oversized salt-shakers shrieking, "Exterminate!"

If you're going do a nerd joke on April 1st, know your material even a little bit better. I read Dune over 30 years ago in college, and I can remember that the capitol of Arrakis is Arrakeen. Even 54 comments later that little factiod hasn't made it anywhere onto the page.

One man's abuse is another man's necessity.

Deciding who is right is the problem.

Assuming you actually want to execute people, I'd favor heroin. There are frequent pieces in the news about drug busts yielding some quantity of heroin, and about accidental heroin overdoese.

So execute with intentional heroin overdoses, if there's that much laying around. I'm sure legislation could make that purpose legal when performed by authorized agents, due process, etc.

I suspect the stumbling block is that some people wouldn't want the convicted getting high on their way out.

Does this mean that the follies of your youth become held against you for your entire life? Even if we were somehow shielded until we're 18, youthful mistakes don't stop then. There has been quite a bit of study now that important developments in the brain continue into the mid 20's. Heck, since we often accept anecdotal fiction as evidence around /., think of Scrooge. He had a life-changing event relatively late in life.

At one extreme, we freeze everyone into the patterns of their youth. At the other, "I've changed, I've learned since then," becomes a mantra that absolves all responsibility. The difference here is that in the real world, people know you, your speech and actions, and how they all change with time, so they're at least equipped to make a decent judgement, even if that doesn't always happen. In non-meat-space those things aren't necessarily true, especially as so much incoming information is filtered to confirm one's current world-view.

If that unit has been willing to work for the Good Magician Humphrey for a year to get the answer to that question, there can be only one answer.

At what point does it become unethical to consider and treat these as lab animals. How much brain complexity is enough? This probably isn't it, and our A.I. isn't good enough yet. But some year we're going to cross the line, and I'm sure that as a society we're going to be completely unaware and in denial when we do.