Imagine a would-be ideologically-motivated terrorist concocted a plot that would kill hundreds of people but he was arrested before he could harm anyone. In the course of the plot, he committed enough crimes that he will be put in a supermax prison for the rest of his life.
Is it more ethical to keep this person in a solitary confinement--allowed out of his cell only one hour a day--for the next forty years or give him the option of taking a pill that will make him stop wanting to murder people in the name of his ideology and instead put him on parole until it's clear the pill worked?
I'd argue offering the pill is far more humane than life in solitary confinement.
A tool like this obviously should not be used to "reform" people who are socially different (e.g. Alan Turing); the scenario I propose here is only applicable to people whose violent politics make them too dangerous to let out of prison.
First, it is very unlikely that a person who is so commited to some idea to be ideologically-motivated terrorist, would voluntarily accept pill that forces ideological change.
Second, there is already something similar. In some countries there is option for people that committed sexual crimes (e.g. chil rape) and have uncontrollable urges to accept chemical castration in order to get parole. It is generally viewed as human rights violation.
> You can't force anyone to do it
And your mind immediately went to:
> Forcibly changing a person's mind
Mind elaborating a bit?
I reckon people who reason like this probably think "extremism" is some concretely defined thing rather than a subjective thing that depends on the culture, the time, and the place.
You seem to have read it a completely different way. Are you by chance worried about the second order effects? Perhaps that the existence of such a pill would increase the range of believes that people are ostracized for?
If they're not allowed to improve, then how are they to rejoin society again?
edit: wait, are you suggesting joining ISIS or the Aryan Brotherhood is just a subjective difference of opinion?
It doesn't matter who's doing the disenfranchising if it's ubiquitous.
Extremism is a loaded word that has no real concrete meaning. Therefore, it can mean whatever the opinion makers want it to mean. And you can justify all sorts of abuse and torture with that sort of propaganda.
This game has been played many times in human history and it never ends well.
Murder, arson, kidnapping? Hate speech, harassment, cyberstalking?
Like in the 1940s, when we failed to take extremism seriously and 6+ million were killed?
I can find probably millions of people that would agree that they are in fact, extremists. In fact, the Nazis argued that Jews and Communists were evil. Of course, in Soviet Russia and China, the anti-communists were the extremists...and died by the tens of millions as a result.
To the extent that laws are actually broken, those crimes should be prosecuted.
Speech is a natural right and needs to be protected as such.
The U.S. went through the 40s all the while generally protecting the first amendment. The German Nazis went around torturing and bullying everyone who disagreed with them. Your proposal is closer to Nazism than anything I've heard of.
People should be allowed to say what they want, BUT - If anyone thinks that they have to say or think that jews/black people/woman are evil, less worth etc., they can fuck right off. In my opinion there's no justifiable reason whatsoever to be racist, xenophobic and the like.
Many of them have bright futures. If anything, it's dystopian not to let them live their lives to the fullest extent.
Talk to them. Listen to how they got there. Show compassion.
https://www.ted.com/talks/christian_picciolini_my_descent_in...
Also, that doesn't scale. Getting someone a therapist costs a good amount of money, getting them on meds is dirt cheap. Convincing someone who doesn't trust you very much they should go see a therapist is going to be a very hard sell.
Maybe - maybe - if it were entirely voluntary, it could be okay. But I think you’ll find that convincing someone who doesn’t trust you very much they should take medication to change their minds is also going to be a very hard sell. People generally think they’re right, after all, otherwise they would have different beliefs.
And sorry but, frankly, advocating for literal chemical brainwashing because it's cheaper than therapy is sociopathic.