Oddbean

? i dont think there has ever been a presumption of innocence re: the victim as in: it is immaterial the point is rather: that it is illegal to extrajudicially murder anyone under any circumstance as a societal community agreement

Of course. I don't disagree with that at all. But if you let your mind be swayed by cultural norms and news media you can easily find yourself believing that, for example, the Sandy Hook parents are perfect people and you should be on their side of every argument.... rather than that they are actually assholes..... despite the horror of their kids being murdered and the sympathy we all feel about that.

but if i wanted to learn & listen about the grief of losing a child im pretty sure elon & the sandy hook parents are probably the ones to talk to along with everyone else who has experienced that catastrophe personally

I'm just thinking down atypical pathways. What if murder became legal? That's an atypical thought. Nobody thinks about this shit, or if they do they don't dare write about it. What if the state turned a blind eye to murders. If murder were legal in Nazi Germany I bet Hitler would have been killed right quick. Might have actually prevented far more deaths than it caused. Would America become much worse or much better? I think it would be worse off but I'm not sure. I see hundreds of horribly evil people continue to perpetuate their evil, and everybody just puts up with it because murder is illegal so nobody can do anything to stop it. Maybe if it weren't illegal the people that got murdered would tend to be the more evil people, causing things to get better. Maybe there is a turning point in a society when evil dominates so greatly that murder of these evil people actually becomes a public good, and only after the evil is cleared out does murder become a public evil again. This is just a crazy thought experiment. Probably the kind of thinking that started violent revolutions I'm guessing. I am not defending murder nor am I suggesting it is a public good. I'm trying to think out under which conditions killing people might become a public good. Because we do it all the time under the label of "war" and most of the time I don't think those are the right conditions to allow for the killing of people.

im not sure i agree that people dont murder bad people because murder is illegal. im pretty sure in the same way many people would have a hard time murdering a squirrel, are people pretty reluctant to murder another human being whether it is legal or not. as in, if you are having atypical thoughts divorced from the emotional weight & the cost on the body .. im not really sure what the practical point of it all is as in: a thought experiment for no purpose that wouldnt play out in reality anyway just seems like a strange way to spend time? but then, what do i know & i do hope you are getting something from it even if i cant see what it is

I'm trying to say inappropriate things to stir up controversy, things you won't find on other social media platforms, nostr "exclusives" to draw people over to see stuff they don't see discussed anywhere else. And why not understand better the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution? It's useful to understand history to predict the future. I've never killed anybody. I'm not going to start. But if I was going to start I wouldn't start with a squirrel! Squirrels are so cute and innocent! I'd start with a rabbit.