I actually think severe punishment might stop some serious sociopaths from committing murder, so I don’t really buy the argument that we shouldn’t punish ill people. Why not?

Actually I think most people (be they sociopaths or just normal people) who go on a rampage or something like that might think of themselves as crazy, and therefore they might think they have a large chance of not being put into jail. Actually that might be more true of healthy people (if you can call healthy someone who kills some other people whom he didn’t even know before) , who in the end end up in prison. So maybe if we didn’t have that defense, we could save a few healthy people (and their victims) from themselves, even if we couldn’t save any victims of the true psycopaths.

If the US government developed a substance or microbe that, when put in the drinking water of a major city, would cause the residents to tend to vote for the incumbent, what laws or rights would be violated? None. The courts have already ruled that not only is the government free to force you NOT to take substances that it unilaterally decides to prohibit — it can also force you TO TAKE substances if it finds that your natural mental processes are not to its liking. Check any drug-war opinion for the first, and check Sell v. US for the second. Or http://cognitiveliberty.org. I spent a couple of years funding efforts to change this (before some idiot invents such a substance) — and failed.

Such a substance is not too far outside the bounds of reality. MDMA, for example, suppresses the fear response, which is what makes it useful in treating post-traumatic stress. All it would take is to increase the longing for security, the trust for authority, the submission to “daddy”.

Of course, if patriots rather than totalitarians looked to invent such substances, maybe they’d come up with one that would encourage novelty-seeking, questioning of authority, having a bit more backbone or courage or assertiveness, etc. If we could reduce the incumbency rate in the US Congress to something lower than that of the Chinese Communist Central Committee, without violating any laws or rights, hey, why not?

Such arguments are both unassailable and inadmissible: unassailable because the very concept of “free will” doesn’t make sense in a cause-effect world unless one invokes supernatural elements, and inadmissible because society has to pretend that it does regardless. Our whole legal system is predicated on the culpability of individuals for their actions: we’re not going to throw out our whole worldview just because science shows us that it’s wrong.

I think this is more a matter of practicality than anything else. If someone’s sociopathic behavior is caused by a tumor and can be decisevely ended by removing said tumor, then that’s what society does. If someone else’s sociopathic behavior is caused by a much more subtle structure in their brain, society puts them in jail or executes them because, realistically, what else can you do with them?

If a procedure is ever discovered which safely, reliably and without major side effects, turns a rapist, a murderer, or an embezzler into a stable productive citizen, I think it will be adopted pretty quickly. There will be a lot of resistance, from both Left and Right (for different reasons), but eventually practicality will win out. Key words here are “reliably” and “productive” — turning criminals into brain-dead zombies will not be popular any time soon.

A destructive behavior will be recognized as a disease if and only if it can be actually cured.

It’s boring tech though… unless they’re planning to roll this out with full-body Gandamu suits as well. THEN we’re talking. Might just quit the day-job and enlist!

Just kidding, just kidding. I could never(say never) be a killing machine.

Thanks for the ideas, there are so many good ones to steal from around here.

Cheers!

Anyway, when it comes to war crimes, it’s almost always the higher-ups (generals, ministers, heads of state) that are accused, not the foot soldiers. For a head of state, “I didn’t know what the weapon was capable off when I approved its deployment” is hardly a defense.

I think the military trend is generally away from landmines, not towards them. But the widespread use of IEDs (by terrorists rather than by soldiers) is arguably a contrary trend.

Who’s culpable in these cases? A drunk who runs someone over doesn’t get to invoke his own impairment as an alibi; presumably there was some point at which he made a sober, conscious decision to start drinking, knowing the risks. But what if your CO orders you to get behind the wheel impaired? What if you get courtmartialled for refusing?

The individual human being is culpable, morally. The soldier who knows that the mechanical device will allow him to kill others with his subconscious is like the drunk who makes the decision to get into the car. He might not have used direct volition to commit the act, but his decision to set in motion events that would result in death of another was freely-done.

Even the soldier who has been ordered by her CO to use the subconscious weapon in war is morally responsible for the death it causes. Legally, isn’t this a Nürnberg situation? “I was only following orders” didn’t cut it for WW2 crimes, why should it for crimes by neuroweapon?

And, Thank You. Starting with the definition is my favorite MO, because, technically speaking, all of science is supposed to work that way, with definitions first, then later we can revise them as the experimental results dictate. Where you draw the borders of items is vitally important to clear thinking and cogent discussion of them.

Also, I like this definition, so of course I approve. I’ve mentioned before that all this free-will stuff, and the when-do-I-perceive-my-decisions-as-having-been-made hoopla, becomes moot if each of us is a city, a community, a corporation, a tiny world. In a corporation, some decisions are made by the top layers of the origanization, but many are made independently under general directives from above, and most are made autonomously by lower-level decision makers. However, the actions as seen from the outside are that the business acts as a unit, in one direction, with one intent. Mostly.

Same thing here – if the aggregate response of the whole community/being is to shoot a policeman in the head, since we can’t punish parts of the brain separately, the whole being gets the needle. The self remains ultimately culpable in this scenario. Absolutely.

The only way this becomes a problem is if we assume perfect justice when we weigh culpability, and that’s not part of our scenario, unless we want to wander off into evaluations using Abrahamic religions, and NObody wants to discuss religion, right? *smile*

In the meantime, though, I bet I could wring a story or two out of this.

We’d enjoy it.

I shouldn’t have worried: ultimately, we’re still totally fucked.

How did I know you were going to say that? *strokes chin thoughtfully*

There’s something similar to these zombies being featured in “Dumbspeech”, isn’t there?