I worked as a dev at a startup building a competing online memorial product. We were small enough that moderation was split among the team, so I did a fair bit. I'd agree with the author here that violent or horrible content was rare, but when it did come through it always stuck in your mind. I'd always be surprised how someone could harbour such incredible hate against a dead person that they'd want to bestow it further onto their grieving loved ones. Overall, there was always at least an equal amount of incredibly deep and touching comments though. If I'm honest the things that were always the most sad to me were the memorials with no comments at all and an obituary that said not much more than that there would be no service.
My sister-in-law worked for a similar organisation. The thing that amused her was the totally inappropriate photos people often supplied for the remembrance packs. One one occasion she had to photoshop bubbles over a person photographed in their bath
So, a Friend of a Friend died. It had been a long time since I had seen her, she had numerous medical issues, and so forth. My friend rushes several states to help with the funeral arrangements and returns to report pure horror: her "spouse" (I put the word in quotes because it was technically true but denotes a level of care which was not present) waited until the last minute to supply photos, almost all of which were amazingly inappropriate. Think leather gear, collars, leashes, and so on. And managed to make it all about them instead of the deceased. My friend and the funeral director had a frantic what can be accomplished in fifteen minutes sprint of cropping, blowing up, making collages, and so forth so as to not completely mortify the deceased's family with the details of what passed for their sex life.
> The thing that amused her was the totally inappropriate photos people often supplied for the remembrance packs
It's always the case that different people have different amount of "prudence". What is normal and casual for some could be completely outrageous for others.
Think being topless at the beach/pool which is completely normal where I live, but I could imagine doing so in the US would cause havoc. Except these differences also exists between individuals, not just cultures as a whole.
Medical forums/communities are full of typos too. "I have lose bowls." It shows how despite a high literacy rate in America and near 90% high school graduation rate, that basic writing proficiency, which many of us may take for granted, is still difficult for many. Unlike communities which may self-select for education or IQ, everyone gets sick, so you see the full tapestry or range of humanity. It can also explain why the college wage premium is so wide and persistent, as the skills gap between college grads and non-grads is still so stark (secondary-school grade inflation obviously does not help either).
I am not a native English speaker and so my language is lot easier based on pronouncing vs spelling, but here I would make a case to defend the English speakers. Whenever I'm in a rush or getting tired, trying to type my stream of consciousness as quickly as possible in English I have noticed I will start to make mistakes similar to this. But the issue is, since I'm frequently in a lot of rush to get many things done I won't have time to recheck everything, so I'll try to get my content out as soon as possible, figuring that people will still understand, and that's the main idea. I could choose to either provide more output, helping more people, or try to fix any grammar issues and help less people. But of course, I know what the correct spelling should be, it is just that frequently even to my surprise I have written it out a bit differently. But my point is, I wouldn't jump to judging people about this or making it be about education at all.
Arguably the problem is with the English language itself. Loose vs lose, and many other examples like they're, their, etc, the spelling and pronunciation don't match at all, intuitively and not logically. So every time brain has to do extra cycles to translate what you hear as your thoughts to special spelling rules.
English definitely has not only numerous footguns in spelling, but there are also the words that it seems nearly everyone thinks they know the meaning of, but do not. The two that leap to mind being nauseous¹ and bemused.²
⸻
1. The New Oxford Dictionary has given up, and offers the common, but technically incorrect definition as its first definition, while the American Heritage Dictionary places that definition at number 2.
2. Here, the dictionaries are holding firm on the correct definition and do not acknowledge the common misapprehension of the word’s meaning.
Could you please let us know what the misunderstood meanings for those words are.
I legitimately only know one meaning for each of those and from a quick look in a dictionary my understanding of those words seem to stem from the original meaning.
As mentioned elsewhere, “nauseous” is often used where “nauseated” would be correct. Likewise, “bemused” is often used where “amused” is meant. A recent example (published in a national magazine):
”Everyone was confused and then bemused when the runner-up, who had written under a pseudonym, turned out to be…Graham Greene.“
I would also like to add “to sanction” being used to meant to punish, although according to the OED, this meaning (in legal contexts) dates to the early 19th century, but every time I encounter it, I always have to stop and puzzle over the context since the verb meaning of “sanction” also means to give approval to.
