Re: death penalty extropian? a modest proposal

J. R. (jr@shasta.com)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 21:39:44 -0800

spike wrote,
>in the future we will probably invent some means of reforming violent
>criminals with some noninvasive equitable procedure. society needs
>protection from them in the mean time. modest proposal: freeze the
condemned,
>store in liquid nitrogen until such means are discovered and implemented.

When "society" proposes to classify transhumanists and extropians as "violent criminals" then we'll need protection from "society."

I think the world needs criminal corpsicles about as much as it needs to collide with a giant asteroid. "Where society outlaws cryogenics, only outlaws will get frozen." --Elmer Fudd

>the deterrent value of such a penalty is unclear. ideas? this proposal
>would provide a number of corpsicles that were perfectly healthy and
>young when they were cryonicized.

Idea: Find the cause of criminality, and fix it. (Oh, sorry, I had convinced myself that science and technology could do practical things as well as spin off more computer games and Borg movies.) But just think, if some savvy transhuman network actually determined the cause of criminality and fixed it, suddenly the "death penalty" would join the "scarlet letter" in the dustbin of irrelevance.

Cheers,

J. R. Molloy