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Old 05-18-2008, 02:35 PM   #1
Talon87
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Judging the Merits of a Man

Who would you rather execute, if forced to pick one?
1) the guy who has never done anything remotely good nor remotely bad -- his existence has had literally NO IMPACT on your life
2) the guy who has done x horrible things to you, y of them unspeakably bad, but for each x things bad he has also done x things good and for each y bad he has done y good.

Most people gravitate towards a policy of, "Don't hurt those who aren't doing anything wrong, but do hurt those who are actively doing bad." However, I think this outlook is both childish and (when you think about) counter-productive to the human race's continued existence.

I think this worldview is incompatible with believing humanity should continue to exist; and it is a worldview which is only compatible with a desire to eradicate mankind from the face of the earth. Why? Simple: the entity that is "mankind" has done every unspeakably bad thing you can imagine. Every one of those crimes you hear about on the news, every one of those stories you have nightmares about, all of them are connected to humans. If we lump all 7 billion people into one sum and call it Man, then this so-called Man is a person capable of doing great deeds and heinous crimes alike. The only way to ensure that the bad things Man is guilty of doing stop is to kill him -- even at the sacrifice of the many good things Man does, too. To that, I say "I'll pass" and boo urns.

I'm not suggesting we ought settle for mediocrity or a world in which evil exists unabated. Obviously we should fight what we believe is wrong and defend what he believe is good. But I'm just saying, I don't think it is right for people to pass judgment so quickly over individual humans, human organizations, or human networks which have done much that is evil but have also done much that is righteous. Passing judgment over such a person, in my opinion, is a hell of a lot more difficult to do than passing judgment over the freeloader who just occupies a seat on the spaceship otherwise known as Planet Earth and, despite doing no bad, does nothing of value either.
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Old 05-18-2008, 03:18 PM   #2
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Re: Judging the Merits of a Man

The problem with executions is, if they're supposed to act as a deterrent, they won't deter the people most likely to comitt crimes, just terrify the people who didn't have crime cross their mind (suburban folk) and aren't going to dissuade vile Baby Boomers from killing their husbands/wives and whatnot. I'd rather not have an execution at all for this reason, better have either the first or second guy go to prison and everyone forgets about him.

Of course, I recently saw a video about how scary prisons are for guards, it's not pretty either - in fact, it's downright scary.

As for the first felon, I'd run a cost-benefit analysis on that guy. Chances are, if he did something terrible like kill my parents, I'd weigh out his damange to society if he were executed versus what positive things he's done, and whether or not his crimes were intentional. Since we're talking about execution, I'll assume intentional murder, which feels like a -10 on a society benefit scale (unlimited values) to me - he deprived society of a worker, deprived a family of a loved one/family, and did it in (presumably) cold blood.

The other guy has a value of 0, because for every bad thing x,y he's done, he's done something equivalently good x,y, which would include the original factor that got him on trial (the -10). Since 0 > -10 I'd got with this guy.

Things are a bit more fishy if we say, for every bad thing x he's done, he's done z smaller good things to make up for it. Even in mathematical modeling if the sum of z adds up to or exceeds x, most people won't feel the deeds are equal because they required so little energy investment - a misconception of sorts.

Like, "this guy killed a man (x), but he picked up every piece of trash in the State of California (z)". z is clearly larger than x (potentially saved thousands of animals from dying, improved sanitation, prevented accidents due to trash, etc.) but a good prosecutor could really get people feeling guilty for the dead guy. I'd still vote on net benefits but he'd be just as likely to get executed instead.
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Old 05-18-2008, 03:24 PM   #3
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Re: Judging the Merits of a Man

The last felon you listed is precisely who I had in mind. INDEED, I agree wholly that society tends to view "picking up trash" as inconsequential next to killing somebody. But seriously! Picking up the trash (theoretically) may have saved tens of human lives and improved thousands! Whereas killing the guy only anti-saved one life and anti-improved a handful of lives. If this guy only killed because if the situation he found himself in (e.g. he forgot to take his meds and he went into a fit of road rage), are we going to throw the book at him? I'd rather not. But most people say Yes, Do So.

While unrealistic, the example of "-10 plus +10 yields 0" was another reference I made above. For the sake of keeping things simple, that was my #2. My #1 was "0 plus 0 yields 0." And I was suggesting that the 2nd zero was way better than the 1st zero, even though society disagrees and says, "Better 0 + 0 than -10 + 10".
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Old 05-18-2008, 04:03 PM   #4
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Re: Judging the Merits of a Man

Meh, I disagreed with a lot except for that very first sentence. I think that prisoners are pampered, yes, but to force them onto the olde English prisoner's meal of bread and water is something even the Asians don't do; the same goes for your denial of the right to exercise and have fun outside. Why should prisoners be denied the right to have fun? I agree that prison should not be made more pleasant than free-but-homeless life, but I disagree that prisoners ought to be made miserable. Instead, prisoners ought to be made productive, and I'm confident you'd be one of the first to back me up when I argue that the happy worker is the productive worker.

Right now, all we have prisoners do is manual labor involving cheap trades like making license plates; but we could do a hell of a lot more if we started creating (and it wouldn't be that fucking hard to do) a "prison mercantile system" where Alcatraz is the place we send all the published writers and English teachers, Terre Haute is where we send all the capital punishment inmates who have experience in mechanical and chemical engineering, etc. Obviously you can't empower prisoners with tools that they could use to turn on the guards, but what you can do is put them to work doing something they are remotely good at and remotely interested in.

If nothing else, let them dance.

Not only are happy prisoners productive workers, but they're also less inclined to want to try to escape.

Dami's complaint: they're too happy right now, and more and more people want to go to prison because it's better than being poor and homeless

Talon's complaint: I agree we overshot it a bit in this country, but I think your measures are a bit Draconian. It's not as though we were "doing it right to begin with," either. Can't we just turn it back 40% from where it is now? Why the full 100%?
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Old 05-18-2008, 05:22 PM   #5
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Re: Judging the Merits of a Man

Quote:
Originally Posted by damicatz
You complain about the safety of the guards but what you fail to mention is how badly their hands are tied. The government is more concerned with the "rights" of the prisoners than the lives of the guards. Guards should shoot to kill any prisoner attempting to escape and shoot to kill to put an end to prison fights.
It's not the fights I'm talking about - from what I saw of the prisoners, these people are incredibly cunning, and though they lack formal academic knowledge with certain things, they're more murderous and devious that any fictional prisoner one could think up.

One prisoner created a weapon out of cellophane plastic wrap; he crinkled it into a pointed edge and heated it during several metal workshops to harden it into a dagger. He then hid this weapon in a beam in a hallway, which had been slightly hollowed out. He was planning on using the dagger to stab a guard walking by, but was caught before he could do it.

True though that the guards have their hands tied.
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