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White Christmas - Time-altering punishment viable in real life?

posted 8 years ago by B-J-C
12 replies | jump to latest

When I first saw White Christmas, I thought there was something strangely familiar with Potter's cookie's punishment. A team of philosophers and researchers have written about the ways criminals could be punished in the future through mind-altering drugs, among other things, to distort their perception of time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10697529/Prisoners-could-serve-1000-year-sentence-in-eight-hours.html

It's important to note that there's no indication any of this is being considered viable or ethical by anybody to do with criminal justice, but it's certainly interesting.

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] B-J-C 8 years ago

Why would anybody choose that for themselves? It only means that when the execution begins, instead of suffering for a moment, he'd be suffering for a very long time. I don't see any benefit in doing this.

Personally, if I was about to be executed and I wanted to drag it out as long as I could, I'd request to sing a song. Then when they agree to let me do it, I'd begin "A million bottles of beer on the wall ...."

[–] vjfoogie 8 years ago

I'm not trying to make this political, but in the USA...no way liberals would allow that to happen. They fight against the death penalty, and they would protest every street corner about this.

I am a conservative, and I used to have a lot of different views till I watch BM. I don't think it is right to subject the cookie to mindless torture, even though they aren't "real," but I see no problem in using the cookie.

With that said, I don't think any human deserves this type of punishment. Just kill him/her and get it over with. I used to say crap like "punishment should fit the crime," but then White Bear changed my mind on that.

So to wrap it all up...no I don't think it will ever be a punishment (legally speaking). It may end up being something the CIA uses to interrogate terrorists and such (which I'm okay with). Definitely never a punishment though.

[–] MasterMoron 8 years ago

It doesn't even make sense as a punishment, since the cookie is the one being punished, not the person who perpetrated the crime.

[–] vjfoogie 8 years ago

I think the OP meant if there was a way to subject a human to the same time altering punishment as the cookie. This is a speculative post about the idea of being able to do such a thing to the human mind.

[–] B-J-C 8 years ago

Quitr right, I was simply pointing out the similarity between what happens in the episode to the cookie and what they're talking about doing to people in the article.

While it sounds very inhumane, I can imagine it may make sense in rehabilitation. The article linked to in the article I linked to makes an interesting point; Since the human mind and personality changes naturally over time, maybe after what they perceive to be a few hundred years of solitary confinement, if they haven't gone crazy and psychotic, they might go the other way and become wiser and more refined, ultimately becoming a zen master. Then when they have served their sentence, they could be released as a new person with as much of their natural life left as they went in with.

[–] Tricklebrook (314) 7 years ago

Still, I do think MasterMoron makes a good point. I wondered about that, too. In the episode it was the cookie being subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment. The guy who actually did it was just sitting in jail, wasn't he?

[–] misc614 8 years ago

So...does that make you a liberal? It sounds like Black Mirror made you think about things and your opinion on the matter became quite liberal. That's good.

[–] chilone (17875) 7 years ago

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 7 years ago

Yes it is.

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[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 7 years ago

I agree, foogie.

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[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 7 years ago

That is a very sick concept, and the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment. I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but here is America we're protected from that by our Constitution.

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