Nobel Prize vs Proof that the Death Penalty MUST kill innocents

Yes, it probably will. As Fat Tony says, "accidents do happen." A prisoner might "die in custody".I mean, hell, that stuff happens now. Currently that's outweighed by the actual legitimate state executions, but you're certainly correct that, in the absence of a legal execution policy, wardens and prison personnel - even prisoners themselves - would, ever so rarely, take the law into their own hands. It happens.So what? It's murder when it happens now; it would be murder when it happens then. I don't think you're going to find too many people who will agree with this; I certainly don't. It's a violation of scientific tentativity. Maybe you can eliminate reasonable doubt of guilt, but you certainly can't eliminate the unreasonable doubts. Yeah, but here's the thing. We're not using the tentative conclusions of evolution to bestow irreversable death on people. The stakes are a little higher in regards to the criminal justice system, don't you agree?The tentativity of science, and of the conclusions of the courtroom, stem from solipsism. If you can refute solipsism then you have a point. But if you can, you'd be the first. And in the presence of solipsism there's no escaping the fact that, despite meeting the conditions you might set out for "reasonable certainty", we might still be completely wrong. You can't assume that we can ignore solipsism just because its inconvinient to your argument.

Uh, well, yeah, I'd say that's exactly what it means. For instance, an absurdly complex conspiracy managed to exploit weaknesses in the American air travel system and kill 3000 people. Certainly that's the fault of the conspirators, but it also points out that our American air travel system, at that time (and arguably at this time), was a failure at preventing its planes from being used as weapons.The system failed. That was the conclusion of the 9/11 investigation; that's the reasonable conclusion from any observer. When wardens/prisoners institute their own brand of "justice", that's a failure of the system. When an innocent man is executed, no matter what burden of proof was met, that's a failure of the system.There's no system we can build that is failure-proof, apparently. Hence the responsible thing to do is try to limit the consequences of that eventual failure. It is accepted (I presume) that the execution of even a single innocent person is unacceptable; therefore that's the consequence we must avoid at all costs. Well, it does. Law enforcement takes this into account. That's why we have all those "Internal Affairs" cop show episodes. There's a process by which law enforcement tries its best to uncover miscarriages of justice and police corruption conspiracies whenever possible. We do the best we can; when we hand down sentences, we do our best to make sure that they're reversable if it turns out we were wrong.But you can't do that with the death penalty. So its not an appropriate punishment for the state. I don't think it's better. But if a prisoner shivs our poor innocent bastard to death, there's somebody to be held accountable. If a courtroom and a jury of peers sends a guy to the gallows and it turns out they were wrong, who's fault is that? There's too many people and too little blame, and so, as we see because this is actually happening, nobody's held to account. It's just a "mistake." I'm well aware we're using the creationist argument. When creationists use it, they're right. Yes, I'll repeat that. Their argument is correct - science does not reach certainties. And that's our response to them, haven't you noticed? That's what we say to them: "You're quite right that nothing is 100% proven in science; the conclusions of science are tentative." If you can't eliminate the possibility of those bizzare conspiracies, then what's the point? You still can't eliminate the possibility of an innocent execution, and isn't that exactly what you claimed you could do? Sounds like you've refuted yourself, to me.If you can't eliminate - totally eliminate - the possibility that an innocent person will be executed by the state, then we have no business executing people at all. (And no, your silly "hey, the state might accidentally execute someone" is about as compelling a possibility as that guy, caught committing adultery, who insists that he had sex with the woman "accidently", because he tripped and fell out of his pants and into her vagina.) If you could find a way to tentatively execute someone, I'll support the death penalty.

Look, I guess I just don't get it. Your system that excludes innocent people from being executed allows for mistakes? Huh?Like I said, I just don't get it. This seems like such a rational position that its ludicrous to see you disagree with it. If its always unacceptable for a state to wrongly execute someone, then we have to ensure that never happens. Thus, the death penalty must be eliminated.This just doesn't seem to be refutable to me. It's iron-clad. The only disagreement possible for reasonable individuals is with the first assumption - that its never ok to allow the state to wrongly execute someone. If you believe that, sometimes, its ok for the state to wrongly execute someone, like in the case where despite the man being innocent, an astronomical burden of evidence has been met, then I guess we can discuss that.But there's simply no disputing that a human system of justice that allows the death penalty is going to lead to people being executed for crimes that they did not, in reality, commit. You haven't, as far as I can see, disputed that. So what are we arguing about?

