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it's also sad because Simon has amazing pixel art graphics.

Every person has the natural right to life.  Anyone who purposely and unjustly takes that right from another revokes their own.

Great! That's a step. So you're saying that when you purposely (intent) and unjustly (without accepted * by whom? * moral foundation) takes a life, you forfeit all societal protection and human rights?

Questions about that. What is the nature of intent? Does free will come into play? Can you entertain the notion that someone might not be at all in control when he commits a violent crime? Are there extenuating circumstances? Do they come into play in your supposition? Do you mean that when someone is found to have commited a crime after cold calculation and when he was of complete control of his actions, only then the first part of your supposition has been met? What happens to not-so-black-and-white situations?

Also, about justice and acting on just cause. Where do you draw the line? If I kill someone when the overwhelming majority considers it the right thing to do, is that then just? Does majority rule in your justice? Or is the law more abstract, and only when the law says I can kill then I can kill? And then, doesn't the majority shape the law through various measures? Is there a higher order than law tha dictates justice to look to? Or is there some other individual justice, sense of morality that could justify the killing of another?

So, now, tell me a few things about society. What's the point of laws in a society? Is protection the biggest imperative? If so, does communal protection ever override or overvalue personal protection? Communal good versus personal good?

Is it to society's benefit that the person who kills is killed? Does society specifically benefit any less if the person who kills is removed from society without losing his life? Why is that step necessary? Is it for the vindication of the victim's family, or for some other reason? What about punishment and vindication, where do you stand on those?

ManicMatt: I suggest you stay away from this thread

I am not arguing whether it is lawful to execute people in the USA where you live. Is anyone doing this in this thread? I am arguing on the moral implications of capital punishment, the assumptions it makes about state authority, the value of human life, utilitarianism, and effectively whether it SHOULD be lawful to execute people. You see, this is called a theoretical discussion on a subject. Not a factual examination, because the facts are easy to esthablish: the US endorses capital punishment. It has arrived to this practice through sound, lawful means, therefore it's endorsement is also lawful at this time. There. Fact. Truth. We're not talking about that. We're presenting ethical viewpoints one step back from the facts. Explaining what we feel life is and how it should be treated. And ultimately, examining state - citizen relations in the context of crime, rehabilitation, punishment, death.


I am asking you to present to me, the clear foundations of your personal ethics. The axioms on which your further argumenting SHOULD rest. If such exist, please post them so I know where you're coming from. I am not interested in convincing you of anything, I just want to understand where you're coming from. I did as much, I placed the value of human life outside the scale of other human commodities and suggested that the value of human life is therefore unquantifiable and under no circumstances should the state call for taking it away and consider this action ethically fortified. My ethical axioms are as ungrounded as anyone elses. There's no subjective morality. So, where are you coming from? What's your founding ethical beliefs? Can you help me understand without resorting to equalizing RIGHT with LAWFUL for once?

You have a knack for wording your opinions into seeming facts, but still, you're presenting no viable argument on WHY it's just to take someone's life. You just repeat your point without fleshing out the concepts that -I hope- are at it's foundation. I'm not expecting proof or anything, since this an ethical manner. I'm expecting to see how you arrive from your axiomatic ethics to the conclusion that the state has the right to take human lives. Explain what those axioms are for me. Explain what the value of human life amounts to, in your system of belief, explain what the social contract you're participating in with your state is. Stop giving me the headlines, I've heard them all before.

I can say that it's bad and that's my personal opinion. I don't attribute any objective weight to value judgements I make.

Yeah, his victims' desire for life didn't stop him from killing them, because he was a murderer. Their deaths were anything but justified. And now you're telling me that the state can operate like a murderer as well, just as long as it's dealing with a murderer? If you're unjust and take a life, then it's open season for you and you relinquish all human rights? Off with your head?

Because it was badly paced, unevenly written, had silly puzzles, provided no motivation for the player, and bland graphics, sterile graphics devoid of any art direction that would hopefully make the game world interesting to traverse?

but is merely a "delayed" death sentence - we're removing their lives from them, anyway; wouldn't it be more humane to end it quickly?

People keep saying this and it amazes me how easy it must be to so easily quantify what life and death is. Oh sure, life impisonment is just a "delayed" death sentence. Anybody would choose a quick death over 25 years in prison, right? Where do you get off? How can you so confidently say this in the place of the people who are in that position? Doesn't their opinion count? Doesn't the fact that people actively DO NOT WANT TO DIE and prefer to remain alive, even if it means in prison for the rest of their lives mean anything to you? How do you find it so easy to make that assumption? A human life is unquantifiable, it's not societal macromanagment 'oh we're burning too much electricity better flick off a few power users' and death is theory. Nobody knows what death is. How can you theoretically send off people to it so easily? Do not tread so lightly.