For the first, pedants like to point out that a statement like:
"I was feeling nauseous" is incorrect and should be "I was feeling nauseated", as nauseous is "causing nausea" but that's just pedantry and dictionaries now reflect that and now also list it as "affected by nausea".
It's pedantic yes, but more importantly it's prescriptive. It's taking as a given that language has a "correct" way to do things and pushing back on natural language evolution.
passion in place of passing, and symphony instead of sympathy is almost certainly inattention in the face of autocorrect, or carelessly tapping on the wrong completion.
If it had been "we're sadden by his sudden passion [sic]", it might have been some curious circumstances that led to their demise, we can only imagine.
Also, find meteorites seem to be approaching the "so bad it's good" threshold.
during my last year of latin in school we translated lot's of one-line obituaries, originally carved in headstones. Many satirical. Their orthography and grammar was as liberal as the content, which came very handy matching our skill level. The carvers hardly knew more latin than we :-)
By any chance does anyone here know where I could find the text data from obituaries? I thought might have some luck asking the HN crowd! It's for a research paper I'm working on.
Typos don't seem so bad. A few years ago when a small article hit a California newspaper's website about my elderly uncle being murdered, the comments immediately filled with complete strangers agreeing that we, the family, had probably killed him because we didn't want to deal with taking care of him. That was great fun to read while trying to cope with his death.
That ultra sucks. Sorry you had to put up with that crap. It's disappointing when people just flagrantly spout their laziest, most ill-informed judgement about things. That stuff is like psychological pollution. I'm glad a lot of news media sites no longer allow comments/discussion on articles about potentially-touchy subjects like deaths, crimes etc.
I found it interesting that he wasn't allowed to read the obits themselves, so wouldn't even know if the subject was a human or dog. One might argue some distancing helps for these kinds of moderation jobs, but also sounds dehumanizing to not have any context at all.
Also of note is that he spent a lot of time keeping the comments "safe and sugarcoated", even deleting comments referencing "family fallouts and estrangement". There's such a strange culture around sanitizing people's images after their death and pretending they were angels. Some people were legitimate pieces of shit in life, and silencing those harmed by them in the interest of being politically correct sounds unfair to me. Caring only about letting their supporters grieve without having to think about the deceased's complexities, while for example, preventing those who were abused by them from voicing their thoughts seems to want to preserve order by sweeping anything unseemly under the rug.
There are other times and places for criticizing the dead, either before or a bit after the person's passing. Not immediately after, and not where the grieving will congregate.
Obituaries can complicate that when they purport to be a biographical summary (such as for public figures), rather than a traditional formal announcement of memorial services with some kind words thrown in.
I hope to live long enough to say "Good riddance!" about the passings of multiple people who did bad things, but I'd do it privately, not be a jerk to the grieving.
This reminds me of my first job in radio. I worked weekend mornings 6-12. The station had started with a "beautiful music" format, then recently had switched to adult contemporary.
They retained a lot of the old advertisers: funeral homes. They sponsored two regularly scheduled readings of funeral notices at 7 and 11:45. Basically, radio obituaries.
One woman didn't like the format, so she'd tune in exactly at 11:45. If we ran them early for some reason, she'd call and demand we read them to her. This happened about twice a month.
Sometimes I got the call, sometimes it was the guy who came in after me. Always the same voice. We called her the funeral lady.
One morning the other guy had enough and I heard him taking to her, "look, lady, is there someone in particular you're hoping is going to die? Just give me a name and we'll call you when they're dead."
The Funeral Lady would agree with you. Well, if she's still around. This was 30 years ago, and I would have guessed the owner of the voice on the other side of the phone was already north of 80.
I've no beef with the genre but I think it would've been really boring to DJ.
