Oddbean new post about | logout
 You can't just call it murder and make it murder. "Murder" has a definition: it is the deliberate unjust killing of another human being. You can argue that the death penalty is unjust, but you can't just say "it's unjust because it's murder" because that's circular reasoning, you have to demonstrate how it is unjust in order to call it murder in the first place.