Nice, France thread

[Serbia]

Random bullshit nonsense

Shut the fuck up, sym. Shut the fuck up.

[patches70]

Just to be clear, that's the second of the two definitions you posted, rather than the first.

Of course it is. The first definition is synonymous with "Illegal" Extralegal and illegal aren't used interchangeably because they don't mean the same thing, and that's a shitty definition. I should have used this-
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... tCLMDNNxMg

which doesn't have that first definition.

Dukasaur, in this case, would be arguing for such torture being brought within the scope of law, rather than established illegal tortures being made legal?

I kind of read his post the other way. That he wanted illegal tortures to become legalised punishments.

I need you to read these two sentences. Carefully. I've read them three times now. You said the exact same thing in both sentences. The bold, if you bring something within the scope of law, it is no longer extralegal. It is either legal or illegal. In this case making torture legal.
In your second sentence you read that Duk wanted illegal tortures to become legalized, or in other words, brought into the scope of the law.

I read it like I did taking Duk's meaning because he specifically used the word extralegal. He doesn't want established law messed with, he just wants these scumbags to get tortured and not have anyone go to prison for doing it. That is extralegal.


Now if you wanted to go with that first definition that you seem to be focusing on, then you have to use it right. For instance, if you believe or there is a law or precedent or statute that said something to the effect "the State is incapable of committing a crime". Then agents of the State commit a crime and are not charged, not prosecuted or anything because as agents of the State what they do cannot be considered a crime (even if it fucking is the bastards) you now get into extralegality. More accurately and a better word would be "privilege", which means "private law". As in one set law for the pleebs and another set of law for the State and the agents of the State.

That's why that first definition is bunk. It's just a bad definition when other words work better for any instance that definition might be applied.
Extralegal means outside the scope of law. That's the only definition that matters.
I believe Duk knows that, thus why I conclude what I think he meant by it.

[patches70]

And serbia has a point. I don't even know why I'm bothering. Sym, why don't you just stop trolling duk in this thread at least?
I'm sure Bernie or mswdlk is around somewhere.

[riskllama]

sym, we had a discussion about you a while back in the PL - wondering if u were like this in real-life situations. i came to the conclusion that you couldn't possibly be like this irl because you'd constantly be walking into things because your eyes would be swollen shut, you'd have to live off milkshakes and smoothies because your jaw would be wired up and you'd be unable to troll the internet because you'd be unemployable & destitute due to your constant "symmetryness". why do you continue down this path? i'm sure i have no idea...
i'm beginning to wonder if you're really even gay, dude...

[Dukasaur]

Thanks for having faith in me, patches, but it may be misplaced. I wasn't engaging in any really deep thoughts there. I was thinking that people like the ones that betiko described in the initial quote, (https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewt ... 5#p4839178) "they told him to fill the truck with heavy stuff and to remove the breaks, and that they will have fun watching him do it", that for such people none of our conventional punishments are adequate. Throwing them in jail simply isn't even 1% enough punishment for the evil they represent. Even killing them is woefully inadequate. Death is just too swift. For all the suffering they have caused to others, to the dozens of direct victims and the hundreds of indirect victims (people who have lost their lovers, friends, siblings, children, parents, etc.) they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Of course, the problem with arranging it for them is that there isn't anyone whom I trust to use that kind of power wisely. Certainly not mechanisms as inherently corruptible as governments. The biggest study done in the U.S. suggests that 4% of executed convicts were innocent, which is a lot of innocent dead people. And that's in the U.S., where there are fairly strong safeguards for the rights of the accused. In some countries where there's a lot less concern for fair trials and such, I suspect the error rate is considerably higher.

I think if we allowed legal tortures the error rate would be similar, and it's just too much power to give to the government. If there was a real movement to bring back legal torture, I would oppose it, for the same reason I oppose capital punishment. It's not that there aren't lots of criminals who deserve to die -- because there are -- but that this power is not something that people as irresponsible as the government should be trusted with.

It's too bad I'm an atheist. It would be nice to console myself with the thought that even though we can't adequately punish these people in this life, at least they will suffer eternal torment in the next. Unfortunately, I don't believe that.

[mrswdk]

Ah yes, torture for the sake of punishing someone. Great stuff, Duk.

After you've finished stabbing wrong-doers in the eyes with toothpicks just to vent your anger at them, perhaps we could revive dunking women in ponds to find out if they're witches as well.