I'd imagine it was mostly just watching the automation systems run, and waiting to talk.
I might be biased - but the tail end of the beautiful music era was probably a high point for FM Broadcast audio quality - it was the last point before the emphasis towards loudness started.
There's a lot of space between passing over abuse in silence and being a jerk to others who are grieving. Mere mention of estrangement or complicated relationships is hardly shitting on someone.
The bereaved have the right to grieve authentically, even if that means doing justice to a history that involves trauma and conflict. That's part of what collective grieving rituals are for and should be for. There are limits but I don't think there's a universal prescription, or that it's fair to draw a line at, e.g., mere mention of estrangement.
There are people who are so manipulative and full of hatred that they actually have nobody who is willing to truly grief about their death. My grandma was such a person. I really remember nobody who was fond of her. To the contrary, most people were content that she was finally gone. So please, don't tell others how they are supposed to deal with their peers.
Considering that death penalty is considered a punishment so great that lots of states banned it, I guess people think that death already punished the person so badly that their sins can be considered absolved. So whether or not people sanitize dead people's image correlates to their opinion on death itself.
Capital punishment is immoral not because death is sufficient to absolve guilt but because we lack sufficient certainty of guilt. Death is just death, it doesn't absolve guilt.
That's an interesting perspective to take. Those countries in Europe who have prohibited capital punishment have done so because we believe it is immoral even in the case of absolute certainty of guilt. Take Anders Breivik for example: there is no doubt whatsoever of his guilt - he is a mass murderer. Nevertheless, according to modern European concepts of morality he should be treated well even in prison, and the Norwegians take that to a level that many other countries would find absurd.
When we decline to execute a heinous offender, and decline to treat them as inhuman - even when they have offended inhumanly - it demonstrates the moral difference between us and them.
Does Anders truly "win" by being simply in confinement forever, rather than being dead? What does he gain? His life? What life? Playing PS1 games forever, seeing the same four walls forever, acceptable but certainly not impressive meals forever. There is not a single thing anyone can do to him or anyone else to undo what he did, and causing him suffering certainly doesn't bring back any children. More importantly, killing him does not make any of the damage he caused go away.
Americans love to piss and moan about all the freedoms we supposedly have, but are conspicuously unsatisfied with merely removing said freedoms as punishment for crimes.
Maybe they don't think "freedom" is that important or meaningful
There is continued harm though. Every day he is treated well, every day he gets food and shelter and care is food and shelter and care paid for by you, that could have been spent on others.
"Those countries in Europe" is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Any justice system that practices capital punishment is considered so dysfunctional that any plans on joining the European Union is out of the question. This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.
Breivik is also a single person; do you really want to change (or even burn down) the entire system just for one person?
In principle I have no trouble just executing Breivik; his guilt is established beyond doubt, he committed an act of exceptional evil, and he more or less declares to want to do it again (well technically he says he wants to be a "non-violent Nazi" or some such, but that's a contradiction in terms: "oh that Holocaust thing was just brilliant, more of that!" is violent rhetoric).
But Breivik-type case are rare. So rare it's not really worth changing the system over it. There's principle of a thing and the practicalities of it: in principle the death penalty is fine, but practically organizing that in a legal system with zero false positives is very difficult, so it's not really worth it.
Aside from the US, you can also look at post-second world war in Europe, which saw some executions that were rather over the top in hindsight.
If you spend some time in the Nordics, you'd find that most don't think "death penalty is fine in principle" as it goes against many of the principles people there try to live by.
He's not treated well. Maybe compared other (inhuman) places, but he feels his treatment is so vindictive that he has tried getting the human rights court involved.
His protests as well as the treatment often perceived as "absurdly comfortable" all hinge on one fact: he is kept in permanent solitary confinement. Which is otherwise considered an additional (and harsh) punishment for regular prisoners. And it's the reason why he has his private gym and entertainment facilities, because those would normale be available as shared facilities to regular prisoners.
Mentioning someone's crimes isn't a punishment, especially when they're not around to hear them. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that people can still have criminal records after they've finished serving a prison sentence?
