Your post led me to this.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Capital_punishment.PNG/500px-Capital_punishment.PNG
from the Wikipedia page.
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Solitary confinement must be terrible. But I always think of it as trees falling in the woods, or monks praying in the monastery.
Potential terrorists are likely rather unfamiliar with solitary confinement, and I imagine the idea is just parked in their minds somewhere, as a noun with no associations. I donât have any real understanding of it. I have read what it does to people, and empathise with that process - but connecting that to the prevention of action mechanism in peoplesâ minds? Not really there.
By the time someone is in âthe placeâ where theyâll commit such atrocious acts, I rather suspect any vestiges of fear of solitary confinement - and indeed, of execution, or anything in between - is rather distant. âBeing caughtâ is probably all part of the equation. An accepted risk, under the category of âdonât bother contemplating it deeplyâ.
Maybe it puts off some would-be terrorists right at the start of the process. Maybe thereâs a large base of people, with a narrow tip, who contemplate action. Maybe all this deters them up to a degree ⌠and of course, the âfanaticsâ, theyâre the ones who make it through the thinking.
Born too late, I guess.
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Killing a killer makes a killer of you. You lose moral authority. You may exact revenge but donât pretend that has anything to do with justice.
Prison is not rehabilitative in most cases. Ineffectual in itâs present form, nimby, expensive but at least it doesnât pander to baser instincts.
Harrowing, introspective, personally-constructed, hellish environment in which you ceaselessly deconstruct your own psyche? A possible shadow of a future method which may offer the chance of real rehabilitation at a neural level. Admittedly torturous but that is an affect of the process and not the central motivaton, Ibogaine therapy.
These extreme cases are tests of our own humanity and as long as cultural leaders in the world like the USA choose the easy path of destructive retribution, other cultures will seek to follow suit. There is a lot more at stake than âthe permanent removal from life of those who donât deserve itâ or however else youâve managed to sell it to yourself.
We can argue all day about the morality of remote strikes and horrendous collateral damage but those operations are often hidden behind a towering wall of security and obfuscation borne of economic and political considerations. The death penalty is something that ordinary people can have an effective say in and if you wish to belong to that evanescent class of being known as humanity, itâs your duty to pursue its extermination.
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Whoa whoa whoa. People who like to put their mouths around penises bring joy into the world. Letâs not use that as a term of disparagement.
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I support the death penalty for predatory offenders, where guilt is certain beyond doubt.
That doesnât mean somebody who shoots someone during a robbery and is convicted on the basis of some grainy cam footage. Iâm only concerned with people who rape and torture and kill because they enjoy it. That type of person tends to be convicted on the basis of the heads in their freezer and an enthusiastic confession, or a pile of videotapes of themselves raping children.
In that case, the goal isnât rehabilitation (which isnât possible) or even punishment- Itâs to ensure that they will never hurt anyone else.
Prison provides a minor risk of escape, but a much greater risk that they will harm guards or other inmates. A 19 year old kid that likes to hotwire cars deserves some time in jail- They donât deserve to get raped and killed by their cellmate.
The only way to prevent that is to keep them in 24hour solitary confinement for life, which quite frankly, is far more cruel and inhumane than execution.
Alternately, we could study them and try to find a way to âfixâ them. Aside from the aforementioned risk to staff and inmates, the idea that we could forcibly modify a fundamental part of someoneâs personality- even a murderous part- opens the door to a Clockwork Orange kind of abuse too horrifying to think about. Homosexuality is a crime in a couple dozen countries- If we can ârehabilitateâ a rapist against their will, why shouldnât Russia ârehabilitateâ gays against theirs? Some slippery slopes are more likely than others.
For cases like this? I donât know- Is terrorism an act of war? If so, then the obligation of the state is not only to ensure he never harms anyone else, but also to try to prevent his allies from causing harm. Is he more of a martyr dead or imprisoned? What option is most likely to prevent future loss of life?
You would rather die than live in a room with occasional access to the sky? Astronaut material you are not.
