Boiling Down the Meaning of Life

By the way, I support abortion for the same reason I support the Death Penalty: Necessary in a practical sense, but over all pretty gross...

That's probably raising lots of flames and will burn some karma, but I find it difficult to see practicality in the death penalty. Abortion now, at least indeed has undeniable practicality in some cases, like where the birth would simply kill the mother. It's hard to argue against that point.

But the death penalty -- at least in its incarnation where you don't just shoot/hang/burn the first person you think is guilty -- seems awfully impractical. Compared to life imprisonment it costs the same (or sometimes even more) and has the same outcome of preventing recidivism (re-offending). But, unfortunately it does cause psychological strain on those having to dish out the penalty (that life imprisonment certainly doesn't) and prevents any sort of future moral insight in the guilty, no matter how unlikely you deem it.

A further difference is what some victims feel, namely the warm gut feeling of satisfied murderous revenge... which is most likely what the person who got the penalty also got at some point and is even maybe what they might have gotten the penalty for to begin with. But since the logical outcome of life and death penalty is ultimately the same anyway (death); only one with more delay than the other, you can't really say that the latter is more practical in that regard either. In both cases, they will never see freedom again or get a chance to repeat their action until they die (and if you're not religious and there's no after-life, this lack is permanent).

As such, I see no reason how practicality could decide the question of the use of the death penalty, as it seems to me just as practical (or even a smidgeon less practical, I admit) than real life imprisonment.

Of course, practicality and morality are two different things that need to be evaluated differently, and thus -- at least for me -- the question is a moral, and not a practical one.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/xPTwKjr_0jc/boiling-down-the-meaning-of-life

joseph kony joseph kony 9 9 9 delmon young sprint chris tucker phoenix jones