[Bernie Sanders]

Is Duk pulling the wings off flies again?

[patches70]

I can understand the sentiment Duk, I don't agree nor condone, but I at least understand.

[mrswdk]

I can understand the sentiment Duk, I don't agree nor condone, but I at least understand.

I think we all have strong enough reading comprehension to understand what it is that Duk is advocating.

[patches70]

I was thinking that people like the ones that betiko described in the initial quote, (https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewt ... 5#p4839178) "they told him to fill the truck with heavy stuff and to remove the breaks, and that they will have fun watching him do it", that for such people none of our conventional punishments are adequate. Throwing them in jail simply isn't even 1% enough punishment for the evil they represent. Even killing them is woefully inadequate. Death is just too swift. For all the suffering they have caused to others, to the dozens of direct victims and the hundreds of indirect victims (people who have lost their lovers, friends, siblings, children, parents, etc.) they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

There is no need for extralegal actions in this case because there are legal means already in place for these individuals. They sound like accomplices and accomplices after the fact. Even the egging on of someone into committing a crime is a crime in itself with laws and punishments already in place.

In France's wisdom they have decided as a society that the murder of an individual does not deserve the death penalty because the death penalty is too extreme. Thus by extension the murdering of 84 people is not worthy of the death penalty.
Torture by your own admission and belief is worse than the death penalty. (Duk-"Even killing them is woefully inadequate. Death is just too swift...they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.")
So if the death penalty is too extreme, by admission, then torture is also too extreme.

You are correct in saying you weren't engaging in any real deep thoughts. You are engaging in wish fulfillment. I can understand.
Although, It has now become apparent to me that you used "extralegal" incorrectly. You just want those accomplices to die horrible, long and drawn out deaths but you don't trust yourself or anyone else to carry it out.


You are in one heck of a logic pickle, I'll give you that.

[patches70]

I can understand the sentiment Duk, I don't agree nor condone, but I at least understand.

I think we all have strong enough reading comprehension to understand what it is that Duk is advocating.

He's not advocating anything, he's just engaging in wish fulfillment, something everyone does to one degree or another.

[mrswdk]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

[Dukasaur]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Knowing that's what they deserve, but accepting the reality that there's no practical way we can give it to them without risking unacceptable social side effects, is not advocating it.

[Dukasaur]

Although, It has now become apparent to me that you used "extralegal" incorrectly. You just want those accomplices to die horrible, long and drawn out deaths but you don't trust yourself or anyone else to carry it out.

The last part is true, but the first part is not.

As you can see in the original statement, extralegal torture was given simply as an example of what I do NOT mean:
Subject: Nice, France thread

he wasn't that much of a lonewolf, he planned it with 3 or 4 of his long time friends. He had been looking at articles regarding people driving into crowds intentionally since a while from what they saw on his phone, some friends provided the gun, they went to rent the truck with him... they told him to fill the truck with heavy stuff and to remove the breaks, and that they will have fun watching him do it.

That's pretty fucked up. Killing them just isn't enough. They should bring back torture for crimes like that.

"Bring back'? What makes you think it ever left?

To be specific, I meant "bring back torture as a legally-sanctioned form of punishment for appropriately heinous crimes that one has been duly convicted of in a proper trial."

I understand that torture is used extra-legally by intelligence agencies and military forces to extract information, that it is used by dictators to exact revenge on their enemies, and by sexual sadists to derive excitement from. None of those meanings were the one I meant.

(emphasis added)

I never said I meant extra-legal tortures, I clearly said that I did not mean those. It was just part of an illustrative list of examples of what I did not mean. It was Sym who derailed the discussion by asking over and over again for a definition of extra-legal instead of asking anything about the main point.

[patches70]

Ok, then, makes sense. Sym seemed to me that he didn't even know what extralegal meant, as if he didn't believe it was a word.

[mrswdk]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Knowing that's what they deserve, but accepting the reality that there's no practical way we can give it to them without risking unacceptable social side effects, is not advocating it.

So if you believe they deserve to be tortured but you refuse to condone their torture, does that mean your stance is immoral?

Also, your argument is 'we shouldn't allow torture because sometimes the people being tortured would be innocent people punished by mistake'. Presumably you also oppose the use of prisons, fines and any other kind of punishment in general then?

