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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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We are already completely fine with wrongful convictions, which is why we throw people away for life despite a chance of wrongful conviction. The difference between being killed, and being thrown away in a tiny cell for your whole life, is vanishingly small, It is the bulk majority of the moral harm done already. You cannot reasonably be against killing people, despite the chance of wrongful conviction, and yet be perfectly fine completely ruining their life in every way short of killing them, despite the chance of wrongful conviction. (As, the number of people eventually freed from wrongful conviction of murder is much lower than not.) Chance is a fact of life that we all deal with every day. Sometimes we just die. The small chance of being executed wrongfully for a murder we didn’t commit does not somehow make executions not worth it, any more than dying when a bridge collapses makes building a bridge not with it.

The evidence for deterrence is that we are promptly executing the drug dealers in front of their community. If you can’t even attempt to reason from first principles why this might deter future criminals, I have no idea what to tell you. Nations that execute drug dealers (and have high catch rates) do shockingly well in deterring drug use. You can look up interviews on YouTube of international drug traffickers talking about how none of them would ever traffic into Singapore. Because they would be executed. I promise you that if you, at the age of 12, saw your uncle executed for drug dealing in front of you, your chance of subsequently dealing drugs will plummet.

Also, we’re obviously talking about dealers of hard drugs, not “drug related” offenses.

The evidence for deterrence is that we are promptly executing the drug dealers in front of their community. If you can’t even attempt to reason from first principles why this might deter future criminals, I have no idea what to tell you.

You can't reason your way to a conclusion on a topic so impossibly complicated as deterrent effects of certain punishments. After all, it's surely intuitive that the existence of the death penalty for murder would deter murder, but it doesn't seem to. These are essentially unfalsifiable arguments, and therefore entirely worthless and unproductive.

have high catch rates

I agree with this part because it is well-evidenced that the single most important factor in deterring crime is the chance of getting caught.

The complication for deterring murder is that such a high portion of murders are not rational acts and thus can't be assumed to be deterrable.

The difference between being killed, and being thrown away in a tiny cell for your whole life, is vanishingly small

yeah but if you’ve been wrongfully convicted that difference starts to feel pretty big. exoneration doesn’t do me much good if i’m already dead. personally i don’t think the death penalty is really “worth it” regardless. summary execution is a different story, that’s a pretty good deterrent imo. not really how i think the state should be operating though, it’s unbecoming. leave that sort of thing to the street gangs

The vast majority of states throughout history have used public execution.

There’s plenty of arguments against it, but ‘it’s not the sort of thing states do’ is just not one of them.

There’s plenty of arguments against it, but ‘it’s not the sort of things states do’ is just not one of them.

who are you quoting? cause i didnt say anything like that