Kevin, thank you for the specific example. It definitely strengthened my practical objection to the practice. I strongly suspect that the current number of false positives lies outside of my acceptance zone.
Rain, I agree that politics is a mind-killer, but thought it worthy of at least brushing the cobwebs off some cached thoughts. Good point about Nitrogen. I wonder why we choose gruesome methods when even CO would be cheap, easy and effective.
Morendil, I appreciate the other questions. You have a good point that if Omega were brought in on the justice system, it would definitely find better corrective measures than the kill command. I think Eliezer once talked about how predicting your possible future decisions is basically the same as deciding. In that case, I already changed many things on this Big Question, and am just finally doing what I predicted I might do last time I gave any thought to capital punishment. Which happened to be at the conclusion (if there is such a thing) of a murder trial where my friend was a victim. Lots of bias to overcome there, methinks.
Unnamed, interesting points. I hadn’t actually considered how similar life imprisonment is to execution, with regard to the pertinent facts. I was recently introduced to the concept of restorative justice which I think encompasses your article. I find it particularly appealing because it deals with what works, instead of worthless Calvinist ideals like punishment. From my understanding, execution only fulfills punishment in the most trivial of senses.
Kevin, thank you for the specific example. It definitely strengthened my practical objection to the practice. I strongly suspect that the current number of false positives lies outside of my acceptance zone.
Rain, I agree that politics is a mind-killer, but thought it worthy of at least brushing the cobwebs off some cached thoughts. Good point about Nitrogen. I wonder why we choose gruesome methods when even CO would be cheap, easy and effective.
Morendil, I appreciate the other questions. You have a good point that if Omega were brought in on the justice system, it would definitely find better corrective measures than the kill command. I think Eliezer once talked about how predicting your possible future decisions is basically the same as deciding. In that case, I already changed many things on this Big Question, and am just finally doing what I predicted I might do last time I gave any thought to capital punishment. Which happened to be at the conclusion (if there is such a thing) of a murder trial where my friend was a victim. Lots of bias to overcome there, methinks.
Unnamed, interesting points. I hadn’t actually considered how similar life imprisonment is to execution, with regard to the pertinent facts. I was recently introduced to the concept of restorative justice which I think encompasses your article. I find it particularly appealing because it deals with what works, instead of worthless Calvinist ideals like punishment. From my understanding, execution only fulfills punishment in the most trivial of senses.