We have a death-penalty debate in the US, which has consequences for less than 100 people per year. We have a few hundred thousand people serving sentences of 20 years and up, but no debate about it. That shows that most Americans place a huge value on life itself, and almost no value on what happens to that life.
Another reason might be the possibility of judicial errors. You can release a locked-up convict and compensate him somehow, but you can’t resurrect a dead convict.
Edit: my comments below this line are irrelevant to the point of this discussion, please disregard them.
Killing enemy soldiers is allowable; killing enemy civilians is not.
One can’t win a war without killing enemy soldiers, but one can win a war without killing enemy civilians (modern wars tend to somewhat blur the line between combatants and civilians). Also, killing civilians motivates enemy soldiers and stimulates the spontaneous formation of militia.
Killing enemy soldiers is allowable; torturing them is not.
Torturing enemy soldiers doesn’t help you win a war and may motivate enemy soldiers to fight to the death, or to torture your own soldiers in return (let alone PR disasters that may arise out of this).
Losing a pilot is not acceptable; losing a $360,000,000 plane is.
Not sure what plane are you talking about. Also, the total costs of training a pilot may well be in the millions. When you officially devalue the pilot life, you’re sending a message to other pilots which will tend to avoid dangerous missions, or just drop the career. (Also, unmanned flight will make the problem obsolete).
My personal position: any life is valuable. Murder is not acceptable.
You can release a locked-up convict and compensate him somehow, but you can’t resurrect a dead convict.
In Virginia, if you’re convicted of murdering someone and sentenced to life in prison, and that person shows up alive and healthy more than 21 days after your conviction, that is not grounds for an appeal of your sentence. So there’s little interest in releasing innocent people. In many states, you can be sentenced to life in prison if you are convected of any 3 felonies. So there just isn’t this concern over prison sentences being too harsh, as long as they don’t kill.
And you can’t compensate someone for 15 years in prison.
One can’t win a war without killing enemy soldiers, but one can win a war without killing enemy civilians.
Torturing enemy soldiers doesn’t help you win a war and may motivate enemy
soldiers to fight to the death, or to torture your own soldiers in return
(let alone PR disasters that may arise out of this).
You’re not thinking any of these things through; but I’m not going to think them through for you here, because I would have to say things more socially unacceptable than I’m willing to say.
Losing a pilot is not acceptable; losing a $360,000,000 plane is.
In Virginia, if you’re convicted of murdering someone and sentenced to life in prison, and that person shows up alive and healthy more than 21 days after your conviction, that is not grounds for an appeal of your sentence.
I don’t believe you. Or rather, I believe that you have been confused by legal terminology. If a lower court reviews new evidence and decides to reverse a conviction, then that is not an appeal, because appeals can only be granted by a higher court, but it leads to the person being released anyways. You have confused a statement about legal procedure for a statement about outcomes, leading you to an obviously absurd conclusion about the value of innocent peoples’ freedom.
Phil is stuck in the 20th century. In 2001 “biological” evidence became admissible later. This is supposed to mean DNA, but might cover a living “victim.” In 2004, more evidence became admissible. But those who plead guilty are stuck.
http://truthinjustice.org/VAevidence.htm
In Virginia, until 2001, neither a lower court, nor any other court, could review new evidence after 21 days. In 2001, an exception was made for DNA evidence. In 2004, an exception was made for evidence that could not possibly have been discovered within 21 days, that would have led any “reasonable” person to a verdict of innocent, for people who pled innocent. See http://www.vadp.org/21day.htm, http://truthinjustice.org/VAevidence.htm .
You’re not thinking any of these things through; but I’m not going to think them through for you here
In general, you are seizing on individual examples and using them as a justification to ignore my point.
Sorry for that. That’s what happens when I post things at 3AM in the morning. (Makes a note—actually three—to himself). I agree that my comments above are irrelevant to your main point. However, I’d keep my first point (about judicial errors) as a relevant side note.
Regarding the point of the original post. I’ve re-read it twice, trying to understand what you’re saying, but I kept stumbling on things that struck me as plain wrongs and made me want to snip them out of context and post an angry reply—e.g. “If I spend 20% of my life on growing petunias, am I thus saying that anyone who doesn’t grow petunias is less valuable?”, or, “does this imply that a life of a newborn baby—my baby! -- is worth exactly zero, because she hasn’t experienced anything except her mother’s womb?”
Either I grossly misunderstood what you’re trying to say (perhaps due to our cultural differences), or the point you’re making is too hard for me to digest. I’ll keep my mouth shut in this thread until I’ve spent more time with the questions.
(I’ll add a note to my comment above to reflect my current position).
I am often dismayed to learn the logical results of my ideas. :)
“If I spend 20% of my life on growing petunias, am I thus saying that anyone who doesn’t grow petunias is less valuable?”
I think so. You might believe that other people have different value systems that are equally valid. I think that the question of how to compare or combine the values of different people is a different question.
In most situations, if you weigh your life vs. other peoples’ lives, it would seem you should assign your life a much higher value. The stranger your values are, the higher you should value your life wrt other people. That’s because your life is directed towards your values, and other peoples’ lives are not. So altruism, of the type explained by kin selection, is immoral. But this is countered by the fact that, the stranger your values are, the more you should discount your own values wrt the values of others. You’d probably have to formalize it to figure out which factor predominates.
“does this imply that a life of a newborn baby—my baby! -- is worth exactly zero, because she hasn’t experienced anything except her mother’s womb?”
