Discussion
Last Statements
saucymew: An interesting Asian counterpart is the Japanese death haiku.MUMON GENSENDied on the twenty-second day of the third month, 1390 at the age of sixty-eightLife is an ever-rolling wheelAnd every day is the right one.He who recites poems at his deathAdds frost to snow.
random_duck: Interesting but now suprizing how many have found solace in religion.
david_shi: Where else would you go?
the_real_cher: How come no one ever makes a joke?
llbbdd: The joke is in the long-winded, self-centered empty apologies and appeals to God; the punchline is in the subsequent brief and clinical descriptions of completely unforgivable acts. These are nauseating to read.
fkdk: I advise having a read through Sapolskys book "Determined" to get another perspective
glitchc: There's at least one wrongful conviction in there.
whoamii: You didn’t find the “that will be 5 dollars” one funny?
llbbdd: I appreciate the recommendation and I will read it (I also appreciate that you made a recommendation instead of downvoting me), however I don't think free will has much to do with this. If they were predetermined to be like this then I have sympathy for the bad dice roll, but once they've stomped an infant to death they're always that person. It doesn't change much about how to deal with them; you can't trust that they won't do it again no matter how much time passes, and that means that saying sorry and making Pascal's wager come off as completely hollow.
galkk: The deeds are horrifying to read. You can do nothing wrong and die by hands of some piece of shit just because you were at wrong place at wrong time. follow up actions of some are even more sad and scary. Killing another human being meant nothing to some of murderers, like killing a fly.Those apologies are too little too late. Good riddance.I have no sympathy for them, and I’m all in for using those for involuntary dangerous drug testing and stuff like that. Those pieces of shit lost their human privileges after what they did.
worthless-trash: What is your goal in asking someone to read this book, we're supposed to have sympathy for those who have had a bad rap in nature and nurture.That 'the system' is responsible for driving them to their actions ?
maest: Yes, those acts are immensely terrible and the apologies feel minuscule by comparison. But I think there's room for more nuance here.There are multiple reasons we put people in jail:1. the victims can feel some vindication and retribution2. other members of society can feel some vindication and retribution and a sense of justice3. other would-be criminals are detered from committing similar crimes for fear of punishment4. making people feel safe by showing them criminals are punished5. removing a bad actor from society6. reforming a bad actor and reintroducing them into societyDifferent cultures emphasize different combinations of reasons. For example, ine notable divide is how, in the US, 6. is considered to be the product of a naive mind, whereas in some nordic countries, that goal is taken seriously, with some amount of success (and perhaps at the detriment of other goals).Anyway, I think your point is that, even if you take the convicts' apologies at face value, goals 1. and 2. remain unfulfilled. And 3. is probably weakened.
sam0x17: I've always felt very alone in my view on this, so don't feel bad if you disagree with me because most people probably do, but I just feel super morally icky when I hear about how part of our justice system is built around "retribution" / "vindication". Like it is one thing to punish, it is quite another to allow others to derive some sort of satisfaction from that punishment, even if they were victims, I just find it sick. It means as a society we are no better than the perpetrators at the end of the day.
