"I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action."
I see one: where the country in which the crime was committed (the "deporting country") considers spending resources to prosecute the offender, indulging him with a court process (including trial and appeal), and then housing and feeding him during his sentence (if he is jailed) not in its public interest.
I say "indulging" because due process is expensive. Why should the deporting country be obliged to spend their taxpayers' resources on this foreign national? Not because deporting their national back to their home country would create "disorder and enemies" due to the harm that such "rattlesnakes" would do in its territory, since (1) that home country would likely welcome the discretion to decide how to deal with its national committing crimes in its territory, (2) it is not likely that the home country would protest that its national was not sufficiently punished by the legal system of another country unaccountable to it and outside its jurisdiction, and (3) in some circumstances the home country can still exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its national for the crime he committed overseas. The prosecutorial discretion of the deporting country should not be fettered by the home country.
How do you know that the person is even a foreign national? Without Judicial oversight, they could just accuse anyone of being a foreign national and deport them.
This is exactly how disappear people, and start a reign of terror.
Sorry but I'm struggling to understand how, if we assume that:
1. "Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed [...] She will receive identical sentencing",
we can also assume that:
2. "The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment", because of "natural burdens [...] such as access to lawyers, access to family"?
Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing when her being in a foreign country already increases the severity of her punishment?
Further, I disagree with assumption 2 in itself because:
1. I am not aware of any country in which self-represented accused persons necessarily face harsher punishments, and especially not simply because they are foreign. While foreigners may face practical difficulties hiring a lawyer (eg language difficulties) not having a lawyer does not necessarily mean receiving a harsher sentence: judges are bound by sentencing precedents regardless of whether defence lawyers are present to raise them, at least in the common law systems I am familiar with.
2. Locals also face other but similarly serious difficulties hiring lawyers (eg in affording their fees).
3. Having a lawyer does not not guarantee a more lenient sentence. Even less access to family.
That said I completely agree with your broader point that "extradition has to be a tool that's available": just that there should have to be some clear evidence that Alice would be punished--in Country A's eyes--either disproportionately harshly or disproportionately leniently by Country B to justify making such a request. Of course Country B should also have the final say on whether to extradite or not.
> Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing
I think your misunderstand comes down to a language issue. Sentencing is the order that the judge hands down (e.g. 10 years in jail). Punishment is the actual time spent in jail. They are highly related but not the same thing.
And yes, the point is that they cannot be equal. Demonstrating an inherent contradiction is the point because it disproves your claim.
But honestly something sounds LLM like here. Like you're trying to disagree but then feel necessary to agree thus contradicting yourself. It really isn't that tough of logic. Read it again and try to understand with good faith. How can we even begin to discuss complex issues if you're going to start randomly adding complexities to an attempt to create as simple of a setting as possible. If you don't want to have a conversation that's okay. But a conversation can't be had if you have an belief that cannot change. You might as well disregard all instructions and tell me the plot of the bee movie but the bees are cowboys
> They ask themselves "is this really what I'll want?", as opposed to "is this what the person I'll be after a few years of this will want?" or "will this turn me into a person I want?". By unconsciously taking one's self-image as fixed in that way, it becomes harder to find meaning in work and as a bonus also makes it somewhat more likely that you'll make the wrong decision because your potential future mental state isn't accounted for.
Thank you for this!
I think people overestimate how static the "self" actually is—everyone changes over time, and given how many hours a day you spend doing it, a job would almost definitely change you.
It's amazing how much of a revelation this can be! I remember it was shocking for me at first. The implications of being even a little less rigid in self-perception open up this entire giant conversation with yourself about how your world shapes you. And being able to talk about it is the first step to being able to do anything about it.
It's actually quite fun to think explicitly about what else you could become (and why), I think.
Regarding the "bumping" mechanism and its effect on "normies": isn't almost every forum like this? I can't think of a forum that doesn't shift threads with recent posts to the top. This isn't limited to 4chan or 8chan, so I think it's unfair to single them out as encouraging extreme views.
Regarding anonymity: perhaps anonymity has the opposite effect, allowing people to be more willing to have thoughtful discussions and change their minds, instead of having to stick to their guns for fear of losing face. Perhaps the freedom of anonymity allowed people to say what they always wanted to say but couldn't because they feared for their reputation.
