"One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers 'too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test.'"
This reminds me of comedian Jackie Mason's admonition that if you take your legal case to trial, you're placing your fate in the hands of people who, virtually by definition, are too stupid to know how to get out of jury duty. Bitter experience has taught me that Mason was right.
An adult IQ of 70 is equivalent to the average intelligence of an 11 - 12 year old, who surely knows it is wrong to kill, much less to do so in a particularly depraved and brutal manner. The Supreme Court decision constraining execution ought to be repealed.
The quiet part is that a 70 IQ white is legitimately retarded and grew up as an FLK, while a 70 IQ black is just one SD below the mean and looks normal
If you're so mentally impaired that the state has put you in a group home, you're too impaired to be tried for a murder. If you're at any kind of functioning level, perhaps living with your parents but performing a menial job, you're capable of understanding that you don't commit murder.
If I were the prosecution, I would bring several low IQ (previously vetted) folks and ask them if they would hit a cat on the head with a hammer. Since they were previously vetted they would truthfully say of course not. "Why not?" "Because that would hurt them". The objective being to demonstrate that having a low IQ does not imply a low moral sense.
I would also ask the defense IQ witness if any high IQ people have ever committed murder (always ask those questions for which you know the answer).
In closing statements would say something like: "We all have to die some day. If you commit a crime and the state must put you to death, at least that is an honorable death. But if the state fails to execute you and instead you must live your remaining years as a ward, that is a dishonorable life".
The last part - no. Immediately after giving the 10 Commandments, Scripture discusses the cases of not fully intentional unjustified homicide. These perps - instead of being executed had to flee to a sanctuary city. Where they stayed for as long as the acting high priest had his term (up to 20 years). That was basically an open-air prison. Being there wasn't more dishonorable than being executed. Of course, if one left the city, one was dispatched by the blood-redeemer.
He is. Active priesthood started at 30 and ended at 50. So at most 20 years. But it was unlikely that he would be called up to high priesthood immediately when eligible. Plus, he could die before aging out. Lots of high priests did something wrong when they officiated at day of atonement service - the principal high priest duty. So if they survived they threw an extra party.
"One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers 'too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test.'"
This odd moral inversion shows up in plea bargaining, where you end up with a heftier sentence for insisting on your purported rights to the presumption of innocence and trial by jury.
There's actually a federal statute that prohibits the DOJ from offering benefits for favorable testimony, but apparently all sorts of goodies were doled out to truly vile men so HW Bush could get Manuel Noriega in prison for possession of masa flour.
In the judicial malpractice arising from the Pike County massacre, Jake Wagner who killed five of the eight victims (his father killed the other three) could end up a free man after thirty two years while his brother got life without possibility of parole even though he didn't do any actual killing, and went to trial because the prosecution would not take the death penalty off the table.
I am really cynical and jaded about the State these days.
It's long bothered me that the government can over charge you, thus forcing you to take a probabilistic view of your situation rather than a binary one and then they insist part of the plea bargain requires you to admit that you did the actual thing even if you didn't.
When prosecutors went after Trump all I could think of is how much of a pussy I would have been in the same situation. His pounding through all that and remaining defiant increased my respect for him.
The Pike County cases are remarkable for the shaft running in the other direction: against the People's interest in swift, fair, retributive justice. How often have we seen that since the kooky 1960s and 70s? We never learn, so I guess the hammer will have to come down in the other direction at some point. In a simpler time Jake and Billy Wagner would already be lynched, and Judge Hein chased out of town.
The Robert Pickton case was a nightmare of liberal governance, permissive society, supine policing, and judicial proceduralism.
Out of curiosity I just took an IQ test and scored well in a relatively short time frame. To me it measured logic and pattern recognition. Patterns were often easily noticed without undertaking any calculation. Sometimes mental calculations were necessary for me. Yet, motivation was needed to get through it. I needed to WANT to do my best. Though towards the end I just wanted to finish. The repetitiveness was getting irritating. Just don't know how it can be used to assist in determining whether someone should be executed or not. I've known a few MENSA people. All were males and seemed to want you to know they were MENSA. I wasn't impressed with the way they viewed things. But then again being too right brained I never scored that high.