More horrifying than killing someone? And if you had investigated the ibogaine therapy I mentioned earlier you would see that the type of âmodificationâ I proposed is an internally motivated process. There may be some guidance from psychologists but they are there to help qualify the emergent experience. The whole point is that the mind heals itself, and we are talking about people who have broken minds.
Take the edge case of Charles Whitman, whoâs brain tumour almost certainly drove him to actions of which he was in very little control. Extrapolating from this you can imagine classifying radicalising education as a kind of brain damage. In cases such as this, isnât it incumbent upon the civilised authority to attempt to âfixâ such indoctrination through remapping of the neural substrate? This, usually through nothing more than education and deep psychotherapy.
I agree that actual physical intrusion into the brain, other than to excise tumours or damaged areas in an attempt to promote health is asking for moral trouble.
Asked Ultron.
I kinda skipped over this accidentally.
And if gays can marry why canât I marry this horse and this mango at the same time?
Tired bullshit argument is tired bullshit.
False equivilency. One is in service to science, exploration, and the accomplishment of the human race, in nearly constant contact with crewmates, support services, and loved ones. The other is a 6x10 bare concrete box with no windows and no human contact.
You might want to actually look up what happens to a personâs psyche after just a few days in that situation. Youâre talking decades. Human beings are intrinsically social animals- That kind of isolation is literally torture.
But weâre not talking about internally motivated people- Weâre talking about using psychology and pharmaceuticals to forcibly change a personâs behavior against their will, based on whether (right or wrong) society thinks they need to change.
When we already have things like conversion therapy and âboot campsâ and deprogramming centers, the suggestion that that kind of ability might be misused isnât even a slippery slope- Itâs an open market.
Yes, that is more horrifying than killing someone who demonstrates an imminent danger to others.
Asked everyone who ever founded a reeducation camp.
In real life.
Those are two separate sentences. But bravo for using conflation as a method for ducking the question.
Are we arguing that the current practice of solitary confinement, or the killing of humans is without merit? Perhaps it is too difficult to come up with a method of confinement which would meet standards of humanity for civil society, easier to just kill them. Less messy intrusion into the corrupt and inhumane prison system. I mean, whoâs ever going to change that!? :shrugs:
You are talking about totally inhuman humans. Just wanted to point out that you are relying on an argument which undermines itself. In the extreme edge cases of totally unchangeable murderous psycopaths (are there any?) I would imagine a regime of pharmacological and psychological methods would bear some kind of fruit of understanding and progress to viable treatments if the methods could be developed. Perhaps you could think of it as a science experiment, rather than as a moral duty if that makes it easier to consider.
Unlike the protracted incarceration and killing of humans? Yes. It is difficult. More difficult than presently used systems. But necessary for those who would attempt to maintain a human-centric morality.
My personal favourite part of your argument is that drug assisted psychotherapy equates concentration-camp torture.
Wonderful!
Also, I was hoping a pro-death penalty peep would address my question concerning the Whitman case and itâs implications for people who have suffered such behavioural issues caused by brain defects.
Anything?
When it comes to psychotherapy, especially psychopharmacology, you can only help those who want help. Using it on people who donât want to change crosses a very bold line. On the other side of that line are conversion therapy, brainwashing, and communist reeducation camps.
Whitman sought help, for the record. He literally left messages saying âI need somebody to help me before I hurt someoneâ. Letâs talk about someone like David Alan Gore, who described disposing of a body and taking trophies as âa perfect experienceâ.
Scientific experimentation on unwilling subjects. Thereâs a winning moral argument.
Sigh. And they want to be incarcerated and killed?
And blind ignorance and uncivil morality ignored him, giving rise to the conditions under which he committed those crimes.
And I asked you, who has displayed questionable moral content, to consider the option but not as an exercise in morality, which I was implying you were lacking, but as a method of fitting it into your world view. Which is shit. On this topic, I have no idea about the rest of you.
