The Appropriate Limits of Legal Speech P.1 - Page 8 - OG Myth-Weavers

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The Appropriate Limits of Legal Speech P.1

 
Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
There is a *huge* difference between brainwashing someone throughout their formative years and mentioning that their wife is having an affair.
Of course there is. but now we've established that there are instances in which I am to blame for someone else's voluntary actions, without having magical spells. There is a huge difference, but it does establish that the following is not, in fact, generally true:

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
unless that ability to determine intent were equally available to A in order to predict C's reaction, in which case we are discussing teh moralit of mind reading spells as manipulation in a fantasy universe.
There are only two, mutually exclusive options:
A) You can influence a person's behavior without magic. You hold responsibility for such behavior.
B) You can not influence a person's behavior without magic. You hold no responsibility for such behavior.

The law of the excluded middle, well, excludes the middle.

Pick one. Either one, it's all the same to me. But then please stay consistent.

You don't actually read what I write, do you?
Every post i have been specific about teh fact that I am talking about controling someone's behavior *WITH A CASUAL COMMENT*
now, if you have a means of so perrfectly reading and predicting that person's response that it essentially violates the concepts of free will as we know them, then yo are dealing with an alternate reality- magical or otherwise.
otherwise a comment- which is not drugs, not brainwashing, not raising a child for 18 years to be a killer, is not a valid means of controling a person, and believing that other people can be so easilly controlled and manipulated is frankly a sign of mental illness.
So stop comparing telling someone that their wife is having an affair with firing a rifle, because the comparison is absurd.
As absurd as the comparison between 18 years of brainwashing versus a casual comment.
Because you are apparently arguing against something that has not been argued.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
Every post i have been specific about teh fact that I am talking about controling someone's behavior *WITH A CASUAL COMMENT*
Ah, I think I see the problem. The situation, as originally described, did not say anything about a casual comment. It was a deliberate communication of details designed to push a person who was already unstable over the edge. A person who, as the original post said, had convinced person A that they would kill person B if they had an affair. This is not about a casual comment, or dealing with a person of normal sanity. It is about a deliberate revelation of the *proof* of an affair, given to a person who could be expected to then kill person B.

From the original posting:
Person A wants person B to die. Person B is in a relationship with person C and is having an affair with person D. Person A knows about the affair and believes that person C will kill person B if they find out. Person A brings proof of the affair to person C. Person C kills persons B and D.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
believing that other people can be so easilly controlled and manipulated is frankly a sign of mental illness.
But the original posting quite specifically stated that the person A told person C about the affair, believing that person B would crack and kill person B. For them to believe that person C would go berserk and kill person B, person C *must* come across as a person of borderline sanity (or else person A is such a person). Either way, it is not the person who you are arguing with who is mentally ill, it is either A or C (or both), as stated in the original post.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
You don't actually read what I write, do you?
Every post i have been specific about teh fact that I am talking about controling someone's behavior *WITH A CASUAL COMMENT*
This is demonstrably false and therefore blatantly shifting the goalposts. A handful of posts back, you wrote this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
I am saying that a person's behavior is impossible to predict because they have free will,
You made no specifications about comments, you made a sweeping claim about the possibility to predict a person's behavior in all places.
Please stay consistent.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
So stop comparing telling someone that their wife is having an affair with firing a rifle, because the comparison is absurd.
You are the only one who keeps making that comparison. If anyone should stop, it's you, because it's skirting close to a strawman.

Fallacies aside, however, let's get back to the subject.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
otherwise a comment- which is not drugs, not brainwashing, not raising a child for 18 years to be a killer
Okay, if I know that a person's upbringing has given him violent tendencies, is spending two years feeding them enough reasons to hate someone enough to kill them reason enough for me to be culpable?

Telling someone that their wife is having an affair without recomending a course of action is a casual comment regardless of the intent behind it.
Quote:
Okay, if I know that a person's upbringing has given him violent tendencies, is spending two years feeding them enough reasons to hate someone enough to kill them reason enough for me to be culpable?
That depends. Morally, yes. in terms of should it be legally? unless you kept them in an environment where yours was the only source of guidance they had, no.
Now, if they are in a compund with you and your religious devotees then yes, in my mind if we could discern your intent then you should be held culpable for the murder.

And I was initially responding to people making comparisons about predictablity with a rifle, which clearly has no moral or legal culpability of its own.

