considering what is merited that we can realize that going to church on sunday shouldn’t enter into sentencing.
You yourself are trying to determine what is merited, while chewing me out for saying that there is such a thing as a merited response. I’d greatly appreciate it if you would cut that the hell out.
Finally, you say:
Deserts are the OUTCOME not the process. Do you even get that?
Ack, and I used your typo:
Desserts are the OUTCOME not the process, I should say.
1. I’m wondering at what point I am allowed to make a character judgement? Which action qualifies so I am finally allowed to treat somebody not like a decent person who did a bad thing like the one time they parked in the disabled space because they just needed it for 5 minutes, but like somebody who actually has a bad character?
2. If we change “deserve” to “earn the consequence”, does it change matters? Yes, I fully agree with Dalillama about the goals of the judicial process. And it seems like many countries are able to reach that goal much better than the US is. I disagree with “no prison for non-violent crimes”, because it fails on several levels:
A) Just because the crime was not hitting somebody over the head does not mean it did not cause huge amounts of suffering. Why is “hitting somebody in a pub brawl so they break their arm (stay at home for 6 weeks and then go on with their life” something you’d consider imprisonment for but “cheating somebody of their life’s savings so they lose their home and their life is practically in shambles” not?
If your ultimate goal is to prevent them from doing future harm, one does not logically follow from the other.
B) It might mean that certain crimes are effectively not sanctioned. To give you an example: Some super rich guy in Germany got caught cheating on his taxes. Massively. 2 digit million level of tax evasion. Yep, he was sentenced to prison. Because fining him makes no fucking sense because he’s so filthy rich that it doesn’t mater that you impose taxes+interest X 3 as a fine. He might be angry about it, but he will not actually miss anything.