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For those curious, the episode of Star Trek one of the users is talking about is called “Hard Time.”

Chief O’Brien is accused of spying and is tricked into thinking he’s served a 20 year prison sentence (during which he murdered his cell mate) when in reality only a few hours have passed.

Long story short, the PTSD and guilt is enough to give him a complete mental breakdown and he’s very nearly driven to suicide.

It’s a prime example of the Torment Nexus.

The episode focuses on O'Brien's PTSD, survivor's guilt, and how prisoners have difficulty continuing their lives after their sentences. It's an inside joke among Trekkies that he gets cruel sci-fi trauma compared to other major characters since there are so many episodes where something horrible/bizarre happens to him and/or those he cares about.

He's second to only Counsellor Troi on how much he gets fucked with.

I mean picard did have that whole other life

Sure, but that wasn't exactly torture.

O'Brien has several episodes that are some version of him suffering. There's Hard Time as mentioned, there's another where his daughter gets time-looped and a version of her that has been living in the wilderness for ~15 years shows up and his family has to deal with that.

There's the time he's kidnapped by the Cardassians and subjected to their version of a trial, which assumes that anyone who is accused is already guilty and he is told he will 100% be sentenced to death.

Another episode where he is isolated by the entire rest of the crew, as if something is wrong with him so he can't be trusted, to the point where commits one man mutiny thinking everyone else has gone mad.

There's the episode where he jumps through time, trying to save the station from destruction, which ends in one version of him dying by some form of radiation poisoning.

His wife gets possessed by an evil Bajoran ghost that threatens to kill her if O'Brien doesn't comply with her orders that will harm his friends.

He gets infected by a deadly biologic weapon while behind enemy lines with only Bashir by his side, almost certainly heading to a painful death.

Another episode where he is isolated by the entire rest of the crew, as if something is wrong with him so he can't be trusted, to the point where commits one man mutiny thinking everyone else has gone mad.

Man, that sure must have felt fucked up for him, but at the same time it was quite the badass moment for him because it showed that if he wanted to, he could absolutely wreck everyones shit.

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That reminds me of the time when O’Brian >!literally dies and is replaced by a version of himself from a reality where he didn’t die!<

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Oh yes, forever ensign Harry Kim

If he wanted a promotion he should have fucked the captain like Lt. Paris.

Tom was demoted after that, and then got promoted back all before Harry ever got promoted once.

Also baby Naomi Wildman

"we brought this baby to replace your dead baby now that you're fully entrenched in the grieving process"

Harry Kim be like "we bailed on that reality and we came to this one, because in this one, the world wasn't destroyed and in this one, we were dead. So we came here, a- a- and we buried ourselves and we took their place. And every morning I eat breakfast twenty yards away from my own rotting corpse."

And the Vulcan and Cat clone dude too. He didnt want to die.

RIP Tuvix. Too soon.

There’s a reason why this comic exists.

https://chiefobrienatwork.com

I just read like 50 of these and I almost feel bad for O’Brien.

Almost.

Wow never seen this before thank you for sharing!

Wow never seen this before thank you for sharing!

I love this series.

Oh man this will keep me going on the slow days!

Which episode was this?

DS9 S2E14 “Whispers”

His wife gets possessed by an evil Bajoran ghost that threatens to kill her if O'Brien doesn't comply with her orders that will harm his friends.

Yeah, but that was just payback from the TNG episode when he was the one possessed by a space ghost heaping shit on Keiko.

Edit: "Power Play"

In that Cardassian episode, the Cardassians remove one of his teeth and keep it for some reason. I don't know why but this detail has stuck with me. Why did they take a tooth? How long do they keep body parts on file? Did Obrien get a synthetic tooth to replace it?

In true Star Trek fashion we never hear about these events ever again.

I think it was for identification within their system or some such. They mention as well that every Cardassian has it done at a young age iirc.

Couple other episodes with teeth extraction too, it's not just this one episode

Remember the toooth

Why

Space tooth fairy

I haven't seen Star Trek in a long time, so I'm unfamiliar with the different races, but I read Cardassians as Kardashians...

yeah there's been a lot of puns along the lines, they were the grey reptile like ones.

Thanks. I know the Cardassians, of course, but...

I recently joked with my hb that a show called 'keeping up with the cardassians' is something we'd happily watch.

Gul Dukat and his shenanigans :)

‘Kidnapped by the Kardashians’ would also be something

Cardassians are less annoying and their ships use less plastic

they are pretty good at plastic surgery

Cardassians look and act human.

speaking of getting infected he was the first to get infected with an aphasia, coma and eventual death virus though in that one at least he wasn't suffering alone.

All I can remember is the five lights with Picard.

THERE WERE FOUR! LIGHTS!

There's the time he's kidnapped by the Cardassians and subjected to their version of a trial, which assumes that anyone who is accused is already guilty and he is told he will 100% be sentenced to death.

The Cardassian are so fucked up. I love the conversation Gul Dukat and Sisko have about the Cardassian legal system.

On Cardassia, the verdict is always known before the trial begins. And it's always the same."

"In that case, why bother with a trial at all?"

"Because the people demand it. They enjoy watching justice triumph over evil every time. They find it comforting."

And the episode where his daughter gets sent through some time portal and comes back as an adult that has been living on her own for most of her life.

Luck of the Irish am I right?

kidnapped by the Cardassians and subjected to their version of a trial

isn't that what happened to OJ Simpson?

ONLY Bashir by his side? He's a lock to live

Rewatched DS9 recently for the second time.

There was a lot of "Oh, this is a torture Miles episode"

There are four lights.

which ends in one version of him dying by some form of radiation poisoning.

And that version is the canonical "our" O'Brien, who gets replaced by his future self. So canonically, the O'Brien we followed actually died.

There's the episode where he jumps through time, trying to save the station from destruction, which ends in one version of him dying by some form of radiation poisoning.

iirc, the original from our POV actually dies but the "past" O'Brien was able to fix the issue.

And Riker had that moment with the play that was actually a real asylum. And the one where he met a clone of himself.

Seven was a child soldier mind slave...

Worf has to constantly struggle with his adopted Vs born identities, especially in the episode where he has to face his paralysis and decides on euthanasia at the hands of his prepubescent son.

Thought I was in /r/daystrominstitute for a second lol

Technically, Picard has three whole other lives. The first was when he was assimilated, then when he was absorbed by the probe (and got his cool ass flute), and then in Generations when he gets sucked into that nebula or whatever and thinks he has a family.

Ass flute?

You didn’t see Picard goes to Band Camp?

Don't ask how he plays it...

Also in Tapestry when he goes back in time to stop himself from getting into a barfight, but winds up in a life where he never took any risks and doesn't become anywhere nesr captain, although he doesn't actually live through that life and frankly Q may have just been messing with him.

I always thought it'd be funny and cool to do a series that starts with a red suited designated dier that gets pulled into every wormhole, space loop, probe, symbiotic parasite, etc so by the end he's a super genius with thousands of years of lived experience and the knowledge of countless cultures.

At the start no one can be bothered to talk to him because he's just s dumb kid that probably won't last his first away mission, by the end he's renowned all around the universe as being amazing at everything - even the q seek him out for his wisdom every Klingon reveres his martial skill, every Vulcan his logic....

Then he dies in a transporter accident or gets drowned under tribbles.

But that life was super wholesome.

Absolutely my favorite episode, by the way.

Still, the trauma of getting shoved into it and yanked back out...

Great sci-fi, IMO, but fair-to-middling Star Trek - because it feels to me like it's borrowing Trek's timeslot and actors to tell its own story, instead of telling a Star Trek story exploring the (excellent) sci-fi themes it wants to explore. If it were the captain of some random exploratory ship on an SF anthology show, played by another actor of Sir Patrick's caliber, instead of Picard, I don't think it would lose much - if anything at all.

And also, THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!

He loved that life. That was his chance to be a father

I personally felt Harry Kim was right behind O'Brien.

And he never got promoted.

Tom Paris got demoted to jail, promoted(Caretaker) demoted(30 Days) and promoted again(Unimatrix Zero)

Well, when you have alien lizard babies with the captain, she has to promote you. It's a Starfleet regulation, I looked it up.

Don't forget Paris also had to relive the last moments of a murder victims life over and over again every 12 hours or so as punishment for committing the murder.

He was innocent of course.

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The account I'm replying to is a karma bot run by someone who will link scams once the account gets enough karma.

Report -> Spam -> Harmful Bot

IDK I think he might come in first. The writers of DS9 referred to those as "O'Brien must suffer" epsisodes, and they had a rule about having to do at least one every season.

Really? I'd of gone with Ensign Kim.

Like, a full third of Troi's torment comes from her mother. Does that really count?

And Troi literally got fucked with multiple times. Poor woman

O'Brien must suffer.

I don't believe they tortured him. Keiko wasn't in the cell.

Seriously. Every time I watch DS9 I’m struck by how really awful she is to him.

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I don't know if I'd call them racist. Keiko feels way more like a sexist stereotype (ha ha nagging wife am I right fellow men) and I can't remember anything about Harry that stands out in that way. I really liked Harry but I agree they did him dirty; my guy saves the ship every other week, is an exemplary officer, and somehow fucking Paris keeps getting pro/demoted over and over instead. Also Harry 4000% gets laid, there's that episode where he and an alien chick fall in love and it's a whole thing where he disobeys a direct order, etc. Something something bonding chemicals. Can't remember the name of it but the alien species all lives on one big ship and part of the plot is a subsection of the population wanting to leave, if that jogs anyone's memory.

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There's a Delta Flyers podcast episode where Garrett Wang talks about how they wanted Harry Kim to spout off some random Chinese proverbs here and there and Garrett was like "But Kim is a Korean name. He's not Chinese." And boy howdy that was uncomfortable.

F I can’t imagine how awkward it would be to have to point that out

If I remember correctly early on Harry didn't pursue any women because he had a girlfriend back on Earth and was hopeful they'd find a way home quickly.

Omg I forgot about her

It’s ok, she probably forgot about him too.

Oh yeah my totally real girlfriend.. she lives on earth.. she would totally love to meet you all but you know, earth is really far away

Doesn't matter, had snu snu.

I mean shit after reading that the producers wanted Harry to just be randomly throwing out Chinese and the actor had to point out that the last name was Korean, I don't have high hopes that they didn't play into the trope deliberately. Not to mention they have universal translators so Harry shouldn't be able to just speak a whole ass different language anyway, nobody else would pick up on it - including the audience.

I honestly don't remember enough about romances to say (I forgot about Harry's girlfriend too lmao) but the only thing I can reliably say about characters getting together in VOY is Paris and Janeway making weird little reptile alien babies is still the weirdest fucking choice and I dont understand who thought that should make it into the episode.

That I just didn't know at all, that's very disappointing and makes an even better case for Harry also getting hit really hard with the same bullshit.

Hm. I thought Harry wasn't getting laid because of the nerd and not asian stereotype.

And Keiko never seemed to me as a nagging wife - this is new to me. Why nagging? I thought they were ok.

The nerd stereotype and the Asian stereotype are intertwined

Perhaps in the US, but elsewhere...

Yes in the US, where the majority of writers, actors, producers etc of Star Trek Voyager were from

As an asexual male with friends that were horndogs making horrible life choices, I appreciated Kim. I identified rather strongly with the guy with no regular sexual interest being put upon by keeping his friends in line.

Also, that isn’t the original Harry Kim from that timeline(?). It could 100% be that Janeway has no clue how to file the paperwork to do anything with him when he had been confirmed dead for over 4 months. Also, the producers hated the actor for some reason.

Lol, you didn't even mention Harry Kim's parents. Terrible stereotyping.

"While you were off saving the Alpha Quadrant, I was lonely, Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllesssssssss. Why are you such a horrible person, Miiiiiiillllllleeeeeeeeeessssss"

I hear the voice

Hahahahaha I thought they were an alright couple, I like a woman who has her own passions and stuff

I agree she was poorly written, but outside that miles and keiko are probably most "normal" couple in that universe, whereas nearly every other main character has some kind of emotional or personality issue that crops up when they try to form relationships.

Ya, I’m not that much of a Trekkie but off the top of my head doesn’t worf end up being an absent father (through no fault of his own, except O’Brian did better) and Riker only has dysfunctional relationships?

Many characters in the star trek universe have general relationship and social issues.

