prior probability is reblogging Anton Chekhov‘s short story “The Bet”, in which a banker and a lawyer make a bet with each other about whether the death penalty is better or worse than life in prison. The story has a surprise ending and several important take-away lessons, not the least of which are the dangers of equating material wealth with happiness …
“The Bet” by Anton Chekhov
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years before. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
“I don’t agree with you,” said the host. “I myself have experienced neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by…
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