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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I guess, but I also feel like it's terrible to have to make it painful for people. Ask almost anyone how they want to die, and they'll say something like "painlessly and in my sleep". How many people actually die like that? Very few. I don't expect most suicides are as painless as lethal injection would be.

I've come to view the physical pain of suicide as a feature rather than a bug due to its deterrent effect. You have to really, really want it, and I think that's a good thing. But ODing on fentanyl seems... well, not fun, but better than most other methods.

I was under the impression that painlessness was debated. Looking it up, this issue seems to be a complete shitshow.

As I understand the arguments, lethal injection is only painful and unreliable when used for executions. When the same chemical is used for good lethal injections a moral-ionic bond flips and makes it painless and humane.

Once I started noticing things like this, it became impossible to stop.

I don't understand why we suck so much at killing people in humane and dignified ways.

Why the fuck are we messing with chemicals and gas and electricity and whatever random stupid things when firing squads have existed for centuries and are reliable, quick, inexpensive and painless?

Is it because people want a more presentable corpse? Do people hate martial aesthetics? Is it too much fun coming up with new ways of executing people using the latest gizmos of science?

Why the fuck are we messing with chemicals and gas and electricity and whatever random stupid things when firing squads have existed for centuries and are reliable, quick, inexpensive and painless?

Are you sure death (ceasing to exist) is swift-enough following a bullet in the brain? Frankly, I'd feel more comfortable speeding up to 200km/h and hitting a tree.

Firing squads are more troublesome than you’d expect.

To avoid disfigurement due to multiple shots to the head, the shooters are typically instructed to aim at the heart, sometimes aided by a paper or cloth target.

We abhor a mess, and anything that can be perceived as undignified. There’s also an impact on the executioner(s). We want the criminal gone, but we’d prefer not to do it.

Firing squads are messy and easy to screw up. The guillotine is quick and reliable, but even messier.

Honestly I'm confused why a bolt gun or some sort of pneumatic guillotine isn't used. Latter is literally impossible to fuck up if you put enough PSI behind a heavy enough blade.

Honestly I'm confused why a bolt gun or some sort of pneumatic guillotine isn't used. Latter is literally impossible to fuck up if you put enough PSI behind a heavy enough blade.

Sure, from the moment you cut the head it's irreversible (maybe technically not quite, given cryonics...).

As a subject, I'd prefer something that disintegrates the actual neural network than letting it die from blood loss.

Some effect similar to the euphemism treadmill, perhaps? No matter what method you use, that method will steadily lose favour due to it being associated with killing, so you keep inventing new ones to shed the old emotional baggage.

Yikes, I didn't realize until I just looked it up myself. It's strange, when I look up whether it's painless for people, everyone seems to say that, no it's not. When I look up whether putting pets to sleep is painless, everyone seems to say, yes, it totally is. Do they use different drugs in these scenarios? Is the protocol different? Or are people just fooling themselves into thinking their pets are having peaceful deaths?

They seem to be painless. Speaking for fairly direct personal experience, you're essentially put to sleep, and then your heart stops. Direct witness reported seeing no distress (witness to Canadian euthanasia administrant).

I think pets are put to sleep with a barbiturate overdose, while executions involve some bizarre cocktail of drugs that persists only because the anti-execution lobby will seize on any change to the status quo as an opportunity to create years of delay and billions of dollars of legal fees for the state.

Can you elaborate? Why would the anti-execution lobby want more painful deaths?

They don't. They want less executions total. The problem is that the tug-of-war can result in bizarre things on the ground as what gets done is what's easiest to defend (rather than what is best).

That said, IIRC there are some places that have stopped using LI entirely because the anti-execution lobby managed to get literally every pharmaceutical manufacturer to cease selling to prisons. It's not solely a "status quo is god" thing.

I'm not really sold on the DP in first-world countries myself, at least as a coercive measure. Lifers should definitely get the option, though.

I think they just want to oppose executions with any and every legal argument they can make without risking their lawyers' law licenses. It just happens that changing the status quo increases the surface area for legal challenge.

For the same reason the green lobby "wants" higher carbon emissions - most people aren't utilitarians.

Not sure. I would guess the cocktail is different—I didn’t see anything about potassium for animals—but I don’t think I can confirm without a lot of bleak reading.

For fairness’ sake, I have seen both yes and no argued for human pain. By all accounts it seems to beat electrocution.

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