Quote:
But the original posting quite specifically stated that the person A told person C about the affair, believing that person B would crack and kill person B. For them to believe that person C would go berserk and kill person B, person C *must* come across as a person of borderline sanity (or else person A is such a person). Either way, it is not the person who you are arguing with who is mentally ill, it is either A or C (or both), as stated in the original post
or a assumes that C is insane, when in fact he is not. You have added something to the puzzle projecting from your own personality. Even an insane person is not so easilly manipulated to murder as this, but there are certainly those in the argument who have argued that C is no more than a rifle- pull the trigger by mentioning an affair and they will kill their spouse. It begins with teh assumption that some people are essentially not human. If a made teh same asumption that does not preclude someone in this thread from having made teh same assumption in order to find a hypothetically legally culpable.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
Of course there is. but now we've established that there are instances in which I am to blame for someone else's voluntary actions, without having magical spells. There is a huge difference, but it does establish that the following is not, in fact, generally true:



There are only two, mutually exclusive options:
A) You can influence a person's behavior without magic. You hold responsibility for such behavior.
B) You can not influence a person's behavior without magic. You hold no responsibility for such behavior.

The law of the excluded middle, well, excludes the middle.

Pick one. Either one, it's all the same to me. But then please stay consistent.
I propose
C) You can influence a person's behavior without magic. You do not hold responsibility for such behavior. For example, if you tell someone not to do something, and they do it just to spite you, then you have influenced their behavior. I don't feel that you should accept responsibility for their actions though, since you were trying to prevent such actions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
That depends. Morally, yes. in terms of should it be legally? unless you kept them in an environment where yours was the only source of guidance they had, no.
Now, if they are in a compund with you and your religious devotees then yes, in my mind if we could discern your intent then you should be held culpable for the murder.
Legality doesn't interest me one iota at this point. Morality should come first and laws should do their best to translate it into practice, never vice versa.

Next question: if I know that a person's upbringing has given him violent tendencies, is spending two months feeding them enough reasons to hate someone enough to kill them reason enough for me to be morally responsible?

Quote:
Originally Posted by canjowolf View Post
I propose
C) You can influence a person's behavior without magic. You do not hold responsibility for such behavior. For example, if you tell someone not to do something, and they do it just to spite you, then you have influenced their behavior. I don't feel that you should accept responsibility for their actions though, since you were trying to prevent such actions.
You propose that I have the power to make person A kill person B, but using that power is entirely morally justifiable, and I hold no responsibility for how I influenced their actions?
I can trick John into killing Alice, but I get off the hook? Sweet!

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
And frankly all te divergent "what ifs" on this conversation are becoming absurd.
Not absurd at all. I was trying to figure out where your line is. If I understand it correctly, you are ok with (attempted) murder, if another human is involved and the initiator is sufficiently subtle about it.

For me the line is taking any action with the explicit intent to get someone killed/harmed, as long as there is at least a remote chance of it happening.

Quote:
You propose that I have the power to make person A kill person B, but using that power is entirely morally justifiable, and I hold no responsibility for how I influenced their actions?
I can trick John into killing Alice, but I get off the hook? Sweet!
Sometimes. In the example that I gave you aren't tricking anyone into doing something. You are telling them not to do something, intending that they not do it, but they do it at least partly because you told them not to. I do support the first sentence if you were trying to convince A not to kill person B (or to be a peaceable human being or not to kill anyone or something similar). Why should you accept guilt for their crime when you told them not to do it?

Edit: Let's say person L really wants to kill someone. They tell you that they are planning on killing Person M. You convince them that killing person M is a bad idea and they tell you that they won't do it. They still secretly want to kill someone though and go out and kill person K without saying anything about it. Should you hold yourself responsible for the death of person K? I say no. Even though your actions contributed to person K's death, you in no way attempted to harm person K and did not harm them through negligence. For the sake of this argument assume that you don't have the power to stop person L and that they kill person K before you can do anything to stop it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by canjowolf View Post
Sometimes. In the example that I gave you aren't tricking anyone into doing something. You are telling them not to do something, intending that they not do it, but they do it at least partly because you told them not to. I do support the first sentence if you were trying to convince A not to kill person B (or to be a peaceable human being or not to kill anyone or something similar). Why should you accept guilt for their crime when you told them not to do it?
Hypothetically: what if you tried to use reverse psychology and told him not to do it, intending that he did it anyway and assuming that it would be more likely because you told him not to?




 

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