I'd add a third scenario, vengeance.

You're talking about exile now, which I also think is justified. But now you've got to consider, is it just to put someone in a cage with monsters? If it's not just to kill someone for being bad to those around them, it's certainly not just to lock them in a cage with people who will prey on them, that's more akin to torture.

If someone is damaged in some way to the point where they present mortal danger to those around them, it is unjust to subject anyone to that behavior, even another like them.

I have some very unpopular views on this topic, and some popular ones, but I've thought a lot about it and I think I understand pretty clearly what a just justice system would look like, and it doesn't preclude the death penalty, or other corporal punishment, but it does preclude prison.

So, this is only true in a limited set of circumstances.

If the public doesn't have faith that death is always (or almost always) given justly, then it doesn't work as a deterrent. It's like having an unpredictable abusive parent, stern parenting helps a child know how they should behave, erratic unpredictable abuse doesn't teach anything. If a person knows they could wind up punished for nothing accidentally, or knows they could get away with it, it won't act as a deterrent anymore, they won't take the deterrent into account when making decisions because the result is unpredictable.

Second, the deterrent only applies to a subset of people who are opportunistic predators behaving rationally. There is another subset of people who, either because they're unstable or because they enjoy it, will prey on those around them. These people must be removed, nothing will deter them, a group has a right to protect itself from them.

Psychopathy simply means "mental disease" - 'psych' = mind, 'pathy' = illness. Its probably a spectrum, and probably everyone is a little bit messed up in the head. I do think that stronger meaning of the word applies to people who advocate the death penalty. Maybe some people simply haven't thought it through, but I don't think most people fall into that category.

> I live in the US, and I would emphatically argue that there is no justice in our court system, for many reasons.

I am 100% with you. The way we do it is unjust. I don't think that means that a group putting people to death is unjust though, as I'll explain later, I just think we need a better way of doing it and better reasoning about when it's warranted.

> First, as someone already wrote, if an individual doesn't have the right to kill, for any reason, then a group cannot magically have the right to kill by virtue of being a group or having some higher status.

An individual does have the right to kill though in some circumstances.

> Second, no human is perfect. If no individual is perfect, then no group is perfect. Their judgement may be wrong. Evidence and testimony may be faked. Incentives may reward them for judging wrongly. Power structures may be threatened, and the politics may demand the death of an innocent. None of these possibilities can be ruled out.

Yup, which is why I agree with you that putting people to death the way our society does it is wrong.

> Even if you know absolutely that they did it, its still wrong to kill them.

I am in complete disagreement with you about this. I reason that if someone is a threat to the safety those around them and will continue to be, it is just for a group to kill them.

> Incentive structures are generally out of our control, and they work in positive and negative ways, and they work in both the short and long term. For example, the current monetary system of usury and perpetually devaluing money causes some amount of stress in people. How much stress? Impossible to know. It affects different people differently, and social emergent phenomena could amplify stress more on particular people, and those people will be more likely to break and do something violent. Entire belief structures are built around compensating for felt oppression. For example, both the state and religion are belief structures that relieve people's anxiety - these social structures emerge from fear. And both the state and religion cause people to kill, and they will never define such killing as murder. But would these structures even exist without the constant application of stress on people, subconsciously felt, from the devaluing of people's savings and work? You can see that, at least partially, incentive structures are self perpetuating cycles. The things that motivate behavior are mostly subconscious and out of an individual's control. Its not simply, "he decided to kill, he's just bad." That doesn't exist. That's a fantasy. And if justice boils down to such a simplistic view on behavior, then there's no hope of ever having 'justice.'

There's a lot going on here. I think you're right, there are plenty of social structures that make people behave erratically and violently, often they convince themselves they are justified when they're not. But in the world, we still can't let those people run wild. They present a danger *now.* Ultimately we have to hold individuals responsible for their behavior, and then we have to fix those other issues separate from that.

> This is too long already. I'll reiterate that the death penalty is wrong, and say that there are other options. And I'll reiterate that someone who thinks society should repay murder with murder is a psychopath. Definitely.

I can say, when I talk about the death penalty, I'm saying that when a group is threatened by an individual, either by words or demonstration of intent with action, that group has a right to neutralize that threat. So it's not really repayment, not a penalty by my reasoning, it's more of a self defense measure. But I do believe that groups killing individuals is just in such a scenario.

So a group putting individuals to death is just in some circumstances, just the way it's done in our society is unjust. I can agree with that.

I agree with you, but here, we are talking about the legal process by which the person is given the death penalty. That can be unjust even if the death penalty itself is justified when used in a just manner.

Let's take it to first principles. If a guy walks up to you and tells you "I am going to kill you if you don't kill me first" do you have a right to kill him? I'd say yes, what do you think?

Now, you and a group of people are hanging out. Some guy walks up to you guys and said "I'm going to kill one of you, I promise." Do you as a group have the right to kill him? Again, I'd say yes.

We can take that and do this thought experiment and find where it stops being justified. The man says "I'm going to rape all your kids and I won't stop until I'm dead", he doesn't say it verbally but demonstrates it with his behavior, etc. Then, what qualifies as a group? Does a jury that is part of the group qualify? You'll find plenty of scenarios where it is not done in a just manner, or when what someone is going to do if left to their own behavior doesn't justify killing them, but you'll find plenty of scenarios where it is justified. Therefore, the death penalty is just, even if the way it is done in our society is unjust.

Oh that's what I said? Your reading comprehension is lacking my dude.

Your supposition, I responded to it with my reasoning. You just re state the same supposition. That's not a path to a fruitful discussion.

I can re explain my reasoning. Life is a process. What makes a human? Hands? Speech? Bipedal walking? All that is true. But a baby can't do any of that. So is a baby objectively human? If so, how do you reason about that consistently?

You do it by stating "that is it's fate if it is not killed first". The process of life, if left uninterrupted, that baby will walk and talk and make things. It will do human things, it will behave like a human unless someone stops that process. So it is human, just as a caterpillar is a butterfly.

Take that same reasoning back before birth. Will a fetus become a grown adult if it it's life process is not interrupted? Yes. Keep going back. At what point in that process, if left undisturbed, does it become the case that the thing will become a full grown person? Where prior to that, there's no likelihood, just a possibility? That's the objective point where you can say it's a person.

Without this, you can't say anyone is objectively human until they can say "yes I am a human". By your reasoning, a baby is not objectively human. We know this is untrue.

OK, now respond to what I said.

Okay, are we still talking about the same things?

You can't just call it murder and make it murder. "Murder" has a definition: it is the deliberate unjust killing of another human being. You can argue that the death penalty is unjust, but you can't just say "it's unjust because it's murder" because that's circular reasoning, you have to demonstrate how it is unjust in order to call it murder in the first place.

That's construing it as murder though.

It is moral for an individual to *kill*, for various reasons, and so it is moral for a group to kill for analogous reasons. A person may kill in defense of itself for example, and so a group may do the same. There's no logical inconsistency whatsoever.

I think that an objective line would be "the point at which, if the process is allowed to go on uninterrupted, it will be overwhelmingly likely to result in a baby." Gestation is a process, there are points in the process that occur all the time that don't result in a baby. Most fertilized eggs don't result in a baby for example. But there are points where it almost always does, and all of them fall after the fertilized egg attatches to the wall of the uterus. If you consider the process as one that exists to result in a baby, then the point in the process which, if left uninterrupted from that point on, it almost always will would be the point it becomes a human being. Just like a baby, if left to grow, will become an old person eventually, so we consider a baby as human as a working age adult. Because otherwise, we cant make either claim, a baby has no agency, it is not objective that it is human except by that same criteria.

I was being understanding of your point, until

> Anyone advocating the death penalty is probably a psychopath

I'm certainly not a psychopath. Neither are the billions of people who support it. Maybe misled. Your hyperbole works against you, and if it isn't hyperbole, you're disconnected from reality.

I could agree with you that the way it is administered by the state is not the best it could be or something like that.

There is a certain percentage of the population that, no matter what you do, what deterrent you set, they'll harm those around them because either they can't control their outbursts or they like it. Those people must be removed.

Besides that, I firmly believe that people have a right to revenge, that that subset of people I talked about is only deterred from praying on you if they fear retaliation.

The death penalty is killing. It is not murder.

If you understand ant reproduction you'll understand why they work that way. Males are born from sterile eggs, they inherit genes only from their mother. Females inherit from both, just like all humans.

This means, female ants are closer related to their siblinfs than their children. They share 75% of genetic material with their siblings vs 50% with their children. The selfish gene and all that, there is a selective pressure in such an organism to become eusocial.

I can see calling it 3 genders, but it isn't quite right, there are still 2 sexes, and female workers are capable of reproduction. But in a eusocial species, the individual isn't the organism, the colony is. The individuals are like somatic cells, and the queen is the germ line.

Humans are not eusocial, just social. We show characteristics of eusocialty, but we aren't quite there. Above, you talked about the tribe and a reproductive aged girl spitting out kids until she was unable, and you're right, a tribe doesn't want to grow as much as possible, but it isn't as simple as that. People like to reproduce as much as is successful. Human children require care, we aren't alligators, so spitting out babies is not the most efficient approach, they all die. The most efficient approach is to spit out as many as you can rear with the resources available to you, and doing your best to maximize their survival. But the tribe, the tribe is something like an organism all it's own, I'm sure you're familiar with Dunbar's number, a tribe with too many people is unhealthy, as is a tribe with too few. So the tribe's goal is to reproduce, to splinter, to form a separate related tribe to cooperate with. And a tribe's behavior is a result of it's culture, it's culture is a result of which behaviors led the tribe to be healthiest, there's a natural selection there as well, its turtles all the way down. If a tribe is capable of managing resources maximally, it's members will reproduce maximally, and the tribe will grow and split, leaving 2 tribes with such successful culture and so on. Humans do attempt to reproduce successful adults as much as possible.

I think you're probably right, from an evolutionary and reproductive standpoint, about homosexuality and other deviations from the norm with regard to sexual behavior.i

OK, but fungi have multiple sexes, what about them? You still need 2, always, but the sexes in fungi have lots to choose from. What's up with that?

(Not disagreeing with your assessment, just a thought that occurred to me.)

I didn't drink milk for years. I started, never going back. I also make my own yogurt, it's fantastic.

What does it do man

I agree, but fact is lightning is what we have, especially around nostr. And any system of social interaction requires incentive structures a protocols. While you can take away blind trust with our technology, for an actual exchange of 2 things, a service or product and payment, you always need some agreed upon rules and an incentive to behave honestly.

You really are using your mind to create libertarian business ideas man, this one deserves applause. We have trustlessness and trust reducing incentive structures and we aren't using them properly, but you are.

I mean, there's BSD...

I heard about this earlier. It sucks. But inertia, network effects, all that, it's simply not going to happen. I know I'm not about to replace my desktop systems, VPS providers won't replace their images, most maintainers won't ditch Linux for a contentious fork, and enterprise is not about to retool all their data centers over this.

I do intend to run BSD in VMs though to mess around and see if I can use it. I might, but I doubt it. We shall see.

Yeah, like we have things such as md5 which were thought secure but have since been shown to be insecure, plenty of that will happen as the technology gets developed, but I think it's understood enough that we can get where we are with classical computers pretty quickly, and probably stay ahead of their capabilities as they develop.