Picard is very private and standoffish, can't state his feelings for Beverly and despises children. Riker is a himbo with daddy and commitment issues. Geordi can't hold a relationship, even holographic ones. Sisko is a bit of control freak and dealing with the death of his wife at the hands of the borg at the start of DS9.

Throughout the show Bashir has obvious relationship issues stemming from his desire to be loved by someone, and leading him to abuse his position as a doctor to prey on women who for some reason are damaged or psychologically distraught.

Worf is torn between two worlds and their respective duties, and is generally incredibly uptight. Leading to him being a bad father, and ruining his brother's life as we learn later in DS9.

Of all of the human starfleet personnel we see, only O'Brien really has a long-term, relatively healthy relationship, if you ignore the bad writing of keiko.

In fact, the adverse affects of a career in Starfleet on relationships is a common theme that crops up throughout the show, almost unintentionally. All of them are socially hampered in some way due to the fact that they spent most of their formative years studying and training to be in Starfleet, spent most of their time at their job, surrounded by other people in Starfleet.

O'Brien. Must. Suffer.

Remember the episode where his wife got posessed by evil demons?

It's was the most likeable Keiko ever was in that show.

Poor O'Brien.

It's ok he gets that statue and is worshipped as the best person in Starfleet or whatever

Haven't seen or hear about that episode since it aired and it's stuck with me. Something Anouk t it was really dark when I watched it as a kid.

he gets cruel sci-fi trauma compared to other major characters

Yeah, being confined to a small room is nothing like his time on the Enterprise, in good ol' Transporter Room 3. There they at least briefly let him out to attend his own wedding.

Not surprised that's a common conception, they seriously fuck with Obrien on the regular in deep space nine. I've noticed the next generation and deep space nine had a lot of episodes that involved at least one of the characters being imprisoned in general, everyone gets some crazy psychological torture at some point.

He deserves it though, he's a real Meaney.

And then there's https://chiefobrienatwork.com/

My fan theory: It is because he painted Q green on one saint Patrick day.

"Chief O'Brien at work" is a great webcomic for that exact reason.

Bro I didn't know star trek was so deep lmao I need to watch this lol

There are a lot of Star Trek episodes, particularly in TNG/DS9 that handle deeper philosophical topics. The Next Generation usually takes a more optimistic stance while Deep Space 9 tends to show the greyer areas of the Federation's politics.

SPOILER for Black Mirror

It’s also part of the Christmas episode of Black Mirror. The jailers are leaving for Christmas and set the time ratio in the virtual prison to like 1,000 years per real world minute. That episode fucked me up.

I legit couldn't watch Black Mirror after that episode. It broke me. The social blocking, the little girl, the guy trapped 1000 years per minute for a week. Great fuck....

The ending to that episode stuck with me more than anything else I've ever seen in a horror movie/show. I still think about it from time to time and get anxious.

The idea that you could torture a person for millions of years and there's no way for them to escape from it is absolutely horrifying. That guy probably suffered the worst fate out of any character in TV history, I cannot think of anything worse.

Steven King has that covered with his story The Jaunt. Just reading the Wikipedia summary shook me. I guess it's worth asking if unending stimulation is better or more preferable to unending lack of stimulation.

Greatest short story ever, I say short story but it's longer than you think, dad.

His The Long Walk has always been my favorite short of his, I'll check this one out

As of January 2021, the story is due to be made into a television series for MRC by Fear The Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson.

Oh shit oh fuck

What you’re saying is that it’s a long story short.

The more detailed version of that story is That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French. Also by Stephen king.

I don't like horror so can you give me a brief summary cuz that title's got me interested

It's basically Stepheb King's "hell is repetition"' quote in expanded short story form. A woman endures reliving a horrible accident for eternity. Sort of a weaponized déjà vu kind of thing

It is a very short story about a vacation that does not end.

A million years is but the first tick of eternity's endless clock.

Longer than you think.

It's also a thing in Altered Carbon although in that they're criminals specifically using it as a neverending painful torture. That was freaky but I found the black mirror one even worse because the casual "eh, just do it" cruelty is definitely something I could see a random cop doing when there's no consequences for them.

It's one of the reasons I would never upload my consciousness to a computer even though the benefits could be incredible. All it takes is one asshole with the right credentials or a software bug to send you to an actual eternal hell.

the casual "eh, just do it" cruelty is definitely something I could see a random cop doing when there's no consequences for them.

This is what makes Black Mirror so horrifying. People often always say it's about "technology scary", but imo the best episodes are the ones about "humans scary". 'cause in the end, the technology might scare you, but the humans building it and letting it happen leaves you helpless and depressed. 'cause you know they would do that.

Ah the realization of the existence eternal heaven and hell through the scientific method

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There's an Iain M Banks novel on the topic.

Surface Detail:

It's a war over both religion and technology. The Culture and a few other of the "Involveds," advanced civilizations in the pan-galactic astropolitical scene, are trying to stamp out Hell. Turns out that the neural lace technology which backs up people's brains has uses beyond resurrection into a new body. Many societies, including the Culture, have built vast virtual Heavens for people who are ready to give up the physical world but want to keep on living in a less challenging environment. And a few societies have set up Hells for people they believe deserve everlasting punishment.

The usual do-gooders aren't thrilled about consigning anybody to an everlasting torment in a sea of fire, pain, and degradation. Certainly the Culture doesn't approve. And so they and the Involveds agree to resolve the dispute by staging a massive, several-decade-long war in the virtual world to determine whether the Hells should be left standing.

It's a great book. Highly recommended.

You might like this take on the concept: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

Also an episode of outer limits from 1996

https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sentence

Came here to say this too. When at least three major sci-fi series all have independent episodes about how fuckmendously stupid an idea something is, maybe review?

See most people take these horrific episodes/ideas as an example of what we shouldn't do. Other people see them as inspiration.

dude reddit did the thing where it makes you comment more than once for a reason

There's a movie (that was on Netflix once) called OtherLife that explores inserting memories/time as punishment.

Just checked. Appears to be on Peacock TV (free in the US I believe).

Also a major plot element in Dredd (2012).

That and the one with the person trapped inside a teddy bear for all eternity made me stop watching. It’s a great show but that kinda shit just fucks me up.

It's also the concept of one of the best Doctor Who episodes of the new era.

Also given that it's Doctor who, it does involve a lot more time than usual.

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It's from season 2, called "White Christmas".

Edit: correction, White Christmas was a special episode after season 2.

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One of the Old Man's War sequels had a bit where aliens captured humans, removed brains and hooked them up to a computer simulation where they forced them to be suicide pilots. They captured a programmer and he managed to get control of the program after a while because he noticed the bugs and seams of the simulation.

That and the one with the person trapped inside a teddy bear for all eternity made me stop watching. It’s a great show but that kinda shit just fucks me up.

That episode was so fucked up that it lost all impact. The people and society were so ridiculously and needlessly cruel that I couldn't take it seriously.

Eachar, murdered him for a piece of bread that he was going to share

O’brien is hands down one of the best star trek characters ever

Colm Meany really brought some gravitas to that episode. For a minute at the end I really thought >!he was going to fire that phaser!<.

O'Brian has the most traumatizing shit happen to him throughout TNG and DS9. Guy is a mental tank.

One of the core tenets of DS:9
 O’Brien must suffer.

Attention Bajoran workers: O'BRIEN MUST SUFFER, at least once per season.

O'Brien had it rough in DS9.

I'm also reminded of this tech from Sid Meier'a Alpha Centauri:

What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output.

-- Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

Upvote for reading my mind. That episode was heavy as fuck.

https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sentence

Try that one too

Thank you. I was about to ask what episode it was.

Dredd, the good one, also has a drug called Slo-mo I think it was that does this as well to a much lesser degree, but WAYY prettier effects. Go see Dredd.

I have seen it. It’s fucking awesome.

To think it bombed because people, as a whole, are too stupid to look up actors/actresses names in a movie, see a title and just assume it was Stallone. Sometimes I honestly wonder how we do not just die en masse from how stupid people are.

Such a great episode and show

God i loved this episode. I'm gonna watch it tonight.

Miles O’Brien must suffer i think is what they called those episodes.

I heard it was originally an idea for bringing back Ensign Sito. That she survived and had spent years as a Cardassian prisoner and they wanted a story line with her rescue, struggles, and recovery.

There's no fix either. He just had to live with it.

Here's the farther adventures of Chief O'Brian!

https://chiefobrienatwork.com/post/106684455801/episode-1-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-builder-read-the-next-episode

It's also one of the best episodes of star trek ever made IMHO.

This was the plot of a 90's outer limits episode too.

Season 2 episode 22 The sentence.

The black mirror episode on this is even creepier.

Similar tone to one of black mirror's episode where they try to interrogate someone so they just put a clone(?) of his consciousness in an iteration to get a confession.

Loved that episode. And loved the method of punishment.

Great episode by the way. Its at least one of the top 10 episodes where they completely torture and destroy the psyche of Mile's O'Brien.

Long story short, the PTSD and guilt is enough to give him a complete mental breakdown and he’s very nearly driven to suicide.

Good news is he's back to normal by the next episode and it never gets acknowledged again because this was the 90s.

It’s like when Jake was helping Dr Bashir in a war zone and saw people die in front of him. Zero psychological repercussions.

Sometimes I forget just how monumentally fucked up DS9 was.

Most other Trek shows: "We're going to explore alien planets making as many friends as we can along the way via the enduring ideology that cooperation and mutual cultural understanding between different species is the path towards maximising happiness for all.

Deep Space 9: Ɨ'Μ Ç€Ă˜Æ—Ć‡Ç€ ƊØ ǀƗV€ ΔƁƁ Μ„ ĆĩΔƘΔĆƩ€Ƙƞ Æ€ĆŠĆžÄ ΔƇĐ ÎœÎ”Òœâ‚Ź Ʃĩ€ Î”á»źÄÆ—â‚ŹĆ‡Ä†â‚Ź Î©á»źâ‚ŹĆžĆŠÆ—Ă˜Ć‡ Æ—â‚Ł ĆÆ—â‚Łâ‚Ź Æ—Ćž ƎØƘƊĊ ĆÆ—VÆ—Ć‡Ç€ ÎČ₏ĆΔởƞ₏ Ʃĩ€ â‚Łá»źĆ‡ÄÎ”Îœâ‚ŹĆ‡ĆŠÎ”Ć Ć‡Î”ĆŠá»źĆ˜â‚Ź Ø₣ Ʃĩ€ á»źĆ‡Æ—V€Ƙƞ€ Æ—Ćž ƊØ ÎČ€ á»źĆ‡Ä†Î”Ć˜Æ—Ć‡Ç€ :)

I mean shit, it's almost as dark as Animorphs. Almost.

I'm more curious about the drugs. Do you have any information about that?

That’s not even the original O’Brien that gets sent to prison. The real O’Brien died of radiation poisoning a season earlier and was replaced by a future version of himself.

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This has been done a LOT in Science Fiction. Everything from books, movies, episodes of scifi tv (been done a couple times in Trek).

I remember an episode of The Outer Limit where Niles (the actor who plays Niles in Fraiser) invents a machine that does it. The trick is, you have to be guilty - it won’t punish you if you’re innocent and your own mind makes up the punishment. One of the test patients ends up almost dying because of the treatment his mind gives him and Niles goes in to bring him out of it. The prisoner dies and Niles is sent to prison for 20 years for negligence. The twist? He didn’t make it out of his own machine - only 5 minutes had passed and the prisoner made it out safe and sound. They reasoned he felt guilty about his invention and he punished himself - basically everyone is guilty of something and some people will punish themselves more in their own mind than anyone would on the outside.

I was wondering if someone else was reminded of that episode.

If I remember correctly though, if you were innocent it would pretty much fry your brain, so the twist was that the inventor served a full sentence because he knew he fucked up.

During that whole episode I kept thinking, with a technology that could give you a college education in minutes or even some mindless entertainment like an instant vacation, what kind of jackass invents something like this and immediately markets it for prisons?

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The ski eye drop was glitched. A woman wants to get her brother back right? Completely forgot the name but I know what you’re taking about.

It's Other Life - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4693358/

A 15min movie summary can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNzzUAUx4ew

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ctrl+f outer limits

Same. Not just that episode. Human Operators was even worse.

