The real reason to end the death penalty
paulgraham.com
The real reason to end the death penalty
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Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#2I 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 penalty is wrong no matter be it accurate or inaccurate.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#3Of possible interest, Texas records death row inmates last words before execution. You can read them all here:
https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h...
My favorite is Delbert Teague, Jr. who quoted the oath of the Knights of Solamnia from Dragonlance.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#4Of possible interest, Texas records death row inmates last words before execution. You can read them all here: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h... My favorite is Delbert Teague, Jr. who quoted the oath of the Knights of Solamnia from Dragonlance.
I clicked on 15 and they're all very positive in tone. Surprised.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#5This is the obvious reason, but of course there are many more: executions are quite expensive, they don't seem to actually deter crime, they're fundamentally pessimistic ("this person will never be useful to society"). Plus, they're kind of unnecessarily cruel: if we wanted to execute people painlessly we could just pump a room full of nitrogen and let the person drift off into unconsciousness and death relatively quickly and silently. But for whatever reason we don't do this, instead opting for spectacles of shooting the person or zapping them or injecting slow paralytics into their veins. My personal guess is that people like to watch for some sort of catharsis which a silent death doesn't give them, but of course I'm not necessarily in a position to judge this well.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#6I 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…
I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but this sort of remark is why the left and intellectuals more widely fail at winning politically. Rather than use arguments that are amenable even to people who disagree on the fundamentals, you would rather retain the moral high-ground by refusing even to debate on their terms, thereby failing to actually influence policy (in this case a matter of life and death).
If the death penalty debate were framed more around "innocent people get killed" and less around more nebulous value-judgement based arguments (which, though valid, divide pretty neatly along partisan and class lines), perhaps the death penalty in the US would have gone long ago.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#7> This circus of incompetence and dishonesty is the real issue with the death penalty.
First order thinking. There's a time to argue with first principles and there's a time to make arguments via "back door hacks" in the guise of amenability. Life and death may not be the best time to use "hacky" arguments because down the line there may be do more harm than good. Particularly, in common-law systems.
Also,
> When intellectuals talk about the death penalty,
I see that intellectuals has been well normalised into a pejorative these days. What a time to live in!
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#8The death penalty is immoral and unethical. The state should not have the power over the life of a person.
However, the problem with removing the death penalty in the US is that it will not deal with the underlying systemic racism and the misaligned incentives of police and prosecution to "get a conviction".
So yes, if the death penalty is removed, there is one less barbarism.
However, for those who are not on death row, who are subject to the injustices, will there be the same pressure to investigate and exonorate the innocent?
How do we ensure that the incentives for conviction do not supersede the incentives for solving the crime accurately?
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#9Even if there were no death penalty, spending 30+ years in prison while innocent does not seem like such a good deal either.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#10Of possible interest, Texas records death row inmates last words before execution. You can read them all here: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.h... My favorite is Delbert Teague, Jr. who quoted the oath of the Knights of Solamnia from Dragonlance.
I clicked on 15 and they're all very positive in tone. Surprised.
I found a couple that were a bit less positive, but most do seem to appear remorseful to some extent. None seemed to be particularly extreme, though–I wonder if those are sanitized to some extent.