The big problem is that, like the death penalty, there’s no possibility of correcting an error.
What happens if we use this machine on an architect? If it erased everything the person did, that would be rather inconvenient for anyone inside a building they designed.
Nobody would be inside a building designed by a non-existent architect. Another architect would have gotten the contract. It’s kind of like this. If you got a bootleg copy of this device and used it on GWH Bush, that wouldn’t mean that we would have had twelve years of no President. (Four of Bush 1 and eight of Bush 2.) It wouldn’t mean that Reagan didn’t even have a Vice President. It just means that other people would have filled those positions.
I think that the idea of “killing” any offspring that a person would have had has to render this idea very immoral as it punishes people who didn’t commit the offense.
It punishes individuals who don’t actually exist. It’s no worse than using a condom to prevent the birth of a guy that doesn’t actually exist.
But *did *exist. “Erasing from existence” is not really different from “killing”, in this way. Someone existed and had a life. Now they don’t. And it wasn’t spontaneous, someone had to expend effort to achieve that state of affairs.
Let me put it another, non-logical, purely rhetorical way - the kind of people who erase all traces of people’s existence? That’s people like Stalin. I do not want to be like Stalin.
Wholeheartedly against it, but let’s go over the OP questions:
Is this an ethical punishment? No, because it has unknowable, widespread effects that go far, far, far beyond the immediate target. The most obvious one is erasing any children of the target from existence; that alone should close the issue right there. We don’t consider executing the children of a condemned criminal, because it’s completely bonkers.
Is it better than the death penalty? No, because the death penalty is relatively much more precise. We don’t execute criminals by blowing up the building they’re in, or putting them in a plane and crashing it somewhere randomly, or shoving them into traffic. Even those examples would likely be less damaging than a retroactive existence wipe.
Would I support it, if it existed and caused a sharp fall in violent crime? No, pretty much for the reasons I’ve already stated above. It’s reckless, cruel and unusual, has enormous potential for causing harm beyond the target, and is just generally terrifying. I would be positively terrified to live in a world where such a device existed.
Albert Abattoir Jr invented a vaccine that prevents AIDS, all cancers, all influenza and athlete’s foot. To celebrate, his father Albert Abattoir Sr goes on a 3 month drinking binge raping and killing (not necessarily in that order) over 2000 men, women and llamas.
Do you erase Abattoir Sr from existence?
I was thinking the exact same thing. If all *solved murders are annulled from reality, then it looks from the altered frame of reference as if murder is just unsolvable. Plus you would have to be taking it on faith that the reason the crime stats drop and plateau at a lower level() after a specific date is this device that you can never prove.
(* …and why presume that violent crime goes down to near zero? Doesn’t that assume that almost all violent crimes ARE solved AND the right person convicted [or that only a few criminals commit the vast majority of all crime]?)
Well, true… But Stalin executed criminals – I mean, real criminals, murderers and rapists. Does not wanting to be like Stalin mean that if he liked oatmeal for breakfast, you’d refuse to eat oatmeal?
Stalin’s activities were political crimes; it wouldn’t be legal here, or in any of the industrial democracies. But the OP is proposing something that would have the full legal support of “due process,” as capital punishment does today.
If it could somehow magically be made to affect the criminal only, without erasing the existence of his offspring, or negating any of the good things he may have done in his life – i.e., maybe when he was fifteen, he reported a fire to the fire department: we don’t want that action retroactively nullified – then “non-existence” would be pretty much the same as execution.
If we could, further, magically use this to retroactively negate the specific crime that he committed – his murder victim magically returns to life, and, in fact, never even knows he or she was murdered – then, yes, definitely, this is the greatest thing ever.
But those are ideals that, as far as I can tell, the OP’s hypothesis does not entail.
Don’t be disingenuous. I clearly mean I don’t want to be like Stalin in the matter under discussion. Stalin breathed too, and I’m going to keep on doing that…
So there was never a committee to erase Communists from Hollywood?
I didn’t say I didn’t want to be like Stalin because of any legalisms. I don’t want to be like Stalin because it was morally wrong.
So this is execution with collateral damage, and that makes it better?
Leaving his victim free to rape 10 more kittens before being caught…
Then you got to use the machine on him. But if he doesn’t exist, then he couldn’t be murdered - does that restore his murderer to life? I’m so confused…
Yep, and I dealt with the OP as written.
This excuse is weak. Stalin criminally made people “not exist.” The OP is talking about a legal process. You can’t poison the well selectively.
You misread what was written: I was positing an execution without collateral damage.
Very possibly, yes. Is it your contention that murder is acceptable if it is a bad person who is murdered? The law does not reason in this way.
Shrug. Time-travel paradoxes are an entirely different thread.
If this punishment exists, but if knowledge of the “erased” person disappears from everyone’s knowledge, then there’s another wrinkle besides nobody ever knowing if it actually works – the “punishment” arguably doesn’t make an effective deterrent. Nobody knows anyone who has been “disappeared”, by definition. Nobody even knows of anyone who has been “disappeared”. So how can it act as a deterrent?
You could say that the mere threat of the punishment ought to be an effective deterrent, since it would be an awful fate. But, since nobody knows if the device actually works (since, if it works as advertised, that’s impossible), what you are threatening people with is not an effective deterrent. You might as well tell them that if they’re bad the Invisible Pink Unicorn will get them. It’s only a half step removed from telling people that you’ll retaliate against illegal parking with the use of nuclear weapons.
