A person can be killed instantly through many different means.

As we know it, to be killed painlessly, is to be killed instantly.

If you instantly destroy a person’s entire brain then they died without pain.

Yet the most effective ways of instantly destroying someone’s entire brain are considered inhumane.

If instantly killing someone by smashing their head with a massive rock, or shooting them in the brain stem is inhumane, then there is no humane way to kill someone at all.

  • daddyjones@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As we know it, to be killed painlessly, is to be killed instantly

    This is not necessarily true. There are ways to fall asleep and never wake up. Not instant, but painless.

            • elephantium@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Most people are subject to the death penalty. The world population is approaching 8.1 billion souls. The ten most populous nations are India, China, the US, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, and Mexico, adding up to 4.6 billion – over half the planet.

              Of those, only Mexico has abolished the death penalty (though Brazil is listed as “extreme only” and Russia is listed as “suspended”, having not officially executed anyone in the past decade*). Putting these together, at least 4.1 billion people out of the “first 4.6” that I looked at live under the specter of the death penalty.

              I don’t think you can no-true-scotsman your way out of the simple fact that it’s still “normal” for humans to kill other humans. I also don’t think that acknowledging that fact requires that you endorse the practice.

              *whoa, is this a case where RUSSIA is more sane than the USA?! Strange times.

              I looked up the population info on https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ and cross-referenced with the site you posted.

            • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Death penalty isn’t the only way to kill people…

              Murder, War, “Police” Violence, “Military interventions (totally 3 days only)”…

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Because the death penalty exists.

      Because people are currently sentenced to execution even in the United States.

      To those humans who are sentenced to death, why not choose a method that is instantaneous death, rather than something that can potentially fail.

      I’d rather die instantly from a rock or a 12 gauge shell to the head than be injected or electrocuted.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    1 year ago

    The key metric for ‘human’ actions is to avoid needless suffering. Livestock processed humanly is not panicked, not given a slow painful death, it should be quick, clean, and without pain.

    Living conditions are human if they don’t create needless suffering, i.e. animals living in a open farm are human, animals living their lives in changes is inhumane.

    I think the golden rule applies, treat others how you would like to be treated, is basically being humane.

  • Hugucinogens@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    I mean, there is no humane way to kill someone.

    But on the USA death penalty issue, yes, generally choices about how it is carried out, are made with the spectators in mind, and the process itself is made more torturous in order to make it look better. (John Oliver has some great information in his death penalty video)

    • Oszilloraptor@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      And (afaik) with the executors mental health in mind as well.

      e.g. if you just crush a head with a stone you will know you did it.

      If two others and you have to push a button you can tell yourself that it’s more probable you didn’t kill somebody than that you did.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Inert gas asphyxiation is considered as painless.

    Accordingly, the human subject detects little abnormal sensation as the oxygen level falls. This leads to asphyxiation (death from lack of oxygen) without the painful and traumatic feeling of suffocation (the hypercapnic alarm response, which in humans arises mostly from carbon dioxide levels rising), or the side effects of poisoning.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I posted it there as well but people tend to be very touchy about human death regardless of circumstances.

      I for one don’t care what condition my body is in after I die as long as physically I didn’t feel anything.

      • elephantium@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That makes me think of the Klingons from Star Trek “It is only an empty shell; do with it as you will.”