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89 points Michelangelo11 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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alwa ◴[] No.44522167[source]
Bizarre that this category of touring show continues after all these years. It seems like such self-consciously guilty behavior on the part of the organizers: you don’t accidentally end up with human corpses (that you’re selling as entertainment on the basis of being human corpses!).

They came by them somehow. If the nature of someplace’s justice system is that a death sentence comes with a “turned-to-plastic-and-paraded-around-for-selfies” enhancement, so as to trouble the offender’s eternal soul as well as their life, then just.. say that. “They’re ’bad guys’ and we as a company believe that’s what bad guys deserve.” Or even, “we weren’t involved in the circumstances of their death, but we figure if we’d had a chance to ask them they probably would be fine with it.”

As morally repugnant as I find the entire endeavor, I bet it wouldn’t even hurt ticket sales: people in the West have, in the not-so-distant past, treated hangings and beheadings as social occasions.

But like, there’s a right way to do informed consent—why not just do it and say “yeah we did it the obvious way”? Come to think of it… the ambiguity sure is a reliable path to free attention. It wouldn’t be the first marketing strategy to rely on provocation…

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BugsJustFindMe ◴[] No.44522587[source]
> so as to trouble the offender’s eternal soul

Maybe if any evidence ever existed of such a thing. But since there is none, I say people spend far too much time and effort worrying about the dignity of dead bodies that have no feelings.

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mc32 ◴[] No.44522636[source]
There are lots of animist (etc.) societies that mark/hold certain grounds as sacred and unfit for other purposes and prevent their usage. Should we tell them to get on with the times?
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1. BugsJustFindMe ◴[] No.44522724[source]
> Should we tell them to get on with the times?

You can simultaneously ask permission in cases where you don't actually need the body for anything meaningfully useful (displaying them this way is extremely frivolous) and also think it's dumb and paleolithic for them to object on such grounds and also tell them to grow up in cases where their mysticism necessarily obstructs societal growth.

If someone believes the earth is flat, how far do you go to humor them? If someone believes lizard people control the Vatican, do we put that belief on equal footing? If someone's perception of god tells them that poor people don't deserve healthcare if they can't pay for it, is that good, or am I allowed to say "what the fuck, that's fucked up"?