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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2855 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Hlynka-watch. Multi-agent environment.

There are at least two other relevant players exerting agency here. First is the group of folks who are simply opposed to any sort of death penalty on principle. One strategy they've taken is, instead of letting the argument be directly about the principle of the death penalty, focusing everyone into arguing about methods of execution. That you are even asking this question is a testament to their success on this goal.

Now, once they've gotten the focus onto methods of execution, they can focus on any extreme outliers. If there's even a 0.01% chance that someone will have an adverse reaction to something in some way, feel any anxiety or pain above the typical level, they latch onto it. They treat it like it's "possibly" the rule rather than the exception. They don't ever directly claim that it is such; they just say that perhaps sometimes things go poorly and hope the reader imagines statistics that aren't really plausible. See also arguments about unarmed black men being killed by police, abortion due to rape, or the focus on complications in the operating room preventing medical providers from providing prices.

The other relevant players are the executees. They don't want to die; this is only human. If they are aware that it is coming, they likely will have some amount of anxiety or negative psychological affect, and this may naturally lead them to struggle in any way possible in what may or may not be a vain hope that someone will make it stop.

Now back to the folks who are against the death penalty in principle. It takes no effort at all for them to interpret any outward sign of struggle as pain or whathaveyou. When Alabama used nitrogen hypoxia, a method that is used in Canada for doctor-assisted suicide specifically because it is so gentle, peaceful, and low risk1, you saw it all on display. An executee didn't want to die and knew he was going to die, so he struggled. Onlookers who don't like the death penalty can interpret that as something going wrong, pain, or whatever. So they write about how terrible it was and how everything must have gone so wrong compared to what they expected.

So unless you can win the argument of, "Yes, people may choose to struggle against their execution, even when there is no pain being imposed, and everyone just has to accept that and shut up about it," this is the problem that pro-death-penalty people have to solve. Unfortunately, the typical solutions to that are actually pretty ugly. See also ISIS, who would perform many mock executions that they wouldn't go through with, so that the executees would simply lose the will to put up a struggle every time, and hopefully they wouldn't realize which one was the real one in time to turn it back on. (Also heavy drugs; they definitely used heavy drugs which wouldn't be acceptable in the US.)

There are other ways to get around this, modifying your own protocol. Put someone in a room where you control the air content. They can even know that this is "the death room". Maybe they'll jump around and scream and put on a show, but your task would be to be able to clearly demonstrate to observers that during that time, they are absolutely receiving 100% pure, regular air, so that it is only a show, not any sort of 'execution gone wrong'. Then, when they've given up or maybe even gone to sleep or something, you turn on invisible, odorless gas, letting people observe that nothing wildly obviously painful occurred. Even if you did this, it is almost assured that the anti-death-penalty people would yet again move the goalposts, saying that it's not about the pain, it's about the psychological effects of however long they're in the room before they die, knowing that they're going to die in that room. There will always be a new set of goalposts and always a new impossible 'problem' that one has to solve.

It really is one of those, "JUST FUCKING TELL US HOW WE'RE ALLOWED TO EXECUTE PEOPLE." In a bizarro but hilarious world, the "King" would round up all of the most ardent opponents, lock them in a room, and say, "You're not allowed to come out until you tell us which method is the best method according to you. 'No method' is not an answer."

1 - You can see an example of the typical affects of hypoxia here. People report feeling perfectly fine and capable. My understanding is that even after the event, if you ask them to reflect on it, they think that everything was just fine and that they were perfectly fine; it's only when they go back and look at their own video that they're like, "WOW! I had no idea that it affected me like that!"

I personally am opposed to death penalty, except maybe in very exceptional circumstances like Nazi war criminals (where the process is kinda outside regular judicial system anyway) - but the situation right now is indeed ridiculous. That said, if I weren't - I would wonder why anybody needs to be able to observe the execution at all. I mean, I realize for example the victims may derive some feeling of closure from it, but I think if they want the guy (it'll be a guy, only one woman had been executed since 1953 in the US) dead, then they'd prefer that done unseen rather than not done at all. And, for better or worse, something that is not on TV (or now youtube) is something pretty much nobody cares about. I mean, horrible things may happen in prisons, but they are mostly undocumented, so people ignore it or make jokes about it (prison rape is one of the favorite targets). Not that I am endorsing any of it or am happy about it, but looking objectively it'd probably make it easier for people to accept.

Somebody has to confirm the process happened as intended- the law was followed, the person(and the right person) actually died, etc.

That happens anyway - prison medics confirm the death, prison guards ensure it goes as planned, etc. I am talking about involvement of people who aren't prison personnel that deals with the technology of it.

Are you suggesting that surviving relatives of a murder victim are legally required to view the murderer's execution? Because I would be surprised if that were the case. If you're simply questioning why these people would be granted the choice to view an execution, I think you've answered that by suggesting the right to be granted "closure," or, if not that, a sense of finality, or justice served--something they can see with their own eyes.

I think you've answered that by suggesting the right to be granted "closure,"

It's not a "right". At least not in any of the existing legal frameworks on the West. There are other frameworks where the kin of the victim had various rights as to prosecuting the murderer - from wergeld to vendetta, but in our Western tradition there's no "rights" with regard to that. It may be a custom, but customs can be changed. If the criminal is sentenced to prison, the victims do not get 24/7 video feed to his prison cell to enjoy his suffering, and do not get to control any details of his imprisonment except possibly in the parole hearing, so there's nothing that demands that this specific custom should be followed forever. I think for the proponents of the capital punishment it is an own goal to insist on keeping this custom.

In an bizarro but hilarious world, the "King" would round up all of the most ardent opponents, lock them in a room, and say, "You're not allowed to come out until you tell us which method is the best method according to you. 'No method' is not an answer."

After the words “round up” I thought this was going somewhere else, along the lines “You all will be executed by the method you yourself choose. The most voted for method gets adopted as the official standard.” Maybe pardon the subgroup who voted for the winning method? Need to game-theory this.

This will immediately be classified as a cruel and unusual punishment.

I can imagine a failure mode in that they could all discuss amongst themselves and agree to vote unanimously in favor of a painless method that creates gruesome results, in order to further discredit death penalty.

I'd say tell them that half of the people rounded up will be executed by the top method and the other half with the runner up. Do the executions one at a time, forcing the whole group to watch, alternating methods. After each two execution, have every one vote which one seemed to be the best, telling them that if either method gets a clear lead over the other (over 2/3 votes after at least 3 rounds / 6 executions), then everyone will get executed all at once with that method. Once that clear lead criteria is achieved, pardon everyone left.

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