site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What do you think? Am I wrong in reading this as just another case of “Americans can do nothing right”?

Apparently yes. But not in way you meant. Judging by

execution took about 25 minutes total (...) What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life, (...) "appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could."

it seems that they failed to asphyxiate them properly. Suffocation by nitrogen gas should not take so long, unless this guy was experienced freediver.

Judging by

That was all expected and was in the side effects that we've seen or researched on nitrogen hypoxia

it seems that either they are in denial or plan was stupid. (AFAIK asphyxiation should happen faster, so it was incompetence in executing execution)

Disclaimer: I have not fact checked article. Maybe they were lying outright.

Ironic how trying to make it painless just makes it worse

I read an interview with a Swedish expert who, while being negative about death penalties in general, was similarly confused about how long it took and all the reported thrashing, which goes against all experience with industrial accidents where people pass out and die very quickly without they themselves or their nearby colleages realising what's going on.

Something clearly went wrong here.

The usual response is, why not euthanize people in the same way animals are euthanized. Humans have a more advanced nervous system in that they can respond by being aware of the procedure, whereas an animal is not. The condemned ,reasonably, do not wish to die and will do everything possible to delay the process and not comply, with lawyers who will look for any procedural misstep to forestall, adding to the complications. Remove the 'human rights' aspect and putting people to death is trivial.

Half-baked thought: all of those industrial accidents don't involve victims aware that it's happening. I can imagine that, while it can sneak up on you, being told you're going to die invokes all sort of deeply-rooted vestigial instincts. Industrial workers in confined spaces aren't generally trying to hold their breath or escape. This may apply to some of the times lethal injection goes poorly as well.

Sure, but you can't hold your breath for 25 minutes. For most people it's like 2 minutes and then you would get knocked out. It's not just that it sneaks up on you, it happens very quickly.

Something is fishy here. Maybe they had too low a concentration of nitrogen?

An interesting thought that genuinely hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out. While the ability to voluntarily hold one's breath is typically limited to 2 -3 minutes a reasonably healthy Human body is capable of functioning on limited or no oxygen for a significant amount of time (closer 10 to 15 minutes). Hypoxia is pernicious in that it sneaks up on you, without explicit warnings/training most people will not recognize that they are in trouble until they've already burned 90% of their available time assuming they recognize that they are in trouble at all because by that point cognitive ability has already started to decline.

Accordingly, I'm now wondering if they ought to have sedated the guy or gotten him blackout drunk first. Throw a big party on death row, get everyone plastered and then pump in the nitrogen.

Also, maybe industrial accidents with someone living after minutes do not end in deaths or being noticed more widely?

But being able to survive for 25 minutes without oxygen, holding breath, seems unlikely.

Maybe they fucked up delivery mechanism of nitrogen? Managed to still give access to oxygen?

You'd think they would test it on a sheep or something during commissioning.