I've played syberia and it's very bad.

Hey, nik

sure

[against the death penality]

Nikolas, you've posted that you are against the death penality about 35 times in this thread so far. I'd say it's um, clear. Yes.

he means that the concept that society will collapse without the death penality is rubbish.

No no, it's good it's the wuss mode one. So hopefully people will get the chance to finish it even if they're not the obsessive compulsive type.

And Rui, thank you.

you took it too far back. Of course any system of discource is based on assumptions and the like even language makes assumptions. The fact that I have to say 'I. have. to. say', subject, verb, object suggests self-will, so here's a very common assumption that however is probably false. The issue I have with the simplification of the text you posted is that it's OVERsimplified to the degree that it becomes a useless tool for examination of real life. To say that the colour of a fabric is red is a simplification (since we know the qualities of light etc create the illusion of colour, and that there is no colour really) but if the discussion is about different fabrics and colours they have, this is a simplification that can stand the relatively humble tests the discourse will put it through.

But to approach human action, human interaction, criminal behaviour and the various internal workings of the human psyche from the foundation that WE ARE FREE TO CHOOSE OUR ACTIONS and WE ARE RATIONAL BEINGS and WE OPERATE ON A PLEASURE/PAIN DICHOCTOMY is just... so stupid it hurts. It's like approaching the development of adventure games, believing every engine you might use will have a 'MAEK MY GAEM' button.

And yeah, capitalism isn't much to my taste. Seems like it's not to the taste of the opressed around the world too! Imagine that!

(1) The human being is a rational actor, (2) Rationality involves an end/means calculation, (3) People (freely) choose all behavior, both conforming and deviant, based on their rational calculations, (4) The central element of calculation involves a cost benefit analysis: Pleasure versus Pain,

This is as far as I got. Rediculous. The human being is not a 'rational actor'. We are acting on predetermined paths where everything we've experienced and our genetic makeup and our instinctual drives lead us to the only non-choice we never had to make. We are bystanders, watching our own lives. There's no free will, and this behaviourist attempt to codify human action in oversimplified cause-and-effect models -whereas comforting and simple- is just comforting and simple. Human existence is very complicated, there's a complex structure where everything interfaces with everything, and people watch their bodies do strange things, they watch as they make mistakes, they watch as they cry and repent, and they watch as they make the same mistakes again. Automation and synchronicity. The sense we make out of life is the sense we apply to it. We are not 'rational actors', in some retarded pre-socratic hedonist quest for maximal pleasure versus minimal pain. There's SO MUCH going on in the head of a human being, this analysis, even if it's just for criminal behaviour fails to cover even the bases.

Do you have any other texts you want me to half-read?

I think you mean elastic, not inelastic.

And I will read the essay you linked. Right now. And come back here.

From a logical standpoint, say you're a rational criminal and you are going to rob a liquor store. Would you pick a store where you know everyone inside has a gun and knows how to use one? Probably not. The risks of yourself getting hurt outweigh the benefits you can gain from stealing the money in the register.
This is the same reason why schoolyard bullies won't attack kids his size or bigger.

If you think the mindset of a desperate man about to rob a place is that of calm rationalization of odds and chances, then I think you don't know what you're talking about. I've been in fights with people far larger than me, and they resulted to my getting beat up, and I can safely discern that this would be the most probable scenario, but sometimes you do things when you're very angry or desperate or other combinations of strong emotions overtake you that you can't calculate in the terms you're using. Violent crimes are not HEAT-type calcualted assault and robberies always. Sometimes you have a gun in your hand and you want to kill somebody who annoys you.

Helm, a proof relying on a degree of statistical significance (which relies on a preset level for the p-value) is FAR weaker than a logical proof. There are two many confounding factors between states to establish a correlation with those studies.

You're right, a proof relying on statistical evidence is weaker than a logical proof. I'll spare you the (sic) thing because it's annoying, but I'd just like to point out that i'm not trying to 'prove' anything here, merely present theories. This is not number theory, we're not proving anything. This is examining society, and the depth of one's argumenting can never be deep enough to be considered anything else than a probable or improbable theory. But anyway yeah, you know what's even weaker than a position based on statistical evidence though? A proof that is neither based on logic nor on statistical evidence, and therefore only on the disparate connections the arguing party has chosen to point out, in the swarming sea of the most probables. Kinda like saying gun ownership in switzerland is the reason they don't have violent crime!

Is the reposted zip the repack version with the wuss mode in, or the original release that's almost impossible to beat?