SCP-4205: in the eyes of the beholder.

The game Sunless Skies plays with this. They can essentially distort time so they'll put prisoners away where they will age rapidly relative to the outside, and it creates some messed up things like sons older than their fathers. There's also a debtor's prison where they work away their debt on a world where time moves faster than on the outside - which also allows them to squeeze more work out of them in less actual time, and because the way the debt accrues its near impossible to work your way out (and now your children may have to work your debt off too).

Such a great series.

That sounds really interesting

I know what you’re talking about. Its a movie where the CEO is a woman who is tricked into serving an extremely long sentence by her co-founder right?

Can’t remember basically any details but that. Also, something about how she was creating the technology to relive memories so she could see her dead husband or something?

Probably missing the details but that feels very familiar as I type it out.

OtherLife Im pretty sure is the movie. Just typed “movie where eyedrops make you serve prison time” lol

Also, my recollection was only like 33% right, guess I just made up the other part.

Right, but I forgot the name of that movie

It's Otherlife isn't it? Love that movie

Self/less I want to say

Snowpiercer they put “criminals” in a suspended state. I think they do it in Virtuosity as well. Maybe Minority Report they do too.

Don't forget Demolition Man! Be well!

Demolition Man has cryofreeze. That Spartan experienced the passage of time was unintentional.

It's the 2012 Dredd.

edit: Oh, or OtherLife.

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Aw, you really had Dredd in mind? I thought I probably missed the mark and it was Otherlife instead.

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Ooh, I should go bait someone into doing that!

(have a nice day)

OtherLife(2017)

IMDb

It's apparently fully available on YT. Not sure if there are any cuts or ads added in but it's there and only in 720p.

Kind of reminds me of a clockwork orange, although idk if that's what you're thinking of

OtherLife (someone else reminded me of the name)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherLife

Yes! Really good with relatively low budged and indie.

So, we getting real life genjutsus as prison sentences now?

Id rather have itachi just show up and kill me tbh

At least then you won't be expected to help rebuild your village every few weeks.

hey you gotta thank them baddies somewhat, ripping apart the whole town makes it a lot easier to modernize.
see pain making a massive hole - easy access so they can put cellars & internet down there b4 filling it back up

its like Szayelaporro's Death in bleach, 1 second is 100 years

Black mirror meter increases.

It's like a check list ✔

It’s literally the ending of black mirror: white christmas

Je. Sus. Christ. I still think about that episode. It's one of my favorites due to how sheerly fucked up the world is and the technology behind the technology. Shudder thinking about it.

Sus

HOLY FUCKING SHIT DID YOU JUST MAKE AN AMOGUS JOKE?!?!

Nope, just wanted to break up the word for emphasis.

Why are you the way that you are

Lmao perfect timing

Yer but that’s a AI right?

The girl in the egg is AI, but that's like a sidestory to explain the time factor. He also deals with a guy in a cabin and coerces a confession from him.

The point is that cookies are just as much humans as we are. Our brains are just a very complex program

We tricked a rock how to think and called it a computer!

The most fucked up part is right at the end when the cop is leaving for the weekend and on a whim cranks the dial so the "prisoner" is serving like 1000 years per minute.

By far the most terrifying episode of black mirror for me. That last moment, the completely casual manner and the pointlessness... That haunts me and pops up in my mind every now and then.

But then that raises the question if the cookie has human consciousness or not. I mean is it possible to create human consciousness in code or is it just a load of 1s and 0s programmed to act like human consciousness?

[deleted]

Thinking about that haunted me

Your sanity would have snapped like a twig, I shudder to think what would happen to a human consciousness after that much time

(that's more than 2 million years btw)

Black Mirror makes a compelling argument that a cookie is indistinguishable from the original person. Any empathy you have for yourself must be extended to your cookie. If San Junipero is heaven on earth, surely White Christmas must be hell.

even san junipero is debatable, after a while you'll get so used to and bored of it that you'd either not want to exist anymore or just live everyday doing drugs to feel anything like they showed at the beginning of the episode

You are an AI, you're just in a meatmech

If I am an AI, I am more useless than that bot from Rick and Morty which only purpose is to pass butter.

Yeah his creator gave him a purpose, can you say the same?

Well, I am not passing you any butter if that's what you are asking.

Um... I'm a bone mech with meat padding thank you very much!

I tend to look at it differently.

I look at how terrible computers still are at some basic things we do very well like holding a conversation or how easily we pick up simple but completely new tasks.

Computers are just shitty brains in metalmech.

i’m not an artificial intelligence. i am a natural intelligence, born from meat and cortex synapses.

im pretty sure they know that

damn they should have made a comment about that

The Christmas episode played a couple of variations of this idea.

That episode is so fucked up

We hadn't maxed out the meter yet?

Or it’s like Science Fiction is written, not to predict the future but address current issues in a different light.

You know how people today are like surprised that life Is playing out like 1984? I wonder if they’ll be surprised when life plays out just like black mirror.

wot if ya mum ran on bah'ries?

Haven't we learned anything from White Christmas?

Yeah I was gonna say isn't this literally the plot of a Black Mirror episode??

I've learned my identical virtual self will get the hose if my volume's at an odd number.

OH I WISH IT COULD BE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAYYYYY\~\~\~

Still a bop tho

Yeah unless you're listening to it for a thousand years

Um
so this is fucked up and weird, right?

I would say this could never happen because the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. I would say that dosing someone with psychoactives against their will is the definition of that.

However, it's hard to be confident, and it's not hard to imagine this Supreme Court issuing a Gorsuch or Kavanaugh-penned opinion saying that it's actually fine.

edit: feels like a lot of people are misreading my comment or jumping off on their own tangents, which is fine, but just to clarify: I am saying that I think a plain reading of that amendment would prohibit this, but that in reality, I worry it could happen.

Solitary confinement is torture but it's normal in the US lol.

Also the 13th amendment still allows slavery for the incarcerated. And private prisons have "mandatory minimums" (i.e. police make shit up to fill up quotas). So there's that, too.

Oh but that's not unusual, can't you read? It has to be Cruel AND Unusual, idiot.

/s

Yep, once you normalize it, it just becomes cruel. Free reign from there.

We have state sponsored torture, some who have been deemed innocent but were water boarded for months regardless.

Cruelty is definitely A-OK with our government.

You could also argue that for any cruel treatment of prisoners by other prisoners is ultimately responsible the prison, and the state/country which is empowering that prison. Since the prisoners are forcefully held inside a system that has been designed and is being managed by the prison / state / country.

I think the logic should be similar enough to how schools are legally responsible for the health and well-being of all the schoolchildren under their care.

Compared to how I envision US prison after 30 years of media consumption, I would opt to stay in solitary.

Yeah people learned nothing from MK Ultra :/

You have a lot more faith in society than I do at this point.

[deleted]

Cops will shoot you up with ketamine just to arrest you

Where do they do this? Asking for a friend

Aurora, Colorado for sure

Weird I thought that was medics who administered the ketamine

Hoboken, NJ

Just because law enforcement violates the constitution daily doesn't mean they aren't still violating the constitution.

But yeah cops don't even let you have first amendment rights these days. Peaceable assembly? Not if we make it violent.

Who decides what is "cruel and unusual" because we already do some cruel and unusual shit.

The Supreme Court, unfortunately

I'd argue the death penalty and life sentences are cruel and unusual but in America they're not considered that apparently

MK Ultra?

CIA mind control program that went on from the 50s to the 70s. They’d take people, put them in an induced coma, pump them full of LSD and other drugs while repeating the same phrases into their ear over and over and over again for days. By the time they woke up they were completely different people. It’s some really scary shit.

Come to think of it, is this why the US govt. was so opposed to legalising psychedelics (e.g. their treatment of Leary, etc)? Because they held the belief that psychedelics were the gateway to mind-control?

Maybe? I’m not too well versed on the whole thing

I know I was more asking if others remember. MK ultra was worse then repeating words in the ears. Sensory deprivation electric shock basically trying to break their minds Manchurian candidate style.

What about the last few years makes you think any of our politicians or our "justice system" give any fucks about the Constitution?

nothing.. hence my comment.

You expect people to read your entire comment before getting mad??

Apparently I'm expecting too much here.

Right? We’re not even American.

Well maybe it could never happen in the US but there's still plenty of other places it could happen...

It can be cruel as long as it's normal and it can be unusual as long as it's not cruel. There are many stories of Judges handing out rather strange punishments in lieu of regular jail time, in one situation I saw a judge give a woman the option to spend the day out in the sun at a dump as punishment for leaving her dog in the car. (Dog was ultimately fine) I think the only requirement is that they have to offer a regular punishment, in this judges case he always offers a week in jail or however long the punishment is supposed to be. If you gave somebody the option to serve their entire sentence in 1 hour of real time but it would feel like a hundred years or alternatively they could have the option to serve 20 years in the actual prison system which one would they choose? I think we're really far away from this technology ever coming anywhere near the justice system because perception of time is still extremely difficult to accurately manipulate no matter what any article says but these are some pretty interesting questions.

Except the question demonstrates the inherent problem with prison systems in general - its far less about keeping dangerous people away from the public or reforming them and far more about torturing ""criminals"".

I do want to say that – while I in no way want to defend the US system – the goals of most criminal justice systems include retribution, restoration and deterrence. Those are goals that are far better met by alternatives than by prison proper. Alternative sentences also tend to be better for rehabilitation in most cases, since they aren't nearly as disruptive to someone's life.

Only keeping society safe from a dangerous criminal is a goal that prisons are good at reaching, but for many offences that's not even so important of a goal.

I would say that dosing someone with psychoactives against their will is the definition of that.

Up until recently, dosing someone with drugs against their will was out of the question.

Lol have you heard of Guantanamo bay or the hundreds of secret torture prisons the CIA has around the world. It’s just not for “brown” people lol

I don't think prisoners fall under amendment rights which is why they can still be used as slaves.

Also I don't really see how this is any different from using truth serum during interrogations

[deleted]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Who would actually want this? Not even America's cruel for profit system would want this because super drugged convicts can't do manual labor.

Sure, I don’t think it’s going to literally happen. It’s just fucked up and weird that it’s theoretically a thing.

The trade off is they can be free and live their actual lives after

Or we can stop having a justice system focused around torturing prisoners and instead helping them integrate into society.

I don’t disagree

no fuck pedos

How many prisoners do you think are pedos?

Imo this would be reasonable. Maybe people will stop killing each other finally if they can actually serve 8+ life sentences for mass murder

So you want a prison system about cruel torture instead of reform.

About making them serve shorter sentence in reality while giving them actual punishment in hopes of reform instead of assuring them that they'll never see the light of day again yes

The horrifying effects of isolation in any form can be seen within weeks of someone being in it. Do you realize how fucking awful several years would be? And to accomplish what, exactly? Permanently scarring people you deem to be criminals? Completely destroying their life through infesting them with PTSD and years of trauma?

Assuming there's no damaged caused by the chemicals, then the brain is just experiencing 8.5 hours and not 1000 years of changed neural connections. On the other hand, one traumatic day can change a person more than one typical month. Between the options of a year in jail or 8.5 hours that feels like 1000 years, I'd probably take the 8.5 hours.

I will pay to do this. I’ll spend a year of my life doing this just to experience hundreds of thousands of years of existence. When I come back
 I’ll fix GME with all of my celestial knowledge.

Hold on. Let me check. What year is it?

I feel like this could (if you trust the government/the police force/whoever will do it to implement it correctly) be way better than a prison sentence. You could go back to the life you knew before without impacting your family as much as actually losing 20 years

This is just wrong, in my opinion. Prison should be about rehabilitation, not malicious punishment or "retribution." Granted, there are straight-up monsters that should never be released into the public. But we should treat them humanely and with dignity. You can't fight evil with evil. And this here is pretty fucking evil.

I don't know why the mindset that you can 'break' a person and change their will still pervades. Reason is the only way.

In Scandinavia they treat their prisoners keeping in mind that they have to be a neighbour some day. Imagine if America did that.

The american prison system is about making money. Not fixing society. That is the root of the problem if you ask me.

Ahh capitalism how it infects everything it touches.

That’s not true. It’s mostly the grand American hobby of treating “inferiors” like shit.

Both are true, a huge percentage of military gear is made with prison labor, and tons of companies use it or have used it for all sorts of things, ranging from McDonald's to Victoria's Secret.