Isn't mentioning it considered bad when someone has served their punishment? It's part of right-to-be-forgotten after all.
When the crime is still recorded and even announced, it's considered part of the punishment because jail is deemed not enough. It's how we get sexual offender registry.
Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them. It’s literally the opposite to what you are claiming
Among support for the death penalty in the United States, is the fact that some criminals, particularly the serial killer type, have committed crimes so heinous that there is no chance of parole or rehabilitation to return to normal life. When one is burdened with 60 consecutive life sentences, it effectively requires that the state pay to sustain the criminal's life until it comes to an end. If the death penalty were enacted instead, we could both reduce the cost the state (which, in turn, is the tax payers), and reduce the suffering the criminal must endure for his crimes.
If you'd like to take the afterlife into account, the "sends the person to eternal torment in hell" sounds like a particular theology not backed up by the Bible, the typical standard in American thinking. That verges way too much on passing ultimate judgment, which is itself reserved for God alone. Perhaps some people believe it. I don't (and I am religious).
> Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them.
It is also supported because it can be used as a self-defence mechanism.
We take it for granted that when we lock up 'really' dangerous people they will be safely away from society, but that kind of infrastructure is a fairly recent phenomena in human history. Prison breaks/escapes still happen:
Not only from a building-prisoners perspective, but also from an excess-resources point of view: through most of human history, suggesting using society's surplus—which probably wasn't there—to feed someone 'evil' while everyone else had to work away would have seemed very unfair.
If a single individual has the right to self-defence against an attacker, and a ("small") group of individuals have the same right (e.g., a bunch of folks worshipping in a temple, mosque, church), then wouldn't a "large" group of individuals (e.g., society) have a right to protect themselves from an attacker?
With regards to "hell": someone, while waiting on death row, many repent of their actions and try to find redemption, but still be executed from a legal point of view:
We, who? The practical reason to support it is that it guarantees there is no chance for them to murder more people, or as a (misguided?) deterrent for others not to murder.
At least where I was taught, death penalty reduces someone's punishment in the afterlife. So in a way capital punishment is a "mercy" because without it they'll be punished even more in hell.
Does it matter if the offender believes in tales of hell and heaven? Or is it just important for the people remaining in society how they think the penalty affects the offender?
I worked as a dev at a startup building a competing online memorial product. We were small enough that moderation was split among the team, so I did a fair bit. I'd agree with the author here that violent or horrible content was rare, but when it did come through it always stuck in your mind. I'd always be surprised how someone could harbour such incredible hate against a dead person that they'd want to bestow it further onto their grieving loved ones. Overall, there was always at least an equal amount of incredibly deep and touching comments though. If I'm honest the things that were always the most sad to me were the memorials with no comments at all and an obituary that said not much more than that there would be no service.
My sister-in-law worked for a similar organisation. The thing that amused her was the totally inappropriate photos people often supplied for the remembrance packs. One one occasion she had to photoshop bubbles over a person photographed in their bath
So, a Friend of a Friend died. It had been a long time since I had seen her, she had numerous medical issues, and so forth. My friend rushes several states to help with the funeral arrangements and returns to report pure horror: her "spouse" (I put the word in quotes because it was technically true but denotes a level of care which was not present) waited until the last minute to supply photos, almost all of which were amazingly inappropriate. Think leather gear, collars, leashes, and so on. And managed to make it all about them instead of the deceased. My friend and the funeral director had a frantic what can be accomplished in fifteen minutes sprint of cropping, blowing up, making collages, and so forth so as to not completely mortify the deceased's family with the details of what passed for their sex life.
> The thing that amused her was the totally inappropriate photos people often supplied for the remembrance packs
It's always the case that different people have different amount of "prudence". What is normal and casual for some could be completely outrageous for others.
Think being topless at the beach/pool which is completely normal where I live, but I could imagine doing so in the US would cause havoc. Except these differences also exists between individuals, not just cultures as a whole.