Reflecting on the 50s when a major field of conventional psychology was personality theory/testing. My business has worked with the Yankelovich Monitor and SRI's VALS. Decent for marketing segmentation but that's it. 'Testing' has significant limitations. And there are SO many kinds of intelligence.
Here a good read if you'd like to delve into this a bit more.
MENSA people are a self-selected group to whom scoring really high on an IQ test is very important to them. They are not particularly representative of high IQ people in general.
iSteve Hall of Famer Josh Rosen has decided to go to Wharton to get his MBA after flaming out of the NFL. This past summer he interned at an unnamed boutique investment bank as an Investment Banking Summer Associate, so we'll see how that goes for him
Darnold had the misfortune of being drafted by the New York Jets but managed to resurrect his career last year with the Minnesota Vikings, who foolishly didn't re-sign him in favor of the unproven JJ McCarthy. Darnold currently has the Seattle Seahawks tied for the best record in the NFC.
As an aside, his three-year-older sister Franki played volleyball for, and is currently an assistant coach at Rhode Island
Critical to maintaining civilization is being plugged into empirical reality and common sense. And this isn't hard. Normal people with common sense just "get" a whole lot of stuff despite nonsense from our kool-aid drinking elites and the "experts say" people.
Examples:
-- executing vicious murders is appropriate whether they are retards or loons seeing visions or stoned out of their minds
-- there is no reason to think different racial and ethnic groups have the same talents and are going to show up in various jobs in like proportions
-- generous welfare for laying about breeds more welfare
-- people on welfare should not be having more kids
-- de-policing is stupid
-- soft on crime yields more crime
-- letting China make everything and printing money to pay for it is not wise
-- men and women aren't the same
-- guys with dicks are not women
and--most importantly--
-- you preserve your nation for *your* children, you don't give it away to foreign invaders
Again--common sense. Common sense that a lot of people have.
But sadly the West is full of a lot kool-aid drinkers, slurping up the "experts say" b.s.
Those of us who want to preserve our nations--hand them over to our children--need to find a way to separate ourselves from the common sense averse, so we actually have a functioning nation to pass on.
iSteve Hall of Famer Jason Collins is diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma. It was 12½ years ago when he became the first active male athlete from the four major North American sports to publicly identify as gay. Collins dated his Stanford classmate Carolyn Moos for eight years and were engaged until he broke it off. Jason's twin brother Jarron also played in the NBA and both brothers are alumni of Harvard-Westlake School
If you murder someone it shouldn't matter that you are an idiot. They're a threat to society and shouldn't get out of prison so why should we keep them around? They won't be missed.
The reason the death penalty must be abolished has nothing to do with whether the perpetrator deserves it, whether it renders justice to the victims, whether there are mistaken convictions, or any other reason. It's because it's not safe to have the government get into that business, any more than now-prohibited torture or maiming sentences. It's the DEFINITION of a slippery slope.
Yes, and in those days they also imposed torture sentences. Thankfully, we've become more enlightened. But we're still vulnerable to state terror, which is now on the rise here and elsewhere. A government that can impose the ultimate penalty has too much power for its citizens' safety.
Good question. It does. But there's certainly a curve here, rising from citations for an open container in your vehicle to execution and, above that but now prohibited in civilized countries, torture. People disagree on what point on the curve to block the penalties higher up. But that's not an argument about principles, just a difference of degree.
So we can assume that if you were (wrongly, I'm sure) convicted of a crime, you'd rather, say, have your hands cut off than spend ten years in the jug. Chacun à son goût, of course.
The Enlightenment thinkers who initiated prison reform were less preoccupied about what x convict "deserved" and more concerned about the ineradicable uncertainty as to whether this person has actually committed a crime. And even more so than that, the Philosophes and reformers were calling public attention to the question of how much to limit the power of the state -- hence the admiration for the United States Constitution among the revolutionaries of 1789 (despite the ghastly consequences of their disagreements on how to implement something similar in France).