Treatment for conditions which negatively effect behaviour were developed by science. I imagine that you still have to seek peopleâs consent for the development of such treatments. When the treatment has been developed, itâs usually still being refined, using those who use it as subjects. Even for established protocols which would be administered to people who are not able to give consent due to injuries or lack of consciousness, whatever. And remember we are talking about that as an alternative to removing forever the option to have their consent for anything at all.
Morality is too messy, easier to kill them. Am I misunderstanding your argument?
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It wasnât uncivil morality that ignored Whitman, it was a doctor who was too lazy to run a damned test. He literally said âHelp me before I hurt somebodyâ- You donât get to compare that to someone who says âI enjoyed killing them, and Iâd love to do it againâ.
If you want to know the root of my moral code, Iâll give it to you in two words:
CONSENTING ADULTS.
I donât give a shit what good you think youâre doing. You talk about performing medical experiments on unwilling subjects or subjecting adults to behavioral modification against their consent, you have the morality authority of a rapist.
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I did?
And you have personally killed many people.
Just. No.
For clarity, I would be amenable to the development of drug assisted psychotherapy under the normal moral guidelines of developing medical treatments. I asked only if you thought incursion by the state into a persons brain chemistry without consent was more or less moral than killing them. The difficulty of morality in cases such as these would involve asking such questions, and answering them with science founded in a moral basis.
Your constant mischaracterisation of my arguments and questions in an attempt not to have to consider them is tiring and I bid you good day sir.
I said good day!
Less. Far less. So far that the gap is measurable in parsecs.
The killing of a person who poses an immediate threat to your own life is morally justifiable as self-defense. The killing of a person who poses an imminent threat to the lives of citizens can be argued as stemming from that same moral principle.
If they do not see anything wrong with themselves or their actions, then by what moral principle do you claim the right to decide which parts of a personâs psyche should be altered?
imagine no incarceration,
itâs easy if youâre blind
Killing is so easy
Why should we even try
Killing all the people
A remedy in bliss
Who ho hoo oo ooo
You may say Iâm a killer
But Iâm not the only one
I hope some daaaay youâll join us
And kill prisoners one by one
You know what, I apologise, you probably would have a point to make in the argument you imagine you are having, but the song lyrics stay godamnit, they stay!
I still imagine you, though, as an executioner, asking permission of the convict to kill him.
âWell guv, he said no, what am I supposed to do, go against his wishes!?â
If they put him to death too soon, those of us in the âtin foil hat tribeâ, are going to think its all too convenient, it would be better to imprison him for life, so that he can grow old being tormented by the knowledge of all the lives he ended &/or seriously harmed, with what he has done. ( assuming he really did all this) The sooner he is executed, the more suspicious its going to look to people like me, who noticed a growing number of obnoxious, weird, details to get all âparanoid & crazyâ overâŚ
What?!?!?
Weâre talking premeditated killing here (death penalty), not killing in self-defense. Capital punishment can only ever be considered self-defense in a society that is absolutely unable to incarcerate someone.
Like, maybe, a hunter-gatherer society. But only if banishment is not an option.
In all other situations, killing is worse than forcible treatment. Whether forcible treatment is better or worse than imprisonment depends on whether and how the treatment works (proof? side effects?).
If you really thought that forcible treatment is worse than killing someone, you should demand the death penalty for doctors who fail to procure the proper signatures before treating someone; after all, their crime is worse than murder.
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Define âtreatmentâ.
âIncursion into a personâs brain chemistryâ, as put by @miasm.
That is, where said brain chemistry is believed (by scientific standards) to be the reason why the patient poses a danger to society. Also, the treatment has to have high chances of success (again, scientifically proven, not because someone says so).
This would be enough for me to state that it is preferable to murdering someone, and to reiterate my absolute incomprehension at your assertion that it was âfar lessâ moral than killing the patient by a gap âmeasurable in parsecsâ.
Note that I would consider imprisonment with an option for voluntary treatment preferable to any treatment without consent unless much stronger conditions were met. Itâs quite obvious that medically treating someone against their own will is a bad thing to do in general.
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Bravo for keeping your head and being so eloquent, I can only apologise for losing mine.
