51–60 of 88 posts
Vernor Vinge’s Peace War has balls of stasis, which you can’t see in to tell if the person trapped is alive or dead. So when they figured out how to calculate the lifetime of the bubble, they started putting the guilty party into a bubble timed so they both popped at the same time, which would quickly be followed by your court date if it turned out to be murder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think - it was a very very long time ago when I read this - but a bad person can put someone into a stasis field without their consent. The stasis field is the shape of a perfect bubble or ball. IIRC it's also perfectly reflective. Anything inside the stasis field simply doesn't participate in time. Once Bob puts Alice into statis, the stasis ball is impenetrable, so the cops don't know if Alice was alive or dead w…
>for whatever the name is Involuntary time travel VS involuntary murder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds really interesting but I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Is the ball the same as the bubble? Why does someone go into it? Who is the “guilty party”?
I think - it was a very very long time ago when I read this - but a bad person can put someone into a stasis field without their consent. The stasis field is the shape of a perfect bubble or ball. IIRC it's also perfectly reflective. Anything inside the stasis field simply doesn't participate in time. Once Bob puts Alice into statis, the stasis ball is impenetrable, so the cops don't know if Alice was alive or dead w…
The bubbles in Vinge's story send people to a future they don't know, and that may be hostile or deserted (I think he wrote a sequel with that idea).
Vernor Vinge’s Peace War has balls of stasis, which you can’t see in to tell if the person trapped is alive or dead. So when they figured out how to calculate the lifetime of the bubble, they started putting the guilty party into a bubble timed so they both popped at the same time, which would quickly be followed by your court date if it turned out to be murder.
If the FBI created a sting wherein they gave you a gun you thought was real, but wasn't actually capable of firing, and you pointed it at someone and pulled the trigger, you could still face a murder a charge even though there was no way the gun would do any harm. It was your intent followed by action to achieve that intent that mattered.
Not a lawyer, but doesn't the direct and intentional actions (sabotage of the steering) by the narrator put Xaiver into a position that would ultimately end in death (with no possible escape or rescue), then the time it takes to achieve that is irrelevant from a law perspective. It was first degree murder. If the FBI created a sting wherein they gave you a gun you thought was real, but wasn't actually capable of firi…
Since the victim's demise here was decelerated, at least from the point of view of everyone in the trial, it can't be murder. Maybe some kind of kidnapping.
Vernor Vinge’s Peace War has balls of stasis, which you can’t see in to tell if the person trapped is alive or dead. So when they figured out how to calculate the lifetime of the bubble, they started putting the guilty party into a bubble timed so they both popped at the same time, which would quickly be followed by your court date if it turned out to be murder.
What if the guilty party wasn't guilty? Isn't that like putting someone in prison for life on the expectation that eventually evidence will come to light that it was the right call?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think - it was a very very long time ago when I read this - but a bad person can put someone into a stasis field without their consent. The stasis field is the shape of a perfect bubble or ball. IIRC it's also perfectly reflective. Anything inside the stasis field simply doesn't participate in time. Once Bob puts Alice into statis, the stasis ball is impenetrable, so the cops don't know if Alice was alive or dead w…
I still don’t get it. So in this fictional universe, has the legal system regressed to the point where kidnapping someone for (presumably) decades is no longer a crime with a life sentence? Or alternatively, is the point that you can’t be punished for kidnapping if you might also have murdered the person, but that part can’t be proven? None of that makes sense.
Vinge posits a technology that is used for good and bad purposes. One of the protagonists is a cop who is bobbled by a criminal and emerges in the distant future, when the Earth is essentially uninhabited except for a handful of humans who have been bobbled (electively or not).
Sure, it's infinite time, in some framework, until the horizon is reached. But it's finite time (an assertation left as an exercise for the reader) until murder .. when the tidal forces tear the husbands atoms asunder.
Not a lawyer, but doesn't the direct and intentional actions (sabotage of the steering) by the narrator put Xaiver into a position that would ultimately end in death (with no possible escape or rescue), then the time it takes to achieve that is irrelevant from a law perspective. It was first degree murder. If the FBI created a sting wherein they gave you a gun you thought was real, but wasn't actually capable of firi…
As I had the introduction of the Murder chapter in a criminal law textbook explained to me, "Death is inevitable. So what we are really talking about here is acceleration." Since the victim's demise here was decelerated , at least from the point of view of everyone in the trial, it can't be murder. Maybe some kind of kidnapping.
I'd rule out kidnapping, because unlawful detainment presumes that the person can be released from that detainment. There is no possibility of release for Xavier.