This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm pretty sure it's 100% outgroup-hatred along standard culture war lines. Executing convicted murderers is a red tribe value, therefore to all blue tribe civilized society, it's savage, uncivilized, and wrong no matter how it's done, and every weapon in the culture war will be brought to bear to oppose it. That explains why a genuine attempt to do it in a more "humane" way has absolutely no effect on the media position. It was never about that, it was about crushing red tribe.
Meanwhile, if somebody wanted to execute Jan 6 convicts, even in the most pointlessly brutal way you could possibly imagine, the same sources would likely cheer on how they were getting exactly what they deserved and lament that the punishment wasn't harsh enough.
I'm blue tribe and nobody I know would cheer on execution of Jan 6 convicts.
I'm against the death penalty for all cases except very rare individuals who are responsible for something on the magnitude of genocide, or if there was somehow someone too dangerous to keep alive (ie, the Joker from Batman fiction). I'm against it for multiple reasons, but prime among them is the terrifyingly high conviction rate if innocents.
Pretty much. I don't have enough faith in the judicial system to give it the power over life and death, even though I don't actually have any principled objection to hanging a murderer.
More options
Context Copy link
Was everyone who died during the Iraq War a terrorist? likely not, some innocents died and it was an acceptable loss. Edge cases does not invalidate the cost/benefit analysis. If a death penalty (or life on death row) is an effective deferent, which I think it is, then it's worth it even if some innocents are caught in the net.
An acceptable loss? An acceptable loss for what? The war in Iraq was a massive negative for the world and was responsible for a lot of suffering, all for the sake of failed geopolitical gameplaying and war-profiteering by the American MIC. Not a single one of the innocent deaths in the Iraq war was an "acceptable loss". I really can't understand your point here - the outcomes of the Iraq war were so terrible that I can't think of any of those deaths as being acceptable. "Yeah sure we murdered a bunch of innocents and gave islamic terror groups a huge amount of propaganda fodder, but in exchange we got to have Islamic State show up a few years later."
pick another example then. like space launches. any program has some accepted threshold of false positives
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think war makes for an awkward analogy to the death penalty, but I take your point that cost/benefit analysis is applicable.
However, when I google, all the results I see say that there's no evidence death penalty works as a deterrent.
But on the other hand, all the sources are biased. Murder rates are higher in capital punishment states but I could easily see that being correlation, not causation. I really can't find any good stats here.
I'm changing my stance to "I believe the death penalty is likely bad, but with low confidence, and more research needs to be done on the matter."
The primary purpose of the death penalty is retributive justice, not deterrence. If it also functions as a deterrent, that's a fantastic bonus, but whether it has a deterrent effect or not, some people simply deserve to die and it's a miscarriage of justice to allow them to live.
CS Lewis wrote a great article about penalties. This was his general take. The only morally appropriate theory of punishment is just desserts. Any deterrence (or incapacitation) is a nice cherry on top.
This is surprising. From a Christian perspective, and CS Lewis only ever wrote from a Christian perspective, everyone's just desserts is eternal damnation (except Mary, if you're Catholic).
More options
Context Copy link
But then, "give every man his deserts, and who should 'scape whipping?"
I think there are murderers who are violent, sick, and dangerous, who have no remorse or no conception of human life (other than their own) being valuable, and who have inflicted horrific suffering on their victims.
It's natural to want to 'pay them back' in the same way, to make them suffer. But that achieves nothing other than satisfying revenge, and handing over the power of vengeance to the state instead of taking private revenge should put us past that. Indulging in sadistic impulses, even if 'justified', doesn't help anyone in the end and is worse for society in the long run, because if we all get to let our baser impulses out in certain circumstances, then I do think that has an effect which ends up with a society that is crueller and harsher and less desirable to live in, in the long run. For instance, people like to complain about bureaucracy and unhelpful government employees and the like, but imagine if someone in the Department of Certificates deliberately screws you around for the laughs, because they'll go back to their desk and joke with their colleagues about "what an idiot, he's going to lose his house because he was too dumb to check that I gave him form 4-A instead of form 4-B which is the one needed, some people are too stupid to live" and everyone laughs because "oh hey, you going to the drawing and quartering on Tuesday, it should be a good one, Executioner Brownley is doing it and he can drag it out for hours".
Ehh I haven’t murdered, raped, assaulted, or materially injured someone. Hell, I haven’t even done boring things like steal with mens rea (I almost certainly have accidentally taken things that aren’t mine).
Am I perfect? No. I’ve done some bad things. But I’m quite sure that this is not a “there but for the Grace of God goes me” situation.
With all of that said, what do you think is the proper role of the state?
More options
Context Copy link
No, the point of handing the power of vengeance to the state is to assure that the vengeance is carried out justly and impartially, not to "put us past that".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Important part: compared to what?
I would really look into details how it was calculated, I expect a lot of bad psychology. And yes, effective catching criminals is better than extreme penalties, yes - criminals are often stupid, but it works at least on margin.
If you would introduce death penalty for say speeding and would keep law and actually execute people (rather than change or ignore law) then I bet that speeding would be deterred.
See also cases where death penalty is needed as criminal cannot be put into prison or will escape anyway (not applicable to USA, admittedly but your claim was broader).
