• proudblond@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I would not say there is specifically an upside to keeping a serial killer alive, but there are many downsides to the death penalty both ethically and in practice, not the least of which is the chance that you would execute an innocent person. For those of us who are anti-death penalty, that is usually where we’re coming from.

    • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      I’m against the death penalty, and I know the best argument against it, something nobody in this thread has even approximately articulated.

      Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.

      • Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        it isn’t a deterrent,

        It is cheaper to let them rot in prison for life,

        nobody wants to make the drugs involved for the ‘humane way’ so it is really difficult to obtain enough where it is used,

        it is fundamentally inhumane to kill someone that knows it’s coming (mental torture),

        risk of executing an innocent, and as already stated

        it is hypocritical to kill someone for killing.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          it is fundamentally inhumane to kill someone that knows it’s coming (mental torture)

          That killing serial killers causes them harm isn’t a particularly compelling point, since we disagree over whether harming them is, in fact, good.

          risk of executing an innocent

          This is a good point and one I would explore further. However, it leaves open exceptions where the evidence is overwhelming.

          it is hypocritical to kill someone for killing

          Killing isn’t always bad. Killing innocent creatures is bad. Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals.

            • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 months ago

              No, I am genuinely against the death penalty.

              It’s important not to conflate moral facts with practical policy. Most of your arguments focus on how people should be treated, whereas the relevant question is how governments should behave and why. These are very different things.

              Regardless of what people deserve, no government should go around killing its own citizens. That is because killing as a punishment makes a spectacle of death. It is profoundly unhealthy for any civil society to revel in death. That’s the answer. It has nothing to do with what serial killers deserve. They do not matter.

          • aidan@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            This is a good point and one I would explore further. However, it leaves open exceptions where the evidence is overwhelming.

            And you trust the state to make that decision? Or a jury?

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals.

            A serial killer can be removed from society and prevented from having an opportunity to kill. “Putting him down” is just you stooping to his level out of misguided self-righteousness

            A rabid animal is suffering from the final hours of a horrible communicable disease that is 100% fatal. It’s in horrible pain, out of its mind, and you are doing a mercy to end its misery

            • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 months ago

              Listen, if you want to keep a psychopath alive in your basement for some unknown reason, well, as long as he doesn’t get out and maul anyone that’s fine by me. But you’re insane if you think normal people should spend their hard-earned money contributing to that exercise in immiseration.

      • proudblond@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I don’t want someone to kill me; therefore I believe it is also not okay for me to kill someone else. It’s just the golden rule. I am not a student of ethics or philosophy but it seems pretty straightforward to me.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          In the event that I were guilty of causing great harm to innocent people, then I should be killed. Not in revenge, but as a matter of course, given that my life would no longer be worth living.

          This is the golden rule in action, which is about how you would want to be treated in similar circumstances.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.

        Nah I think not killing innocent people is a pretty strong argument, death being a spectacle doesn’t really matter to me- someone killing someone is much worse than the part where they post it on LiveLeak

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          If you’re so against killing innocents, I assume you’re vegan. Or… is your morality as twisted and inconsistent as I suspect?

            • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 months ago

              So your morality is arbitrary, and at least we can both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.

              • aidan@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                So your morality is arbitrary

                Yours isn’t? Where does it come from?

                both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.

                You’re clearly not trolling

                • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  5 months ago

                  Your morality isn’t arbitrary?

                  This is literally nihilism.

                  I’m genuinely happy to discuss metaethics, but I’m getting a sense that you don’t actually care about ethics very much, given your nihilism.

                  • aidan@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    This is literally nihilism.

                    No, it’s not.

                    Nihilism requires intentionally rejecting morality. Accepting that any belief is inherently arbitrary, but still caring about that, is not nihilism