Medical forums/communities are full of typos too. "I have lose bowls." It shows how despite a high literacy rate in America and near 90% high school graduation rate, that basic writing proficiency, which many of us may take for granted, is still difficult for many. Unlike communities which may self-select for education or IQ, everyone gets sick, so you see the full tapestry or range of humanity. It can also explain why the college wage premium is so wide and persistent, as the skills gap between college grads and non-grads is still so stark (secondary-school grade inflation obviously does not help either).
I am not a native English speaker and so my language is lot easier based on pronouncing vs spelling, but here I would make a case to defend the English speakers. Whenever I'm in a rush or getting tired, trying to type my stream of consciousness as quickly as possible in English I have noticed I will start to make mistakes similar to this. But the issue is, since I'm frequently in a lot of rush to get many things done I won't have time to recheck everything, so I'll try to get my content out as soon as possible, figuring that people will still understand, and that's the main idea. I could choose to either provide more output, helping more people, or try to fix any grammar issues and help less people. But of course, I know what the correct spelling should be, it is just that frequently even to my surprise I have written it out a bit differently. But my point is, I wouldn't jump to judging people about this or making it be about education at all.
Arguably the problem is with the English language itself. Loose vs lose, and many other examples like they're, their, etc, the spelling and pronunciation don't match at all, intuitively and not logically. So every time brain has to do extra cycles to translate what you hear as your thoughts to special spelling rules.
English definitely has not only numerous footguns in spelling, but there are also the words that it seems nearly everyone thinks they know the meaning of, but do not. The two that leap to mind being nauseous¹ and bemused.²
⸻
1. The New Oxford Dictionary has given up, and offers the common, but technically incorrect definition as its first definition, while the American Heritage Dictionary places that definition at number 2.
2. Here, the dictionaries are holding firm on the correct definition and do not acknowledge the common misapprehension of the word’s meaning.
Could you please let us know what the misunderstood meanings for those words are.
I legitimately only know one meaning for each of those and from a quick look in a dictionary my understanding of those words seem to stem from the original meaning.
As mentioned elsewhere, “nauseous” is often used where “nauseated” would be correct. Likewise, “bemused” is often used where “amused” is meant. A recent example (published in a national magazine):
”Everyone was confused and then bemused when the runner-up, who had written under a pseudonym, turned out to be…Graham Greene.“
I would also like to add “to sanction” being used to meant to punish, although according to the OED, this meaning (in legal contexts) dates to the early 19th century, but every time I encounter it, I always have to stop and puzzle over the context since the verb meaning of “sanction” also means to give approval to.
For the first, pedants like to point out that a statement like:
"I was feeling nauseous" is incorrect and should be "I was feeling nauseated", as nauseous is "causing nausea" but that's just pedantry and dictionaries now reflect that and now also list it as "affected by nausea".
It's pedantic yes, but more importantly it's prescriptive. It's taking as a given that language has a "correct" way to do things and pushing back on natural language evolution.
It's eugenics for language lol
I figured that but agree with you. I generally wouldn't use that meaning but it's not like I'm going to fight about it being used.
Same here! I can’t think of alternate meanings either.
passion in place of passing, and symphony instead of sympathy is almost certainly inattention in the face of autocorrect, or carelessly tapping on the wrong completion.
Seen native speakers write "for all intensive purposes".
That's not a typo; that's what they believe that to be.
If it had been "we're sadden by his sudden passion [sic]", it might have been some curious circumstances that led to their demise, we can only imagine.
Also, find meteorites seem to be approaching the "so bad it's good" threshold.
Not a native English speaker, can anybody identify the accent that changes "saddened" and "passing"?
It should be saddened by their sudden passing rather than passion.
what is "find meteorites" supposed to be?
"fond memories", I assume
during my last year of latin in school we translated lot's of one-line obituaries, originally carved in headstones. Many satirical. Their orthography and grammar was as liberal as the content, which came very handy matching our skill level. The carvers hardly knew more latin than we :-)
Life ends, typos last.
