View Full Forums : Kill the innocent but save the convicted murderer...


Remi
12-09-2005, 05:35 PM
I'm having difficulty reconciling these two philosophies.

It would be better for the rare death than for people to be forced to disclose their medical history if they want to board a plane.

Better to risk it and let a man live who was sentenced to die, than to put a man to death and wonder if we had erred in our decision.

In the first, it seems preferred to kill an innocent man rather than have him reveal pertinent medical history. In the second, it appears preferred to let a convicted murderer live rather than kill him and later risk discovering a rare error.

Is the innocent man's life so less valuable than a convicted murderer's?

Panamah
12-09-2005, 05:42 PM
You'll have to ask the author of those statements.

People who are deathly allergic to things wear medical ID tags to identify themselves as such should they be unable to say something to protect themselves. Perhaps there should be a way of identifying people who might have mental illnesses to police or other people likely to shoot you, because that's what they're trained to do to people who act weird, that would be confidential otherwise.

MadroneDorf
12-09-2005, 07:27 PM
The main difference is that I doubt the innocent person would want to disclose medical records to board a plane.

If such a law was proposed, the first people to jump up and claim that its unfair, uncontitional or whatever, would be the people that it would ultimately protect.

really though the two statements are talking about something quite different, one is more about calculated risks and potential loss of life, versus a situation that is much more in control, and its not about potential loss of life, but actual.

for the record though I dont care if tookie fries or not, i just think the two statements can be made without being hypocritical or having a messed up sense of morals (i dont even know who said them hah)

MadroneDorf
12-09-2005, 07:57 PM
also.....

one would have to consider not only the direct costs (cost of implementing a system, training, ongoing personel) and indirect costs (more time to board planes)

and this really really makes me sound like an asshole is it worth it worth it? Morally you cant put a price on a persons life, but economically and realistically you have to, and such decisions are made every often. (what types of equipment to police officers/military, etc)

or a less assholic way to say it is, could the time and money spent on enforcing and supporting the additional regulations be better spent elsewhere for a higher rate of return of saved lives. (or wherever you took the money from to run the program)

finally, how much of a difference would it actually make? I'd wager to think that a bipolar/messed up person has higher chance of doing something like bringing an explosive aboard a plane, hell you could have someone actually planning to do something bad take advantage of it by registering.

Arienne
12-09-2005, 08:33 PM
The medical issue deals with a fundamental right to privacy. IF it's seen to be such a benefit to divulge certain info, it could be implemented on a voluntary basis... no harm done. If the purpose truly IS to protect the one who has a medical condition, the decision as to whether the protection is worth more than the right should be his and no one elses. (note: I am not implying that this is something pending with our legislators. To the best of my knowledge, it's a hypothetical discussion...just so no one gets too confused here).

As for the convicted murderer... evidently Aidon sees a benefit in keeping the guy around and suggests that it is better to err on the side of caution and not follow through with his full sentence.

Fyyr Lu'Storm
12-09-2005, 09:38 PM
Morally you cant put a price on a persons life,

Actually you can.

How much does it cost to make a person?

Last time I checked poor people make babies all the time. Its not like it cost them any money to ****. Sure you can factor in the cost of delivery, and food, and clothes and junk for the fun of it.

MadroneDorf
12-10-2005, 01:14 AM
i was initially saying you couldn't morally do it, as I said later economically or realistically you could....

How much does it cost to make a person?

Last time I checked poor people make babies all the time. Its not like it cost them any money to ****. Sure you can factor in the cost of delivery, and food, and clothes and junk for the fun of it.

that would really be more the cost of a baby, it would get a lot more complicated as they get older, for costs of schooling, experience knowledge etc.. hell you could even make arguements for potential wages and/or contributions to a community, society or mankind as a whole (depending on the person)... although taking such an economical approach to the summation of someones value could also put someones value as a negative if their collective worth was calculated to be less then the cost of sustainment...

of course looking at the value of someones life in such a way seems so well.... wrong, (although possibly somewhat unavoidable in the general sense in terms of decisions that policy makers have to make) and as I originally stated the portion you quoted i was talking about morally as opposed to economically!