One thing I see a lot of is commentators crowing that this or that convict will be extorted, beaten, and raped in prison. Naturally, though, if the convict is seven feet tall and a former kickboxing champion, these add-on punishments do not apply to him. In effect the justice system is imposing torture sentences arbitrarily, applying more to one person than another even if they're convicted of the same crime. This caveat can sound like a plea for leniency, but it's not saying that x convict should be let out sooner, given liberties like conjugal visits, or anything else. It's only -- narrowly -- saying that imposing vastly different penalties for the same crime is a characteristic of past states and current uncivilized ones, and a justice department that does this is taking on tyrannical behaviors, one of which (and a diagnostic one) is differences in punishments for the same crime -- whether for extrajudicial reasons (political, social, personal, and so on) or, just as terrorizing to its citizens, the sheer arbitrariness of dysfunctional rule.
> The Enlightenment thinkers who initiated prison reform were less preoccupied about what x convict "deserved" and more concerned about the ineradicable uncertainty as to whether this person has actually committed a crime. And even more so than that, the Philosophes and reformers were calling public attention to the question of how much to limit the power of the state -- hence the admiration for the United States Constitution among the revolutionaries of 1789
The Philosophes had basically stopped thinking of criminals as moral agents at all, instead they started thinking of criminals as broken objects to be fixed.
Of course, not all Enlightenment thinkers made that mistake. Adam Smith correctly observed that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
> (despite the ghastly consequences of their disagreements on how to implement something similar in France).
The ghastly consequences were in fact the inevitable result of the French Enlightenment philosophy.
> One thing I see a lot of is commentators crowing that this or that convict will be extorted, beaten, and raped in prison. Naturally, though, if the convict is seven feet tall and a former kickboxing champion, these add-on punishments do not apply to him. In effect the justice system is imposing torture sentences arbitrarily, applying more to one person than another even if they're convicted of the same crime.
That is also the result of the philosophy you advocate. People are unwilling to assume the moral burden of properly punishing criminals so they end up outsourcing it to other criminals, with the arbitrary results you decry.
I'm afraid you're mistaken about my point about unequal punishments, which is quite the opposite of your restatement: that if more people comprehend their moral responsibility for the punishments their system metes out -- equally for the disastrous early releases of murderers in California and for converse inequities like the death penalty for marijuana possession common in Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian states -- they'll more often agree that we should NOT outsource punishment to other criminals.
As for the sprawling generalization regarding the late-eighteenth-century "broken watch" perspective, one could just as easily say the Enlightenment was more about seeing people as individuals with motives, imaginations, and the whole package. There's room enough in the Enlightenment for almost everybody.
As for results of liberalism in Republican France, for more than a century it had quite different, and fortunate, results in different places -- for instance in the US and Great Britain.
Taking all of these wide pronouncements together, I'm afraid that your key word here is "inevitable" -- a popular thought-stopper that I try never to use, especially not in discussions of such a messy, unpredictable, and almost infinitely complex subject as cultural history. Frankly, historical determinism better suits Marxists than their challengers.
At the Nuremberg trials, Albert Speer tested lower than several other Nazi leaders, including Karl Donitz and Herman Goring. I believe he lowered his score on purpose.
"One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers 'too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test.'"
This reminds me of comedian Jackie Mason's admonition that if you take your legal case to trial, you're placing your fate in the hands of people who, virtually by definition, are too stupid to know how to get out of jury duty. Bitter experience has taught me that Mason was right.
An adult IQ of 70 is equivalent to the average intelligence of an 11 - 12 year old, who surely knows it is wrong to kill, much less to do so in a particularly depraved and brutal manner. The Supreme Court decision constraining execution ought to be repealed.
The quiet part is that a 70 IQ white is legitimately retarded and grew up as an FLK, while a 70 IQ black is just one SD below the mean and looks normal
If you're so mentally impaired that the state has put you in a group home, you're too impaired to be tried for a murder. If you're at any kind of functioning level, perhaps living with your parents but performing a menial job, you're capable of understanding that you don't commit murder.
I've known people with Downs Syndrome that have a strong sense of moral capability. Someone with a 70 IQ knows what they are doing.
Agree.
The real problem is the underlying "logic" of the SCROTUS Atkins decision:
• Could learn to be better = OK to execute
• Too stupid ever to learn morals = keep them alive and dangerous indefinitely
I meant to use the word culpability.
