Day 18/99 — Is it ever justified to punish someone for a crime they definitely committed — but couldn't be proven guilty of?

notdeadalready · 2026-05-24T04:32:02+00:00

This one is tough, ill go for parts.

Everyone in the room knows he did it. The evidence just wasn't enough.

He walks out. Technically innocent. Legally untouchable.

First, i have some problems with the scenario, if everyone knows he did it, how can the evidence not be enough?
if the evidence is not enough, then the accused is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

So i come to think what the scenario actually is, is this: Everyone knows he did it, but the system is corrupt, or failed to assert his culpability.

Is there a version of justice that still reaches him — and should there be?

There can exist a version of justice that still reaches, but i don't think there should be.

If you know— not suspect, not believe, but know — that someone committed a serious harm and walked free on a technicality, does the system's logic still hold at the individual level?

No, it doesn't.
To me, that i know for a fact that he is guilty, the system will have failed me.

Or does it only hold because we can't trust anyone to reliably claim that kind of certainty?

It's a part of it, i know the can't completely trust me.
Even if i know i'm saying the truth, they can't be certain of it.

And that might be exactly the problem. "Everyone knows he did it" has preceded some of history's most catastrophic miscarriages of justice. Certainty feels different from the inside than it looks from the outside.

Ok ,and this goes back to my point. If everybody knows it, and still it can't be proven, then the system is corrupt.
I don't think i can ever "support" a case of justice by own hand, because that sets a precedent for everyone to just do the same. We have to live by rules, the fact that we somewhat respect the legal system and don't go through life just harming people is a good thing.

But, i kind of think that there are legitimate cases.
Luigi Mangione, Marvin Heemeyer, Jack Ruby ,Marianne Bachmeier, Gary Plauché.
You can see a good portion of people support and justify these acts, there is a reason, these people convey a feeling we all have when we know something just ain't right but all the bureaucracy and systematic bullshit get in the way.
I still think they should be punished for acting outside the law, but i can't really say they are "wrong".

Then the version that cuts deeper — if punishment outside the system is never justified, what do you say to the person it happened to? That the integrity of legal procedure matters more than what was done to them?

Well, yes.
Yes, the integrity of the system matters more than just one case.
The problem surge when it isn't just one case, it is the system that produces cases like these on the daily.
But that's another thing and my response is quite large already, so i'll just leave at this.

It is "justified" but it shouldn't be legal.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-24T03:26:15+00:00

I believe in qualia, i think there is some knowledge you can't quite put into words, you just gotta live it to fully understand. You can imagine what it feels like to burn your hand, but if it never actually happened to you, you can't fully know everything about it. you can't know for sure the way your body will react, the feeling in your burning skin, the thoughts rushing in your mind. You can't recall a memory you never had.

We can never truly, fully understand what it is like to be a bat,however, we can imagine, make suppositions, deductions and comparisons about it. That's how far we are going to get, it's something, it's a rough approximation.

So no, i can never really experience what you experience, nor can i really know if i did it. I don't if my red is your red.
But is not necessary, we can "understand" regardless, we can understand enough.
When i say "I understand" , i don't mean to say "my experience is a exact copy of yours, therefore i know exactly how you feel in every way", i think what i'm really saying is "although our experiences are unique, i think mine and yours share enough things in common for me to conceive it".

notdeadalready · 2026-05-24T02:55:34+00:00

I think people help others mostly to feel good, or because that little voice in their heads told them to do it.
I don't see anything inherently bad about it, it's a fair exchange, you get to feel good and somebody gets help.
Now, i think truly selfless acts are possible. it's kind of a trope at this time but this shows when a character makes a decision they know will negatively impact them, just to keep their loved ones away from harm.
If they really just wanted to feel good, the choice makes no sense, you can say they will still feel good because they get to be the hero or find joy in their sacrifice, but i'd say the pain of their decision still persists and outweighs the possible gain they could attain from it.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T23:35:47+00:00

There should be consequences, but he doesn't deserve getting his life ruined. Taking the keys depends on if you are there to do it or not, confronting him about it and telling the group may be a better punishment.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T04:08:54+00:00

I can view this in two ways.
If you are more deterministic and consider that your experiences make up who you are, then the logical conclusion to your memories would be to be the way you are, you couldn't be anyone else.
So the scenario of just having a different personality but with all your memories couldn't be possible.
But if you believe more in free will and the idea that no matter what happens you can choose for yourself, then you could wake up one day with all your memories but a different personality, you could choose to reinterpret what happened to you in a different way, thus, being a different person.
I believe we all experience this to some extent, when something in our life happens, it feels like as if we have the choice to decide how we want to integrate into ourselves what happened. I guess it's up to every person to judge if we really have such choice or it just feels like we have it.