Upon first reading this, for a second I thought that Victoria’s Secret was using military gear for all sorts of things. I should probably go to sleep.

It's true, have you not seen semi automatics on bras yet? They're all the rage!

Absolutely. Because money is more important than literally everything.

I doubt it. Look at any of the comments on a post from r/justiceserved or r/iamatotalpieceofshit about a criminal who did something heinous and tell me that you think that it'd be easy to change the system without the profit incentive. Do also note that Reddit as a website is significantly more left leaning and open to more humane implementations of the justice system than the average U.S. citizen. The reality is that it's going to take real sociological change towards the perception of criminals in order for any politician to be able to safely support better treatment of them without sabotaging their own campaign.

And if they fixed these guys they wouldn't be able to use them again!

Torturing someone for 10 minutes doesn't even serve this purpose

Only about 8% of prisons are private

Covid hit me hard because I can’t go out. At least i have internet. I can’t imagine being a prisoner locked up in a room with no view and sensory deprivation. I’ll go depressed and crazy. If a person already has issues these would just escalate the issues.

I've been in solitary before (Wasn't a danger to anyone, to be clear; this was in a psych ward and I was super over-medicated and tweaking tf out, so that was my punishment), and... Christ, yeah, it was maddening. It wasn't even AS bad as it would be in prison; I had a book, but I had to just sit alone at a desk all day long. No getting up, no talking with anyone who might've been passing by (Unless it was to ask a nurse if I could go to the bathroom, but I'd have to wait for them to come by, and sometimes they'd pretend not to hear me), nada.

This went on for several days up until my release, and the worst part was that there was no way to tell the time aside from when meals were brought to me. It's been over half a decade since then, and while I'm way, way better mentally and emotionally now, that honestly still messes with me sometimes. It's a cruel, cruel thing to do to someone.

I don't like sharing stories like this on the net but you're not alone. They fucked my mind up bad in 2017 but I've gotten way better since then, thankfully.

My sons fathers in prison. He has a tablet. They watch movies all day. He’s doing just fine. However he did go into solitary for five days and started hearing voices so there’s that.

America doesn’t want prisoners rehabilitate. They want prisoners to reoffend so there’s a constant supply of slave labor.

People vastly overestimate how much US relies on prison labor. It brings in 500 million in revenue which is 0.0025% of the GDP.

Source

Then for the love of fuck let's get rid of it already.

I agree with the sentiment but it's not that simple. Most prison labor is taking care of the facility like janitorial work or running the laundromat. If you live in a house and have to clean it, would you considered that slave labor? If so every children forced to do chores are slaves by that definition.

Next, in most states' prison labor that produces goods outside of prison are voluntary afaik. What if prisoners want the option to work to shorten their sentences/learn skill/save up for their release? Therefore while prison reform is necessary, I don't think doing a blanket ban on prison labor is the answer.

[deleted]

Right, but the prisons are state subsidized. So from the businessman's perspective it's a great deal. The state supplies cheap, replaceable labor for you, all you gotta do is use it.

Our incentives are disgusting.

So when is that teen who shot up the youth politic camp getting free?

Well he did a heil Hitler during his recent parole hearing so I think he's fine with noping tf out of society and living in prison.

Norway actually let Varg Vikernes back into society, so maybe they’re not as great as you think.

But that's entirely the point, you have to release them sooner or later.

Why? If they’re dangerous keep them away from society.

In practice almost all the worst criminals are eventually released.

Ok but we don’t have to release them. I don’t see why dangerous individuals should be back out.

But they are released.

By the same token, do you think they should be held in jail infinitely at cost to the taxpayer?

But that’s entirely the point, you have to release them sooner or later.

Ok but I don’t care that they are released, I care about this statement that they need to be.

Some people should absolutely be kept in jail until death at cost to the taxpayer. Some people are simply too dangerous to be left to their own devices

They're too dangerous to be left to their own devices

Sounds a lot like

"He's too dangerous to be left alive"

So, is it more compassionate to jail them for life? Or just kill em? I mean, net effect is the same, one just costs the taxpayer more.

Either way you'll still accidentally kill some innocent people. Abolish prisons.

I’m not willing to give the state the ability to kill citizens. We can always open up a cell, we can never undo a grave.

Definitely not going to abolish prisons. Plenty of violent crimes absolutely need prison time.

The first guy was talking about Norwegian prisons which are entirely based on rehabilitation and keeping prisoners away from others, not punishment. I would be fine living there for > 50 years

For people like Varg? No, we don’t have to ;)

Nevertheless, they are released. And whether he's released with the same or worse intentions than when we went in is the responsibility of the prison system.

And he hasn't reoffended. He is now "your neighbour". Do I agree with his views? Of course not, but he has served his time for the evil deed that he did, and such should be reinstated to society.

An example of someone who's most likely will never get released is Anders Breivik.

In Scandinavia they treat their prisoners keeping in mind that they have to be a neighbour some day

Scandanavia doesn’t have American criminals. Have you seen a Scandinavian prison? The first thing most American prisoners would do is use half of the shit given to them to create weapons.

Culture is a huge aspect people forget about, doesn’t matter how nice your prison is when the culture of inmates is not around getting better, but planning about what crimes they’re going to do when they get out.

Also, good luck trying to force someone to get mental healthcare even if they obviously need it. Hollywood made sure that in America, no adult can be forced to undergo physiological treatment against their will. In Europe (or at least in Germany), it’s standard practice to condemn someone to a mental ward until they accept treatment or die.

People also seem to forget that the other half of the American prison system is actually outside of prison. Ever heard of parole? If you’re not a violent or risky person 9/10 times you won’t be in a cell, but in your own house, on parole, or house arrest.

Do you not think that culture stems at least in part from the fact that people who are on parole, or who have done jail time, have so much trouble finding employment and getting back on their feet in a legitimate way?

No, because people way smarter than me have said it’s outside influences like the drug trade (drug dealers can get $$$, glorifying gang culture), historic discrimination against blacks forcing them to make money by other means, and an unwillingness to fix the social safety net.

Having a horrible justice system doesn’t really mean much, you can pull up countries like Japan and Singapore with fucking horrendous prison systems that have little to no crime, because in general people don’t want to commit crime in the first place (culture, safety nets, etc).

I think the difference is probably how easy it is to get a custodial sentence in America.

Granted, there are straight-up monsters that should never be released into the public. But we should treat them humanely and with dignity.

The issue is that it's difficult to convince the public to support the humane treatment, much less rehabilitation, of people who commit truly heinous crimes. Discussions about how the justice system should deal with such people quickly turn to calls for their death, calls for severe retribution, or for cheering on cruel/unusual fates for them in prison.

Regardless of whether or not monsters do indeed deserve to die or worse isn't the only issue since creating a category of people who're disposable only encourages authoritarian regimes to falsely pin that label on those who stand in their way. There are already historical cases of dissidents being framed for crimes that eliminate any public sympathy, allowing them to be unpersoned.

That being said, there actually is evidence in criminology for there being people who, for one reason or another, are extremely unlikely to ever be rehabilitated even with long term, intensive, and professional intervention. The one doing the most heavy-lifting in the process of positive change is almost always the person themselves. Going from monstrous to righteous is the result of consistent conscious effort.

There are a lot of people who simply won't choose to put in that effort, even if doing so would absolutely make them happier in the long term. Plenty of people when faced with the most cruel fate you can imagine will still stubbornly insist that there's nothing wrong with them because of so-and-so reason. Such people make up a higher proportion of humanity than one might think, albeit it's a minority of them that actually become conventional criminals.

One common theme is that they tend to be extremely adept at social manipulation coupled with an impulsive need to control their environment, making it even harder to prevent them from hurting others or even figure out precisely what's being dealt with. Professionals fall for adept manipulators frequently, believing they're helping a client with something far different than what's actually at work or even being tricked into blaming victim(s) for the way they treated their perpetrator or fail to help reform their perpetrator.

The idea that everyone can be reformed if just given the right conditions or that crime is just the result of bad circumstances are relevant to criminology, but the truth is a lot greyer than that. The fortunate/unfortunate thing is that we have many case studies of saints who come from the most hellish upbringings one can imagine and monsters who came from deeply supportive, functional, and prosperous ones. People are influenced by their environment, but generally people still make choices and those choices are theirs.

As a side note to your first point about convincing people that even people who did awful things deserve humanity, nothing upset me more than when I open up about my CSA history and people say my dad should be r//ped in prison. It's such a common response, nearly every dude I have been friends with has said that. And every single time I'm just like, no, the point is that no one should endure that! Don't wish literally the worst experience I've ever had on someone! That's fucked up! It makes me so uncomfy.

It's definitely worse when they start describing ways they, personally, wish they could hurt them. That makes me feel so incredibly unsafe around them.

People love to say inhumane, vile words akin to sewage against another, it's just make it easier when you can be excused for these words in society if the target is a criminal, because in their eyes "criminals aren't humans" anymore.

♄

I hear you

Can’t relate personally. The only regret I have about the time I tried to shoot my molester mother is that I failed. If they invented this shit I’d get it off the black market and inject it into her without a single regret. To me it’s like when a corporation is fined ten grand for crimes that made them millions. Without the pain being higher than the pleasure they got from it, it’s just how much they paid to do the thing.

Exceptionally well said! Generally what it comes down to is “one size does not fit all”.

The issue is that it's difficult to convince the public to support the humane treatment, much less rehabilitation, of people who commit truly heinous crimes.

Heinous crimes? LMAO. High standards much?

It's difficult to convince public to support humane treatment of kids who have committed minor infractions. Remember Kids4cash judges? Over two thousand kids sent into juvenile detention system, often for most bullshit reasons. 28 years for the unrepentant judge. 11 years for co-conspirators who played ball. Oh, wait... The prison term was purely because of money involved. The judge was an elected official, who campaigned on the whole "tough on crime" bullshit.

Remember Joe Arpaio? Also an elected official. His behavior has been covered by press over and over again. Re-elected over and over again. Finally convicted... and then pardoned.

Heinous crimes, my ass. Fucking animals who vote for all the "tough on crime" bullshit are the ones who commit heinous crimes.

convince public to support humane treatment of kids who have committed minor infractions. Remember Kids4cash judges?

Some corrupt judges are not the "public". The public is already convinced that what they did was awful, that's why they had to hide it from the public in the first place.

Except they were fine with the beliefs which led to those horrible actions. That's why "tough on crime" bullshit is so popular with people.

What beliefs are those? Being tough on crime? If those judges believed in being tough on crime and handing out max sentences to kids then they wouldn't have needed to be bribed millions to do that in the first place.

Look up the full story. Behind the Bastards podcast had a two-parter episode. One on these judges and another on Texas juvenile corrections system.

https://player.fm/series/behind-the-bastards-2448966/part-one-the-cash-for-kids-scandal

https://player.fm/series/behind-the-bastards-2448966/part-two-the-child-prisons-of-texas

He was not bribed. He actively helped set the whole thing up. As in, limit the government-owned facility and redirect kids into the new private one, which he helped to set up.

Mark Ciavarella was given 2.6 million from the co-owner and builder of two for-profit juvenile facilities. Michael Conahan took nearly $1 million from the the builder. How is that not a bribe?

He was way too involved for it to be simply a bribe.

They did not hide it. Again, motherfucker actively campaigned on tough treatment of juveniles. The reason for investigation and conviction was money changing hands.

They absolutely hid the fact that they received millions from the juvenile detention facilities and denied adequate legal counsel to hundreds of youths.

They hid the money part. They got convicted for the money part. The treatment of juveniles was just fine, legally speaking.

That's why you can't look up someone's criminal record on the fly. And why I don't believe mugshots should be released to the public in news articles. By all means say that a 23 year old was caught robbing a pharmacy and one person was injured, but don't show the face. Because if that person does improve, if they do get out they can become a functioning member of society again, but only if society lets them.... Which as you said they don't. But what people don't know doesn't hurt them.

Regarding the manipulator factor, that’s also the greatest weakness with rehabilitation. Unless you’ve got mind-reading powers, the only test for if it works is waiting for them to die of natural causes and praying they don’t do it again. Depending on what they did, you could be outright sacrificing innocent lives for their sake.

