On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 3:50 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> I would buy the argument that mass murderer Charles Manson is the way a >> bunch of particles obey the Schrodinger Wave Equation, but I'll be damned >> it I can see what that has to do with his guild or innocence; that bunch of >> particles killed a bunch or people or it did not. If it did and if we then >> send a current of a few hundred amps through that bunch of particles we can >> be certain it will never kill again; it might even make it less likely that >> similar bunches op particles kill in the future, although this is less >> certain. >> >> > The question is about moral responsibility >
The question is about the purpose of punishment. I can only think of 2 reasons for punishing a criminal: 1) To prevent that criminal from committing another crime; if he's dead he can't and if he's in jail his crimes will be contained to within the jail walls. 2) To deter others from committing crimes; they don't want to end up like him. To be honest I can think of other reasons to punish a criminal but they all involve sadism and I will not defend them. > > In practice we have over time relied more and more on the defence that > the person concerned couldn't help what they did And because of that the law has in practice become more and more inconsistent and illogical. Just recently I read about a ex policeman in Florida who shot a man in a movie theater because he was texting, he was charged with SECOND degree murder. If he had planned for a year to kill someone to get his $10,000,000 life insurance he would have been charged with FIRST degree murder, but I think somebody who will murder for a trivial reason is more contemptible and far far more dangerous than someone who will only murder if the reason is substantial. The law is nuts, if somebody murders me I hope it will be for a reason more important than texting during a movie. > because of various conditions that aren't their fault (e.g. genetic or > due to illnesses or maltreatment), and we even have the science to back it > up now. > We have only gibberish like the "free will" noise to back it up. There are only 4 possibilities: 1) The criminal committed the crime because he had bad genes. 2) The criminal committed the crime because he had a bad environment. 3) The criminal committed the crime because he had bad genes and a bad environment. 4) The criminal committed the crime because of a random quantum fluctuation which has no cause. > Eventually we should reach the point where a mass murderer isn't killed, > or put away for life, but has his or her brain reprogrammed so that s/he is > no longer a mass murderer. In other words, if the software is faulty, get > an upgrade. > We can do that already. Passing a current of a few hundred amps through the brain of a mass murderer for a minute or two would result in a marvelous upgrade. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
