Non-existence as punishment : a hypothetical

Great Debates
1

A new technology comes around that allows us to erase people from existence, in the sense that they never existed in the first place. Every time this device is used, there’s no direct evidence of it actually working, because when you erase something from having existed, suddenly you now live in a new world where you had no idea of the thing or person you erased in the first place.

But rest assured the science is sound and to a fictitious outside-of-time observer, the device works as described.

So society decides to put it to use on those who commit the most seriously heinous crimes. Instead of the death penalty, now we sentence people to Non-existence. It is the most severe punishment the state can levy and is only used in violent and destructive crimes.

The benefits are that any victims are immediately restored as if the crime never happened in the first place, there is no chance of recidivism, and there is no ongoing prison cost. Also, the state isn’t depriving anyone of their life by killing them, they are simply denying their existing in the first place.

Since no one actually can recognize the device working by direct means, there isn’t much of a deterrent effect. Also, when the device is used, no one can ever know the potential positive effects a criminal’s existence may have had on the world. And furthermore we don’t learn from the serious mistakes of others because they just wouldn’t happen anymore.

However, after being used for several decades, violent crime rates drop off to 0, except in the cases where the criminal can’t be caught. Every time the device is used, it appears to be the first time, but with measurable statistics showing that ever since it was invented, violent crimes are way down to almost nothing, people know it is working. Even when people kill themselves during a crime, if they are posthumously convicted of a serious crime, they can be erased from history.

Some people wonder “well what happens instead of the person existing? Do his parents simply never have a child in the first place? Is a different child born?” The science is a bit fuzzy on this point but essentially nothing else changes in the universe except for the direct impact the target had due to his existence. So maybe a different person is brought into existence or maybe not. Unfortunately we don’t quite know.

So the debate is this: is this an ethical punishment? Is it better than the death penalty? Would you support it, if you lived in this world where violent crime had dropped off since it started being used?

2

Would I support the use of a device which could change my (and everyone else’s) life in unpredictable ways, several times a year?

After five seconds’ thought, no, I don’t think I would. I might change my mind after more thought, but I doubt it.

ETA: If it’s not clear, I’m assuming from your OP that all the butterfly effects of the erasee’s existence since birth also disappear, with unpredictable results. As a bad example (but maybe I can get it in under the edit window), maybe the guy once cut me off in traffic, which made me late for a party, which resulted in me going to a different party instead, where I met my wife.

3

And I hope this doesn’t derail the thread, but a question that would make me think more than five seconds is, if such a device existed, and I could use it on exactly one currently living person, who would it be?

ETA: I lied. Took me four seconds to think of W.

4

On top of the decision as to if it was a form of punishment we’d approve of, all sorts of abstracts come to mind like that.

I.E. if the person we make never exist never actually existed, how can he have committed the crime which resulted in us in making him not exist? Like going back in time and killing my parents before I was conceived. If I never existed how can I kill the people who made me exist? Which came first, the chicken or the egg physics.

People who smoke dope probably love thinking about this shit.:stuck_out_tongue:

5

Yes all the little effects would never happen either. And effectively, every time the device is used, it is the first time, because the other timeline simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Nevertheless, we have proof is working because the more we use it, the less crimes ever happen in the first place.

Sure, you may not meet your wife, but you probably meet someone just as good, and plus, nobody gets murdered.

No one is really sure how much existence and history as a whole change every time the device is used, but one thing is clear, and that is that violent crime now really doesn’t exist anymore, so people feel safer.

Nobody ever notices their lives changing either. So there is only a hypothetical worry.

6

People have debated forever about the deterrence factor of the death penalty. Your idea has no deterrence factor as the perp never existed. Plus it changes my life in ways I didn’t intend, destroying my free will. The criminal never existing may change something for the worst for me. Hate to say it, but people I don’t know getting murdered may not be the worst thing if their survival changes things in a negative way.

Maybe the guy the perp murdered later drives drunk and hits me head on. Under your idea The perp never existed, his former victim is dead and so am I. Under the current way the perp is in prison, his murder victim is still dead but I’m alive because the drunk who hit me was murdered before he could get drunk and hit me.

Or are you going to make the drunk not exist either now? You zap out his killer to zap him out. This goes into a long weird rabbit hole where the last guy remaining is the one with the “make them not exist machine.” And I’m certain I saw that guy on an old episode of Underdog.

7

I’d prefer it if there were a way to know it had happened. If we had a big memorial “wall of shame.” These people are so damn bad, we erased them from existence entirely.

Otherwise, it has some of the same problems as reincarnation and karma: we don’t have any way to remember what happened. How do we learn from it?

Still, yes, if there were a magic button like that, then I would favor its use. The trouble is that so would everyone else. We’d never find stability! You’d push the button to reverse the death of a loved one; I’d use it to prevent a war; some other guy would use it to upset the results of the Super Bowl!

Worse…as a side-effect, this would reverse other events. That novel I just finished writing? Gone. Two wonderful people falling in love and getting married? Too bad: never happened.

So…I favor its very limited use, and only in cases of very obvious harm to society. If the ICBMs are flying, then that’s a pretty good time to press the reset button. But just because of one jackass committing a single murder? No.

(This also invites Niven’s Law: the only “stable” time-line is one in which this technology is never invented.)

8

So pkbites, if someone you loved was murdered, and you lived in this universe, you would beg the state not to press the button? Would you prefer the death penalty?

What does deterrent effect matter in a world where murder and rapes almost never happen any more?
Also, if the device gets used on an innocent person, we would never know but it also may still prevent the crime.

9

How would we know there’s less crime? In fact if we used it enough we might ask "why are keeping this expensive reality alteration machine? There hasn’t been any violent crime in living memory! "

10

I don’t want my justice system to have revenge as its raison d’etre, so, no.

I would be interested in seeing what Matt Inman might do with the concept, though.

11

Because preventing crime at the cost of changing many peoples lives is not worth it.
Millions of horrible people have done things that would result in this punishment. That in turn would result in millions, even billions, if not everybody on Earth having their lives changed in several different ways. Per my drunk driver example those changes will not always be positive. The domino effect would be worse than the original horrible crime.

Think about all the variables and tangents that would happen just by one person that did exist all of a sudden having never existed. Now multiple that by infinity.

Didn’t Doc Brown go over all this 30 years ago?

12

To say nothing of George Bailey, who did it close to seventy. :smiley:

13

Take the criminal and completely erase their memories. Everything they have experienced and learned is now a blank slate. Send them through a specific education program to retrain them on how to live their new life. This is actually the idea I had for a video game that takes place in the far future where heinous criminals go through a program called Hard Reset to have their minds wiped and re-educated and the player starts out waking up after his reset and tries to find out who he is by escaping the compound.

14

We would still have records and memories of when the machine was invented and what date it was slated to go into use. We can compare crime records before and after that time.

15

I don’t think so. The OP says we don’t have any way to perceive the machine working. The victim disappears…and so does his crime. The victim “was never killed,” and so we have no way to know such a crime ever happened.

16

Quite. The first person this machine should be used on is the person who invented it, for crimes against history. Then, of course, the machine would cease to exist as well, and we would be none the wiser.

Perhaps this sort of machine is invented on a regular basis, with the same results every time.

17

Exactly. ISTM we would be in a perpetual state of thinking we’ve never used the machine.

18

What happens to any children/grand children/etc of the erased person? What if he was a frequent sperm donor before turning to a life of crime?

19

All these would vanish too, and so would every record of them, and the consequences of every action they had ever taken. Vanishing people in this way would cause a butterfly effect that would change the whole world.

20

In this case it would be no deterrent at all.