If I were the prosecution, I would bring several low IQ (previously vetted) folks and ask them if they would hit a cat on the head with a hammer. Since they were previously vetted they would truthfully say of course not. "Why not?" "Because that would hurt them". The objective being to demonstrate that having a low IQ does not imply a low moral sense.
I would also ask the defense IQ witness if any high IQ people have ever committed murder (always ask those questions for which you know the answer).
In closing statements would say something like: "We all have to die some day. If you commit a crime and the state must put you to death, at least that is an honorable death. But if the state fails to execute you and instead you must live your remaining years as a ward, that is a dishonorable life".
The last part - no. Immediately after giving the 10 Commandments, Scripture discusses the cases of not fully intentional unjustified homicide. These perps - instead of being executed had to flee to a sanctuary city. Where they stayed for as long as the acting high priest had his term (up to 20 years). That was basically an open-air prison. Being there wasn't more dishonorable than being executed. Of course, if one left the city, one was dispatched by the blood-redeemer.
"Where they stayed for as long as the acting chief priest had his term (up to 20 years). "
The Chief Priest is not term limited.
He is. Active priesthood started at 30 and ended at 50. So at most 20 years. But it was unlikely that he would be called up to high priesthood immediately when eligible. Plus, he could die before aging out. Lots of high priests did something wrong when they officiated at day of atonement service - the principal high priest duty. So if they survived they threw an extra party.
"Active priesthood started at 30 and ended at 50."
No, you are confusing priesthood with the Levites term limits. Per Berachot 29a Yohanan the High Priest served for 80 years.
Yes--as you point out, it doesn't seem logical to connect intelligence (what the IQ test reveals) and morality (knowing right from wrong).
Down people are pro-social and many are highly conscientious.
"One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers 'too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test.'"
This odd moral inversion shows up in plea bargaining, where you end up with a heftier sentence for insisting on your purported rights to the presumption of innocence and trial by jury.
There's actually a federal statute that prohibits the DOJ from offering benefits for favorable testimony, but apparently all sorts of goodies were doled out to truly vile men so HW Bush could get Manuel Noriega in prison for possession of masa flour.
In the judicial malpractice arising from the Pike County massacre, Jake Wagner who killed five of the eight victims (his father killed the other three) could end up a free man after thirty two years while his brother got life without possibility of parole even though he didn't do any actual killing, and went to trial because the prosecution would not take the death penalty off the table.
I am really cynical and jaded about the State these days.
It's long bothered me that the government can over charge you, thus forcing you to take a probabilistic view of your situation rather than a binary one and then they insist part of the plea bargain requires you to admit that you did the actual thing even if you didn't.
When prosecutors went after Trump all I could think of is how much of a pussy I would have been in the same situation. His pounding through all that and remaining defiant increased my respect for him.
The Pike County cases are remarkable for the shaft running in the other direction: against the People's interest in swift, fair, retributive justice. How often have we seen that since the kooky 1960s and 70s? We never learn, so I guess the hammer will have to come down in the other direction at some point. In a simpler time Jake and Billy Wagner would already be lynched, and Judge Hein chased out of town.
The Robert Pickton case was a nightmare of liberal governance, permissive society, supine policing, and judicial proceduralism.
Out of curiosity I just took an IQ test and scored well in a relatively short time frame. To me it measured logic and pattern recognition. Patterns were often easily noticed without undertaking any calculation. Sometimes mental calculations were necessary for me. Yet, motivation was needed to get through it. I needed to WANT to do my best. Though towards the end I just wanted to finish. The repetitiveness was getting irritating. Just don't know how it can be used to assist in determining whether someone should be executed or not. I've known a few MENSA people. All were males and seemed to want you to know they were MENSA. I wasn't impressed with the way they viewed things. But then again being too right brained I never scored that high.
Reflecting on the 50s when a major field of conventional psychology was personality theory/testing. My business has worked with the Yankelovich Monitor and SRI's VALS. Decent for marketing segmentation but that's it. 'Testing' has significant limitations. And there are SO many kinds of intelligence.
Here a good read if you'd like to delve into this a bit more.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.000-clever-fools-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html
"I've known a few MENSA people. All were males and seemed to want you to know they were MENSA."
Did they do Cross-fit as well?
> I've known a few MENSA people. All were males and seemed to want you to know they were MENSA. I wasn't impressed with the way they viewed things
The issue with Mensa is that it self-selects for those who want to join such a club. Those with actual accomplishments are too busy to join
MENSA people are a self-selected group to whom scoring really high on an IQ test is very important to them. They are not particularly representative of high IQ people in general.
Steve, my money is on Joseph Clinton Smith having a higher IQ than Ketanji Jackson.
😂😂😂
I decided to subscribe just so I could like your comment. I'm kind of kidding, I was thinking about it anyhow.
Wow--I had never heard of the Atkins decision. Thank you, Steve!
O/T
iSteve Hall of Famer Josh Rosen has decided to go to Wharton to get his MBA after flaming out of the NFL. This past summer he interned at an unnamed boutique investment bank as an Investment Banking Summer Associate, so we'll see how that goes for him
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-rosen-4bb617112/
Rosen of UCLA looked too-narrow shouldered to be an NFL QB. Sam Darnold of USC looked to be about 6 inches wider, and he's still around in the NFL.
Darnold had the misfortune of being drafted by the New York Jets but managed to resurrect his career last year with the Minnesota Vikings, who foolishly didn't re-sign him in favor of the unproven JJ McCarthy. Darnold currently has the Seattle Seahawks tied for the best record in the NFC.
As an aside, his three-year-older sister Franki played volleyball for, and is currently an assistant coach at Rhode Island
https://gorhody.com/sports/womens-volleyball/roster/coaches/franki-darnold/556
This is stupid.
Separate Nations.
Critical to maintaining civilization is being plugged into empirical reality and common sense. And this isn't hard. Normal people with common sense just "get" a whole lot of stuff despite nonsense from our kool-aid drinking elites and the "experts say" people.
Examples:
-- executing vicious murders is appropriate whether they are retards or loons seeing visions or stoned out of their minds
-- there is no reason to think different racial and ethnic groups have the same talents and are going to show up in various jobs in like proportions
-- generous welfare for laying about breeds more welfare
-- people on welfare should not be having more kids
-- de-policing is stupid
-- soft on crime yields more crime
-- letting China make everything and printing money to pay for it is not wise
-- men and women aren't the same
-- guys with dicks are not women
and--most importantly--
-- you preserve your nation for *your* children, you don't give it away to foreign invaders
Again--common sense. Common sense that a lot of people have.
But sadly the West is full of a lot kool-aid drinkers, slurping up the "experts say" b.s.
Those of us who want to preserve our nations--hand them over to our children--need to find a way to separate ourselves from the common sense averse, so we actually have a functioning nation to pass on.
O/T
iSteve Hall of Famer Jason Collins is diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma. It was 12½ years ago when he became the first active male athlete from the four major North American sports to publicly identify as gay. Collins dated his Stanford classmate Carolyn Moos for eight years and were engaged until he broke it off. Jason's twin brother Jarron also played in the NBA and both brothers are alumni of Harvard-Westlake School
Brain cancer ... that's sad.
Isn’t this another instance of the justices gathering their combined wisdom and attempting to do the job of the legislature by writing a law?
If you murder someone it shouldn't matter that you are an idiot. They're a threat to society and shouldn't get out of prison so why should we keep them around? They won't be missed.
The reason the death penalty must be abolished has nothing to do with whether the perpetrator deserves it, whether it renders justice to the victims, whether there are mistaken convictions, or any other reason. It's because it's not safe to have the government get into that business, any more than now-prohibited torture or maiming sentences. It's the DEFINITION of a slippery slope.
What slippery slope would that be? Considering every government on earth had it until less than a century ago.
Yes, and in those days they also imposed torture sentences. Thankfully, we've become more enlightened. But we're still vulnerable to state terror, which is now on the rise here and elsewhere. A government that can impose the ultimate penalty has too much power for its citizens' safety.
Why doesn't your logic apply to any penalty the government can impose?
Good question. It does. But there's certainly a curve here, rising from citations for an open container in your vehicle to execution and, above that but now prohibited in civilized countries, torture. People disagree on what point on the curve to block the penalties higher up. But that's not an argument about principles, just a difference of degree.
