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The real reason to end the death penalty

paulgraham.com

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Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#451

Post by dudul »

lurquer wrote: post #448
spijdar wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he said to "not be too eager". I don't believe there were many instances of Gandalf and the crew chosing to seek out death in bloodlust? I guess it's all subjective, since you could argue they could have gone more out of their way to avoid more deaths. That said, I don't believe Tolkien was ever totally comfortable with his treatment of orcs, he just never reconciled his morals and personal narratives with his…

In all seriousness, it’s an odd feeling one gets when writing fiction. Is the author morally responsible for the actions of his characters? In reality, Gandalf isn’t killing orcs... there are no orcs and there is no Gandalf and it’s just a bunch of ink on a piece of paper. I write fiction occasionally. When wondering if it’s ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ for a character to do something repugnant, I often have to remind myself…

This has nothing to do with being real or not. An author should write consistent characters. Characters who follow their own morale and ethic. An author is not their characters.

Considering that an author is responsible for the morale of their characters is how we end up with boring Marie sues in media.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#452

Post by qwytw »

mrweasel wrote: post #326
whatever1 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a practical aspect a lot of benefits for death penalties: 1) Low cost. No need for jails and their associated costs 2) Great scaling. You can kill as many as you want, but you cannot build a jail every day 3) Safe. People don’t come back to repeat their mistakes. 4) It’s the only language that many criminals speak and understand. The downsides are of a moral nature and twofold: 1) We should not punish innocent p…

As much as I dislike the idea of a government killing someone for a crime, the cost and potential elimination of future trouble with an individual is tempting. Assuming that we absolutely know that someone is guilt (ignoring how that would happen), it doesn't need to take years and millions of dollars to simply shoot someone. Then there are the people who are not only a financial burden on society, they are actively…

Is there there, though? It might justify someone's perverted sense of justice but that's about it. There are many other people who might be considering not contributing anything to the society, but they haven't yet done anything egregious enough to warrant a death penalty, following this logic it's only logical to "just shot" them as well.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#453

Post by [deleted] »

outworlder wrote: post #212
alexashka wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our roads and speed limits are not reliable enough to have cars. Pretty obvious we should abolish cars. Duh.

Please stop and reflect a bit on your comparison. As a reminder, we are talking about the state intentionally taking human lives. Not accidents.

[deleted]

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#454

Post by aeternum »

filoeleven wrote: post #312
aeternum wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But our justice system is reliable enough to lock people up for life just because there's a small chance we may find out they are innocent before they die in prison? There must be a better way.

Norway gave 21 years, their maximum sentence, plus “the possibility of one or more extensions for as long as he is deemed a danger to society” to Breivik for killing 69 people. This seems like a better way to go. He will be evaluated for extensions of his sentence periodically, and (showing my ignorance of their system here) I presume the panel will include medical professionals who are more equipped to gauge his men…

I'd prefer we treat prisons as mini-societies. Only a minimal set of rules should be set and enforced by the guards. The majority of the rules should be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.

Guards would step in if things go awry, but in general there would be a strong incentive to cooperate and contribute as that would be the primary indicator that the prisoner is ready to be released and can contribute to society outside the prison.

This should make prisons much more self-sufficient and less costly.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#455

Post by chillacy »

kazinator wrote: post #311
klelatti wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reducing a human being to a single binary classification - evil or not evil - an assessment that ignores the circumstances of their life, mental state etc at a particular point in time. You're also saying that you're prepared to ignore the wider impact that the act of executing that individual has on society. On the apparent grounds that the dead victim is somehow vindicated (which I can only interpret as mean…

> You're reducing a human being to a single binary classification - evil or not evil That is correct. > You're also saying that you're prepared to ignore the wider impact that the act of executing that individual has on society. That must specifically not be allowed to cloud our judgment. "Society" is word which refers to collection of people, the vast majority of whom have no connection to the case.

> our judgment

Who is 'our'? Hopefully not just everyone who agrees with your definition of evil...