Fucking liberals, with your checks list expectations that your tax dollars will go towards humane treatment and rehabilitation of others. /s

Oh don't worry, Liberals don't believe in that foo-foo shit either

r/theleftcantmeme (/s)

Even with the 'straight-up monsters', I hate this attitude that our only solution is lock them up and throw away the key. People are very, very rarely 'born' evil. These 'monsters' have, in all likelihood, been forged by an aspect of our society. Therefore, imo it is our responsibility to do everything we can to rehabilitate these people - talk to them, try to understand them, and try to get them to a position where they are no longer menaces to society, and can participate among us again. And maybe we can't do that for all of them - we certainly can't right now, with our current psychological understanding. But we are obliged to try. And I hate that the prevailing opinion is that we are under no such obligation, and instead we should simply dehumanise them and leave them to rot.

Overall, I don’t disagree with you, but we can’t put everything on “it’s society’s fault”. We all still have the ability to make choices and we need to face consequences for those choices. I agree that prison isn’t the best answer, but there aren’t many, if any, other practical solutions. We haven’t exactly done a sparkling job in the psychology field of helping people that WANT help, let alone people who don’t.

Also, it’s not just about rehabilitation, it’s about punishment for the crime they committed. How else would we punish the crime? Of course we need to find out why they did it and how to help prevent them from doing it again, but how would you punish it?

I agree that some people will be ‘unsaveable’, as it were - but I think while we have them inside, we might as well keep trying. Maybe one in every hundred of these prisoners will, after 30 years in prison, realise they’d be happier and better off if they actually listened to what the shrinks have to say. For me, even that would be worth the effort.

In terms of punishment - honestly, i disagree with the entire punishment school of justice. The only actual value punishment has from a societal perspective is as a deterrent against crime to potential criminals, and from that angle the isolation of prison does enough for that. Otherwise it’s just hurting someone because they hurt someone else - and sure, that feels fair, but it doesn’t benefit anyone. Society only benefits if that criminal can be taught to change.

why is punishment needed in the first place when it doesn't help anyone? it's completely unproductive

I break into your house, steal your stuff, and kill your fish - cops catch me and make me give your stuff back
 and now bygones are bygones - we’re cool?

the primary reason for burglaries is because of economic reasons, people don't just do it for fun; they're desperate. so yeah, a bit of recovery and elimination of poverty? we're cool

Did you just skip the whole "kill your fish" part?

And people absolutely do it for fun. How many videos are there online of clearly well-off people (nice clothes, wealthy area, expensive car) shoplifting by the boatload?

did you just skip the "bit of recovery" part? if someone is doing that for fun then they've obviously got some mental health issues to sort out. sure, it won't be easy, but it's not impossible.

so again: we're cool.

You should probably up the stakes in your examples, i don’t think a lot of people would be that salty over a fish.

It wasn't even my example. I just think it's funny that he decided to skip over a whole aspect of the other's guy's example that would arguably upset some people the most. A lot of people love their pets more than most of their possessions, after all.

I'm not a guy, fuckwad.

And I'm supposed to know that how? Jackass.

  1. stop assuming only guys use the internet

  2. username

It's actually a contested point that free will exists, among scientists and philosophers. And most high level meditators would probably also tell you that it doesn't exist (I wont get into this unless someone is interested).

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion

The tldr is that your brain makes the decision before you even think you are making a decision.

If you can accept this, then everything a person does is a product of their brain. Their brain is a product of environment and genetics.

So I don't think people should be punished, but society should be safe, so people should be locked up humanely (Scandinavian style), and rehabilitated if possible.

it’s not just about rehabilitation, it’s about punishment for the crime they committed

What's the point of punishment if not rehabilitation? Revenge?

Not the guy you replied to but I guess I’ve always thought that punishment is a deterrent. Like if there’s no consequences for doing bad shit besides hurting someone else, what’s going to stop the many many people that don’t care about hurting someone else from just doing whatever benefits them? Yeah nobody’s born evil and all that, but I have met a lot of people who have a shockingly small amount of empathy.

You give more sympathy and effort to the monsters in this one single post than you ever have for any of their victims.

Because this is a post about how we should treat criminals, not how we should treat their victims.

Of course those who suffer the effects of crime deserve sympathy, I don’t think anybody is arguing against that. The trauma of any sort of assault, or the grief of seeing a loved one hurt or killed, is horrifying - I don’t wish it on anyone. And because of that, I also think we need to be much better at having services available to victims as well - it is absurd that we expect people to go through this trauma, take a week of sick leave, and then go back to life as if nothing happened. It’s all the more absurd that we largely expect them to pay for treatment for any psychological damage they may have suffered. Both of those things have to change.

However, punishing the perpetrator in order to make the victim feel better is wrong. Revenge feels great, but it a losing game. The original victim will still have all that trauma to process - all you have now is another person undergoing a traumatic experience because we have decided they deserve it. As I said in another comment, the only benefit to punishing criminals is as a deterrent to any potential criminal on the outside, and the isolation of years in prison is plenty enough for that. Otherwise, you’re just inputting Old Testament style ‘eye for an eye’ ethics into our modern world.

Sociopathy can not be reformed.

This is just wrong, in my opinion. Prison should be about rehabilitation, not malicious punishment or "retribution."

Per the 13th Amendment prisoners can be slaves. America does not care about prisoners, in fact they actively try to gain prisoners.

Prisoners are forced to do labor in lots of countries, like Germany and Japan. Wanting people to work for their keep isn't "retribution" or "malicious punishment".

And whos to say someone who is subjected to this won't go crazy and commit more crimes because they've been mentally broken. It's rare, but people who have really bad psychedelic trips are never the same after.

I'd be all for the 1000 year prison sentence in a day if we knew that it was going to be 1000 years of good rehabilitation.

Also, as long as it wasn't 1000 years, that's fucked.

Yeah, honestly being able to have rehabilitation in a short time frame so a person can spend more of their life happy and free is good.

There are five reasons for prisons. Punishment to prevent someone from offending again, Deterrence to prevent other people from offending, Rehabilitation to change the offender’s circumstances and remove the desire to reoffend, Isolation to keep dangerous people away from others, and Vengeance to make the victims feel better. All prisons are some combination of these five factors, different prisons will prioritize some factors over another but they are always there.

You forgot “make money.”

That seems to capture most of what prison should be. You rehabilitate criminals while they serve their punishment for the crime they committed. Society has gotten together and created a list of rules that its members have to follow. There has to be a balance of consequnce and correction for not following them.

American prisons are so good at deterrence and rehabilitation that we have the most prisoners in the world by far.

I’d like to go on a thousand year long trip tho

No one is actually suggesting this, it’s not even possible. It’s purely a hypothetical thought experiment.

Alright, counter argument. If everything is digital including the therapists, one could conceivably allow for the rehabilitation process.

Forenote: the punishment in the OP is obviously indefensible, and it also does not even satisfy the purpose of prison: protecting society by separation. Below paragraph is pertinent only to parent comment.

Forced rehabilitation is literal evil. The purpose of prison is to remove someone from society. Punishment and deterrent are secondary, voluntary or transient rehabilitation are ideal scenarios that almost never come to fruition. Many people in prison either belong there for a very good reason and need to stay there because they can never change, or are there for a very bad reason and so don't need to change. If someone is a burglar and is capable of growth and betterment, the onus is on them to enact that progress, and facing real consequences for their actions is often a huge catalyst in that. Until that happens, keeping them away from society at large is entirely appropriate. Rehab should absolutely be readily available at all times, but utilitarian recidivism reduction as an end goal is an abhorrent, disgusting nightmare. Prisoners are not animals in skinner boxes for bourgeois moralists to conduct empathy experiments on, nor are they children who need carrots and sticks to learn right and wrong (and such teaching methods are unethical for children, too).

False - the vast majority of people don't reoffend when given the resources necessary for rehabilitation and forced to be better people. Punitive prison systems are fucking terrible for rehabilitation - because the vast majority of crimes are committed based on circumstance.

What do you think is going to help a poor person who committed said burglary - a felony on their criminal record, practically banning them from any job out there, or job training and emotional support, so they can get a decent-paying job they enjoy once they're out?

And you keep claiming that "forced" rehabilitation is evil without any explanation of why. I can assume it's because "muh individualism" or "well aksually its brain washing", but you never expain it besides a passing mention of "empathy experiments"??

Not to mention that you're actually insane for saying "teaching kids that being mean is bad is unethical."

Also, I think a psychotic murderous criminal would come out mentally worse from being in their own mind for 20 years or whatever time they decide to put them in.

This. If your mindset with any penal action is “the person should be harmed emotionally, physically, or mentally as retribution for the pain they’ve caused” you’ve already lost the plot.

Now that said, I’m VERY into psychedelic use as a form of therapy for inmates, but as a part of a therapeutic healing process like it is for non convicts. Psilocybin can be so beneficial in breaking down barriers and allowing a person to look at things they don’t want to objectively and without fear or shame. I think that could be really important for someone who has done a bad or evil thing because it can be easy to like. Avoid that part of yourself and run from it but you don’t get better until you look at it

I think, ultimately, it could become something extremely worth while in the future, if we could do things like put them into an artificial environment at an accelerated rate.

Imagine getting a ten year sentence, experiencing all that comes with while also being put through rehabilitation programs. You spend ten year reading, ten years in heavy institutional control, all the things that come with being institutionalize that long.

Then one day you wake up, it's been a year, you have your life back. You, hopefully, have some skills you didn't before, and literally get a second chance.

If we were to create something like that it could be of a lot of value to society.

We wouldn't though, if the technology existed we would just make them suffer for 10 years of burning without dying and set them lose with nothing to show for it.

Even if you did think prison was about retribution, this is a pretty stupid way to do it. "Give them a treatment that'll probably make them even more violent and unstable and then immediately release them back into society at large. Sure, that'll definitely make things safer for our community!" That's why I always found that DS9 episode kind of hard to suspend disbelief for.

We already do that in the US, although the reason is to keep people in the prison system so they can be legal slave labor, but I digress.

At least with the current prison system there's the rationale of isolating prisoners from society so they can't be out hurting people. With this, you don't even get that.

Exactly, and even that loose defense of prisons is instantly shown to be a lie whenever something like this is created and presented as a good thing.

But we should treat them humanely and with dignity. You can’t fight evil with evil.

I mean, did you say this for the monsters? People like you always say to treat the monsters humanely but did they do the same?

Do you think they'll do the same if you just shove them in a closet for a decade and give them PTSD?

No, but I chose to be the better person. I don't (willingly) participate in a cycle of violence and abuse. However tempting it may be. If I treat the monster by being a monster to them, how am I any better from a moral standpoint?

Better off just to kill a guy than make him server a 50 plus year prison sentence to be honest. What is even the fucking point?

Could you use this for good? Like, go to 4 years of college in your mind? Or retire in your mind? Or learn the panflute?

I mean, being stuck in prison for what feels like 1000 years would be a great way to reform in my opinion, obviously still messed up though

Prison should be about protecting society, not rehabilitation.

we should treat hitler humanely and with dignity

Yes. Be morally better. Doing otherwise would be hypocrisy.

Black Mirror wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual.

Yup imagine someone trying to emulate the first episode.

I remember that Ds9 episode. It was...hard to watch. And naturally it was O'Brien

I did dmt once and had kaleidoscope vision for fifteen minutes. It was awesome yet fleeting. Would not do again

Same. I've done it a few times and I'm just not ready to fully let go

Are you supposed to trip longer than that on it? I thought it jsut passed through my system that quickly. The one downside of having bariatric surgery - edibles don't do shit for long anymore

Dmt is just that short. 15 mins at max, it's just hard to tell.

It's too intense for me in all honesty I'm just not ready as I said

I understand and it's way smarter to wait until you're mentally prepared. I'd like to try acid but I always think I won't handle it well so I've only done shrooms. Which are hella fun imo.

Different drugs obviously, shrooms and acid, but imho if you can handle one you can handle the other.

And yeah it's funny, I literally have grams of dmt a few feet beside me but I haven't touched it in quite some time.

As long as it doesn't go bad if and when you do decide to do it. I think I'd be fine on acid but it's also impossible to acquire so I'm not fomo ing

DMT is a 15 minute “real-time” experience that can last hours in a dream world (blasting off) depending on dosage. If you do it right; this reality ceases to exist.

