So in terms of people preying on others, you see it as a black and white issue? Either you are incompetent to run your own affairs, or you are responsible for your own actions? I’m trying to understand your point of view here.
Uh, it sounds like you’re saying that “The only reason we consider this person to have been shot is that he has a bullet pass through him - clearly bootstrapping!” Obviously that makes no sense, and I can’t figure out what you were trying to say because my reading of it leads me to think you’re making a similarly absurd point.
No, I mean physical violence AND mental abuse AND cutting people off from other people (family, friends, etc.) AND all the other ways a person can be abused.
Constant verbal abuse AND isolating a person from other people AND depriving them of means to support themselves AND preventing them from seeking help AND… there are a LOT of ways to hurt someone else, it’s not just about the physical.
Among other things, yes - there HAVE been young people who have killed themselves due to bullying on social media (just as other forms of bullying can have that effect). There also techniques like doxxing, which can also have terrible outcomes, such as deaths on a hit list of abortion providers, and Jackson Cosko who, if convicted, maybe facing 20 years in prison.
So yes, certain “non physical violence” on social media (among other things) can and has been treated as a crime. The link has other examples for your to peruse.
Because the consequences of declaring someone mentally incompetent to the point of needing a guardian are so severe it is a lengthy and deliberative process requiring proof of that level of incompetence to handle one’s daily affairs. It is not commonly done, and when it is done, typically only after years and much screwing up.
As numerous mentally ill mass shooters have demonstrated one can obtain firearms even when batshit crazy. The prisons are full of people who are, arguably, not truly competent and yet they had their freedom long enough to harm, even kill other people.
It may be as simple as this young man being incompetent, but no one had gone through the legal process to make it official.
Yes, repeated suicide attempts are frequently considered a sign of severe mental illness.
I think generally yes. I think that part of being a member of a free society is that you have to put up with the freedom of assholes in society. Unless our speech has to be limited and tailored so as not to harm the most feeble-minded among us, there has to be a clear line where you are not responsible for another adult’s actions.
Not, my point was that part of the Court’s ruling is that this wasn’t just regular suicide counseling which is legal, but it was a crime, in part, because this young man was “mentally ill.” If we are holding, as Broomstick does below, that anyone who attempts suicide is mentally ill, then that limitation the Court put forward is meaningless.
Yes, but other than the physical components of the above, none of what you say is a crime. I’m not supporting any of it, mind you. I am simply saying that even today (not sure after this case) but those other forms of abuse are assholish, but not illegal. So I’m not sure why they are relevant to this discussion.
Okay, but explain to me how we are not going down the slippery slope here with these “word crimes.” This seems to have the potential for chilling speech. I cannot say anything mean, lest the person I address be ultrasensitive and harms themselves because of my speech.
If I call someone an asshole on the internet and that was the last straw for him, am I responsible for his death? What if I used a hate speech term about his sexuality? And what about doxxing? It’s a shitty thing to do and maybe would be an invasion of privacy tort, but a crime?!?
And realistically, if someone wanted to find any poster here that has posted for any length of time, I don’t think it would be that hard. Plus my name and address are not really private information. They are published in books, or at least they used to be, now at minimum in online directories. Since when is there a right to remain anonymous? I know that there is probably a board rule against doxxing, and that is fine, but why does every inconvenient thing now seem to need to be backed by the force of criminal law?
So why is it a crime if someone bilks lonely senior citizens out of their money? They are usually still in charge of their affairs, so where’s the harm?
You seem to have an issue with the correlation between mental illness and suicidal behavior. There are mental illnesses that don’t feature suicidal behavior, of course; but an awful lot of suicidal behavior is due to mental illness. Just because you are focused on a 1:1 correlation of suicide and mental illness that doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean you have a point.