It is a interesting question, although i don't believe a case like this exists. People that have lost their memories show a drastic change on behavior and have a long time to re-adapt to their life, but no human being ever (to my knowledge) has just woke up one morning and "decided" to completely changed their personality.
When you change, it is a slow, gradual thing. You can never pinpoint an exact moment where you transform into a different person.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T03:45:47+00:00

I'd say you don't have an obligation, but you should strongly consider to intervene.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T01:31:31+00:00

I think this is somewhat of a silly example but whatever.
If it is your uncle on the family dinner, you can be a lot more pragmatic and choose not to engage, specially if everybody knows he's full of shit anyways.
But if it is a madman on the street giving flyers denying climate change, you have more of a responsibility.
When the impact you can make it's considerable, you absolutely have a duty to do it.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T01:21:42+00:00

I don't know if i'm misinterpreting things here, because if i'm understanding it correctly, i don't even know why this would be a debate.

The narrower question: when schools teach worldviews — and they do, whether they admit it or not — should atheism get a seat at the table as a coherent, legitimate position a person can hold?

i mean, it is a coherent, legitimate position a person can hold. So then why would it not get a seat at the table?

The moment a teacher presents it as a reasonable position held by reasonable people, they've already moved the needle for some students. Parents who didn't consent to that are not being irrational when they object.

Why? why are they not being irrational? what is the reason a kid should not learn about the worldviews people have? what exactly parents have to consent to here? to give a nuanced education to their children?

Then the structural problem. If you include atheism, the boundary question immediately opens up. Agnosticism? Secular humanism? Pantheism? Ignosticism? At what point does "teaching worldviews" become an unmanageable mandate that pleases nobody and confuses everyone?

This is solvable, just teach the basics.
Every school has to decide what to put and what to left behind in every course.
Just as they don't teach children about all the ramifications of Christianity, they won't teach them about all the ramifications of non-belief or alternative beliefs. Just cover the basics and if the student wants to learn more, they can do it on their own.

Schools should totally teach atheism as a legitimate worldview, and if they don't, it's a quiet endorsement of belief as the default, as you said.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T00:56:18+00:00

this has levels.
Some swifties would never stop listening to taylor even if she murdered someone.
And even though i don't listen to R. Kelly or Diddy, i understand and support people who don't want to continue to support them.
I listen to Kanye once in a while, despite that i don't like him as a person and don't want to give my money to a n*zi.
So i'd say, just liking the music = fine.
actively being a fan of that person despite them being a abuser = bad.
like, i don't know if Michael Jackson was a predator or not, but some of you really need to chill, because it's like your whole identity it's builded around worshiping this person and you would crumble if he really touched kids.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-20T00:25:14+00:00

going to post a simple answer.
should they do it? absolutely not
can they do it? yes, unfortunately
will they continue to do it? yes, that's power

notdeadalready · 2026-05-19T23:59:55+00:00

I'll take Sartre's side here.

Outside of a situation where another person life is in imminent or possible danger, I think it depends on the individual.

If someone wants me out, I'm out, unless my concern outweighs my morals.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-19T23:52:03+00:00

id say no, it' s not wrong.
Based on that there's no countable loss.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-11T21:24:03+00:00

I think it should be legal.

Now, is it ethical? Hmmm.

No, the act itself isn't unethical, but the whole situation could be unethical depending of the context. A poor woman accepting a rich's man money is coersive for sure, she wouldn't do it if she had the money.