Huh til. Well next time I won't say yes to some dude growing it in his clothing drawer

I’ve gotten mine from reliable sources every time. All it takes is .1-.2g to be in another dimension talking to other worldly beings. The only thing that came close was a 10-strip of LSD but imagine that whole LSD trip is condensed into a 15 minute real time out of body experience and that’s DMT (YMMV)

Ahhh that sounds fascinating.

I spent a while talking to the DMT people after getting over the initial trippiness, but, I don't know how long it really lasted. I'd guess anywhere between ten and thirty minutes.

That's nowhere close to a dmt experience. Low dose. Like going to the beach, tippin your toes in the water and coming back saying you won't ever go scuba diving in the middle of the ocean because you didn't like how cold the ocean is.

When those 15 minutes start feeling like days is when the real "fun" starts...

That sounds awful if it's a bad trip. I had a bad trip on acid and holy shit I never wanna go through that again.

I had dozens of bad trips, they always preceded something much greater, beautiful and amazing. I think my deepest trips happene right after an extremely bad experience I had to face and deal with. People call it "the drug testing you" for a reason. Others just say there's no such thing as a bad trip, it's just the user being inexperienced. Nowadays challenging trips like that are my favorite since they give me a flaw to overcome or accept.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395920303352

From this study:

>Finally, and most importantly, most participants argued that unpleasant experiences during bad trips had been beneficial and had sometimes given them deep existential and life-altering insights.

Might be true for some people but all I had was anxiety and paranoia for a few hours. The only thing I learned is to not do psychedelics if you're not in good mental shape. And also not to smoke weed on acid.

It's a common problem. The mind is not as smart as we'd like to think. Something I've learned from psychedelics is that the mind is constantly scanning the enviroment for threats, and this enviroment can not only be the place you physically are but the mental state your life finds itself in.

Doing psychedelics while your mind is in this state of threat searching(Paranoia and anxiety) will just make you more aware of these processes that happen in the background and give you a bad trip

What they can teach you is what is the cause of these problems by making you aware that under all the distractions of life, your mind is an anxious state for some reason or another. Facing a bad trip can lead you to figuring out exactly what in your life is causing that anxiety and help you find a way to solve it (It won't solve it for yourself as they aren't magical). The problem is that sometimes the "problem" might be something as simple as the place you are taking them. It just might be a place you aren't comfortable being. One example I can think of is of someone doing them in a place that they know spiders can enter. So the mind is in its background mode of searching for spiders.

Being aware of this process when you break down the walls that separate you from the unconscious will just make you have a bad trip about spiders and other equally terrifying creatures. You might even hallucinate them as your mind confuses imagination with reality.

Sometimes it can truly be a bigger problem. And when it is a bigger, more abstract problem permeating your life, being aware exactly of what it is will lead you to being able to deal with it effectively. Could be something as being afraid of losing your job, or being afraid of death, of a partner cheating, of someone breaking into your home, or many other forms of "threats" that are too abstract for the mind to solve alone.

Perhaps there was something in my life that was causing it but I genuinely think it was the weed. I had been on it for 2-3 hours and having a pretty good time but as soon as I took a hit from a pipe things started getting dark very quickly and lasted for another 3-4 hours.

I get what you're saying though. Sometimes when I'm high (only on weed) and not having a great time I'm aware of these processes in my brain and I can have mini epiphanies about my life. Of course I write them down or I'll forget lol.

Ive been hearing. Ty for the info! :) now I gotta find some again lol

Don't dis DMT fam

I'm not, I just personally wouldn't do it again. By all means, yay drugs

My High School has been using this technology forever.

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Boring? Absolutely. But also better. High school was very high stress compared to work.

I have never a sentence that benefitted from using "sweet summer child".

redditors begging for an excuse to say "oh my sweet summer child" for the 7175927th time today

redditors begging for an excuse to say "oh my sweet summer child" for the 7175927th time today

redditors begging for an excuse to say "oh my sweet summer child" for the 7175927th time today

man made horrors beyond our comprehension

Man made horrors fully within our comprehension

Bad headline. The quote was "you could imagine" doing this and the headline suggests it's possible. Imagining something doesn't make it possible.

Ah, I see you've never tried DMT or Salvia Divinorum

Dude, imagine doing salvia for 8.5 hours. It feels like a long time but you’re preoccupied by the crazy visions and then you snap out of it and only 15 minutes passed.

Now that 30+ times in a row. No way you wouldnt be a completely different person after that.

Most people are a totally different person after the first dose of salvia or DMT. And I genuinely say that in a good way

I had a Ketamine infusion done in a doctor's office for depression.

It was 8 rounds spread over time. First two were actually pleasant experiences.......

The third round was horrifying because they delivered the drip too fast and I fell into a "k hole" and had the most crippling waking nightmare that colors were now life and I existed on a plane where I was the only one there and I could never escape. There was absolutely nothing but color. I know that probably doesn't make sense, but it felt like I had died and been sent to hell forever. I was back to normal within approximately 10 minutes of the drip stopping, but I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone.

Really bizarre, horrifying experience and I almost didn't complete the sessions, but aside from that.....it did finally get rid of my depression.

sounds like you had an ego death

DMT is short as fuck, those 15 minutes don't feel like hours or something like that. Maybe some slight distortion but nothing to that effect.

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I don't believe you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ stop watching drug tiktoks

Never had a break through dose, I see

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I'm just saying, they aren't wrong when they say that chemicals exists that cause extreme time dilation

You're correct. You could even imagine developing a pill or liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000 year sentence.

Ah, I see you believe that psychedelics are some form of magic drug like in the movies.

Never tried salvia, have you Squidward?

Did do a half year research project on psychedelics and their reputation, as well as my fair share of psilocybin and LSD. I'd say I'm more qualified than most when I say this: psychedelics aren't some supernatural phenomenon that makes minutes feel like years. People like to exaggerate the time dilation aspects, just as they like to exaggerate the hallucinations, the ego death, the visuals and the memory loosening effects.

Not even Leary would suggest that you could make a trip feel like 1000 years, and neither would Groff, or Hoffman, or Shulkin, or any of the dozens of researchers, authors and preachers we read and disseminated.

But you haven't tried salvia... Curious đŸ€š

No, I haven't had the chance. Then again you've tried it, but the extent of your education on psychedelics is probably limited to some racist named Jeff and approximately 587 hours of Joe Rogan during your formative years.

Don't like Joe Rogan and don't like racists either. What I do like is talking about drugs I've actually tried

Chief O'brian must suffer

Joke aside you would be so fucking brain broken after this that it would be more human to shoot the person like a horse with a broken leg in the 1800s dude

I always thought that for longer sentences it would be interesting if you could just ask to be executed instead of rotting away in jail for 60 years

A lot of people hold onto the possibility of getting out though so I am not sure how many would do that. Maybe with no possibility of parole.

I always thought that for longer sentences it would be interesting if you could just ask to be executed instead of rotting away in jail for 60 years

I "like" when people are like "this is admitting prison is about punishment instead of rehabilitation!", as if anyone ever in the prison system told them it WASN'T about punishment.

Jokes on them, I have no sense of time

ADHD finally paying off!

Work every day already feels like this for us!

I feel like it's only been 4 hours but in reality it's been 21!

Thankfully this is never coming to pass because prisons are about having slave labor

In the USA

Organs in other countries...

Some other, you mean

Edit: ???

Countries, can you read???

Yes, other countries, like, China, and some others

But saying "other countries" makes it sound like it happens pretty much in every country aside from the USA.

There are other countries aside from the USA?

Yes.

The Allies, the Axis and the Third World.

Yeah prisons are not even about Punishing anymore, let alone about healing and rehabbing, they’re about storing black bodies and making people money.

Honestly this actually terrifies me. How would it be like, would you just stuck in your own mind/imagination for what feels like 100s of years or would you be stuck in mind numbing darkness. Honestly both of these possibilities kind of make me feel like I'm about to have a panic attack just thinking about it.

Right, so I can actually answer this question. Long story short I took a psychedelic deliriant when I was younger and ended up eating the entire bag when the delirium kicked in, which was a LOT.

The experience lasted for about 12 hours and felt like thousands of years.

Was coming back from that an extremely bizarre experience? Sure. I was pretty sure I'd left this lifetime behind so long ago I was amazed to find it was still here. Was it something I'd like to experience again? Definitely not.

Was it anywhere near as bad as what a single year in prison would likely be? Not even close.

It's more like having a bizarre dream that "feels as if" it was thousands of years. It's not even close to being a 1 to 1 comparison with ACTUALLY experiencing something for thousands of years.

The premise, as far as I can tell, is total bullshit and it's based on a lack of any real experience with that kind of state. Or maybe a lower level version of that kind of experience where you can "kind of imagine" that if you ramped it up to thousands of years it would be incomprehensibly more extreme.

I could certainly imagine that it might be possible to create psychedelics that were tantamount to torture, but the time warp effect on its own isn't going to do it.

Maybe if you did it every day for weeks on end, but, again, the way the title of this article is presented seems like clickbait.

Of course it would already be perfectly viable to torture people with substances that are already available. Of course then you wouldn't be able to hide it behind the premise of making them "serve a really long sentence."

That is kinda how break through doses of DMT or Salvia Divinorum feel, and it's more enjoyable than it might sound

5 min of salvia was more than enough for me in my life, this would be far far more cruel than just hanging the person instead.

We should just rename the U.S. justice system to the vengeance system at this point, because at least then it would be honest about what it is. The whole thing is built off of knee jerk reactions and feelings of disgust with zero regard to any actual data or humanity, and it’ll take forever to get changed (assuming it even does) because running on “lets make things better for criminals” is a smear campaign that writes itself.

"Vengeance System" sounds like a multiplayer mehanic that rewards revenge kills...

Calm down, it's just a journalist making up a hypothetical scenario and a tumblerina getting mad at it. Like, it's a non-story, y'all are getting played.

You may notice that my comment doesn't even reference the article, and that's because it's more so a comment on how our justice system currently is than one on the hypothetical nightmare scenario in the post. I'm not taking what the story says as the justification for why I think the U.S. justice system is disgusting and treats prisoners like animals. I'm using the fact that the justice system does actually do those things. We still currently employ solitary confinement in prison despite it being a literal torture method. We still have incredibly bloated prison sentences. We still allow literal slavery for prisoners. All of these things are blatantly inhumane, and none of them reduce recidivism rates or deters people from committing crimes in the first place.

People commenting on this post about how fucked our justice system is (including me) aren't seeing this post and thinking "Well if this is true then the justice system is inhumane and awful!", they're seeing the post already knowing our justice system is currently inhumane and awful. They're pointing out that "let's give somebody drugs to make them feel like they've been in prison and/or mental hell for thousands of years even though it's only been a day" being thought of hypothetically as a scenario one would want is indicative of how the average U.S. citizen thinks of legal justice and prison sentences. If the person said "with this drug we could spike a random person's drink and torture them by making them feel like they're imprisoned in their own mind for a thousand years for fun" that wouldn't've made it into the article at all, and if it did the writer would immediately and blatantly frame it in the light of how fucked up that would be. The fact that the quote makes it into the article with no commentary about how it, for example, goes against the idea of rehabilitating criminals, or actually helping them shows that the idea of people who've committed crimes being treated via punishment meant to hurt and nothing more is a socially acceptable way of viewing how criminal justice should be.

yes I deserve murderers and pedos deserve punishment not rehabilitation

I’m getting horror flashbacks from that one chapter of Bleach

Granz 100% deserved that fate, I'm surprised he was still somewhat coherent when he came back, guess his sanity came back when he died

No doubt he deserved it. I guess 10,000 years locked in your own mind will make a person go full circle back to sanity again đŸ€·â€â™‚ïž

Literally a Black Mirror episode.

White Christmas episode of black mirror

What would make this even mor fucked up is if they somehow linked it to the metaverse

Oh cool! Man-made horrors beyond our comprehension

I’ve seen this in a black mirror episode


Imagine if they could trick the mind in to a 1000 years of education into an 8 hour day.

I cant imagine someone bejng a 1000 years old being normal and well adjusted. Id go psychotic if i had to live a 1000 years

Torture. This is called torture.

Isn’t there a short story about this? One of the lines goes “it’s forever in there” or something?

I think you mean The Jaunt by Stephen King. My favorite short story of his! Freaky shit.