I presume "Terrible trade gyms" is a weird autocorrect for "tragedies"?
Terrible voice transcription ?
Tradegys?
I can looking for a reference to curb your enthusiasm's dearest aunt episode. So posting this for some other fellow traveller.
Childish. Yes, I did too:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=f1nHVU1Qe4I
(NSFW language for the uninitiated)
Reminds me of the old and tasteless meme of being 'an hero'.
By any chance does anyone here know where I could find the text data from obituaries? I thought might have some luck asking the HN crowd! It's for a research paper I'm working on.
Typos don't seem so bad. A few years ago when a small article hit a California newspaper's website about my elderly uncle being murdered, the comments immediately filled with complete strangers agreeing that we, the family, had probably killed him because we didn't want to deal with taking care of him. That was great fun to read while trying to cope with his death.
Yikes. Sorry you had to deal with this. Did you respond in any way or close the tab and cry about humanity?
I really wanted to respond, but decided the healthiest thing to do was to just ignore them.
That ultra sucks. Sorry you had to put up with that crap. It's disappointing when people just flagrantly spout their laziest, most ill-informed judgement about things. That stuff is like psychological pollution. I'm glad a lot of news media sites no longer allow comments/discussion on articles about potentially-touchy subjects like deaths, crimes etc.
I found it interesting that he wasn't allowed to read the obits themselves, so wouldn't even know if the subject was a human or dog. One might argue some distancing helps for these kinds of moderation jobs, but also sounds dehumanizing to not have any context at all.
Also of note is that he spent a lot of time keeping the comments "safe and sugarcoated", even deleting comments referencing "family fallouts and estrangement". There's such a strange culture around sanitizing people's images after their death and pretending they were angels. Some people were legitimate pieces of shit in life, and silencing those harmed by them in the interest of being politically correct sounds unfair to me. Caring only about letting their supporters grieve without having to think about the deceased's complexities, while for example, preventing those who were abused by them from voicing their thoughts seems to want to preserve order by sweeping anything unseemly under the rug.
There are other times and places for criticizing the dead, either before or a bit after the person's passing. Not immediately after, and not where the grieving will congregate.
Obituaries can complicate that when they purport to be a biographical summary (such as for public figures), rather than a traditional formal announcement of memorial services with some kind words thrown in.
I hope to live long enough to say "Good riddance!" about the passings of multiple people who did bad things, but I'd do it privately, not be a jerk to the grieving.
There's an old Soviet joke:
A man goes to a newspaper stand every day, buys a copy of Pravda, glances at the front cover, curses, and throws it away.
After a few weeks of this the seller just has to ask what's going on: "why do you always look at the cover but never inside?"
"I'm looking for an obituary."
"An obituary? But those are in the back!"
"Oh no, the obituary I'm looking for will be on the front page."
This reminds me of my first job in radio. I worked weekend mornings 6-12. The station had started with a "beautiful music" format, then recently had switched to adult contemporary.
They retained a lot of the old advertisers: funeral homes. They sponsored two regularly scheduled readings of funeral notices at 7 and 11:45. Basically, radio obituaries.
One woman didn't like the format, so she'd tune in exactly at 11:45. If we ran them early for some reason, she'd call and demand we read them to her. This happened about twice a month.
Sometimes I got the call, sometimes it was the guy who came in after me. Always the same voice. We called her the funeral lady.
One morning the other guy had enough and I heard him taking to her, "look, lady, is there someone in particular you're hoping is going to die? Just give me a name and we'll call you when they're dead."
"The Obituary Show" was probably a big money maker. Sponsored by a funeral home, I expect. Great place to be heard by your future customers.
Man, I miss beautiful music being a viable radio format. It makes such great background music.
The Funeral Lady would agree with you. Well, if she's still around. This was 30 years ago, and I would have guessed the owner of the voice on the other side of the phone was already north of 80.
I've no beef with the genre but I think it would've been really boring to DJ.
I'd imagine it was mostly just watching the automation systems run, and waiting to talk.