[Dukasaur]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Knowing that's what they deserve, but accepting the reality that there's no practical way we can give it to them without risking unacceptable social side effects, is not advocating it.

So if you believe they deserve to be tortured but you refuse to condone their torture, does that mean your stance is immoral?

It means that I accept that there are limitations to what we can accomplish. Some of the injustices in the world simply cannot be fixed.

Also, your argument is 'we shouldn't allow torture because sometimes the people being tortured would be innocent people punished by mistake'. Presumably you also oppose the use of prisons, fines and any other kind of punishment in general then?

Problematic, isn't it?

[mrswdk]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Knowing that's what they deserve, but accepting the reality that there's no practical way we can give it to them without risking unacceptable social side effects, is not advocating it.

So if you believe they deserve to be tortured but you refuse to condone their torture, does that mean your stance is immoral?

It means that I accept that there are limitations to what we can accomplish. Some of the injustices in the world simply cannot be fixed.

Cop out.

If the overall impact of using torture as a punishment is detrimental, is the use of torture as a punishment not therefore immoral (following whatever definition of morality you subscribe to)?

[Dukasaur]

He's not advocating anything

See:

they deserve to suffer something on the scale of old-fashioned medieval tortures.

Knowing that's what they deserve, but accepting the reality that there's no practical way we can give it to them without risking unacceptable social side effects, is not advocating it.

So if you believe they deserve to be tortured but you refuse to condone their torture, does that mean your stance is immoral?

It means that I accept that there are limitations to what we can accomplish. Some of the injustices in the world simply cannot be fixed.

Cop out.

If the overall impact of using torture as a punishment is detrimental, is the use of torture as a punishment not therefore immoral (following whatever definition of morality you subscribe to)?

You can call it a cop out if you wish, but I see it as having the wisdom to accept that some problems just don't have really good solutions.

My economics textbook devoted a whole chapter to this problem. Given the fact that all information is imperfect, it is simply impossible to design a perfect justice system that will ensure all the guilty are punished and all the non-guilty are unpunished. Sometimes the innocent will be punished and sometimes the guilty will go free.

You cannot eliminate all the errors, but you can tinker with their ratio. Write the rules one way, and you can reduce the number of false positives (innocent being punished) at the cost of increasing the number of false negatives (guilty going free.) Write the rules a different way, and you can reduce the number of false negatives but at the cost of increasing the number of false positives.

As a society we decide how much we're willing to risk innocent people being punished versus how much we're willing to tolerate guilty people going free, and we adjust the rules. The answers to those questions are largely normative. There's no objective rule that can help you here. However, what most societies -- at least the democratic ones that are given a say in the matter -- have decided is that false positives are harder to bear if the punishment is more severe. We're willing to risk a higher level of false positives in exchange for fewer false negatives in civil court (where it's only money at stake) than in criminal court (where someone's life and liberty are in jeopardy). Consequently, civil court has lower standards of proof than criminal court.

Depending on the country, the rules are further split up in various ways. There are often higher safeguards in "superior" civil courts which deal with larger dollar sums than in "small claims" court which deals with smaller amounts, and there are higher safeguards in "capital" criminal cases where death or life imprisonment may be an option than in "summary" criminal cases where only short-term jail sentences are being contemplated. Again, it's done different ways in different countries, but overall the pattern is almost always that more severe punishments require a higher standard of proof, in order to reduce the number of false positives at the expense of some false negatives.

I'm not making any peculiar claims in saying that I don't trust the government to carry out extreme sanctions like death or torture, while I do trust them to carry out lesser ones. I may be drawing the line at a different level than you would, but the underlying logic is the same as what every society uses.

[DoomYoshi]

There are no innocent fucking victims. If you live on this planet you're guilty - period - f*ck you - End of report - Next case.

[mrswdk]

You can call it a cop out if you wish, but I see it as having the wisdom to accept that some problems just don't have really good solutions.

My economics textbook devoted a whole chapter to this problem. Given the fact that all information is imperfect, it is simply impossible to design a perfect justice system that will ensure all the guilty are punished and all the non-guilty are unpunished. Sometimes the innocent will be punished and sometimes the guilty will go free.

You cannot eliminate all the errors, but you can tinker with their ratio. Write the rules one way, and you can reduce the number of false positives (innocent being punished) at the cost of increasing the number of false negatives (guilty going free.) Write the rules a different way, and you can reduce the number of false negatives but at the cost of increasing the number of false positives.

