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 -
No. The harm comes from the 14 year old not knowing what they're agreeing to and being too scared to say no once it starts.
Because we as a society have agreed to grant as much protection as possible to everyone, even to people who are either stupid or mentally disturbed enough to want to be killed, because we generally value human life. There is also the fact that if consent was an exception, so many murderers would claim the "but they actually consented" defense which would drag out the (already unbelievably long) criminal justice process of putting murderers in prison.
Okay, the latter is something I hadn't considered. But the former: what do you mean by "what they're agreeing to"? They're agreeing to stick their dick into someone they wanted to stick their dick into anyways.
I don't see why this is a useful protection to grant.
But we're not talking about the general case. We're talking about the specific case of someone who no longer values their own life and actively wishes for it to be taken away.
This would be trivially solved by requiring a high bar of evidence for this defense. Can they produce the amount of documentation that Meiwes and Brandes had on hand, signed and notarized and what have you? 99.9% of murders are not going to have that on file.
They may have agreed to that. But they don't know about the complex emotions that comes with the act and their minds are not mature enough to handle it. It's more than just the raw physical act that takes place.
The theory goes that suicidal people are not in their right mind and if they were cured of their afflictions would no longer wish to die. By giving up this protection we would be causing thousands or even millions of unnecessary deaths.
We still do everything in our power to prevent suicidal people from taking their own lives. We don't just ignore them and leave them to their own devices or even actively encourage them to kill themselves.
It's not just being able to eventually adjudicate the claim, it's also the amount of judicial resources spent on frivolous claims (especially since, as you admit, the defense would only be successful in vanishingly rare scenarios). Do you know the saying, "the process is the punishment"? How the process for resolving disputes or incidents, and it being dragged out for a long period of time, is itself a punishment? Defendants can cause that sort of punishment too. The defendant and/or their lawyers will do absolutely everything they can to keep the defendant out of jail, and that includes claiming defenses that have no hope of success, but still result in delays and time, effort, and resources spent having to rebut the claim by prosecutors and witnesses.
As I said, allowing this sort of defense at all would result in the second-order consequences of spawning endless litigation over whether someone consented to being murdered, especially if there was a high bar of evidence.
"They totes consented to it, the document was notarized by this guy!" "Hang on, is that notary even licensed? Looks like his license expired." "Yes, but, he got it reinstated, so it's valid!" "Yeah but, look at this recent state law, says he has to renew in a month, and he didn't." "Hang on, what about..." and so on, arguments like that, ad infinitum. It's already hard enough to put away murderers, we don't need to make it harder.
That's only one way to look at it, no? By demanding such "protection" we cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.
If ad infinitum problems crop up, that's a bug of the legal system, not of the moral code behind the legal system. Not every legal system has this issue.
Was the notary licensed at the time of notarization? If so then it's legit. If not no. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes of the court's time with a sufficiently competent legal system.
It's only "unnecessary suffering" if you ignore the suffering caused to loved ones when someone they knew and loved has died. Most people are distraught when a friend, family member, relative, etc. commits suicide.
No, you can't just ignore second-order consequences. Not every change you make to a system is isolated and affects only that one particular area of the system. Laws can interact in sometimes surprising ways. For example, if a state legalizes marijuana, then cops can no longer use the smell of marijuana alone to establish probable cause for searching a vehicle. Or if it's legal in a state to carry a concealed firearm (especially permitless carry) then cops can no longer "stop and frisk" a suspect based on someone saying they're armed, unless they also say they're committing a crime in some way (the standard is armed and dangerous).
Fixing the problems with using notaries as the basis of evidence is not so simple. If we allowed murder in the case of consent, there would be a huge incentive to create fake notaries or otherwise fake documentation supporting the murder. After all, it's easier than getting away with murder by killing witnesses, covering up evidence or the other usual means of doing it. And it's not like the victim can even testify against them. The short story "Infodeath" by Ben Sheffield provides a good example where (spoiler alert) someone gets tricked into signing paperwork saying they wanted to commit suicide by lethal injection, then gets forced to have said lethal injection, and dies nonconsensually.
Well, duh? I don't see how any of those examples are relevant. That's exactly how you would expect the second-order effects of those laws to propagate throughout the legal system.
Not a problem because notaries are appointed by the state. How would you even have fake notaries? If the state doesn't recognize the notary then obviously the notary's testimony or signature is worthless.
It really feels to me like you're overcomplicating this. Okay, let's say the US legal system is too fucked up to make this workable. Fair enough, the US legal system takes a lot of good ideas and fucks them up, like allowing for the capture of regulatory agencies. Doesn't mean that regulating industries is a bad idea in and of itself, just means that the US is bad at doing it.
You can throw at me all the nitty gritty problems that might exist in some hypothetical poorly implementation version of them, and okay, I'll grant you that such a piss poor implementation is a really bad idea. I don't see how that changes anything at all.
You would have a notary appointed by the state, but one that's paid off so they can notarize fradulent consensual-murder documents. You seem to be lacking a security mindset and not at all thinking about the many ways consensual murder could go very, very wrong.
No, I'm not bringing up some hypothetical poor implementation of the idea. I'm bringing up the challenges that every single implementation would have. These problems aren't avoidable by saying "just get a better implementation, bro". They're inherent and fundamental and will happen unless there's a solution for them. I'm not saying there aren't any solutions, either -- however, solutions aren't exempt from having knock-on effects as well. At what level of hackjob patches, fixes and workarounds, and workarounds to those workarounds will you admit that it's not worth it to have consensual murder anymore? I think it's simplest to just not have consensual murder. The benefits are questionable and the costs are enormous.
Interestingly, your entire line of argument against consensual murder also boils down to this:
Which is not meaningfully distinct from progressivism or traditionalism, which come up with this (bad faith) answer for the exact same reason.
My final answer- that being the liberal one- is simply to state that the optimum amount of possible bad relationships is not zero.
No, it doesn't. I would never use the same logic to argue against consensual sex. The two don't even remotely compare.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link