ElPatron said:
1. It proves that if you have to chose between X and Y, people will try and say Z
Of course that will sometimes be the case, you could also so that if I offer you cake or pie you could say that you'd just have a carrot. The Z that your example sites is that people will choose not death (shooting themselves in the foot) over likely death (going to war. The death penalty problem is different though since you are contending that there is a significant number of people who would choose certain immediate death (suicide) over certain slightly delayed death (execution) or potentially significantly delayed death (BATTLE DOME!). There is no reason however to believe that argument to be accurate.
2. It does not prove your argument, because the Roman Empire and the Allies/Axis still had many people to fight for them. So if you use my argument to support yours, you're basically saying "people prefer death to have their feet shot/thumbs cut off", which is not the matter at hand.
No, that wasn't my argument even a little. My argument was the choice of death now or maybe death later isn't a choice, that if you tell someone I can kill you now or you can go find and potentially delay your death by some period of time, ethically I'm not really giving you any options. In the example of draft dodging people shoot themselves in the foot because that act provides the greatest chance of survival, and going to war doesn't even make it all that likely that you'll die.
3. Death row inmates are a minority in the rest of the inmate population. They are much more closely watched than regular inmates.
True, we still however have no way of proving what percentage of them would commit suicide if we weren't watching them. The number, near as I can tell, is between .6% and 1.2% based on your 6 times more likely statistic which means in the US Death Row system we'll have 2 or 3 suicides in a year. That is not a particularly significant number.
2. It proves that people will prefer a quick, summary way of doing things. WWI was not a "clean" war, it was pretty gruesome. People preferred the short term suffering of having their feet shot than suffering from infections, cold, famine, not seeing their family, getting mangled and dying slowly, facing permanent injury for life.
No, it evidences that people will choose injury over death, which is my point.[
4. Choosing between death and fight is still choosing between death and death. If you decline the fight, death. If you lose, death. If you win, death.
You can get too injured to win another fight and get killed in the arena. Or just give up fighting. Or even if you win, your next opponent might kill you anyway. All choices result in death.
5. If you are a 50 year old man with some disabilities, you won't be able to fight a 20 year old. Or you might be a skinny guy, facing a huge guy that looks like he was a bouncer of some sort. People will chose death instead of dying slowly in the hands of someone who can just dominate the whole match, while everyone is watching.
No, in these examples you aren't giving the person then isn't choosing between potentially delayed death and immediate death anymore, they are choosing between immediate death and immediate death so still when you're not dealing with the physically impaired I still contend that you are not giving a real or ethical choice.