Panamah
12-10-2005, 11:24 AM
I think you always have to ask yourself, what if it were your husband or wife, mother or father, that was having a nervous breakdown and got shot because they were having a weird mental thing going on. Sometimes people just act weird and they don't have control over it. I think it is kind of a sign of people disassociating with humanity when they think its ok to just shoot someone because of it.

Aidon
12-10-2005, 11:25 AM
I'm having difficulty reconciling these two philosophies.





In the first, it seems preferred to kill an innocent man rather than have him reveal pertinent medical history. In the second, it appears preferred to let a convicted murderer live rather than kill him and later risk discovering a rare error.

Is the innocent man's life so less valuable than a convicted murderer's?

Because we need privacy. We need our rights. They are paramount.

The State, however, doesn't require such benefits...the State should always err on the side of the rights of the People first.

If someone who is mentally disturbed wished to reveal that information, he is permitted. But mandatory disclosure would be an evil.

Arienne
12-10-2005, 11:46 AM
I think you always have to ask yourself, what if it were your husband or wife, mother or father, that was having a nervous breakdown and got shot because they were having a weird mental thing going on. Sometimes people just act weird and they don't have control over it. I think it is kind of a sign of people disassociating with humanity when they think its ok to just shoot someone because of it.
But when the choice has to be made between one life versus many lives the choice should be obvious, Panamah. The fact that the guy was acting erratic and refused to acceed to the Marshall's requests gave them no choice as I see it. It's easy to say that they were wrong AFTER it's discovered that there was no bomb, but if the choice had been made to wait and he DID detonate a bomb (and his wife had been an accomplice there to distract and make the Marshall's question their moves to give enough time to detonate a bomb) how many people would have died? Or even COULD have died? And then you would be arguing here that the Marshalls should have shot first and saved the lives of those a bomb had taken.

I think everyone who has posted here believes the mans death was a tragedy. But given the situation, there was a choice that had to be made without enough information to do differently.

Panamah
12-10-2005, 12:49 PM
We don't know all the facts so you're making a lot of assumptions. I think the marshalls probably did what they thought they were trained to do. I just think their training needs to take into account people like this guy, who was mentally ill. Frankly, I will wait to pass judgement until I hear more. I mean, they shot him while he was running AWAY from the plane and now I'm hearing no one else heard him say anything about haivng a bomb.

But the real question is, IMHO, how do we make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again?

Fyyr Lu'Storm
12-10-2005, 10:42 PM
i was initially saying you couldn't morally do it, as I said later economically or realistically you could....



that would really be more the cost of a baby, it would get a lot more complicated as they get older, for costs of schooling, experience knowledge etc.. hell you could even make arguements for potential wages and/or contributions to a community, society or mankind as a whole (depending on the person)... a

Those are optional additional costs. And such do not need to be entered in the value.

The end cost of a human life is rather small. Less than the cost of a new economy class auto.

Aidon
12-11-2005, 12:29 AM
I'd venture to guess, Fy'yr, that you feel your life is worth more than a new auto ;).

Panamah
12-11-2005, 11:07 AM
I remember they used to say it'd take less than a dollar's worth of ingredients to equal a human being. However, building the AI, robotics, etc... that'd come at a much steeper price.

I think we value human life like this:

Distance from a given human:

If you ARE that human, you're priceless.
If you're closely related, it might be pretty danged expensive.
If you're in the same country, of the same ethnic, religious background pretty pricey.
Different continent but similar backgrounds, "**** happens".
Different continent, different skin color or religious backgrounds, "Well, those people overbreed anyway".

Fyyr Lu'Storm
12-12-2005, 04:35 AM
I'd venture to guess, Fy'yr, that you feel your life is worth more than a new auto ;).

"A good body with a dull brain is as cheap as life itself."
-Batiatus

Erianaiel
12-12-2005, 05:39 AM
I'm having difficulty reconciling these two philosophies.