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#456

Post by qwytw »

throw0101a wrote: post #333
klelatti wrote: post #232

I absolutely abhor the death penalty. I do find this reliance on a single rationale to stop the death penalty problematic though: - For many people I suspect that there is a combination of level of proof and severity of crime that would lead them to say the risk of erroneous conviction can be ignored. - Someone will say let's focus on improving the justice system to deal with the errors. I'd rather the burden of just…

> I'd rather the burden of justification be the other way: what does the death penalty actually achieve, with a high burden of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) that as a policy it actually benefits society as a whole. In the past: societal self-defence. Older prisons were not as secure, and so the risk of dangerous people escaping was high(er). If they got out they could do more harm to innocent people. This is less o…

Or rather it was simply cheaper to execute someone, pre modern societies simply couldn't really afford keeping a large number of people imprisoned for significant periods of time.

Considering that during some periods a fine or monetary compensation to the victims family was considered to be reasonable punishment for murder and that on the (on the opposite end of the spectrum) during other periods people were often hanged for what we would currently consider to be petty theft, one could argue that pre modern societies were much more concerned about presereving their social order rather than protecting innocent people from harm.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#457

Post by chillacy »

bluecalm wrote: post #79
wideareanetwork wrote: post #2

I think no other justification is needed to end the death penalty than “it’s inhuman and barbaric”. Even discussing other factors arguments and considerations dilutes the core point that’s it’s straight up wrong unethical and inhuman to murder others in the name of the law. Paul Graham has a valid point, but if you say “it’s wrong cause it’s inaccurate”, implies it’s right if it’s accurate. And it’s not... the death…

This argument is useless because what inhuman and barbaric my means depends on your belief system. Abortion is inhuman and barbaric to significant % of the population and death penalty isn't. They use murder argument as well. Of course death penalty is not murder nor is abortion if you're honest about what the word means but here we are with those absolute statements about ethics. If we just use this argument and don…

Right, despite mostly common human emotions (justice, reciprocity, etc), specific moral beliefs are normative and vary wildly by upbringing, religion, and political persuasion.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#458

Post by lurquer »

dudul wrote: post #451
lurquer wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all seriousness, it’s an odd feeling one gets when writing fiction. Is the author morally responsible for the actions of his characters? In reality, Gandalf isn’t killing orcs... there are no orcs and there is no Gandalf and it’s just a bunch of ink on a piece of paper. I write fiction occasionally. When wondering if it’s ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ for a character to do something repugnant, I often have to remind myself…

This has nothing to do with being real or not. An author should write consistent characters. Characters who follow their own morale and ethic. An author is not their characters. Considering that an author is responsible for the morale of their characters is how we end up with boring Marie sues in media.

You may have missed my point...

I was simply observing that it is difficult, as an author, not to feel queasy about writing a character who commits immoral acts.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#459

Post by solveit »

nojs wrote: post #443
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable doubt means doubts that a person is guilty. In probability terms it can be interpreted as a state of belief in the guilt (or innocence) of the accused. PG's 4% number is offered as the frequency of wrongful convictions. The two concepts are not related. For example, if a body of jurors say that they are 95% certain that John Smith murdered Jane Brown, that does not mean that there is a 5% probability that…

I think most people interpret the task of assigning a percentage to their belief of something like this as equivalent to estimating the percentage of the time they are likely to be wrong. So to say the two are not related is not true.

I think this attributes overly precise motives to people who have none. It may be accurate for the HN crowd (although I doubt it), but in general, people assigning percentages to their beliefs are performing cargo-cult numeracy rather than actually calibrating beliefs. To illustrate: I am pretty sure that people saying they're 99% sure are saying "I am pretty sure" and not "I estimate I will be wrong once out of a hundred times in situations of comparable certainty".

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#460

Post by nullc »

I'm surprised to see this doesn't also make another argument: It's not economical.

Because we rightfully try to set a high bar and have many delays, opportunities for appeal to minimize executing innocent people and also need high security confinement (since someone sentenced to death doesn't have a lot to lose in attempting to escape...) the entire process is extraordinarily expensive.

The resources we spend on it could instead be spend elsewhere and save lot of lives, cut taxes, -- whatever stokes your particular political perspective would be better off if we weren't spending resources killing people.

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