Hacker News Reader

I never played Persona 5, is that relevant to "public support of a assassination"? Otherwise I don't see how it's relevant.

View on HN

One of the central themes of P5 is that “public support” tends to be based on spectacle and emotion rather than justice — kinda like the idea of news as entertainment rather than truth. The assassination of a foreign leader would be news, but it wouldn’t really be a spectacle in the same way as a local politician, and wouldn’t create the kind of emotional reaction within the public that the parent comment is referencing.

This is a very powerful notion in general. In an extremely real way, justice is just "codified vibes." The primary purpose of a functioning judicial system is really to allow the public to sleep soundly in their beds at night.

> The primary purpose of a functioning judicial system is really to allow the public to sleep soundly in their beds at night

*In some countries.

In others, the primary purpose is rehabilitation so people can eventually re-join society as "better people".

That's the same thing, just with different publicly accepted definitions of 'safe'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com