Yep that’s the one

I thought this was maybe. A tiny bit good, until I realized this is just like the "Fate worse than death trope" where the character is put through sociology damaging woes. So no, it isn't good

Seriously? Ridgeway has a 1440 year sentence, not because we want him to feel being in prison that long, but because there are some people who are monstrous enough that they should never be allowed to participate in society again after what they did, and killing people has no potential of fixing a miscarriage of justice.

What in the twilight zone is this

Didn't Sasuke's brother do this in Naruto?

Fucking hell, could you imagine how insane you'd go?

The first time I took Salvia I experienced the universe collapsing and rebounding for what felt like a billion years, and I came out alright

If that technology exists, who cares about torturing people. There are better uses for that, imagine having twice the hours in one day for folks who can't enjoy fully their time.

What would actually happen:

They would subject people to this for the rest of their waking lives..

That wasn’t that hard, the torture was only the beginning.

Wowza! A shitty thing is happening that I can do nothing about!!! Time to go sulk in the corner because I’m worthless since I can’t do anything to stop it!!! Gee thanks

There's no chance for appeals/parole/new exonerating evidence either.

Haven’t rewatched DS9 in a couple years but the suicide scene near the end occupies my mind and I think about it in detail now and then.

Otherlife is an awesome movie but let's not make it real plz

Would you really drive that bulldozer through the apple store after a 1000 years of something?

You might come out a different kind of insane.

You might come out a genius.

I could have sworn there was an Outer Limits episode about this too. Maybe I’m just misattributing the DS9 episode though.

There was: https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sentence

Seems the Outer Limits episode was a few months later. Too soon after to be attributed to being a copy of the DS9 idea, so assume there’s some shared inspiration. Wonder what it might have been.

Will it be Christmas?

y'all need to read Long Dream by Junji Ito.

There won't even be prisons anymore there would just be a Total Recall machine in the back of every police car.

See at first I was like "this is good! Because it simulates the punishment sithout permanently ruining a weed dealers life. Sure the punishment shouldn't exist but babysteps.

But then I realized that this would only work for short sentences and if we did it to say, murderers then it'd be a collosdal fuck-up

Genjutsu

Most justice systems have one end goal reached by three (advertised) tenants:

Make sure people follow the law via; 1 fear of punishment 2 Isolation of those who do not fear 3 removing the motivation to commit future crimes.

the often touted in the press (4) vengeance / justice on behalf of the victim is never really part of the system. But there is pressure for this to be the real outcome.

Criminal sentencing is at the end of the day a stick to keep people in line and nothing else, now I'd argue that as it stands in many places it's an ineffective stick at best and a thoroughly corrupt stick that is actually a slave trade at worst. The wishes of the victim are only material in how they might aid or hinder a conviction.

Of course civil law can provide actual restitution for the victim - at a price.

What was the Stephen king story where we develop light speed but you have to be asleep or you’ll come out the other side a shattered chattering zombie blindly lashing out because anyone awake experienced a sensation less blank void that fragments men from sheer deprivation

The Jaunt, and it was teleportation they invented

I think it was portal technology. They had a guy walk through and he came out the other side looking ancient. His last words were “it’s an Eternity in there”

This is literally the plot of a Black Mirror episode.

That is fucked. Cue next post about some shit ISIS has done and see how the "torment nexus idea" sounds great. Have people not realized that fighting perceived injustice aka justice boner is what drives people. Hence why people will rally against Bezos for not helping the poor when it would in fact be more effective for them to spend that energy in helping the poor themselves.

It would never happen. The prisons need prisoners for the slave labor. If you can serve a 20 years sentence in an hour then you get out they'd never be able to turn a profit.

As a person who's afraid of death, I'd take being in prison for a thousand years over dying in twenty

Tales of the Afternow podcast covered something similar in one of their episodes. So good, but so sad.

is this not an episode of black mirror cause they really should make it into one

I’ll fuckin do it again

It's longer than you think, dad! It's longer than you think!

Kind of feels like The Jaunt

Dystopian, so it'll probably happen. Nice.

I have this sort of thing as an injected substance in a sci-fantasy world I'm making. It's called "liquid time" and it's pretty common in government torture, but it's more widely known as street drug that's often paired with other stuff to make it so when you get really fucking high for like 10 minutes it feels like you got way more time out of it.

Stephen King has a really disturbing short story similar to this called The Jaunt. It's a pretty quick read but has stuck with me since I first read it. What if instantaneous teleportation went...very wrong?

https://gist.github.com/Schemetrical/6184daf83843bcab9402

This some Tsukuyomi shit

Don't forget Picards "INNER LIGHT" episode. It wasn't punishment but he lived a whole life on a dying planet.

Aren't they supposed to be rehabilitated after the 8 hours though?

You had me at DMT.

There’s an episode of BLACK MIRROR that’s based on exactly this.

Well that's fucked up

it sounds pretty insane on the 1000 year level but if we're talking about an actual normal prison timeframe this would actually be interesting as an alternative.

one of many big issues with the whole '20 years punishment' or whatever in standard procedure is those 20 years aren't the only punishment. that's most of your youth gone you're never getting back, you're hardly going to have any time left to live at all depending on when you went in.

beyond that, people that come out of jail are treated incredibly poorly in any kind of job market, to where it can genuinely take multiple years just to land a remotely decent paying job if they don't just relapse back to crime because they have to. so that's most of your life just entirely down the drain.

then the fact that the system just hopes for the best that the verdict was completely fair and that you must've learned your lesson, neither of which tend to be the case, so you might've just ruined an entire life for absolutely nothing.

honestly this would in a way make our insane prison system more humane.

But... why?

Well, why not? /s

Also that's not possible, as I understand it. The distortion of time in a perceived life or death situation is caused by the brain taking in and processing as much information as possible as quickly as possible in an attempt to find the best course of action. I imagine these drugs stimulate this response, so the amount by which perception of time is distorted is limited by the brain's ability to take in and process information.

Wait
 so prison was never about rehabilitating people so they don’t reoffend???

:0

“Literally no words” = words

Either fix them or kill em. It's that simple. Punishment is symptom of incarceration not the goal .

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Also given how fucked up the Justice system already is, this would mostly be used against people of color

Prison should be for reformation, not punishment. That said, if governments are trying to just throw around free DMT I'm open to it

Part of it is being an example to others. If someone does something bad enough for a life sentence, and there's no bluff, then others are going to think twice.

Galaxy brain idea: The govt has a monopoly on therapists who specialize in re-introducing victims to real life

These prisoners about to be suffering from Tsukuyomi or some shit💀

OtherLife (2017)

There are multiple black mirror episodes about this concept. The future looks more bleak.

I believe there’s a movie called Otherlife that explores this exact idea

Okay. Who the fuck hired Mayuri?

How does this type of drugs work ? I think it can be use in a much better way. if its not armfull to you body...

Tormentr.

Engineered bad trip sound horrifying.

Yeesss put the people that are already fucked in some ways through mental torture and let them back into the society even more fucked up. What a brilliant idea!!!

this reminds me of that pme manga where a random side villain basicakly ends up in this exact situation amd he uses the time to fully figure out the worlds magic system

This isn’t completely identical, but all I could think of was scp-2701

All these comments about black mirror, star trek, otherlife, and not a single one about the TVA trapping Loki in a time loop prison.

Torment Nexus?

Hello Prison Planet Theory. I see you!

aw sweet, manmade horrors beyond my comprehension!

Yeah to add to the first one, I would feel very similar. If I had to perceive possibly hundreds of years for a robbery, for example, I can promise I would do much worse immediately in absolute spite of the people who put me in there.

Nothing morally wrong, but definitely something much worse than robbery. Or perhaps Id just amplify the crime I was convicted up, like robbing multiple banks instead of a convenience store.

Mayuri made something like this in Bleach, except it was like 10,000 years or something like that all in the span of a second

Wasn’t this a Black Mirror episode ?!

White Christmas

Chill itachi

i mean doesnt they simply want to cut cost? the govs think only about profit, so this is less about torture and more of a " i can make a machine that make a 100 years sentence into a 8 hours and I basically dont need to give prisoners food and housing? Count me in!"

Dredd ?

There’s a movie about this too idk the name of it, but I saw it in a movie recapped channel on YouTube

They just want a white Christmas~

It‘s eternity in there

Is there an r/TormentNexus?

The biggest issue with this is that it makes rehabilitation impossible. It's literally just torture.

The Star Trek episode is pretty fucked up. There’s also a Black Mirror episode that deals with this concept too.

“White Christmas”

Something something Rick and Morty Episode, got cancer and went back to the carpet factory.

Blitz and chips!!!!

When Apple store goes uncapitalized I can't help but wonder why theres so much hate for a farmers market

You should watch Otherlife on Netflix, literally what this is about

This is highly disturbing

Long Jaunt!

Mangekyo Sharingan - Tsukuyomi

Tf they gonna do? Mangekyou sharingan the prisoners?

đŸ€ŁđŸ€ŁđŸ€Ł

There was a Black Mirror episode dedicated to this theory.

It was as horrifying as it sounds.

Oh cool MAN MADE HORRORS BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION

"He's out of line, but he's right."

Kind of like the way the concept of "meritocracy" was originally popularized by a guy who was mocking the idea and then all the people who wanted to believe that being rich made them smart decided to use it unironically.

https://kottke.org/17/03/the-satirical-origins-of-the-meritocracy

Or the way "trickle-down economics" was originally a joke, and then all the rich people who wanted to believe that being rich made them good people decided to use it unironically.

https://wiredpen.com/2015/01/30/will-rogers-trickle-economics/

This reminds me of the episode of The Outer Limits called The Sentence.

Good time to write down a list of your enemies

Mayori was behind this

I think there was an outer limits episode, where the inventor ended up going to prison for accidentally killing an inmate using this type of "prison". He spent his whole life in prison until he died, which then he awoke from his machine. Turns out he was the test subject to the investors. Really fuxked me up as a kid.

That’s what we’ve been missing. We haven’t been turning our felons into time gods.

So were going to break the mind of already unstable people? I see ABSOLUTELY no flaws in this plan.

We already have this ability.

They can just send people to live in Cleveland, Ohio, where every day feels like a fucking eternity.

If you have ever had a bad trip, feeling like you were fucked for a 1000 years, may make you never do a bad thing again.

Is it feels like they spend 1000 joes, could I take that, study for like 3 minutes and have like all my studies done

Yeah but... could it work in reverse? I could spend the next 8 hours having 1,000 years of happy times...

But... then the real world...

Yeah if you'd ever done DMT you wouldn't say something so ridiculous.

Obviously this person has never tripped.

When the body dies, aside from souls nothing will happen. The mind dies with the body

Honestly I get why this is fucked up, but at the same time if someone could serve there sentence without almost their whole life literally being taken away from them? That’s awesome.

Edit: and yes I understand prison should be about rehabilitation firstly. I’m just saying, I see a positive here.

The thing is if you do this to the person you can do anything to try to rehabilitate them because, well, they're off their nut on whatever drugs you gave them

Don’t commit crimes and u won’t have to worry about it :)

I love how we’re all convinced we’re not in mind prison right now.

Infinite Tsukuyomi vibes

Isn’t this an SCP

I know a way to make life sentences last seconds...

Uh, no, if you think you served your time, it doesn't matter what other people think.

Literally

There’s a movie that’s like this but I forgot the name of it but the concept is the same

This would never happen because it would cut into the profits of private prisons.

This would never happen because it would cut into the profits of private prisons.

Can confirm, I lived for years as a brick being crushed in a wall on 20x salvia. I would be very wary to commit crimes if the punishment was dmt and salvia rehab.

Can confirm, I lived for years as a brick being crushed in a wall on 20x salvia. I would be very wary to commit crimes if the punishment was dmt and salvia rehab.

If you wanna see what it’ll look like watch the movie “OtherLife”

What's the point of prisons again?

In cyberpunk 2020 they use Braindance tech for the same effect.

Guys. The scientists in question didn't say it'd be good, that it'd be right, just that it'd be theoretically possible. The headline is sensationalized to get you people to do exactly what you're doing.

Nobody is actively working on trying to make prisoners have 1000 year long prison sentences. Nobody is advocating for that. This is proof of nothing. I get that things are bad, but can y'all maybe freak out over something more pressing than obvious sci fi bullshit?