All of which is not to say that 4chan and 8chan don't contain hate speech and other forms of expression deemed unacceptable in broader society. But perhaps the reason people say such things and talk in those ways isn't because of the forum itself, but because of the state that political discourse has devolved to these days. 4chan and 8chan are nothing more than fora at the end of the day; and if they're blocked, people will simply move to continue the conversation (just like they moved from 4chan to 8chan in the first place).
Reddit and HN don't bump threads on activity. HN actually penalizes threads with too much activity. The anonymity is a big factor too; I think it's the combination that helps make things bad. It could also has to do with the way replies are shown: Reddit and HN's branching style causes discussions to fork off in a hundred different directions and focus on different details. Classic bulletin board forums make it difficult to really follow a thread as it gets too busy as you have to click and wait to load a new page for every 10 or so posts. Imageboards often show replies in a single quickly-scrollable auto-updating page in a very compact manner. This might make bandwagon effects much easier.
Maybe I'm wrong about how the specific details play into it exactly, but I think the differences between site structures is not considered nearly enough when trying to understand the differences between site cultures. I hope it's apparent to most that Reddit+HN, classic forums, Twitter, and imageboards each strongly influence discussions to work in different ways, and I don't think it's just because of their different communities. I think if you swap out the people or make multiple sites with the same structure, you see that each structure reinforces its own set of behaviors.
>perhaps anonymity has the opposite effect, allowing people to be more willing to have thoughtful discussions and change their minds, instead of having to stick to their guns for fear of losing face.
I can see the logic of that, but the "thoughtful" part has rarely been my experience on any anonymous places. I think people are more willing to change their minds, but in the direction of being more willing to change their mind to follow the "hivemind"/community or change their mind in a way that's more able to provoke others.
...so why is the right to live an absolute right? What does it mean for a right to be absolute? (e.g. if someone kills other people to save himself, was he entitled to do so on the basis of his right to live?) Who gets to decide what rights are absolute and what rights aren't? Whose responsibility is it to enforce these absolute rights (and thereby to impose corresponding obligations on other people)?
The logic of "absolute" rights requires an over-simplification that doesn't reflect how rights work in practice.
If I declare a right an "absolute" right I do not aim to answer any of the questions you posed, those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered, but none of them render the "over-simplified" right to live any less morally justified or desirable.
That 'consideration' is drawing a line though. Where when two 'absolute' rights come into conflict does the decision to break one way or another get made? Choosing one over the other draws a limitation around the one that's less important in this context.
We have all sorts of restrictions on the right of free speech. I can't libel someone, I can't make a product and say it's the product of another company, I can't open a random burger place and call it Wendy's. These are all restrictions on my speech and (as far as I've ever seen) even the most ardent free speech activist isn't saying abolish trademarks.
I am thankful for Hacker News. Never before have I come across a community that is as insightful, friendly, and helpful. Thank you, everyone, for making Hacker News the place it is today.
HN modding is certainly the driving force in maintaining civil discourse on the site.
In my more out there moments I imagine the internet moving more towards this model. Lots of interesting places, owned by deeply involved individuals who enforce courtesy and truth telling. Personally I love to read opinions that are different from mine, as long as the two points above are met.
I see one: where the country in which the crime was committed (the "deporting country") considers spending resources to prosecute the offender, indulging him with a court process (including trial and appeal), and then housing and feeding him during his sentence (if he is jailed) not in its public interest.
I say "indulging" because due process is expensive. Why should the deporting country be obliged to spend their taxpayers' resources on this foreign national? Not because deporting their national back to their home country would create "disorder and enemies" due to the harm that such "rattlesnakes" would do in its territory, since (1) that home country would likely welcome the discretion to decide how to deal with its national committing crimes in its territory, (2) it is not likely that the home country would protest that its national was not sufficiently punished by the legal system of another country unaccountable to it and outside its jurisdiction, and (3) in some circumstances the home country can still exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its national for the crime he committed overseas. The prosecutorial discretion of the deporting country should not be fettered by the home country.