You also seem to misunderstand the meaning of “slippery slope.” It’s a fallacious argument that ignores the issue at hand to redirect a debate to instill fear of something unrelated to the debate. As in, “If we ban machine guns, next we will have to eat with sporks because knifes will be too dangerous!” Or, “If we prohibit people from manipulating the mentally ill to promote their suicide, next we will be expected to be civil to the mentally ill!”
Once again, you embrace the fallacious to argue a poor point. Nobody is suggesting that all inconvenient things be illegal. Not sure what thread you got that from, but see again my discription of “slippery slope” which you didn’t seem to be aware of.
Actually… preventing a person from leaving a location (by, say, taking away their car, phone, etc. and leaving them in an isolated location unable to call for help) may not be physical violence but it CAN be illegal - it’s a form of kidnapping. So yes, some of what I mentioned can be a crime. It has to be an extreme form of these things because there is a point at which “non physical abuse” very much IS a crime.
That is NOT what I said, jerk. What I said was
Which is NOT the same as what you attributed to me, because there are outliers where suicide is not necessarily from mental illness. Either you failed to understand what I said, or you deliberately skewed my words - I’m going to be generous this time and assume it’s the former.
Wow. You just don’t get it.
This isn’t about calling some random person you don’t personally know an asshole, triggering Something Awful, this is about saying something awful to someone you know is having a problem, someone you know is prone or vulnerable to self-harm. That’s quite a difference.
If you feed someone something with, say, shellfish not knowing they’re allergic to shellfish and they die… arguably that’s an accident because you didn’t know that would be a problem. If, however, you know the person has a shellfish allergy and you deliberately feed them something with shellfish that is murder.
That’s the distinction here - Horrible Girlfriend KNEW this guy was mentally ill and had attempted suicide in the past, she knew he was suggestible. She took advantage of that and it wound up killing him.
Yes, potentially a crime - again, read the link to Jackson Costko who is potentially facing twenty years in prison.
If publishing someone’s information on the internet leads to a risk to their safety or personal harm to them, and you knew before you published that information that you were putting that person at risk YES that’s potentially a crime.
Frankly, I don’t understand why you are having such difficulty understanding these concepts.
This is really at the root of a number of the threats to encroach on civil liberties that we see over and over: people don’t understand that you shouldn’t make “legal/illegal” congruent with “moral/immoral”. The number of immoral acts that are, and should remain, legal is far greater than the number that are illegal. This applies not only here, but in cases where people want to suppress the free speech and assembly of neo-Nazis, or to call it a criminal offense of “rape” if a guy cajoles a reluctant partner into agreeing to have sex with him (since that’s not “enthusiastic consent”).
You can strenuously disapprove of something without criminalizing it.
She talked him into getting back in the truck. This, IMHO, makes her at least partly responsible. She didn’t kick the chair out from under him, but pretty close.
This is like telling a person on a bridge to jump. Ignore them if that will work for you conscience. But don’t give them the extra push.
How do you feel about kids getting bullied to the point of committing suicide?
My eldest son (a freshman in college) is a depressive who has expressed suicidal thoughts. This principle is so important to me, I would stand by it even if it increased the chance of losing my beloved son. If someone talked him into suicide, or emotionally bullied him to the point that he took his own life in response, I would hate that person, but I would not believe they should be prosecuted.
I’ve talked two people out of suicide. So I think I may have a different perspective.
I believe there is a bit of a social contract that demands that a person try to get/give a person help when they need it desperately. Walk away, should not be prosecuted. Talking them into it is a whole 'nother thing. It makes them complicit in their death.
But the question of whether suicide can be warranted (unlike, say, whether cold-blooded murder of an innocent person can be justified) is an open question in philosophy, as this entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy illustrates: Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
So in effect, you are implicitly arguing that only one position on this question can be legally allowed; or that if one holds the unpopular pro-suicide position, they had better be careful about admitting to it or at the very least not try to be too emphatic or persuasive about it.
As with most questions of free speech, the wise counsel of John Stuart Mill is applicable here:
