Re: ETHICS: reprogramming others, trials, justice (was Re:

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Sat, 05 Jul 1997 12:33:59 -0400


Michael M. Butler wrote:
>
> >Won't it be great once we can just use nanotechnology to reprogram these
> >individuals! No more prisons, no more executions, just plain old
> >reprogramming.
> >Shawn M. Johnson
>
> Shawn:
>
> Are you joking, or have you made up your mind about this?
> I'm not being sarcastic here--but I have a very mixed reaction
> to the notion of "fixing" people, especially without their consent.
>
> Extinguishing them *might* be more ethical. I'm not sure.

Emminently more ethical. Give them the choice: execution or
reprogramming. Either way it is the end of that "individual". If a
person does not want to become a nice, polite, pliable cipher of
society, they should be able to choose the alternative. I find it rather
disturbing that the Supreme Court found that government owns our lives,
that we do not.

>
> I have another series of bones to pick with the entire idea of
> "trials"--they seem to be mostly about making the local mass of
> primates feel better. _Sometimes_ that includes feeling like you'd
> have gotten a fair shake if you were in the defendant's shoes, but
> I daresay that's not prominent in the mind of many of today's jurors.
>
> Is that (palliating the masses' feelings) all "justice" amounts to?

They are the enetertainment part of "bread and circuses". Personally I
prefer the Canadian concept of blacked out trials. Victims rights is a
moronic concept, as the victim is not on trial. The crucial error that
victims make in feeling like they are vitimized again at trial is that
they make such a huge emotional investment in beleiving that the accused
is guilty to begin with, and feel violated if their beleifs are not
accepted by the court. The Goldmans are an excellent example of this.
Whether or not OJ was guilty, they had decided at the beginning of the
trial that he was guilty, and made sure that the media and the public
understood this.

-- 
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]}