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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3986 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

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Any reason why we don't use laughing gas for executions? All you need it hermetically sealed chamber, throw the convicted inside, throw couple of whipping cream cannisters - like two or three gallons. Open them remotely. And it is anesthetic. Easy to procure and cheap.

The usual answer is that it’s easy to kill people cheaply and humanely in all sorts of ways, but most people don’t want to sell stuff for the purposes of executing people and the ones who are willing to get boycotted.

It's this.

Anesthesiologists know exactly how to kill someone reasonably cheaply and in a painless and not distressing way, it's why they have such a high suicide rate.

But finding people to sell the stuff required (and getting requisite professional staff to assist) is hard.

Then you add on the "finger on the trigger" problem (who wants to be the specific person who killed someone on purpose? Nobody you want doing it).

All this adds up to the weird dance we have.

Then you add on the "finger on the trigger" problem (who wants to be the specific person who killed someone on purpose? Nobody you want doing it).

This specifically has a known solution, though: you take a citizen draft of say, 10 people, and you set things up so that they all have to take an action (pressing a button for example). Only one of the buttons actually works and it’s random every time.

It’s how they used to do firing squads: most of the rifles are loaded with blanks so nobody knows who the real killer is.

you take a citizen draft of say, 10 people, and you set things up so that they all have to take an action

Why not make the jury that condemned the person do this?

I’m (perhaps incorrectly) recalling a story of how they used to do it in Utah. I imagine because they want juries to deliver the correct verdict without worrying about having to carry out the execution.

Got it reversed- firing squads have one blank among several rifles.

Right, I think it works well for firing squads but as soon as you have ten people pushing buttons and only one of them work.....it just kind of looks stupid. Since the whole issue here is optics I'm not sure how to make that shake out.

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