Thread

1. comrade1234 · 1790835654 · focus · HN ↗

   The state shouldn't be able to take your life outside of war. I've had this strict belief since junior high, maybe because I was raised catholic. I don't understand how anyone can see otherwise. Do you want your neighbors to be able to kill you?

   1. ajkjk · 1790837756 · focus · HN ↗

      Is your belief based in something? You say "shouldn't be able to..." but, like, why not? To convince anyone else of it you'd have to agree on the framework in which states are and aren't allowed to do things.

      I think for most people the intuition is something like: the state is there to protect people (in principle at least); when someone is sufficiently dangerous to others they forfeit this right and it becomes just about protecting others from them; whereupon 'vengeance' is basically permitted against them, but then this is also delegated to the state to deter people from doing it individually because that's destabilizing, hence a death penalty.

      Seems pretty natural to me unless you happen to have an infinite negative weight assigned to killing someone, which I do not. I mean, I have a large negative one, but it's not infinite. (Maybe yours is, perhaps from the catholic upbringing, which is why this doesn't make sense?)

      (No idea what the neighbor thing has to do it; obviously nobody is arguing that neighbors should be (legally) able to kill anyone.)

      1. iamnothere · 1790863251 · focus · HN ↗

         Motte: protection

         Bailey: vengeance

         1. ajkjk · 1790872096 · focus · HN ↗

            uh... no? that's not what I said. I wasn't arguing for the position. I was describing how the position works. And I don't think it's a motte/bailey at all because they really do have the one thing for protection and the other thing for vengeance. It's not a case of using one to justify the other, it's just two separate things that they justify.

            1. iamnothere · 1790877084 · focus · HN ↗

               I didn’t realize you weren’t arguing in favor. Still I do see this formulation frequently used to argue for capital punishment. They will fall back on claims of protection whenever challenged, but the core argument (that not everyone accepts!) is that victims have a right to vengeance.

               1. ajkjk · 1790888870 · focus · HN ↗

                  I think people are get very muddled when they attempt to put their positions into words. That doesn't necessarily mean they're being deceptive. Sometimes it's just a skill issue. I think that what I have described is the "coherent" version of the position (the steelman, if you like). I like to lay it out like that because it makes the discussion about the thing it is actually about, which is, as you said, whether a right to vengeance makes sense or is something we want to enshrine in our society.

                  Now that I'm thinking about it there is at least one other coherent position I know of for it, which is: if you start out thinking of life as rather 'disposable' (so humans are somewhat equivalent to animals, which we regularly raise to eat; war is okay; things like that), then the argument for keeping people alive is that they contribute to society or at least don't heavily detract from it, and the argument for putting them to death is that people have proven themselves not even worth keeping alive. This opens a whole different can of worms though where you have to explain where your bar for keeping people alive is. but I do think it is ultimately how a lot of people think about it, as well---at least in regard to people who are not part their personal community.

                  1. iamnothere · 1790891420 · focus · HN ↗

                     > This opens a whole different can of worms though where you have to explain where your bar for keeping people alive is.

                     This risk shouldn’t be understated—there’s a lot of unpersoning happening right now among those with political sway, and if it continues we could easily swing back around to the eugenics and mass killing of the early 20th century. The modern notion of human rights was explicitly created as a reaction to the mass death and atrocities of the world wars.

                     There’s a tendency among the powerful to view those at the bottom as “useless eaters,” so when you start making decisions about who should be “kept alive” this can become quite dangerous.

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