Well, reports on 18th century public executions, where people could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief, attracted the same kind of boisterous crowds as Dickens describes, and while the poor wretch on the gallows was being hanged for pick-pocketing, the thieves in the crowd were busy performing the same crimes. So deterrent effects aren't very strong when people are hardened to seeing executions.
The Golden Age of murders in Britain were often domestic poisonings because, ironically, divorce was seen as more scandalous than murder by the perpetrators. A lot of people commit crimes in the heat of the moment and unpremeditated, and those who do plan out their crimes imagine they'll never be caught. So I think execution or life imprisonment are both equally good deterrents, and maybe life in jail until you're old and feeble is a worse deterrent than a quick execution? I don't know. I think there is a deterrent effect, and there should be deterrent effects for all punishment, but that the deterrent isn't strong enough for capital punishment to justify it, and it is mostly about revenge and satisfying vindictiveness. I've felt the impulse myself, reading terrible crimes, that the perpetrators should be burned alive or tortured to death - but that's not good. That makes me just as much ready and eager to murder, and murder horribly, as they are.
I think the "anti-revenge" argument proves too much. It ultimately depends far too much on how much deterrent effect there is.
Most acts of violence are done in heat of the moment or otherwise irrational decisions: thus deterrence effect must be small, as the people who are committing illegal violence are not weighing their options and consequences rationally. And in fact, despite the all might of the (Western, developed) judicial system, most (Western, developed) countries have still some amounts of criminality. I acknowledge it is a point of contention, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that deterrence effect is small-to-negligible. Thus, any punishment worth its name is unjustified as deterrence, as deterrence doesn't happen to meaningful extent.
If there is no meaningful deterrence, and the idea of revenge is verboten, what reason remains to administer any punishment at all? If we are talking about a criminal who is a high-risk repeat offender, there is still argument that we should incapacitate to prevent them committing further crimes. However, not all people are like that. Some want to commit one, specific murder. Or some goody-shoes comes and argues they have a very good method to "rehabilitate" them (or prevent committing any more crimes, which is functionally same thing), and it involves electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, perhaps sniffing their internet traffic, and perhaps soon, AI. (Thus, they'd have a system of no other punishment than what is necessary to monitor they won't do it again.)
Thinking about this, I came to conclusion that justice as a concept must involve retributive elements, that is, a form of revenge, or it is not justice. A method that prevents the perpetrator from committing more crimes does nothing to the victim of their previous crimes. It is fully defenseless in the face of fait accompli: when crime has been committed, it can no longer be prevented. There either can be retribution or no retribution: admittedly is retribution is weak of ghost of justice as it can not make the crime undone, but it is still more than nothing, because acknowledges the pain of the victim (as it is administered in relation of the crime) whereas preventive methods won't ( as they focus on the future of the perpetrator), neither do deterrent methods (because they are concerned only with deterring other people, and the method of deterring crimes may turn out to be unrelated to the crime itself).
Finally, the system of no justice that I outlined is not fantasy, but the Nordic model slightly exaggerated. Yet it is proving impossible. According to their stated principles, Norwegians should let Anders Behring Breivik out as soon as their relevant officials are reasonably sure he is no longer danger to society or rendered harmless, as he has already sit the 10 year mandatory sentence they had in the books. Practically, by their stated philosophy, they should: after a hypothetical release, Breivik would be under constant monitoring, probably would not have chance to commit nor organize any further acts of terrorist violence, and he is getting pretty old. Yet they can't bear themselves to do it, and twist themselves into all kinds of legal knots that are not very believable as written but taken seriously because everyone involved deep-down knows it would act of injustice to let him walk free again. (I agree that he should sit for life, or should have faced capital punishment long ago. The Norwegian unwillingness to administer their law according to its written intentions shows they apparently also think their chosen system is illegitimate, in this case. And if it doesn't fit in this case, why not the other cases?)
What I mean about revenge are the people saying "hell yeah they should suffer, I'd be fine with it if they were tortured to death" and the likes. That has nothing to do with deterrence or even punishment. And it's people who have no relationship to the murder or the offender saying it. I understand a parent or spouse or close family member wanting to tear the offender limb from limb. Someone sitting in their chair miles away with no connection going "put it on TV and I'll pay to view" is not healthy for society in the long run, is what I'm saying.
There are five (or six, depending on how you count them) purposes for punishment generally recognized. Deterrence (specific and general), rehabilitation, restitution, and retribution. Retribution actually covers the desire for punishment of the crime for both those near the victim and society at large.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Did any of them cheer over Babbit getting shot on the day itself?
No. Although I admit this is just anecdotal and I can't speak for the whole tribe of course.
More options
Context Copy link
In my circle, no. There are people who think she was foolish and the shooting was justified, but I don't know anyone who celebrated her death in the "fucking MAGA got what she deserved" sense you're implying.
I don't doubt that such people exist, but I think you'll find more hypocrisy among Blue Tribers when it comes to prison abolition and rehabilitation ("We should give everyone a second chance, except conservatives who might once have used the n-word") than the death penalty. Genuine opponents of the death penalty really do believe that it's always immoral, full stop.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't believe this for one second. Any evidence of such sentiment (i.e. people saying they should get it/it would justified if they did)?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link