So then why are conclusions of science tentative? Why can't we be certain, for instance, that evolution is right? Absurd, impractical, yes. But not impossible.Sorry, close but no cigar. If we're going to have the state kill people, and be beyond accountability for it, then I want the elimination of even the absurd and impractical doubt. Or else I want a tentative death penalty.Which of those two can you provide?

The only way we know someone is guilty is as a tentative conclusion from finite evidence. There's no way to know about the evidence we don't have, so the conclusion cannot be better than tentative.Now, that doesn't prove that innocent people must die, but it does prove that we can't know they can't. Prudence dictates that we proceed from the assumption that some guilty people are actually innocent. Clearly the sort of mistake we're referring to is possible; we know that it is because we observe it happening. It's never been the case that a prisoner was accidentally executed by the state - as opposed to murdered by wardens/guards/prisoners/whatever.Clearly the sort of mistake we're talking about is possible because we see it happen. It's ludicrous to suggest that a system no different from the one we have now is going to be free of the same mistakes. I don't see that it's relevant. It's not a dodge; I'm not interested in discussing it.

I've done the reading; I know the answer. The reason scientific conclusions are always tentative is because scientific reasoning is inherently fallacious. All science is based on induction, and the only way to validate induction is by induction.Well, sorry. That works for making VCR's, but when we're talking about killing a completely healthy human being, with his full faculties and a full quality of life, I'd like a little better than that.Like I said I want either elimination of unreasonable doubt or a tentative death penalty. Which does your system deliver? You mistake them. They're not one-liners for you to ignore; they're succinct rebuttals of your position for you to address.The only way to eliminate the problem is to either base the conclusion on non-fallacious, non-inductive grounds, or to provide for a tentative death penalty. Which does your system deliver? Yeah. I want either an absurd level of certainly before my state starts taking lives, or else I want a tentative, reversable death penalty. Which one are you giving me? It's the innocent I have pity on, not the guilty. Since we're not sure we can tell the difference, prudence dictates that we take the death penalty off the table.

The connection is that "every-day knowledge" is probably even more fallacious than scientific knowledge; perverted as it is by confirmation bias and other human mental shortcuts.And that's exactly what you're doing. You're shortcutting right to certainty without any justification about how you got there. No, but then, the consequences of those acts rarely involve the execution of another human being. Maybe you could turn down the snippiness? While you're at it, it's necessary for you to do more than just call me a creationist for you to rebut my reasoning. Nope. Not beyond a tentative conclusion, anyway. I realize that you'd just like to handwave tentativity and solipsism away, but tentativity isn't just a practical limitation on science. It's a fundamental limitation on how we know things about the real world. Oh? And which scientist was that?

And sometimes absurd things happen. How will you rule them out? Certainly not by any appeal to the evidence, apparently. Sorry, but that's not good enough for me. I'd like the death penalty to be delivered based on a little more than what Holmes finds "absurd."I don't think that's too much to ask, but you've consistently failed to deliver a system that eliminates your subjective assessment of what is "absurd" and what is not.Even the scientific definition of fact stipulates provisional, tentative acceptance. Why is it that you can just handwave that necessary tentativity away, as though it doesn't apply to you? I don't accept that line of reasoning; it's just fallacious special pleading. Yet, we must obviously have the highest threshold practically possible. Clearly, then, we know that the highest possible threshold still executes innocent people. Well, keep working on it then. I'm sure it'll come to you.

Look, Holmes, we've laid it out for you. We believe that the only just application of the death penalty comes under a system where either all doubt, even the absurd doubt, is removed; or else the penalty is delivered reversably.Well? Which do you give us? It really is just that simple, and no, that's not a strawman of your position. It's simply asking you to meet the only possible conditions under which delivering the death penalty would be just and fair.But all you do is tapdance around this issue and make hilarious misstatements about scientific knowledge; statements that I'm embarassed to read from someone of your learning and intelligence. You really should know better, in regards to science, by now. Why do you think that science isn't a search for truth? It's not because scientists are so half-assed at their jobs that they can't get things right, or because they go off half-cocked with just a part of the information. It's because there's fundamental limitations about the level of knowledge you can achieve by induction, because induction is an inherently fallacious mode of reasoning. Ultimately all inductive reasoning is circular.Well, I'd like a little more than circular reasoning to base the death penalty on, and I don't think that's absurd. And it's pretty clear that you can't deliver that, so aren't we done here?