I might be biased - but the tail end of the beautiful music era was probably a high point for FM Broadcast audio quality - it was the last point before the emphasis towards loudness started.
That guy wasted a lot of money, cos looking at the front page is free!
(Sorry)
:) interesting and funny at the same time
There's a lot of space between passing over abuse in silence and being a jerk to others who are grieving. Mere mention of estrangement or complicated relationships is hardly shitting on someone.
The bereaved have the right to grieve authentically, even if that means doing justice to a history that involves trauma and conflict. That's part of what collective grieving rituals are for and should be for. There are limits but I don't think there's a universal prescription, or that it's fair to draw a line at, e.g., mere mention of estrangement.
Good point. I wasn't thinking of enough scenarios.
There are people who are so manipulative and full of hatred that they actually have nobody who is willing to truly grief about their death. My grandma was such a person. I really remember nobody who was fond of her. To the contrary, most people were content that she was finally gone. So please, don't tell others how they are supposed to deal with their peers.
Let's think it in this way.
If the person is universally hatred, nobody would pay for his/her online obituary comment system's moderation
No.
Even in the worst of those situations, some people will pay for the formalities for any of a variety of reasons.
Wills often include instructions for funerals, and expenses to be put to things like Obits, flowers, and other accruements.
Funeral is the last chance to say 'fuck you' to the haters
You are overlooking that the bulk of those negative comments are probably not true, and are just griefers.
For example the experience of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39834260 lower down in this thread.
> just griefers.
Appropriate usage.
Considering that death penalty is considered a punishment so great that lots of states banned it, I guess people think that death already punished the person so badly that their sins can be considered absolved. So whether or not people sanitize dead people's image correlates to their opinion on death itself.
Capital punishment is immoral not because death is sufficient to absolve guilt but because we lack sufficient certainty of guilt. Death is just death, it doesn't absolve guilt.
That's an interesting perspective to take. Those countries in Europe who have prohibited capital punishment have done so because we believe it is immoral even in the case of absolute certainty of guilt. Take Anders Breivik for example: there is no doubt whatsoever of his guilt - he is a mass murderer. Nevertheless, according to modern European concepts of morality he should be treated well even in prison, and the Norwegians take that to a level that many other countries would find absurd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
When we decline to execute a heinous offender, and decline to treat them as inhuman - even when they have offended inhumanly - it demonstrates the moral difference between us and them.
And seemingly demonstrates our ability to be taken advantage of by said inhuman offenders-
Does Anders truly "win" by being simply in confinement forever, rather than being dead? What does he gain? His life? What life? Playing PS1 games forever, seeing the same four walls forever, acceptable but certainly not impressive meals forever. There is not a single thing anyone can do to him or anyone else to undo what he did, and causing him suffering certainly doesn't bring back any children. More importantly, killing him does not make any of the damage he caused go away.
Americans love to piss and moan about all the freedoms we supposedly have, but are conspicuously unsatisfied with merely removing said freedoms as punishment for crimes.
Maybe they don't think "freedom" is that important or meaningful
There is continued harm though. Every day he is treated well, every day he gets food and shelter and care is food and shelter and care paid for by you, that could have been spent on others.
As Michelle Obama said: "When they go low, we go high"
"Those countries in Europe" is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Any justice system that practices capital punishment is considered so dysfunctional that any plans on joining the European Union is out of the question. This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.
> This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.
Lets see how true this really is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39826176 - "Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US" - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/26/julian-assange...
Hardly 'rigged'.
Breivik is also a single person; do you really want to change (or even burn down) the entire system just for one person?
In principle I have no trouble just executing Breivik; his guilt is established beyond doubt, he committed an act of exceptional evil, and he more or less declares to want to do it again (well technically he says he wants to be a "non-violent Nazi" or some such, but that's a contradiction in terms: "oh that Holocaust thing was just brilliant, more of that!" is violent rhetoric).
