If he had not implied that they needed demonization, you would not have had to mention it and tell others not to do it. You obviously saw what he did there and are attempting some useless kind of damage control.
Err, no. You seem to have forgotten that I was replying to MightyMartian, not turkeydance.
-What's the advantage of execution over long-term imprisonment?
-It normalizes killing in the civilian world, which may have negative indirect effects on society. A strong taboo on lethal violence is vital to civilized society, and eroding it may be indirectly costly (to violent crime rates, that is).
Some people also use the slippery-slope argument and the do you really want the government to have that power? argument, but I don't find either of them that compelling.
Their decision to indiscriminately kill is what makes them evil, not the numbers after the decision is made.
So you're saying evilness is entirely a function of intent, and not of action/'success in evil'? It's not the case that the intent of all senseless killers is equivalent, though.
What about two criminals who successfully committed their crimes, but one set out to kill one random person, and the other set out to kill two? Or a million?
Seeing as you are the one offering a parody of a counter-argument for no clear reason (your idiotic straw-man assumes crazy purist utilitarianism, and even then it's garbage), I hardly think you're in a position to be calling me argumentative.
Did you forget the bit where he killed 77 people? Christ.
The guy is a multiple murderer. It's not like they took a random person off the street and put them in solitary.
Secondly, you are somehow forgetting how awful it is to murder dozens of people. I'm rather, uh, alarmed, by this.
We're talking about the murders of 77 innocent people. Imagine if someone murdered you, your family, and everyone you've ever considered yourself to be close to. (This is likely to add up to far less than 77, but no matter.)
And you seriously think that wiping out every last one of those people is no worse than putting a convicted serial killer in solitary?
Let's cut the crap already. It's simple: if you had to choose between putting a convicted multiple murderer in solitary, or slaughtering several dozen innocents, would you agree it's obvious that the former option is the lesser evil?
If yes, you've just proven my point.
If no, I worry that you are dangerously unhinged, and need at the very least to do some serious thinking about the value of human life.
It wouldn't be cheaper. Execution is far more expensive than long-term imprisonment, due to appeals courts.
If you doubt this, it's because you haven't done any reading on the realities of the capital punishment issue.
The 'justice' argument is somewhat more compelling, but I don't think it's enough. There's no deterrent effect for this kind of insane crime, so it doesn't really benefit society to execute the criminal. The only real upside is catharsis, but that comes at great financial cost, the risk of executing innocent people, and the subtler effect of normalising killing in society. (Some people also argue there's a slippery slope issue here, but I don't find that argument all that persuasive, at least not in civilized societies.)
Yes... once I've killed your first child, I'm no more evil for killing your second one.
You seem to agree that killing several people is worse than killing one person, but somehow you think that the evilness of the person isn't increased.
Why do you think it makes sense to impose a 'ceiling' on one of these, but not the other?
If given the choice between releasing an insane criminal intent on killing one person, and releasing an insane criminal intent on killing 50, who would you release?
Obviously the former, because... that criminal isn't as evil.
That is like saying person A is worse than person B, because person A only killed 10 people while person B killed 100.
Well, yeah. You really think there's something wrong with that reasoning?
It could be 1, doesn't matter.
So... the second murder has no moral consequence then? Are you sure about that?
I consider rape to be the same thing, and I'm not even a woman, but I understand that to women, it can be just as bad as murder.
It's serious enough that I'd consider it legitimate to use lethal force to prevent it. I still don't consider it the moral equivalent of murder, though. It seems obvious to me that murder is even worse than rape.
Also, bear in mind that male-male rape is a real occurrence. Rape isn't just a women's issue.
The irony is all the people calling for the execution of this guy. As if killing him is somehow "good", but his killing of others is "bad".
I happen to agree with you in opposing capital punishment, but the point you're making doesn't make sense.
We imprison kidnappers. Are you going to argue that's the moral equivalent of kidnapping? Of course not, because context is vital when evaluating morality.
You're either civilized or you're not, there isn't much middle ground there.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in the UK, we've had more Muslims leave the country to support ISIS than have joined our armed-forces.
What I'm talking about isn't make-believe, much as we both may wish it was.
There are serious issues with the global religion of Islam, and with poor integration into western cultures and values.
It's like blaming Christians when someone shoots an abortion doctor.
Not really, no. A truly terrifying proportion of Muslims hold insane, dangerous, beliefs.
Islam is absolutely not the equivalent of Christianity.
If he had not implied that they needed demonization, you would not have had to mention it and tell others not to do it. You obviously saw what he did there and are attempting some useless kind of damage control.
Err, no. You seem to have forgotten that I was replying to MightyMartian, not turkeydance.
And yet it remains that Islam is way the most prominent ideology behind this kind of thing.
And I think it should be mentioned that the people most often victimized by Islamic terrorists are their fellow Muslims.
Right. So? This has precisely zero bearing on the question of whether Islam as a religion is a factor in Islamic terrorism.
Or were you somehow trying to tell turkeydance not to demonise Muslims (which they never did anyway)?
No-one is this much of a moron.