But that's the thing. Tentativity never ends. It's inescapable.The methodology you apply casually, day to day, is a weaker, more error-prone methodology that the scientific one. It's ludicrous to suggest that the casual methodology somehow provides conclusions that are stronger or more certain than the scientific methodology. How could that be the case? If the scientific methodology, which to the large part is the strictest methodology possible for the aquisition of knowledge, can't deliver any better conclusions than tenative ones, what hope would a lesser, more error-prone methodology have? Wouldn't I have to have a soul, first? That's their perogative. They don't have to learn evolution if they don't want.

As I recall, his OP included a confession as necessary for the death penalty; the knowledge of this requirement would mean that nobody would ever confess.If Holmes wants to propose a system where the death penalty, as a result of an obvious and easily met condition, is never used, how is that practically different from what we have proposed, which is a system where the death penalty is never used because there's a rule against using it?

Yes, and I understood them. I agree that they're absurd, remember?But they're not impossible. That's the problem you seem to have - no amount of "absurd" equals "impossible". We didn't have a discussion. You told me to do the reading, and so I did, and I discovered that you were totally wrong about the nature of scientific tentativity. It isn't a practical result of the fact that scientists are idiots or bad at their jobs or simply working in areas for which there's simply not enough data.Scientific tenativity stems from the fact that no amount of evidence overcomes the fact that relying on evidence itself is a fallacy, specifically the Inductive Fallacy. And your only response to this fact is to tell me "no, you're wrong." Well, it doesn't work like that around here. Did you forget? It has to be. Why wouldn't it be? We have a justice system predicated on a principle of the greatest possible benefit of the doubt for the accused, filled with people operating from the greatest possible benefit of the doubt, with the vast majority of the financial incentive working for the accused. (Generally.) If that's not the highest bar for guilt that we can possibly set, what is?If there was a higher bar that could be reached, we'd be reaching it. You ask a direct question that's relevant to the topic at hand, and I'll answer it. You insist on bringing in these irrelevancies in a vain and disingenuous effort to paint your opponents as hypocrites, and you'll get more of the same.

I understood you completely, and that's the point to which I've been referring. We all know that the rules of the scientific methodology are considerably stricter than the rules you apply to have knowledge in every-day life; therefore it's beyond idiotic to assert that the knowledge you gain from a looser, more error-prone methodology is somehow better or less tentative.C'mon. I can't imagine anything more patently self-refuting. How can the introduction of greater error lead to greater precision? Results drive the rules. The half-assed, casual methodology we all employ serves just fine for getting us to work and getting us fed. When decisions become a little more important, we apply stricter methodologies. Laws, government. Mangement hierarchies. Policies and procedures. And ultimately, for the greatest fidelity to the real world possible, the scientific methodology.You're going to turn that on its head and tell me that the half-assed casual methodology, that operates from, hell, no rules that we can articulate, is going to result in conclusions that we are to hold more confidently than the rigorous scientific methodology?How stupid do you think I am? I'm not saying we don't know anything. I mean, clearly, I'm saying that in many situations, we're going to know enough, and know it confidently enough, to put a man in jail, possibly until he dies.But I'm saying that we don't know enough to kill him. We'll never know enough; it's not possible to know enough.

Could you turn down the snippiness? I'm pretty sure I'm not the one here who thinks Crashfrog is such an idiot that he's going to put more confidence in half-assed, casual everyday reasoning - especially knowing as I do that, in the human brain, decision preceeds rationalization - than in rigourous scientific methodology.Exactly how stupid do you think I am, Holmes? Fine. For the death penalty, I require a greater level of certainty than the scientific method, and certainly far better than the half-assed casual method. Can you deliver it? Apparently not.

Hey. Brilliant. That's only the exact system you've been arguing against the whole goddamn thread.But I'm glad we finally agree.