I became anti-death penalty because the real world data of how it has been applied clearly shows the state does not apply it evenly to all. It disproportional is applied to people of color. Moreover, the state has shown it doesn’t convict evenly, so not only can people be wrongfully convicted at a higher rate for some, but they can even be put to death by the state. So innocent people are being wrongfully convicted and even put to death. Until we, as a society, can apply laws and punishments evenly, we cannot have laws and punishments only for some. So the death penalty should be off the table.

Fiscally, the death penalty is also more expensive to enforce than life in prison. So ethically or fiscally, the death penalty should be abolished.

Well, I should have said this earlier.

Another complicating factor is that, I do not believe in free will.

So even though that technically means I can reject your choice based morality as well

Most definitions I’ve heard describing the lack of free will don’t mean that you can’t do something, but rather you were destined to do that thing. As in, it isn’t the rejection of the outcome being true, but rather that you would never not do that thing was not in the cards.

That doesn’t run afoul of what I described above. If you want to go live like a hermit away from society “lack of free will” doesn’t prevent that, it just means that you were going to live like a hermit anyway.

Do you hold a different definition of “no free will”?

That said, obviously if I were to live forever, I’d want everyone I care about to live forever.

In our theoretical discussion, I’ll allow it.

And I’d want our existence to be one of contentment and enjoyment.

See here is where that breaks down. If humanity were capable of existence of contentment and enjoyment, we’d be doing that with our finite lives. We don’t get that deal. So being granted infinite life, in this scenario, is you being stuck with the current “everyone I care about” watching time move forward infinitely. Any kids you’d have (or your loved ones) after you get granted this, would grow old and die while you still lived. Any new friends you’d make would be a slight blip in your life as they die away over your infinite years. In the best case scenario, your body would be fully healthy until the heat death of the universe. In worse cases, you’ll grow old and decrepit, forever in pain, but never allowed to be free of it where everyone else escapes through eventual death.

You and your small band of those you care about would watch the world make the same mistakes again and again. The only ones you’d find any mutual understanding with would be your small band of folks that shares the same horror of infinite life. Would those people then resent you for giving them infinite life? Would they intentially avoid you throughout eternity? Anyone else not of your band would be like a child to you. You’d have seen humans grow and develop over hundreds of generations. Nothing would be new to you.

Eventually, people would catch on that you and your band never die. Your face, with infinite healing, would never be changeable and humanity would hunt for you and your band looking for the secret to your life. When you are eventually caught, you’d be imprisoned and studied for hundreds of years. They’d never let you out. Your world would become whatever cage they put you in. They might let you out to do dangerous or deadly things that would kill other humans, like cleaning out radioactive reactors by hand. As soon as you’d finish they’d lock you back up again. You couldn’t stop them doing this to you. You’re not a superhero with super strength, you’re just a person that can’t die.

You’d likely be around for the end of humanity. Bombs, plague, something will likely kill off humanity on Earth before we become a multiplanet species. Then its just you and your band in a crumbling Earth wandering the ruins and bored out of your minds having done everything possible there is in life.

Eventually the Earth (and the inner planets of our Solar System) itself would be consumed by the sun when it evolves into a red dwarf. You’ll be there for that. You’d spend a about 5 billion years inside our sun (in pain? suffocating?) until the sun consumes the last of its hydrogen. Your best be is to be ejected from the sun during CME at some point, at least you wouldn’t be stuck inside the sun anymore. However, at that point you are floating in interstellar space for billions of more years. You see where this goes? This is what you want as your alternative to death, to live forever.

This would still be worse than never having existed, but its the next best thing.

Is it? I didn’t even go into the scenario where EVERYONE lives forever, and the Earth starts literally filling up with people because no one dies anymore. The cruelty we’ll do to each other will ramp up immeasurably because the ethical argument against killing someone that has held us back is now removed. The worst tinpot dictators no long die, so they stay in power forever and make your life hell. Ironically, death cults will spring up. These being people promising an escape to nightmare of existence will be seen as prophets and holy men. Vast research will be poured into finding ways to die. Insanity will be so so commonplace because the human mind just hasn’t evolved to live this long. Cognition will break down and we’ll be marauding animals working through the path of destroying everything on Earth, because why not?

Me? I much prefer the certainty that there will be an end to this life eventually.

Its not merely an “opinion”, its nearly a universally held moral axiomatic fact that doing something to someone without their consent is, by default, wrong.

You’re having an entirely different conversation than the one I’m having. I’m not arguing the ethical or morality of childbirth. I’m simply pointing out that after you are an adult, all the choices and responsibilities of making your life what you want it to be (or not to be) become yours irrespective of what happened to you prior in childhood. Thats it. No its not fair, but life isn’t either.

and that I, having not choose to be here need to just “suck it up” as an adult and be a productive part of a natalist society I largely deem responsible for the grave injustice of anyone’s birth.

