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Who said I’m “pissed off”? What I’m saying is that you’ve outed yourself as a liar. You’re willing to cynically lie to your interlocutors about this issue because you have an axe to grind. Therefore, we can apply considerable skepticism to any “evidence” you bring to bear to try and trick us into supporting your position. You bring some statistics purported to demonstrate that executing prisoners instead of enslaving them is a net economic negative? Okay, why should we trust that your statistics aren’t doctored or misrepresented?
Again, you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t actually care if that reason is true, because it’s not your actual reason for opposing the death penalty. It’s just something you latched onto because you thought we would care about it. So if it’s not true, it doesn’t move the needle for you at all. It’s not like you’re going to switch to supporting the death penalty if you discover that whatever study you’re citing isn’t accurate or replicable.
I can't wholly discount the possibility that my more fundamental beliefs about the sanctity of life have biased me towards believing evidence and arguments that present my anti-execution position as fulfilling both my values about utilitarian economic efficiency and my values about deontological behavior. And yes, since my deontological values are more fundamental than my utilitarian values, I would still be anti-death-penalty even if I thought it wasn't a utilitarian evil. But I was in no way being dishonest-- I genuinely believe everything I said about alternatives to the death penalty. I would prefer lifetime imprisonment over hard labor for everyone on track to receive the death penalty because of my utilitarian and deontological beliefs about slavery, but I would be happy to accept hard labor as an improvement to killing people.
As for your last accusation-- that I don’t actually care if that reason is true-- you are also completely wrong. It's true that I would ultimately be happy if you stopped supporting the death penalty regardless of why. (Though I'd privately think you were an idiot if you said something ridiculous, "lifetime imprisonment causes more net suffering" or alternatively the exact position I complained about in my original comment about people who are pro-execution but anti-government.) But I have practical objections against lying in arguments, and specifically in this case if you somehow managed to convince me that the death penalty was a utilitarian good versus alternative punishments I would reprioritize my time and emotional response. There's plenty of stuff that's a utilitarian evil but moral good, and plenty of stuff that's a utilitarian good but moral evil. Given that it's much harder to change peoples' minds on either of those categories, I prefer to focus my time on the slam-dunks that are both utilitarian and moral evils.
/u/Netstack if I haven't sufficiently toned down the heat of my rhetoric, please tell me and I'll stop responding to this subthread in general.
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Same reason you trust people who do share your values? Reputation, mostly.
Most sources aren’t load-bearing. Most beliefs don’t even have a load-bearing source to present! Discrediting the false ones is still appropriate.
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