[ExI] What is Grace?

[Stefano Vaj]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> Two problems (at least, beyond the "don't be bloody ridiculous" objection
> from almost everyone else out there):
> This "medicalizes" crime. That might be justified, but many will see the
> suggestion as an affront.
> And this is a really powerful memetic way to contaminate cryonic suspension
> with the taint of punishment and murder.
> You might, though, get away with doing it *after* cryonics is accepted
> widely, *then* conscripting it as a replacement for judicial life-taking.
> Other than that, it's a quite elegant way to use cryonics, since for many
> pro-execution people it can be sold as the moral equivalent of death and for
> anti-execution people the moral equivalent of life imprisonment. But the
> former might balk at paying indefinitely for someone they want snuffed out,
> while the latter might see it as either judicial murder in disguise or as a
> sort of soft option once recovery has been demonstrated.

You steal a few objection from my lips.

But then I have some additional ones.

I have the feeling that especially in the US many "hardliners" see
criminal sentences as a form of biblical retribution ("you did the
crime, you do the time"), and the convicted felon as a sinner; while
many "softliner" see the convicted felon as a sick person in need of
psychiatric help.

Actually, while criminal punishments may *also* offer some moral
satisfaction to the victim and appease the moral outrage of the
public, its essential purpose is to deter a number of behaviours -
sometimes rather exotic and not necessarily "immoral" but for the fact
of being illegal - from being adopted by *rational* deciders (who are
supposed to compare the expected dividends against the likely sentence
multiplied the changes of being caught red-handed).

In fact, people who are irrational enough to be in need of a "cure"
are (or should) not be punishable *even today*, being exempted by the
McNaughton rules or their continental equivalents.

Now, cryonic suspension would not serve any conceivable purpose in
this respect.

It would not allow us to "cure" people who were never insane in the
first place, nor, admitting that expectation of resurrectin becomes
widespread, it could be seen as a factor significantly altering what
is perceived as the most convenient course of action by those
contemplating crime as an option.

-- 
Stefano Vaj