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 -
Well this is my point. 1 in 100,000 is still vanishingly small. Where would you draw the line for saying we can just chalk something up to statistical noise. 1 in 5 million? 1 million? 200,000?
Well, aside from what is asserted without evidence being able to be dismissed without evidence, the wrongful conviction rate would be to most people intolerably high. Executions are slow for a reason; the appeals process is there for a reason. John Grisham estimates the wrongful conviction rate to be between 2% and 10% - now, he isn't necessarily unbiased considering he works with the Innocence Project. So let's go with the lowest end of his estimate, 2%. In 2019, over 240,000 people were sentenced to prison for drug-related crimes, the most serious offence of whom was possession in only 3.7% of cases. But let's say your policies reduce drug crime by half - which is very unlikely - and then half the number again to be generous so we get 60,000. These are the ballparkiest of ballpark figures, but I think if anything I've surely got an underestimate, and that still leaves us with over a thousand wrongful drug executions per year, for apparent benefits in defence of which you can't even cite a single piece of evidence.
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.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
who are you quoting? cause i didnt say anything like that
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