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hard_Time_(episode)

This really isn't the time for Star Wars references.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi has entered the chat

Would the person under the influence understand someone if they were talking to them very very quickly, like around one billion times faster?

Would the person under the influence understand someone if they were talking to them very very quickly, like around one billion times faster?

That would be bad.

That would do terrible things to the brain.

It's longer than you think! Longer than you think!

Then how would the đŸ‡ș🇾 continue to extract free labor and maintain its practice of prison slavery?

Nah. Not happening.

I could maybe understand serving
like a week max under that thing. And I’m just saying that from first impression

Other life (movie)

There’s a movie about this premise. Other life or something like that

There’s a movie about this premise. Other life or something like that

There’s a movie about this premise. Other life or something like that

Aw sweet, man-made horrors beyond my comprehension.

Sure are a lot of words in your "literally no words" post. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Absolutely in love with the idea of a book just being titled “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus”

Maybe we are currently serving a sentence at this moment, chemically forced to live in a world that is “less than” compared to the real world

Maybe it’s just me

Or you

So you spent 1000 years in prison but come back to the same date in time and realize you were only gone for a day and life is back to normal.

This is literally right out of bleach with Mayuri's drug, shits horrifying

This is straight out of a r/blackmirror episode

It's longer than you think! Long Jaunt, Longer than you Think!

And Roko's Basilisk takes one more step to completion.

no he will not. he just does not understand how it works.

whats worse? this or being frozen for decades like demolition man?

Porque no los dos?

1000 years to reflect on life and my future? Sign me up

Dr strange jumps in

I wonder what its like to be left alone for all that time. What would be the crime to fit he time spent there? You ould be crating many stornger enemies if you did this. But that is not so back for you.

ITACHIIII!

More of an " infinite perspective vortex" man myself but to each their own.

That was a good episode. It FUCKED UP O’Brien badly

O Brian got worked harder than a life of being a cheese monster

Dark Mirror had this episode already

I'm sorry. I thought prison was meant to be about rehabilitation, not torture. Or do I just not live in a shithole of a country?

Like the episode of bleach where Mayuri gives that guy a drug and then kills him and now he'll be dying in his own mind for like 1000 years or whatever

I saw an episode of a "twilight show" tyoe thing with David Hyde Pearce with this exact plot. Seemed like a bad idea.

Edit, it was the outer limits

The Total Perspective Vortex is a device that was built as a practical application of the theory of atomic interactivity. The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, then it is theoretically possible to extrapolate a model of the entire universe using any single piece of matter as a starting point. The Vortex does this employing a piece of fairy cake as its base of extrapolation.

The machine was originally created by its inventor Trin Tragula as a way to get back at his wife. She was always telling him to get a "sense of proportion," so he showed her the Vortex. Tragula was horrified to learn he had destroyed her mind, even as he proved his point that if life was going to live in such a vast Universe, one thing it could not afford to have was a sense of perspective.

This will never be implemented in the US because prisons wouldn't make a dime of the prisoners. Well maybe if they are real evil and coming it with the normal sentence, making it 1000 times worst being in prison. Come to think of it, they might actually do it. Just because they can.

When Itachi used Tsukuyomi on Kakashi, even as a child I realized how absolutely abhorrent something like this would be.

Besides the moral implications for the prisoner, imagine how their victims feel when they are let out after a day.

I do think that 99/100 prison sentences should be rehabilitation not punishment.

But I'll never not think someone who has taken EVERYTHING from another human, or done something immensely fucked up like raping a child etc etc doesn't deserve punishment not a chance to have a great life that they've robbed from someone else.

I don't think it's unfair to say some people.dont deserve a second chance. There are to my mind unforgivable acts.

By all means armed robbers, thugs, and general pieces of shit give them a second shake of the dice. But there's people who will never deserve that in 1000 years.

I've just finished reading Surface Details by Iain Banks about a situation were societies are able to map people so that they can exist in simulations. That's a common bit of tech in the series but in this particular book it's about a conflict between various civilizations because some have created and maintain hell simulations where their people that they deem worth of it are tortured for ever.

Pointless punishment. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it.

It's called time dilation

Itachi?? That you?

Uhh
 I don’t think I would want them to do that again immediately

I’ve had a bad LSD trip that felt like it was lasting hours when only 30 minutes had gone by

It’s not very fun lmao

Just abolish prison. If you want to do punishment, giving someone a hundred lashes a week for the rest of their lives might actually be more humane than a 20 year sentence.

OOOOOONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!!!!

trauma pill

Imagine you get 1 month and they accidently give you 60 million years.

Your brain is fried but fully enlightened.

Am I the only one that wants in on this? Not forcing it on anyone or doing it for hours but imagine if we could condense a 30 minute mental break into a few seconds. Just giving me that extra time to think things through would be great.

People saying this is terrible. I would bet this is how rich and powerful people will get sentenced and no trauma at all.

At least when its over you'll be able to use the three sea shells.

I wonder what the truth here is. Like not the meme version or the Reddit interpretation but the actual facts. Oh well, not interested enough to look it up myself so I guess it will remain a mystery to me

Sir, which liquor store do I have to rob?

So basically Itachi’s Tsukuyomi

1984

Everyone referencing Black mirror and no one on The Outer Limits? Episode with Niles Crane?

Why use that for prison and not for education? Even easier courses like forklift driving would be nice.

You’re an idiot if you believe this. Literally imbecilic.

Bro, pump me full of drugs please. I'll slap the shit out of a cop for it. Let me out and I'll slap the shit out one again. I'll repeat the process until I have mentally lived 100,000 years and possess the power to bend time to my will.

Then I'd slap the shit out of a cop again.

How to have a bunch of vegetables. So much for rehabilitation

Alerted Carbon much?

This is some black mirror shit

Honestly, you could prob trick your brain into remembering it’s only 8 hours.

Black mirror intensifies

That's the most stupid thing I have ever heard in my life. What good is for the rest of us ?

There's literally a movie about this.

Black mirror had one episode about it too

Fuck the Torment Nexus. What about The Total Perspective Vortex?

This guy knows where his towel is.

i feel like there was an outter limits episode like this too but i could be wrong

It would be great to use this technology for learning. Right I wanna understand all about this subject, you can get 20 years of learning in a few minutes.

I loved White Christmas but my first thought was Stephen King's The Jaunt. Horrifying.

There was a blafk mirror episode with this concept.

This is literally the premise to the Netflix film other life, great film.

Oh sweet, man made horrors beyond my imagination

For the people that are worried, this will never be real atleast in the US. Prisioners are the #1 source of cheap labour and there is a whole industry built around private prisions where judged has to send people to prision even if they don't deserve it so that they can fill their qouta.

Yeah but once we replace all the prison labourers with robots, we'll be free to punish them with taeterrimal horrors beyond the realm of human sanity.

Hehe as long as they call it a cookie and leave it on for Christmas running like a thousand years a minute

Jesus fucking Christ I wasn’t prepared for this

So the plot of Altered Carbon basically?

There is literally no point to doing this, what would even be gained?

Wouldn't 1,000 years of mind-prison be ultimate euthanasia?

I know I won't keep my sanity after taking 1,000 year trip, and boredom alone will drive me insane..

Where I’m from, we call that Tsukuyomi. đŸœđŸ„

Until you've had a bad trip on DMT, shut your stupid whore mouth.

I took a 4-drag DMT trip once and as the colors came and covered all creation I was 100% sure I had just let Satan out into the world through a hole in my forehead, and she turned around and said "Didn't you learn anything from last time we met?", and then proceeded to fly out and cover the entire world like a thin umbrella, and all 8 billion people knew I was to blame.

So yeah, play some happy music in the background if you gonna do a 4-drag trip.

There's a black mirror episode that touches on this. It's fucking terrifying.

Isn't there a Black Mirror episode specifically about this? Yes there was. Wasn't it also one of the most horrifying? Why yes, yes it was.

Itachi torturing Kakashi be like

Like that shit in the dredd remake that Cersei was bombing

Man 1000 years is overkill but if I could opt into this to serve my normal time hell yeah I would.

So slo-mo from Dredd but amped

They should do therapy and rehabilitation and shit in that time so prisoners can get re-habilitated really quickly

unfortunately i do not see a future in which some governments use this and some dont, unless the drugs dont work exactly as described.

But then how would prisons make money? /s

did we just forget about the whole "cruel and unusual punishments" being fucking illegal?

isn't it one of the amendments?????

I think I only justify this 4 very serious and inhumane crimes

Sounds like this one Black Mirror Episode

Do you want Roko's Basilisk? Because this is how you get Roko's Basilisk.

Don’t you literally go insane if you’re kept in isolation for too long; wouldn’t this just be torture?

Slo-mo

The title was literally no words

Theres nothing but words

Slo-Mo

Didn't they also make a similar episode of Black Mirror?

This an scp, 2701

You could get the same effect by sitting in school

The jaunt comes to mind

I know it may sound cool but after 1000 years hell even 100 years your brain would be mush. I'd say it's better to serve life or get the death penalty really. If the judges experienced what is was like to be locked in solitude for 1000 years then if they survive afterwards they would never sentence anybody to it deeming it too cruel.

I'd still want it developed for people that deserve it, like pedophiles, rapists, and a abusers (like beat their wife/husband/children abusers)

Basically the WARP train from Library of Ruina

Hehehehe, OP is like Jessica

Yah and then you get out of prison the same day and figure out you were there for 8 hours... and go back to committing crimes. Dumb

This proves its about punishment and not keeping society safe

Controlling the effect of psychedelic drugs would be fucking impossible, which is why I hope it does eventually get into a type of therapy, because it has helped people with psychological problems, it’s just a bit risky.

In Dredd (2012) a drug lord is given the drug Slow-Mo and then pushed off a a building. Of course they only fall a few seconds but it feels like an eternity because of the drug.

K hole you would regret sir

In other news
 the world has figured out how to speed up the mental deterioration of inmates for a fraction of the price

Isn’t there a Stephen King novel that has the same concept? I’ve been trying to find it for ages.

Black mirror did an episode on this

Wasn’t there a movie where this was a thing? They were all stored in like glass boxes and kept sedated using drugs?

For those curious, this article was about a philosopher talking about whether or not it would be more moral to have long prison sentences or have someone have a prison sentence that is short in real time but feels very long technologically. It's got a clickbait title

"Nah dude you'd get hella spiritually enlightened and then. Ascend this level of physical reality"....:)

"I'd literally just do it again the second they let me out."

I can confidently say without ever meeting who wrote this, no you absolutely would not.

Reminds me of the George Saunders short story “Escape from Spiderhead.”

This would never happen in the US lol, the primary motivation for incarceration is free or cheap prison labor for corporations. Won't be getting that if they don't even make it to prison.

Pretty sure jail is meant to keep them out of normal society, not speed run their sentences....

Finally, man made horrors beyond my comprehension

Okay but... you guys ever heard of that guy in r/nosleep in the train station...?

This would undermine the concept of reintegration in to the society completely

Prison is a deterrent and a way to bar dangerous people from society, not rehabilitation.

While some people may leave prison rehabilitated, the majority don't. It's main use is to scare people away from committing their first crime.

I could see the idea featured in the article working for lower level crimes like drug possession, where the criminal isn't a real danger to other people. But for more violent crimes, you need regular prison to keep those people away from society.

Isn't it also about rehabilitation and giving them time to think and reflect over their mistakes? Cause this might be a good way to rehabilitate people if there's no torture involved. I guess it also depends on what they experience during those 'years' of time

Good, pedos deserve this

But then you come out of prison and you get told, oh hey, it’s still 2022, wouldn’t you wanna do it again?

inb4 this is only judged as a fair punishment for rich white people

See also Surface Detail, by Iain M. Banks. Religious fundamentalist aliens work out how to transpose someone's consciousness into an SSD, and use it to create virtual hells.

But there are at least 2 words there

It’s like watching Jurassic Park and thinking “We should try and resurrect dinosaurs.” No you shouldn’t! The movie is literally about why doing something like that is a bad idea!

That is incredibly fucked up

This is existence. Once you realize it you are freed from your suffering. It’s cute to think that death is the end.

Am I the only one who's wondering why it's eight and a half hours? What, you're compressing time by a factor of something like a million, but they couldn't manage to squeeze it just that little bit more, to get it done inside one regular shift?