But Breivik-type case are rare. So rare it's not really worth changing the system over it. There's principle of a thing and the practicalities of it: in principle the death penalty is fine, but practically organizing that in a legal system with zero false positives is very difficult, so it's not really worth it.
Aside from the US, you can also look at post-second world war in Europe, which saw some executions that were rather over the top in hindsight.
> in principle the death penalty is fine
If you spend some time in the Nordics, you'd find that most don't think "death penalty is fine in principle" as it goes against many of the principles people there try to live by.
Obviously the "I think that [..]" or "it is my opinion that [..]" is implied.
He's not treated well. Maybe compared other (inhuman) places, but he feels his treatment is so vindictive that he has tried getting the human rights court involved.
Other than that killing him would be way to kind.
His protests as well as the treatment often perceived as "absurdly comfortable" all hinge on one fact: he is kept in permanent solitary confinement. Which is otherwise considered an additional (and harsh) punishment for regular prisoners. And it's the reason why he has his private gym and entertainment facilities, because those would normale be available as shared facilities to regular prisoners.
Is that why? I find it hypocritical to punish murder with state sanctioned murder.
Mentioning someone's crimes isn't a punishment, especially when they're not around to hear them. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that people can still have criminal records after they've finished serving a prison sentence?
Isn't mentioning it considered bad when someone has served their punishment? It's part of right-to-be-forgotten after all.
When the crime is still recorded and even announced, it's considered part of the punishment because jail is deemed not enough. It's how we get sexual offender registry.
Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them. It’s literally the opposite to what you are claiming
That's a take I've certainly never heard before.
Among support for the death penalty in the United States, is the fact that some criminals, particularly the serial killer type, have committed crimes so heinous that there is no chance of parole or rehabilitation to return to normal life. When one is burdened with 60 consecutive life sentences, it effectively requires that the state pay to sustain the criminal's life until it comes to an end. If the death penalty were enacted instead, we could both reduce the cost the state (which, in turn, is the tax payers), and reduce the suffering the criminal must endure for his crimes.
If you'd like to take the afterlife into account, the "sends the person to eternal torment in hell" sounds like a particular theology not backed up by the Bible, the typical standard in American thinking. That verges way too much on passing ultimate judgment, which is itself reserved for God alone. Perhaps some people believe it. I don't (and I am religious).
> Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them.
It is also supported because it can be used as a self-defence mechanism.
We take it for granted that when we lock up 'really' dangerous people they will be safely away from society, but that kind of infrastructure is a fairly recent phenomena in human history. Prison breaks/escapes still happen:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prison_escapes#2022_–_...
Not only from a building-prisoners perspective, but also from an excess-resources point of view: through most of human history, suggesting using society's surplus—which probably wasn't there—to feed someone 'evil' while everyone else had to work away would have seemed very unfair.
If a single individual has the right to self-defence against an attacker, and a ("small") group of individuals have the same right (e.g., a bunch of folks worshipping in a temple, mosque, church), then wouldn't a "large" group of individuals (e.g., society) have a right to protect themselves from an attacker?
With regards to "hell": someone, while waiting on death row, many repent of their actions and try to find redemption, but still be executed from a legal point of view:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man_Walking_(book)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man_Walking_(film)
We, who? The practical reason to support it is that it guarantees there is no chance for them to murder more people, or as a (misguided?) deterrent for others not to murder.
At least where I was taught, death penalty reduces someone's punishment in the afterlife. So in a way capital punishment is a "mercy" because without it they'll be punished even more in hell.
So yeah, this perspective really depends.
Does it matter if the offender believes in tales of hell and heaven? Or is it just important for the people remaining in society how they think the penalty affects the offender?
That’s interesting; I never heard that before.
Where was this?
I never understood that stance. To me the death penalty is an easy way out compared to a life without freedom.
How does dying absolve anyone of sin?
Following that though is to say dead Nazi's sins are absolved.
I don't think so. Sin is a sin, crime is a crime, no matter person is dead it alive.
Only if you consider it's absolvable with one death. Though it isn't like those are absolvable by any means in this world.
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