Frankly, I'd be in favor of eliminating prison and bringing back corporal punishment.
Prison is just all around wasteful.
So we can assume that if you were (wrongly, I'm sure) convicted of a crime, you'd rather, say, have your hands cut off than spend ten years in the jug. Chacun à son goût, of course.
> Thankfully, we've become more enlightened.
The "we must be more lenient to criminals" was one of the dumber aspects of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment thinkers who initiated prison reform were less preoccupied about what x convict "deserved" and more concerned about the ineradicable uncertainty as to whether this person has actually committed a crime. And even more so than that, the Philosophes and reformers were calling public attention to the question of how much to limit the power of the state -- hence the admiration for the United States Constitution among the revolutionaries of 1789 (despite the ghastly consequences of their disagreements on how to implement something similar in France).
One thing I see a lot of is commentators crowing that this or that convict will be extorted, beaten, and raped in prison. Naturally, though, if the convict is seven feet tall and a former kickboxing champion, these add-on punishments do not apply to him. In effect the justice system is imposing torture sentences arbitrarily, applying more to one person than another even if they're convicted of the same crime. This caveat can sound like a plea for leniency, but it's not saying that x convict should be let out sooner, given liberties like conjugal visits, or anything else. It's only -- narrowly -- saying that imposing vastly different penalties for the same crime is a characteristic of past states and current uncivilized ones, and a justice department that does this is taking on tyrannical behaviors, one of which (and a diagnostic one) is differences in punishments for the same crime -- whether for extrajudicial reasons (political, social, personal, and so on) or, just as terrorizing to its citizens, the sheer arbitrariness of dysfunctional rule.
> The Enlightenment thinkers who initiated prison reform were less preoccupied about what x convict "deserved" and more concerned about the ineradicable uncertainty as to whether this person has actually committed a crime. And even more so than that, the Philosophes and reformers were calling public attention to the question of how much to limit the power of the state -- hence the admiration for the United States Constitution among the revolutionaries of 1789
The Philosophes had basically stopped thinking of criminals as moral agents at all, instead they started thinking of criminals as broken objects to be fixed.
Of course, not all Enlightenment thinkers made that mistake. Adam Smith correctly observed that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
> (despite the ghastly consequences of their disagreements on how to implement something similar in France).
The ghastly consequences were in fact the inevitable result of the French Enlightenment philosophy.
> One thing I see a lot of is commentators crowing that this or that convict will be extorted, beaten, and raped in prison. Naturally, though, if the convict is seven feet tall and a former kickboxing champion, these add-on punishments do not apply to him. In effect the justice system is imposing torture sentences arbitrarily, applying more to one person than another even if they're convicted of the same crime.
That is also the result of the philosophy you advocate. People are unwilling to assume the moral burden of properly punishing criminals so they end up outsourcing it to other criminals, with the arbitrary results you decry.
I'm afraid you're mistaken about my point about unequal punishments, which is quite the opposite of your restatement: that if more people comprehend their moral responsibility for the punishments their system metes out -- equally for the disastrous early releases of murderers in California and for converse inequities like the death penalty for marijuana possession common in Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian states -- they'll more often agree that we should NOT outsource punishment to other criminals.
As for the sprawling generalization regarding the late-eighteenth-century "broken watch" perspective, one could just as easily say the Enlightenment was more about seeing people as individuals with motives, imaginations, and the whole package. There's room enough in the Enlightenment for almost everybody.
As for results of liberalism in Republican France, for more than a century it had quite different, and fortunate, results in different places -- for instance in the US and Great Britain.
Taking all of these wide pronouncements together, I'm afraid that your key word here is "inevitable" -- a popular thought-stopper that I try never to use, especially not in discussions of such a messy, unpredictable, and almost infinitely complex subject as cultural history. Frankly, historical determinism better suits Marxists than their challengers.
And so to bed.
At the Nuremberg trials, Albert Speer tested lower than several other Nazi leaders, including Karl Donitz and Herman Goring. I believe he lowered his score on purpose.
What does that have to so with slippery slopes?
Nothing. It's just interesting that the defendant in this case may be being coached to do the same thing.