This is absolutely your choice. There is no requirement that you are a “productive” member of society. You have the power to withdraw from society entirely if you like. There are dead towns scattered all over the world where you could simply walk into a house and start living there and no one would likely know or care for years or decades. You could scratch out a subsistence life eating whatever you could grow in the ground. You might never see another person in your life before you die (likely of preventable injury or disease). If thats what is most important to you in life, you can make that happen.

You’re welcome to that opinion of course, but do you use that as a reason to not do anything with yourself? If no, then you’re not part of the folks I was referring to.

Time flows in only one direction, so that I did not exist before brings me no comfort in the face of someday not existing once again.

The “I cannot fathom not existing” part. You already know what this is like. There were millions of years where you didn’t exist. There was no pain, no loss, no yearning, no regret, no boredom no consciousness trapped in an infinite time of waiting or torture. What we will be like after death is just like that. We’ve been there before, and we’ll be there again someday.

Death is a lovecraftian horror to me, now that I exist. I cannot fathom not existing and the idea that eventually I will be dead terrifies me.

When I was younger this scared me too. As I got older, and I don’t fear when my death will eventually take me.

The alternate to eventually dying someday is living forever. When you think about what infinite life would truly be like, that is MUCH closer to any definition of hell I’ve ever heard of. I’m happy to go into multiple theoretical scenarios of this, each more horrific than the next. Those that say they want to live forever lack imagination. Death isn’t something to fear. At the end of a long life, it is a gift.

I’d heard Australia Post is looking to improve this by experimenting with flying drone technology. Drones will be able to place the “Sorry we missed you!” card straight into the letterbox from a central dispatch location without having to do the expensive and time consuming step of sending a driver to put the note there by hand.

the attorneys were taken off the case while a transportation department spokesperson speculated they published the document as an act of sabatoge.

The GOP, to maintain consistency, must now go after Pete Hegseth for his leak of secret government war plans as Pete’s leak was “an act of sabotage”.

Surely hope your child won’t happen to be depressed or traumatized in some way.

We’re not talking about “in some way” here. The piece you’re clearly responding to is my point we’re talking about how some adults use how their parents treated them as children as a continuing excuse for inaction in adulthood. We’re safe though. I have no children and won’t be having any.

Thats really good! I’m proud of you for taking action for your own health. You’re proving my point though. You didn’t let whatever your parents did to you hold you back from taking steps on your own. You aren’t using how your parents raised you as an excuse to do nothing.

I want to say I’m glad you didn’t go through with that negative thing you mentioned. The world is better with you in it. I know I’m no one to you, but you’ve made my life better by talking with me here and sharing a human moment. I want you to be here for all the other people you touch positively in the years ahead. Please be here for that.

but when going through shit yourself that you can’t explain to others, the only thing I can say is “that’s easy to to say, not to feel”

Thats the point to reach for professional help, as in therapy. We’re not born equipped to deal with all the shit life can throw as us. There’s no shame in that.

The problem is not reaching out for help as an adult when you need it.

“oh my, I think I’ve had too much to drink and need to head out. Thanks for the visit, family”

“You…just got here. You’re still wearing your coat and the door is still swinging open as we speak from where you opened it.”

Absolutely, but he does it when he’s committing unspeakable horror like launching a weapon wiping out an entire intelligent pre-warp civliziation so that the Federation can find the planet and mine it for a rare ore.

I think Section 31 as a concept is really quite lame, like a covert division of Internal Affairs of the de facto Galaxy Police organisation?

Not internal affairs, CIA. The Federation at large gets to keep their hands clean and stand tall morally. Section 31 comes in and fucks stuff up doing all the immoral shit needed to preserve and expand the Federation.

Federation: “Bio weapons are a war crime and morally indefensible”

Section 31: “Yeah thats great to take a moral position, but the Federation was facing extinction, so we clandestinely created a bio weapon that works only on the shape-shifting ‘Founders’ and used our own allied shapeshifter to infect them without his knowledge killing his own people to push the ‘Founders’ into submission and stop the overpowering invasion of the Alpha quadrant.”

Sisko working with Garak murdering Romulan Senator Vreenak was absolutely Section 31 material.

Tim Robbins’ Boimler has had to make tough choices and caused many deaths. Countless deaths, but as a means to an end for the greater good. Years ago he started questioning what the ‘greater good’ was. Today he’s become ruthlessly efficient, carrying out the movements on the chessboard destroying whole worlds and cultures so that others could continue and thrive.

I’m not saying this to belittle your situation, I have honest sympathy for you (and your sibling), but at some point in an adult’s life, no matter how you were raised or what fucked up things your parents did, it has to stop being a excuse for the present day situation. Keep in mind, I’m not saying that’s what you’re saying here. I’m explaining further my prior post, not dismissing your response.

Hypothetically if an abusive parent cut off the legs of their child, the resulting adult will always be legless, but that can’t be the reason the (now adult) still uses as to why they don’t move forward with whatever life they have left.

I’d cast today’s Tim Robbins as an aged and grizzled Section 31 Boimler:

Doesn’t he look like a Boimler that has seen some shit?

I was wondering about that, but I have the same problem I wasn’t willing to plug it into google to check the spelling.

Thanks for letting me know.