There are trustable scientific means of veradication which can be
employed to determine the truth of the prisoner's statements.
>
> I suppose we're talking about repeat offenders who have shown no
> capacity for redemption. In such a case, how many tries does a criminal
> get? Or using the prior discourse, how many times must a criminal
> recidivate before he has demonstrated his or her lack of capacity for
> redemption?
I really like the three strikes laws, but putting them away permanently
is not the answer. Three strikes should be the point at which a criminal
is exterminated, at a minimum. A heinous capital crime should of course
be a pick your fate the first time routine...
>
> > It is to determine whether the material being judged is
> > capable of being recycled or should be incinerated that such an
> > evaluation is made...
>
> I (stick neck out) would suggest that all material is capable of being
> recycled. Especially as scarce and valuable a material as intelligent
> life.
Depends upon the degree to which you mean recycle. As fertilizer, sure.
As a living breathing human being? Maybe not without a lobotomy and/or
castration. Your one mistake is assuming intelligence in the first
place....
>
> > The criminal must demonstrate their capacity to be
> > redeemed. If he doesn't, lets not waste further tax dollars on him, fry
> > the mad dog.
>
> Do you think that people are always responsible for their actions? I
> tend to waffle on this point (to a fault), so I hope you might let me
> pick your brain a bit.
Even an alcoholic is responsible for what happens during their
blackouts, as they made the concious choice to drink, to not seek
treatment. A free society demands that its citizens be responsible for
themselves. If one is not responsible for their actions, or cannot be
responsible for their actions, they either need to be institutionallized
as a retarded individual, or exterminated.
>
> > I value human life highly. So highly that I feel that people who do not
> > value human life do not value their own life enough to go on living.
>
> So then the reason for frying them is not that they do not value other
> human lives, but rather that they do not value their own? Or is it a
> combination of the two? To take this further along the so-called
> tangent, why is human life any different than other life? Unless we are
> talking about sentience, life is life is life. I would argue that to
> value human life to the exclusion of all other life is not valuing life
> at all. It is homophilia, maybe evolutionary, but merely an innate wish
> to see the species continue. Do you think that you might be talking
> about valuing intelligent life?
Human Life = Sentience. That life may have sentience or not, but
sentience always presupposes life is what separates the two. When I
state "human life" I mean sentience, not life in general. The golden
rule dictates that man treat his fellow man as he wishes to be treated.
If one denies another continued sentience, society must assume that that
one also seeks to be denied sentience.
This does not conflict with the principle of innocent until proven
guilty, as the accused is not necessarily the true killer, but once the
killer is found by a process of evidentiary review by a jury of peers,
society is morally bound to carry out the golden rule.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/Mikey's Animatronic Factory My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}