In the first, it seems preferred to kill an innocent man rather than have him reveal pertinent medical history. In the second, it appears preferred to let a convicted murderer live rather than kill him and later risk discovering a rare error.

Is the innocent man's life so less valuable than a convicted murderer's?

These two cases are not as different as you might think, and the fact that an apparently opposing conclusion is reaches is not necessarily surprising if you look at the underlying moral and philosophical principles.

At the base of all is that we have given the state a monopoly on using violence. Only state sanctioned officials are allowed to use violence against other citizens (violence being the ability to detain or otherwise punish). This is done because we expect the state to protect us against others. The alternative being varying degrees of anarchism. I.e. if two citizens have a conflict, they have to go to the state to settle it. They are not allowed to handle things on their own as they see fit.

Now what all this does expressly not give the state is the right to protect citizens against themselves. I.e. if anybody wants to do something that is harmful to himself he is free to do so. However, by doing something that endangers others then the state must and will take action. Hence why the state will not ban smoking, but has banned smoking in public. The first destroys somebody's own lungs, the second potentially harms others.
This fundamental principle was first voiced by a french philosopher, but has since then been adapted by most (democratic) governments. (He used it to show that government should not enforce a state religion, but the principle applies to any law).
Of course there are laws passed that violate this principle (e.g. the obligation to wear seat belts), but in general law makers are careful not to cross that boundary where they force citizens to behave in specific ways 'for their own good' (and if they try civil rights groups tend to put a lot of pressure on them to change the proposed or actual law).

Now, how does this apply to the two cases?
The easiest to see is the case of the convicted criminal. Here we have the situation where the state exercised its mandate to protect its citizens from another. Because of the potential abuse (after all 'state' is a concept that in reality consists of many people who can and will make mistakes and sometimes worse), it is important that this power can only exercised when a fair degree of certainty is reached. Also, because the state has the monopoly on violence it is difficult for citizens to protect themselves against abuses and mistakes, so there must be many safeguards against such things. This leads to Miranda, the 'innocent until proven guilty' and 'reasonable doubt' to name just a few of them. Does this mean that the criminal should not be executed? At best his case can be used as an argument againt the death penalty (despite our best efforts to prevent them, courts still make mistakes and protection against the power of the state is -not- equal for all citizens), but this is a different discussion.

The case of the man who was shot by air marshals is much more ambiguous. From what I have seen in the newspapers, the air marshals had good reasons to believe the man a threat to others in the plane and that they were required to excercise their mandate to protect them. That it turned out the man was harmless makes it a tragedy.
The very difficult question is if this is enough of a justification to allow the state to 'protect people against themselves' by forcing them to divulge information they would rather have kept private. After all, how long before such information gets leaked, or before employers demand similar information to protect their interests against people who might, theoretically, harm themselves on the job because of their mental disorder.
Slippery slope arguments are always dangerous (and potentially a cheap political prop), but they do point out that it is very important to be extremely reluctant when it comes to introducing legislation that moves the state into an area where it has no business being.
A tragedy does not automatically make a good reason for legislation, though the pressure of television and popular opinion does increasingly force politicians and law makers to respond to incidents immediately.

My personal opinion is that, sad as the case is, it is not reason enough to force people to give up highly private information about themselves. Especially not for something as rare as this incident. There is a thing like personal responsibility. If the man needed medication to keep his condition under control, why was he not taking the medicines? And if he was not capable of making such decisions, he should have had a guardian who could. If on the other hand he was capable of making the decision than we should not look for outside blame, or responsibility. The state is a protector, but it should not devolve into being a crutch for those too lazy to protect themselves.


Eri

Aidon
12-12-2005, 09:18 AM
"A good body with a dull brain is as cheap as life itself."
-Batiatus

When it comes to estimating the value of human life, never trust a Roman. To them, life was cheap, unless they were trying to sell it to you.
-Aidon

Fyyr Lu'Storm
12-14-2005, 07:51 PM
The state is a protector, but it should not devolve into being a crutch for those too lazy to protect themselves.

Too late!