On 4/27/2015 5:38 PM, LizR wrote:
On 28 April 2015 at 12:04, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 4/27/2015 4:24 PM, LizR wrote:On 28 April 2015 at 08:58, Jason Resch <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: What if you step into a delayed duplication machine, and the first one out goes and commits murder at a later time, and then commits suicide, later the delayed duplicate of you emerges. Do we imprison them, or would that be punishing them for a "pre-crime"? I think the "public safety" argument comes in here. We have very good evidence that you are both dangerous and mentally unstable. I think we should at least consider offering psychiatric help, and perhaps threaten imprisonment if it's refused. But of course I don't know how the rest of this hypothetical SF society functions. Maybe we keep you from being a threat by uploading you into a computerised utopia in which your every wish is granted.To really make a good decision we'd have to know a lot more - which is why we have trials. Of course. Having been on a jury, I do actually appreciate that. Just from the above outline we don't even really know that the killer is dangerous or mentally unstable.It's a reasonable reading given the main facts - he committed a murder and then killed himself. Obviously there may be extenuating circumstances...Maybe he murdered the guy who bullied his gay son online and caused his son to commit suicide....but that isn't actually a justification for murder. (See your first comment about why we have trials.)
I'm not saying it's justification. In fact from a utilitarian analysis of murder laws "justification" is a kind of derivative attribute of laws. I'm saying that he may not be a danger to other people at all. That's not good a basis for judging for judging the utility of punishment or laws. People who kill their wife or husband in anger are very unlikely to kill anyone else.
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