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  • 17 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 8th, 2024
  • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•Republicans scrambling to get ahead of the Epstein files. Watch. There will be LOADS more of this.
    510·
    9 months ago

    The argument is flawed in the following way.

    1. If some crimes are punished more severely than others, then the government could accuse its critics of committing these crimes.
    2. Therefore, no crimes should be punished more severely than others.

    But this conclusion is ridiculous. Some crimes should be punished more severely, possibly up to and including the death penalty.

    My point is that if you do want to argue against the death penalty, this argument is not it.

    EDIT: The only good arguments against the death penalty focus on the the kind of civil society you would rather live in — one that has a bureaucratic apparatus for killing people, or one that does not.

    Arguments against the death penalty based on specific crimes are unpersuasive, since some crimes really do deserve death, morally speaking — the problem has always been an administrative one. Even if some violent (or even white collar) criminals deserve to die, building a bureaucratic apparatus to administer their deaths would make for an evil sort of society.

  • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.comtopolitics @lemmy.world•Pam Bondi is breaking the DOJ
    14·
    1 year ago

    These numbers are extremely low. We are limited by our diagnostic capabilities, and a lot of psychopathy is simply passed off as narcissism, particularly among non-violent psychopaths.

    If a psychopath is intelligent enough to simply get a job on Wall Street then how do we diagnose him? The PCL-22 requires him to engage in extreme behaviors. Following a profit motive doesn’t “count” and neither does voting for Trump.

  • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.comtopolitics @lemmy.world•Pam Bondi is breaking the DOJ
    452·
    1 year ago

    Psychopathy.

    5% of the population is psychopathic. No shame. No guilt. No fear. Zero motivations beyond their own amusement. Contrary to popular belief, people like her are born that way.

    However, this type of brain damage is on a spectrum, and judging by opinion polls and various psychometric data over the last century, I would estimate at least 30% of the population to be categorically incapable of moral reasoning. A conservative estimate. This outsize fraction of humans possess rudimentary moral intuitions, like most mammals, but no inclination or capacity for abstract reflection.

    They also do not exhibit any of the transcendental values that separate “persons” from animals. But we are forbidden from having that uncomfortable discussion because of some weird hang ups about dehumanization. Nevermind that Homo sapiens are literally animals and there’s nothing shocking about the fact that a huge fraction of us are nothing more than animals.