What “excuse”? I’m saying I don’t want to be like Stalin, what does it matter whether what Stalin did was legal or not? I mean, owning slaves used to be legal, are you going to argue, if I say I don’t want to be like some slaveholder, that it’s OK because it was legal?
Um, I don’t think you even know what I’m talking about - I’m not talking about executing people (which, in any case, I don’t know that he didn’t do it legally, he very well might have had a legal basis) - I’m talking about editing them out of photos and books. I doubt very much this was illegal at that time for him to have done.
The OP asked what I thought the ethical thing to do was. I answered. You’re the only one bringing up legality like anyone else cared.
It’s a huge mistake to conflate ethical with legal.
No, you misread what I meant by “this” - by which I meant the OP’s hypothetical.
No. It’s my contention that not knowing the consequences of your actions doesn’t allow you to trumpet the supposed benefits: “Oh look, we erased this murder, now Bob gets to live” “Oh, look, I see Bob managed to take out 5 million people in Existan with his nuke. Guess we better erase him.” “Oh look, those wacky Existanians have genocided 10 million Yvanians. Guess we go back to the rabbit hole and see how far we can go”
I’m reminded of the end of The World’s End, where only 3 non-blanks can be found.
This isn’t a time travel paradox, it’s an existential one.
We can never know the consequences of wearing a condom to prevent an egg fertilization. This doesn’t mean that wearing a condom is unethical, even though a slippery-slope argument very similar to the one you just made could also be made for wearing condoms.
Erasing bad people from history in the way the OP described would have unintended consequences, yes. Everything anyone has ever done had unintended consequences. All we can do is make our best guess at what’s likely to happen.
I don’t think the world would be a worse place if there was never another psychopath born, do you? If you agree, then what precisely is the functional difference between that and the OP? The machine would actually never “erase” anyone, and from everyone’s perspective, it’s never even activated.
See post 47.
See the first post of the OP. Hell, re-read the OP.
The daughter you never had because you spooged into a condom the night she would have been conceived will now never be able to invent faster-than-light travel. Do you want to ban condoms now?
Point is, you can create any silly hypothetical to argue against any decision anyone could ever make. Doesn’t make it a good argument.
You’re missing the point. The machine never has to be turned on. If it ever would be turned on, history is rewritten to create a situation in which the machine was never used. The machine just creates a world in which nobody ever becomes a monster. It doesn’t “kill” or “erase” people in any sense, because those very people never even existed. The machine just sits there, unused, while the worst crimes of humanity just stop happening. From literally anybody’s perspective, there’s no way to even tell if the machine even works.
You really don’t see the difference is, do you? Do you mind telling me how I know what my daughter is going to invent before she is born?
In the scenario in post 47, Albert Abattoir Jr is already born. We reasonably know that when the machine is used on his father, Albert Abattoir Jr will also be erased along with all of his vaccines that help millions. Albert Abattoir Jr knows his father is sentenced to have the machine used on his father, and has to live with the agony of knowing that although it was his father that committed heinous crimes, he and his accomplishments will also receive the same sentence. Albert Jr’s six siblings also will be erased along with his fourteen nieces and nephews. This is the same as using a condom?
I don’t understand this. You say the machine never has to be turned on, then say “if it ever would be turned on…”
Yes, in the Op’s scenario, the machine IS and HAS been turned on many times. So many, that “violent crimes are way down to almost nothing.”
No, it doesn’t. Each time it’s used, it erases ONE person that would have become a monster. There are still monsters in the making.
Of course they existed.
They don’t “just” stop happening- they happen AFTER the machine is used. Whether or not in each new reality it seems it has never been used is irrelevant.
From the OP:
“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.”
“It appears to be the first time” in that sentence is for all intents and purposes “it is the first time.” Any time the machine is used is the first time the machine is used. There is never a time “after” the machine is used, because the very act of using the machine causes it to not have been used. It would never be possible to note when and where the machine had been used, or who it was used on. The most evidence anyone would have for the machine’s effectiveness would be that people could say, “Wow, ever since that machine was invented but never, ever used, crime sure has gone down a lot!”
This is why the machine would have to be used sparingly and with attention to ethical considerations. Few would object if it were used to prevent nuclear war.
“Possible, probable, my French hen,
she lays eggs in the relative when.
She doesn’t lay eggs in the positive now,
because she’s unable to postulate how.”
The “erased” persons “never existed” in the revised time-line. Since we cannot see across time-lines – we can’t look at a world where Hitler died in infancy, only speculate about it – such a world “doesn’t exist” for us.
Re-read my arguments - it’s not the unintended consequences that make the erasure unethical, it’s that an appeal to consequences is no counter to the argument that erasing people is unethical in-and-of itself (because it’s the same as killing people against their will, and that is always unethical - in my morality anyway) because the consequences are essentially unpredictable and nested.
The purpose of wearing a condom is itself ethical, unlike the purpose of the erasure machine (e-Razortron - patent pending). So there’s no need to go any further with examining consequences for me. All those non-existent people are purely hypothetical, whereas in the hypothetical, at least the first person isn’t hypothetically hypothetical(if you get what I mean) and it’s their erasure I consider unethical. Consequences (returning the victim to life) were raised as a counter to that. I consider them irrelevant personally (killing-against-the-will is always unethical) but other people raised them, I was just pointing out that that’s a bad road to go down in-and-of itself.
Note that I have no opposition to the OP’s machine if people volunteer for the process, say they feel remorse or whatever. Then it becomes ethical, like euthanasia.