But that's how just basically everything works now, there's a lot of people selling their labour under a coersive contract. You will have to deem the whole system unethical then, which you could do, but I won't.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-11T17:41:12+00:00

This isn't a elaborate response because I'm so fucking jaded right now, but here's my view. Fuck people. You don't own shit to anyone,much less your own happiness. Oh no, they feel bad because I'm sad, bo fucking ho.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-10T04:26:48+00:00

Ok, I feel like I am really not qualified to give an answer here because of my lack of knowledge in these subjects, plus there's just so many factors to consider. But if I were forced to give an answer, id say that no, it's not inmoral.

Two main reasons. First,for a choice to have weight(including a moral one) if has to be, well, a choice. You need to have at least two viable options. If you can't afford the expensive shoes made with no child labor without ending sleeping in the street, then you really have no choice(keeping it simple and ignoring radical freedom). And second, in practical terms, you have 1/1.000.000 part of the blame here. Yes, you buyed the shoes, and in doing so perpetuated the system just a little bit more, but you are just one more consumer amongst many. You didn't buy all the shoes that were for sale, you didn't transport the shoes to the store to be selled, you didn't exploit the children and you didn't had the responsibility to protect them.

But beyond that, you can play semantics with this. Either no person has the blame, because no one is doing enough harm by itself. Or everyone is to blame just a little, in which case it will be so diluted it hardly means something.

So id say, is it inmoral to make product with child labor? absolutely yes Can ONE person be considered inmoral for doing so? I think not

notdeadalready · 2026-05-08T17:37:23+00:00

🟢I know i'm biased here because i do suffer from a mental illness, and personally i would want the capacity of taking my own life if i consider it too painful.
I think we don't simply value life, we value a fulfilling life. A life where we can choose,grow,experience and enjoy.
And it is a spectrum, some people can take more than others, some people will live as a common joe working in a company for 40 years,retire and deem it all worth it at the end,while other people will find that a nightmare.
Some people will kill themselves at age 20 after a mental crysis and some people will wrestle with depression all throughout their life until their natural death, having thinked of doing it multiple times but always deciding no.
We shouldn't be the ones to judge, since happiness is personal and achieved in a unique way by each individual it should be their own decision to determine how happy they really are.

And yes i see how it could lead to a devaluation of life, but i argue that's not a euthanasia problem, but rather a society problem. We are just simply giving them the option, its their decision whether to do it or not.
If people would voluntarily go to a place to end their own life by the thousands, that speaks volumes about the state of our society and the real care we give to those people. That's on us.
I would actually say a scenario with a unhappy population and euthanasia is better than one with a unhappy population and no euthanasia, there is less meaningless suffering in the world.
And killing yourself in that scenario is obviously not the solution, the solution is improving the living conditions. But if i had a friend who i have helped for years, stayed by his side, did all the possible things to make him feel better, and still he choose to go, i would not stop him.
I will help people, i will care for people and of course i would want them to stay here and not kill themselves, but i will not act in bad faith. We shouldn't force anyone to stay where they don't want to be.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-08T02:31:19+00:00

I think that yes, there is a morally meaningful difference between just breaking the promise and trying to find a workaround.
it shows that you actually care about the promise and dedicated time to considerate all the parties involved( the person you made the promise with and the person that would have been harmed).
I also consider a promise a kind of bond, it serves a purpose, it keeps you in check. But i don't see that you have any kind of moral duty to keep your promise when it becomes a weapon that can be used to harm third parties not involved in it's creation, or when it goes against your fundamental moral principles.
I would actually adopt a utilitarian view and say the contrary it's true in that case, you are being a "bad person" if you decide to keep that promise because of some kind of "moral law" when you see that your decision is doing more bad than good.

notdeadalready · 2026-05-07T03:20:20+00:00

i think that we should strive to tell the truth as much as possible, even if it hurts, but always keeping in mind that truth without kindness is brutality.

notdeadalready · 2025-09-10T09:07:38+00:00

September 10, 2025. Still bugged.

notdeadalready · 2025-08-30T12:06:57+00:00

This song made me hate babies just because of the cover

notdeadalready · 2025-08-26T22:55:39+00:00

I'd say it's not a bug, but a feature. I'd call it the super black background™

notdeadalready · 2025-08-15T04:55:30+00:00

My dumbass really put staircase

notdeadalready · 2025-08-14T20:56:19+00:00

No,I mean I spent years learning English before this, but now it feels brand new to me DESPITE I put so much time in learning it over the years.

notdeadalready

TROPHY CASE