John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

Yeah, Star Trek went to that particular well multiple times...I vaguely remember an episode from The Next generation about a society in which children with special needs were recognized early and then not allowed to live and they were all shocked/uncomfortable about Geordie. And naturally in the end it is his visor technology which saves their way of life.

Thing is, science fiction scenarios usually explore the extremes. And that is completely okay, they have to, because that is the best way to bring the dangers across. But in real live, there always needs to be a balance.

Thing is.. the genome of the average person looks to be full of.. crap. Everyone is a mutant in a bunch of ways, and almost all mutations are duds.

Evolution works by picking out rare gold from massive amounts of dross - the really bad mutations exit the genepool before you even make it out of the womb, lesser imperfections just mean you are a bit less likely to survive the next famine or whatever, so dont stick around for the long haul.

Which means we are all walking around with small mutations that, oh, mean we dont process vitamin h right or some other little detail of our body chemistry is impaired. Not just one flaw, but many.

.. And just.. editing them all out looks like it should be both really easy, and also produce a generation which is mildly superhuman just by being freakishly healthy.

It's the "looks like it should be really easy" part that I'm worried about. Nature has a way of flipping you off when you think you've figured it out. Especially since due to the way evolution works, it might take decades or even centuries to notice any really bad side effects. The obvious option is to make sure there's a big giant control group, but that runs the risk of accidentally creating a genetic caste society.

Personally, what I would prefer is non-inheritable changes. Let people modify themselves as much as they want so long as they don't touch the gametes. That way unmodified genes get passed on and the human genome as a whole isn't affected. But that has its own problems, starting with the fact that the vast majority of gene therapies work best in the womb. Maybe we'll develop technology to rewrite an adult human body at a cellular level in a relatively short timeframe (as in months instead of decades), but that's pie in the sky technology right now.

I'd personally like to be able to modify myself to have larger muscles, but I guess we have to be careful about all these negative potential effects too...

Pretty interesting stuff.

I would like that too. Mostly because I just don't gain weight. And the lack of weight hinders muscle growth. And the lack of weight isn't some 'Oh, I stay normal' but a 'Oh, I'm constantly underweight'.

Edited by InkDagger on Jul 5th 2018 at 3:43:38 AM

Might be able to change that too with gene splicing.

The whole thing is depressing.

John Oliver goes over the power prosecutors have in the US justice system and how often said power is actually abused.

I admit, I never quite got this competitive element in US courtrooms. I have watched my share of trials (actual trials, not TV trials) in German court rooms, and they worked more like some sort of negotiation with the judge having the final say. It's more about getting the fact right than getting a "win", because the goal is not to get the highest possible punishment for someone, but to find the truth and a fitting punishment. Only the really highly prolific cases go more competitive, but not to the level I keep seeing in the US.

Because US System is Common Law and we use Civil Law. Different legal systems.

Wondering why US Court procedures and German ones are different is tbh as free of sense as US Citizens in Ireland complaining about their First Amendment rights not being granted when they asshole-protest against LBGT laws.

RTFM...

Edited by 3of4 on Aug 6th 2018 at 12:28:42 PM

I am mostly wondering what the point is. Shouldn't the goal of a trial be to lay out all evidence as cleanly as possible and make a really good argument and NOT to get the highest punishment possible? I mean, who wants to get stuck in the US court system?

Common Law is, by design, an adversarial system. You are basically saying 'Why isn't Common Law like Civil Law'.

And if you think Civil Law is without it's own fuckups, just look at the Wehrhahn trial.

Edited by 3of4 on Aug 6th 2018 at 1:45:06 PM

Civil cases in the United States are adversarial. You want your client to win; discovering the truth is not the point.

Now, that SHOULD be different in criminal cases. Prosecutors SHOULD want to get the truth, and do justice.

However, many prosecutors are either actively malicious, or have been swallowed up by system that believes that the first person arrested must clearly be guilty, and then operates on that assumption for the entire rest of the case.

Achieving high conviction rates and being “tough on crime” is unfortunately often a priority over catching the actual criminal. And unfortunately, there is a vindictive, racist streak in our prosecutors a mile wide. Prosecutors are disproportionately white and male, and that influences how they behave.

Then there’s the way the prison system has been used to sweep up black people (and poor whites and Latinos), arrest them for minor charges with little evidence, intimidate them into a guilty plea, ask for the maximum sentence, and then leave them to rot while making manufactured goods for $1 a day.

Watch 13th on Netflix, and/or read The New Jim Crow. The modern American police are descendants of slave catching squads. Our criminal justice system is.... deeply broken. Or, depending how you look at it, it’s working perfectly as it was intended.

Footnote: common law means law from judicial opinions, versus statutory (statutes and legal codes passed by the legislature). Common law is a part of every type of law, including civil and criminal law.

Edited by wisewillow on Aug 6th 2018 at 7:48:45 AM

Sunday will be a field day for John because he'll definitely be touching upon this again: Tribune has terminated its merger deal with Sinclair and is suing Sinclair for breach of contract.

Since I'm not good at embedding this, I'll just post a link on yesterday's topic: Astroturfing.

Edited by Mario1995 on Aug 13th 2018 at 11:49:40 AM

WAG THE DOG is basically the best way to understand this.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 14th 2018 at 7:41:17 AM

John Oliver's going over how the US strips felons - even non-violent ones - of their voting rights or, as he points out in the video, "taxation without representation".

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 10th 2018 at 5:01:43 PM

I can't watch the video, but do felons regain their right to vote once they're out of prison?

Depends on the state. Most do (or at least once parole has been served), but Florida in particular does not, having over 1.4 million ex-convicts permanently stripped of their franchise under the state's constitution. The former Democratic governor had a system set up to restore voting rights of such people through executive authority, but the current governor, Rick Scott, has instead created a system of in-person review that enfranchises only a tiny trickle of people, and those seemingly on a whim.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the stance on ex-felons is intended in large part to prevent minorities from voting via the two-punch system: convict them of minor offenses such as drug possession, then strip their franchise.

There is some hope that the constitutional amendment in question will be overturned by public referendum this fall.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 11th 2018 at 7:40:45 AM

What are the chances of eventually getting felons who are currently in prison their voting rights back? I know our system likes to dehumanize prisoners, but there are plenty of human rights organizations fighting for them—are any of them looking into their voting rights, or is that considered low priority at the moment?

Frankly, I am okay with people who are in prison not having voting rights. It might not be ideal, but it is understandable. But once they have finished their punishment, they should get the right back or at least get it back after a set period of time. Automatically, no question asked.

I think it's pretty standard not to allow currently serving felons to vote, but they should get their rights back upon finishing their sentences.

Actually...I think in Germany they can request to vote per letter, but naturally they no longer have the right that their vote is kept secret (because their letter might be checked) and there is a separate possibility to lose the right to vote for a specific time or forever, but that only happens if you have committed really, really bad crimes, like first degree murder or you are considered criminally insane. In such cases this is part of the judgement, though, there is no need for a separate hearing or anything like this.

Some more international comparison:

In The Netherlands, convicts currently serving a prison sentence keep their voting rights. It is possible to strip a person of their voting rights as a separate sentence, but only if the crime directly threatens the democratic order. Between 2005 and 2010, prosecutors asked for this sentence a total of four times. Three of these cases were instances of terrorism, one was an instance of voting fraud. In none of the cases the sentence was actually imposed.

So yeah, add The Netherlands to the list of countries where disenfranchisement isn't used as a punitive measure.