The way I said it does. I was being sloppy. But even if I revise it so that the infant has some non-zero value, it wouldn’t be satisfactory; because parents have it biologically programmed into them to assign extra value to their own children. We would have to address the problem of combining different peoples’ values. And I’m not going to address that problem now.
Sure, the set of arguments for these positions is not the empty set, but are they actually right?
The point isn’t that torturing soldiers or killing civilians is necessarily good, but that you actually have to think about the problem first. How many planes is a pilots worth to you? How many is it worth to him?
If these numbers aren’t the same, how do you explain this?
Also, killing civilians motivates enemy soldiers and stimulates the spontaneous formation of militia.
This is circular (it indeed true). It supposedly motivates soldiers for the same reason: in the abstract, they consider death of their fellow civilians worse than death of their fellow soldiers.
Another reason might be the possibility of judicial errors. You can release a locked-up convict and compensate him somehow, but you can’t resurrect a dead convict.
Edit: my comments below this line are irrelevant to the point of this discussion, please disregard them.
One can’t win a war without killing enemy soldiers, but one can win a war without killing enemy civilians (modern wars tend to somewhat blur the line between combatants and civilians). Also, killing civilians motivates enemy soldiers and stimulates the spontaneous formation of militia.
Torturing enemy soldiers doesn’t help you win a war and may motivate enemy soldiers to fight to the death, or to torture your own soldiers in return (let alone PR disasters that may arise out of this).
Not sure what plane are you talking about. Also, the total costs of training a pilot may well be in the millions. When you officially devalue the pilot life, you’re sending a message to other pilots which will tend to avoid dangerous missions, or just drop the career. (Also, unmanned flight will make the problem obsolete).
My personal position: any life is valuable. Murder is not acceptable.
In Virginia, if you’re convicted of murdering someone and sentenced to life in prison, and that person shows up alive and healthy more than 21 days after your conviction, that is not grounds for an appeal of your sentence. So there’s little interest in releasing innocent people. In many states, you can be sentenced to life in prison if you are convected of any 3 felonies. So there just isn’t this concern over prison sentences being too harsh, as long as they don’t kill.
And you can’t compensate someone for 15 years in prison.
You’re not thinking any of these things through; but I’m not going to think them through for you here, because I would have to say things more socially unacceptable than I’m willing to say.
The F22 Raptor.
In general, you are seizing on individual examples and using them as a justification to ignore my point.
I don’t believe you. Or rather, I believe that you have been confused by legal terminology. If a lower court reviews new evidence and decides to reverse a conviction, then that is not an appeal, because appeals can only be granted by a higher court, but it leads to the person being released anyways. You have confused a statement about legal procedure for a statement about outcomes, leading you to an obviously absurd conclusion about the value of innocent peoples’ freedom.
Phil is stuck in the 20th century. In 2001 “biological” evidence became admissible later. This is supposed to mean DNA, but might cover a living “victim.” In 2004, more evidence became admissible. But those who plead guilty are stuck. http://truthinjustice.org/VAevidence.htm
In Virginia, until 2001, neither a lower court, nor any other court, could review new evidence after 21 days. In 2001, an exception was made for DNA evidence. In 2004, an exception was made for evidence that could not possibly have been discovered within 21 days, that would have led any “reasonable” person to a verdict of innocent, for people who pled innocent. See http://www.vadp.org/21day.htm, http://truthinjustice.org/VAevidence.htm .
Sorry for that. That’s what happens when I post things at 3AM in the morning. (Makes a note—actually three—to himself). I agree that my comments above are irrelevant to your main point. However, I’d keep my first point (about judicial errors) as a relevant side note.
Regarding the point of the original post. I’ve re-read it twice, trying to understand what you’re saying, but I kept stumbling on things that struck me as plain wrongs and made me want to snip them out of context and post an angry reply—e.g. “If I spend 20% of my life on growing petunias, am I thus saying that anyone who doesn’t grow petunias is less valuable?”, or, “does this imply that a life of a newborn baby—my baby! -- is worth exactly zero, because she hasn’t experienced anything except her mother’s womb?”
Either I grossly misunderstood what you’re trying to say (perhaps due to our cultural differences), or the point you’re making is too hard for me to digest. I’ll keep my mouth shut in this thread until I’ve spent more time with the questions.
(I’ll add a note to my comment above to reflect my current position).
I am often dismayed to learn the logical results of my ideas. :)
I think so. You might believe that other people have different value systems that are equally valid. I think that the question of how to compare or combine the values of different people is a different question.
In most situations, if you weigh your life vs. other peoples’ lives, it would seem you should assign your life a much higher value. The stranger your values are, the higher you should value your life wrt other people. That’s because your life is directed towards your values, and other peoples’ lives are not. So altruism, of the type explained by kin selection, is immoral. But this is countered by the fact that, the stranger your values are, the more you should discount your own values wrt the values of others. You’d probably have to formalize it to figure out which factor predominates.
The way I said it does. I was being sloppy. But even if I revise it so that the infant has some non-zero value, it wouldn’t be satisfactory; because parents have it biologically programmed into them to assign extra value to their own children. We would have to address the problem of combining different peoples’ values. And I’m not going to address that problem now.
Sure, the set of arguments for these positions is not the empty set, but are they actually right?
The point isn’t that torturing soldiers or killing civilians is necessarily good, but that you actually have to think about the problem first. How many planes is a pilots worth to you? How many is it worth to him?
If these numbers aren’t the same, how do you explain this?
This is circular (it indeed true). It supposedly motivates soldiers for the same reason: in the abstract, they consider death of their fellow civilians worse than death of their fellow soldiers.