As a society we decide how much we're willing to risk innocent people being punished versus how much we're willing to tolerate guilty people going free, and we adjust the rules. The answers to those questions are largely normative. There's no objective rule that can help you here. However, what most societies -- at least the democratic ones that are given a say in the matter -- have decided is that false positives are harder to bear if the punishment is more severe. We're willing to risk a higher level of false positives in exchange for fewer false negatives in civil court (where it's only money at stake) than in criminal court (where someone's life and liberty are in jeopardy). Consequently, civil court has lower standards of proof than criminal court.

Depending on the country, the rules are further split up in various ways. There are often higher safeguards in "superior" civil courts which deal with larger dollar sums than in "small claims" court which deals with smaller amounts, and there are higher safeguards in "capital" criminal cases where death or life imprisonment may be an option than in "summary" criminal cases where only short-term jail sentences are being contemplated. Again, it's done different ways in different countries, but overall the pattern is almost always that more severe punishments require a higher standard of proof, in order to reduce the number of false positives at the expense of some false negatives.

I'm not making any peculiar claims in saying that I don't trust the government to carry out extreme sanctions like death or torture, while I do trust them to carry out lesser ones. I may be drawing the line at a different level than you would, but the underlying logic is the same as what every society uses.

It is a cop out. You said people who do stuff like the Nice attack deserve to be tortured in retaliation, you then said you oppose giving anyone the power to torture them. In other words you are opposed to anyone doing the thing which you claim to believe is morally right, because it's difficult to make sure it's done properly.

Sounds like in your world view, there are a bunch of morally requisite behaviors which we should just give up pursuit of because the big bad world makes it too difficult to be moral.

Seems to be a common theme with you. Beats me why you cling onto the who morality thing in the first place, since it must surely make you feel terribly guilty all the time about your indifference to what you see as the world's ills.

[Symmetry]

Isn't it odd, that given the people who've taken the time to post their flames about trolling, that we still managed to have a genuinely interesting debate about legal definitions of torture?

Duke took a step back and offered a more nuanced view, Serbia threw his usual Freudian foul mouthed, tantrum. Patches started off with the troll stuff, but realised there was a discussion to be had.

[mrswdk]

'Extra legal' is a term used by people who want to avoid saying 'illegal' and bringing up all the negative connotations that come with recognizing something as illegal.

In this case clearly because Duk wishes the stigma around torture would be shed. Trying to play down the illegality of present day torture doesn't help the case though.

[Symmetry]

'Extra legal' is a term used by people who want to avoid saying 'illegal' and bringing up all the negative connotations that come with recognizing something as illegal.

In this case clearly because Duk wishes the stigma around torture would be shed. Trying to play down the illegality of present day torture doesn't help the case though.

It was always gonna be a dodgy term used in defense of an extremely nasty argument, to be fair.

[Beast Of Burson]

'Extra legal' is a term used by people who want to avoid saying 'illegal'

Extra-Legal is not illegal. It means Outside of the law. Illegal and extra legal are 2 different animals all together.

extra-terrestrial... "outside" of a planet
extra-marital affair.... having sex with somebody "outside" of your marriage.

Doesn't mean something is illegal.

Insider trading had no laws providing for it. Big Joe Kennedy made some of his fortune off of this, then when he became a Senator, he pushed to have the loophole closed. When he did it, it wasn't illegal... it was just "outside" the law at the time.

Now it is "inside" the written laws. Which means it is illegal to do it.

As far as torture goes:

Do I think SOME people deserve to be tortured for the things they have done? Abso-fucking-lutely! Is it allowed by Societal standards in the 21st century? Absolutely not.

What Duk is saying is that we cannot punish all crimes with the system we have created because there are too many loopholes allowing for these people to continue acting the fool. So do we just keep letting them do things against society because the current punishments do not work?

How many times do you see third time offenders go right back to jail? All the time here in the US.

Now tell me why MY tax dollars should support a person, that obviously will never stop what they are doing, because they know the punishment is a joke?

This should be the norm:

1st time, shame on you. Do your time
2nd time, you get twice the sentence.
3rd time, execution. You are a waste of skin and the taxpayers should not have to be burden with your upkeep.

Some people just don't care. Swift and severe punishment IS the ONLY answer.

Think - Clockwork Orange.