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This is a bullshit argument. Torture does not save shit and it is good for nothing. What if destroying the earth would save the universe? What if Batman wante

by msg 16y ago

This is a bullshit argument. Torture does not save shit and it is good for nothing. What if destroying the earth would save the universe? What if Batman wanted you to torture someone? What if cutting off the eyelids of a brown person meant that unicorns would walk the earth? What if I snuck into suburban households and cut up humans for body parts so my nanobots could learn regeneration techniques? What if the nanobots could reanimate all the dead humans after I cut them up? The reason it is bullshit is because you can put anything in the place of torture and justify it by saying it "saves lives". But for some reason, the arguments that we want to justify this way always boil down to freeing ourselves from the shackles of morality. It is the will to power dressed up in the clothing of public policy. What kind of life are we saving? Is there anything we value more than life?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
DrSprout 16y ago
That's still a fact-based argument. You're saying (and I agree) that data show that the supposition that torture is useful is nonsense. It's only useful as a deterrent tool in morally bankrupt regimes. (But again we come to the moral question of how many innocent people we're willing to harm for deterrence's sake.)
- Tichy 16y ago
  Which data do you have? Just curious.
Tichy 16y ago
Learn to read. I didn't say that torture is good. In fact, I don't have any data on it at all. Just saying that data might still affect one's opinion. What if you family was abducted and locked into an air sealed room, and the culprit was caught by the police. Your family has 1 hour left before air supply runs out. Would you still be against torture. Again, I can't stress this enough: please read carefully. I am not advocating torture. This discussion is not about torture at all.
- msg 16y ago
  I know how to read. The concept I am criticizing in your argument is "data". And I am saying that taking a statistical approach to these questions is misguided. "Maybe if it would save 1000 lives per month? Or one million lives per month? I suspect you don't have any hard data on the impact of torture." I didn't say you were advocating torture either. I am trying to show by example that this decision calculus can be used to justify all kinds of evil nonsense, torture being one example. You can always generate counterfactuals of this form to justify anything... so this method of justification is meaningless. I don't know why you believe that we are not talking about torture. Maybe you don't know that you are presenting a family-based reformulation of the exact same ticking time bomb scenario used by Alan Dershowitz to justify torture. You are reusing these arguments, so maybe you should think about exactly what these arguments have justified in the last ten years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario It's true, though, that you are not talking about torture per se. What you are talking about is weighing some count of human lives against a moral imperative not to do some evil thing. Torture usually stands in for that evil thing because up until very recently, everyone agreed that it was so evil that the kind of weighing you are talking about would not be countenanced. Let me tell a story that may explain what I am getting at. In 1984 (the year), a feminist named Carol Cohn went to a military school to learn about strategic nuclear concepts like mutually assured destruction, first strike, credible second strike, counterforce weapons, etc. What she found was that as she became immersed in that world, she learned to make similar kinds of artificial weighings of the destruction of cities against the loss of second strike capability. The decision calculus she learned to use allowed her to think about nuclear weapons in terms of numbers and geography rather than in terms of human life ("collateral damage"). "If I was unable to speak my concerns in the language, more disturbing still was that I also began to find it harder even to keep them in my own head. No matter how firm my commitment to staying aware of the bloody reality behind the words, over and over, I found that I could not keep human lives as my reference point. I found that I could go for days speaking about nuclear weapons, without once thinking about the people who would be incinerated by them." http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07aa.shtml http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07aa.shtml (the whole article) I suggest you should not be acquiring "data" at all on this question. The only things the data could tell you would be artificial and dehumanized.
jsmcgd 16y ago
In my opinion quality of life takes precedence over life itself.

by msg 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

DrSprout 16y ago

That's still a fact-based argument. You're saying (and I agree) that data show that the supposition that torture is useful is nonsense. It's only useful as a deterrent tool in morally bankrupt regimes. (But again we come to the moral question of how many innocent people we're willing to harm for deterrence's sake.)

Tichy 16y ago
Which data do you have? Just curious.

Tichy 16y ago

Learn to read. I didn't say that torture is good. In fact, I don't have any data on it at all. Just saying that data might still affect one's opinion. What if you family was abducted and locked into an air sealed room, and the culprit was caught by the police. Your family has 1 hour left before air supply runs out. Would you still be against torture. Again, I can't stress this enough: please read carefully. I am not advocating torture. This discussion is not about torture at all.

msg 16y ago
I know how to read. The concept I am criticizing in your argument is "data". And I am saying that taking a statistical approach to these questions is misguided. "Maybe if it would save 1000 lives per month? Or one million lives per month? I suspect you don't have any hard data on the impact of torture." I didn't say you were advocating torture either. I am trying to show by example that this decision calculus can be used to justify all kinds of evil nonsense, torture being one example. You can always generate counterfactuals of this form to justify anything... so this method of justification is meaningless. I don't know why you believe that we are not talking about torture. Maybe you don't know that you are presenting a family-based reformulation of the exact same ticking time bomb scenario used by Alan Dershowitz to justify torture. You are reusing these arguments, so maybe you should think about exactly what these arguments have justified in the last ten years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario It's true, though, that you are not talking about torture per se. What you are talking about is weighing some count of human lives against a moral imperative not to do some evil thing. Torture usually stands in for that evil thing because up until very recently, everyone agreed that it was so evil that the kind of weighing you are talking about would not be countenanced. Let me tell a story that may explain what I am getting at. In 1984 (the year), a feminist named Carol Cohn went to a military school to learn about strategic nuclear concepts like mutually assured destruction, first strike, credible second strike, counterforce weapons, etc. What she found was that as she became immersed in that world, she learned to make similar kinds of artificial weighings of the destruction of cities against the loss of second strike capability. The decision calculus she learned to use allowed her to think about nuclear weapons in terms of numbers and geography rather than in terms of human life ("collateral damage"). "If I was unable to speak my concerns in the language, more disturbing still was that I also began to find it harder even to keep them in my own head. No matter how firm my commitment to staying aware of the bloody reality behind the words, over and over, I found that I could not keep human lives as my reference point. I found that I could go for days speaking about nuclear weapons, without once thinking about the people who would be incinerated by them." http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07aa.shtml http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07aa.shtml (the whole article) I suggest you should not be acquiring "data" at all on this question. The only things the data could tell you would be artificial and dehumanized.

jsmcgd 16y ago

In my opinion quality of life takes precedence over life itself.