Go back to troll school.
Privacy died 150 years ago at least.
Not even close.
Mass-scale spying has been simply impossible until very recently.
Hear hear. The common off-by-one usage is infuriating.
Err, seriously? It's right there in the title. It literally could not be any clearer.
4K and Richer Graphics
Not a bad idea, especially after the LG TV spying scandal, but if it's a 4K screen, the only way you'll get 4K Netflix is by using the smart TV app.
you'll end up having rebels all the way from communists to Islamists.
What?
So... confirmation bias, then.
It's also a LOT more expensive to deploy than just shutting down the internet - which has zero capital cost.
Who cares about just the capital cost? You seem to be assuming that Iraq has zero Internet-based economy.
Would you prefer we ensure we make these kinds of games so realistic that even the armchair general suffers from PTSD?
Seems we've quickly forgotten the side effects from sending humans onto an actual battlefield.
Or, more likely, you've forgotten that we're talking about video games.
I guess that makes sense, if you interpret 'fixed' to refer to deployment, not to implementation.
vulnerabilities with fixes that have yet to be implemented
Unfixed vulnerabilities, then.
Which uses more memory: a small Python program, or a small Java program?
Also, performance isn't always important. If your program is IO-bound, you might see no real improvement moving from Python to Java, or even to C.
Two major questions remains here:
Some people also use the slippery-slope argument and the do you really want the government to have that power? argument, but I don't find either of them that compelling.
Their decision to indiscriminately kill is what makes them evil, not the numbers after the decision is made.
So you're saying evilness is entirely a function of intent, and not of action/'success in evil'? It's not the case that the intent of all senseless killers is equivalent, though.
What about two criminals who successfully committed their crimes, but one set out to kill one random person, and the other set out to kill two? Or a million?
you could stop being such an argumentative cock
Seeing as you are the one offering a parody of a counter-argument for no clear reason (your idiotic straw-man assumes crazy purist utilitarianism, and even then it's garbage), I hardly think you're in a position to be calling me argumentative.
Did you forget the bit where he killed 77 people? Christ.
The guy is a multiple murderer. It's not like they took a random person off the street and put them in solitary.
Secondly, you are somehow forgetting how awful it is to murder dozens of people. I'm rather, uh, alarmed, by this.
We're talking about the murders of 77 innocent people. Imagine if someone murdered you, your family, and everyone you've ever considered yourself to be close to. (This is likely to add up to far less than 77, but no matter.)
And you seriously think that wiping out every last one of those people is no worse than putting a convicted serial killer in solitary?
Let's cut the crap already. It's simple: if you had to choose between putting a convicted multiple murderer in solitary, or slaughtering several dozen innocents, would you agree it's obvious that the former option is the lesser evil?
If yes, you've just proven my point.
If no, I worry that you are dangerously unhinged, and need at the very least to do some serious thinking about the value of human life.
It should be cheaper
Yeah... but it won't be, so...
Killing these people is a moral good.
Only if you view retribution as a moral good in itself. Seeing as it doesn't make the world a better place, I don't buy it.
It wouldn't be cheaper. Execution is far more expensive than long-term imprisonment, due to appeals courts.
If you doubt this, it's because you haven't done any reading on the realities of the capital punishment issue.
The 'justice' argument is somewhat more compelling, but I don't think it's enough. There's no deterrent effect for this kind of insane crime, so it doesn't really benefit society to execute the criminal. The only real upside is catharsis, but that comes at great financial cost, the risk of executing innocent people, and the subtler effect of normalising killing in society. (Some people also argue there's a slippery slope issue here, but I don't find that argument all that persuasive, at least not in civilized societies.)
Yes... once I've killed your first child, I'm no more evil for killing your second one.
You seem to agree that killing several people is worse than killing one person, but somehow you think that the evilness of the person isn't increased.
Why do you think it makes sense to impose a 'ceiling' on one of these, but not the other?
If given the choice between releasing an insane criminal intent on killing one person, and releasing an insane criminal intent on killing 50, who would you release?
Obviously the former, because... that criminal isn't as evil.
Nope.
That is like saying person A is worse than person B, because person A only killed 10 people while person B killed 100.
Well, yeah. You really think there's something wrong with that reasoning?
It could be 1, doesn't matter.
So... the second murder has no moral consequence then? Are you sure about that?
I consider rape to be the same thing, and I'm not even a woman, but I understand that to women, it can be just as bad as murder.
It's serious enough that I'd consider it legitimate to use lethal force to prevent it. I still don't consider it the moral equivalent of murder, though. It seems obvious to me that murder is even worse than rape.
Also, bear in mind that male-male rape is a real occurrence. Rape isn't just a women's issue.
The irony is all the people calling for the execution of this guy. As if killing him is somehow "good", but his killing of others is "bad".
I happen to agree with you in opposing capital punishment, but the point you're making doesn't make sense.
We imprison kidnappers. Are you going to argue that's the moral equivalent of kidnapping? Of course not, because context is vital when evaluating morality.
You're either civilized or you're not, there isn't much middle ground there.
No. Get real.