The Torture Paradox

Quoting Agent Smith

However, the penalty for torture is less severe than the penalty for murder.

Don't you think there is far more nuance to criminal sentences with respect to who did what and how bad it was and what the law is wherever it happened? All murder, neither all torture, is the same. Justify your lazy generalization (cite something).

Reply to Nils Loc Too simplistic, an oversimplification, eh? I wonder what the punishment for torture was in antiquity, torture? Looks like it wasn't really a criminal offense, being a mode of punishment rather (crucifixion), usually reserved for the baddest of the bad (traitors/heretics/witches).

Quoting Nils Loc

cite something

I've never heard of anyone being given the death penalty for torture. Have you?

Reply to Agent Smith

Currently it looks like you're right. Everyone on death row is there for murder.

One can imagine the death penalty is suitable for a depraved serial torturer if it is suitable for other kinds of murder. Could there be some room in the law for applying it despite custom/precedent, if the evidence was really crazy (Sawmovie stuff that could kill if it got out of hand)?

Maybe all the most extreme serial torturers just happen to end up murdering their victims so it's very unlikely that you'll have one crime without the other. The dead can't tattletale so easily.

Reply to Nils Loc I find it quite reassuring that a) torture isn't mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, neither as an offense and nor as a punishment ( :chin: ) and b) current legal systems considers torture in any way, shape or form barabaric and unacceptable except there seems to be some loopholes that can be exploited (Guantanamo bay).

I sense a disturbance in the Force.

Reply to Agent Smith Murder tortures the survivors (i.e. family, friends & lovers of the murder-victim) with open-ended, sudden bereavement. Also, murder undermines / threatens social stability. The deterrent penalty must (attempt to) be stronger because the down-stream adverse, public effects tend to be greater in scope. No "paradox", Smith.

Reply to 180 Proof

Good answer! :up:

Quoting 180 Proof

Murder tortures the survivors

Doesn't that make torture worse? Torture tortures the survivors more than "Murder tortures the survivors"?

Reply to Agent Smith Stop torturing yourself. :sweat:

Quoting 180 Proof

Stop torturing yourself. :sweat:

Good advice! Leave that to the other people.

Consider:
Schools basically kill the spirit of learning in countless amounts of children. Is that not akin to murder?

This is an example of the availability bias. Physical murder is obvious to the senses. Intellectual murder is invisible.

Reply to Yohan Most perceptive of you! :up: