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> he later became the first military officer to speak out against such practices. He did so not just because he thought they were wrong, but because he thought

by c3534l 9y ago

> he later became the first military officer to speak out against such practices. He did so not just because he thought they were wrong, but because he thought they were stupid. You know, just in case you were tempted to think he was a morally decent human being. I still can't believe how casually people talk about one of the shameful human rights abuses in recent history as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked.

unfamiliar 9y ago
Well, it depends on your moral framework. If torturing someone could potentially save hundreds of lives then it could quite easily be argued for.
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  Only if you live in a moral vacuum. EDIT: Most of the moral decisions western society has taken about how we show act are on the principles of first doing no harm and respecting the rights of the individual. This ranges from medicine to the principle of innocent until proven guilty and using the legal standard of beyond reasonable doubt. By torturing someone you are defying almost every moral decision societies have ever made. EDIT AGAIN: Wow just wow. Heavy heavy downvoting for speaking against normalization of torture. Please explain yourselves?
  - Smaug123 9y ago
    Or you're one of many varieties of utilitarian.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. It's only logical. The think about morality is that everyone can have their own, or none at all. Not everyone is bound to value the welfare and freedoms of others as highly as they value their own. And the same goes on the tribal level--not everyone values Them as highly as Us. You can create any number of moral structures that would allow for torture that still do not allow for indiscriminate violence.
    - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
      All the structures you describe are what I what define as living in a moral vacuum...
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        So your moral system requires that its adherents view incompatible or competing moral structures as inferior. So what? They can do the same to yours. You can say that people with other types of morality have no morals, but that does not make it true. The reality is that they may actually have morals, and you just don't like the ones they have.
        asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
        > You can create any number of moral structures that would allow for torture that still do not allow for indiscriminate violence. They do however allow for someone to sit down and decide in a quiet methodical way they they are about to deliberately injure another defenseless human being. > So your moral system requires that its adherents view incompatible or competing moral structures as inferior. So what? They can do the same to yours. In some cases yes. For example anyone that justifies torture or slavery.
        logfromblammo 9y ago
        So now your tribe and this hypothetical torturing tribe view each other as inferiors. You're "weak", and they're "cruel". Now what? Do you boycott and embargo trade with them? Do you go to war preemptively, or only after one of yours gets tortured by one of theirs? Perhaps you launch a propaganda campaign to depict them as mindless savages that revel in the pain of innocents? Maybe you single them out at the border, and loudly demand that they publicly pledge to not torture anybody while they are visiting your territory? That isn't likely to make them stop torturing. I'm not seeing your point. An argument from morality only works for people who share your morals, a group that necessarily excludes those people who engage in torture. People who share your morality already don't torture. An argument regarding the efficacy of the technique is more likely to get a torturer to stop, whereas the moral argument only reinforces a pre-existing aversion. And thanks to cognitive dissonance, the longer someone has been torturing, the less likely they are to listen to anyone telling them that torture is wrong. If you reframe it as an evolution in effective interviewing technique based on recent scientific research, they have a psychological "out" that allows them to stop torturing without having to reframe themselves as a bad guy.
  - edanm 9y ago
    As I understand your comment, you're saying that there is no "morally justifiable" moral framework under which torture would be acceptable. Other people here obviously disagree, using e.g. the trolley problem as an example scenario - would you torture 1 person to save X people from death? This is a legitimate moral question, and I don't think it's anywhere near "decided" at this point. Also, you write: "Most of the moral decisions western society has taken about how we show act are on the principles of first doing no harm and respecting the rights of the individual." Well, much as I would love to live in that world, I don't think it's the one we live in. I mean yes, theoretically this might be true, but practically speaking, there have been plenty of wars involving the west where I don't think many people will say that the West was 100% in the right. There are plenty of situations where we don't care about individual rights that much. E.g. most libertarians will say that basically the entire rise of the welfare state is explicitly against individual liberty. I'm not even sure most socialists will disagree with that! Most importantly, even if the general principle is to try not to do harm, it still doesn't really solve the torture "dilemma". There certainly are some pacifists who cling to "do no harm" as a founding principle, but they're not considered to be the standard view (nor do they claim they are).
    - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
      Maybe I did make a small error which would clarify things. s/Most of the moral decisions western society/Most of the decisions that stand the test of hindsight as having a moral basis that societies have taken/ Whereas your position seems to be - things are a little bit shit anyway so what is the harm in making some more bad decisions. > As I understand your comment, you're saying that there is no "morally justifiable" moral framework under which torture would be acceptable. Other people here obviously disagree, using e.g. the trolley problem as an example scenario - would you torture 1 person to save X people from death? This is a legitimate moral question, and I don't think it's anywhere near "decided" at this point. This is not a relevant question. There is a simple question - are you prepared to hurt the person tied down in front of you in cold blood?
    - 24gttghh 9y ago
      Since you bring up the "Trolley Problem" I'd like to share a recent Radiolab piece on the subject[0]. There are apparently competing parts of our brain, and whichever is the "loudest" (most active) is what determines our actions. The tagline of the episode is >Most of us would sacrifice one person to save five. It’s a pretty straightforward bit of moral math. But if we have to actually kill that person ourselves, the math gets fuzzy. Basically, a more primal part of our brain is likely to scream "NO" when faced with a decision of being the one to directly end another human's life. When there is distance between the decision and the action, more "rational" parts of our brain have the upper hand. [0]https://www.radiolab.org/story/driverless-dilemma/?utm_source=local&utm_medium=treatment&utm_campaign=daMost&utm_content=damostviewed https://www.radiolab.org/story/driverless-dilemma/?utm_sourc...
  - Smaug123 9y ago
    I'm going to give an analogy in response to your EDIT AGAIN. I claim that it's morally indefensible to torture a fish. Even if thousands of humans are to die unless I torture this fish (for some reason), you must refuse. It's torture. To advocate otherwise is to normalise torture, and to go against every moral decision societies have ever made. (Let's ignore the fact that factory farms exist, a moral abhorrence on a gigantic scale if you care about the welfare of animals; whether or not that abhorrence is balanced by an even greater moral benefit from the wide-scale eating of meat they enable. To be clear, I'm explicitly not giving an opinion on whether factory farms are a net benefit; to discuss that aspect further would be to miss the point of the argument entirely.) If I took your moral system and also assigned worth to the well-being of fish, it's quite possible that I could end up with that. But I hope you agree that the views of my second paragraph are at best ridiculous, and at worst abhorrent. So something must be wrong either with the generalisation of your argument, or with the assumption that the well-being of fish is worth defending. So either caring even a little about the well-being of fish makes me a moral vacuum, or some part of your argument doesn't generalise away from "torture of humans". Do you at least see that your argument doesn't have overwhelming force? I'd hope that a worthy moral framework would generalise more easily than this facet of yours that you've presented.
    - nojvek 9y ago
      Once you bring in animals, the morals really change. We humans draw a very strong boundary on super precious human life vs everything else. Not here to debate why we do it, but that's how we've done it for ages.
  - naasking 9y ago
    > Only if you live in a moral vacuum. Utilitarianism is a perfectly valid moral theory. Not all ethics are deontological.
    - mcguire 9y ago
      The utilitarian case isn't as clear-cut as you seem to think it is.
      - naasking 9y ago
        Deontological ethics aren't clear-cut either. That's why ethics is still philosophy and not science.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > By torturing someone you are defying almost every moral decision societies have ever made. This is obviously not true; torture has been accepted by most societies.
  - eps 9y ago
    ... or if your child is among these hundreds.
Banthum 9y ago
In war we regularly maim and kill teenagers, using bullets and explosives. This is entirely intentional and done to save our troops and our people and to win the conflict. If it's necessary to win a fight that matters, and it works, it is okay. See: allied bombing campaigns in WW2 wherein we intentionally roasted thousands of babies and grandmas. The self-indulgent alternative is a recipe for extinction. And you can't have much influence over the world if you're not there. If you're not brutal enough, you just end up handing the future to someone more brutal, which is itself a wrong. Just like it'd be wrong to let the Nazis take Europe because you didn't want to roast babies and grandmas.
- ourmandave 9y ago
  See: allied bombing campaigns in WW2 wherein we intentionally roasted thousands of babies and grandmas. See: War Crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
  - edanm 9y ago
    You might not like it, but the GP has a point in that this is how war is usually conducted. Trying to sweep it under the rug is, IMO, morally wrong all by itself. If you're doing something, at least admit it. Not all of the things GP is talking about are considered warcrimes, and it's sometimes a word thrown around to make it look like we care about something after the fact, but we still do it.
    - wfo 9y ago
      It is how war is usually conducted, and perhaps there is a justification for total war if something poses an existential threat. But you need to consider this in the context of actual reality, where nearly all "war" is really a police action taken extrajudicially by ultrapowerful states against guerilla groups or civilian populations in order to ensure the dominance and power of wealthy global interests. Every war in the cold war was like this. The doctrine of the acceptability of mass slaughter of innocents is how the people with weapons have chosen to use them in these non-existential "wars" but that isn't a justification for that choice.
kbutler 9y ago
> as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked. It's an interesting thought experiment in ethics, analogous to the Trolley Problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem). Assume a nuclear bomb will be detonated in the city, killing and horribly injuring millions of innocent people. The individual who is responsible is known, with no doubt, and there exists some level of pain you can inflict upon him which will, without doubt, prevent the explosion. What degree of pain is acceptable to inflict on that person? Make him sit in the comfy chair? Give him terrible squinty looks? Give him a paper cut? Paper cut with lemon juice? ... If you choose not to take that action, are you responsible for or complicit in the deaths and injury to those people? What if you were one of the co-conspirators, and having second thoughts, could compel the other individual to stop it?
- xtian 9y ago
  What is the benefit of spending time on such a contrived scenario? This is the ethicist's version of "assume a spherical cow". In actual reality you will never have any certainty about the outcomes of interactions like these. All you have control over is whether or not you hurt the person in front of you.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > All you have control over is whether or not you hurt the person in front of you. I tend towards believing that people who bring up the "WHAT IF NOOK BOMB" type scenarios are really just looking for justification that their existing belief in torture is A-OK.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      It's more nuanced. They are trying to make the claim that there might be some situations where it's justifiable. Not that it's "A-OK" all the time.
      - r00fus 9y ago
positr0n 9y ago
I mean, there can be a valid debate on the moral cost of torturing X people to to (potentially) save Y lives with the information extracted. But torturing someone is stupid and doesn't work, so we don't even need to have that debate. I'd probably be in the same camp. I'm against torture because it's stupid. I haven't bothered to think through the moral implications because why bother?
- edanm 9y ago
  Personally, whenever I find that I don't have to solve a moral dilemma (or any dilemma) because it's clear-cut either way (one way has all upsides), I tend to be nervous that I'm missing something. Humans are really really good at cognitive dissonance. I'm not saying I know whether torture works or not, I'm just saying, it's awfully convenient that most people harp on the "it doesn't work" idea, and that means the burden of proof IMO should be much higher to show it doesn't work (assuming your default belief is that it does work, which is most people's default prior).
  - ChrisSD 9y ago
    If we're thinking about this purely scientifically (ignoring the ethics for a moment) then you're asking the wrong question. The question is not "does torture work". The question is "which techniques get the interviewee to honestly reveal what they do (or don't) know". Or to put it another way, the relative results should be your focus.
    - edanm 9y ago
      That's a good point. One of the reasons that I semi-assume that torture works, is that there are security agencies that continue to use it. That also means they choose to use torture versus other means, although there, you could argue that they're doing it as a time/cost-saving measure, and that you could theoretically get similar results with more work. That's actually a pretty strong argument against my "I assume it works because it's used" argument.
      - 9y ago
Maarten88 9y ago
> just in case you were tempted to think he was a morally decent human being He is only practicing what he preaches: he knows you won't convince anyone by confronting them and telling they are human rights violators. They probably see themselves as patriots, and simply don't care. You might, however, convince them by telling them your method will get them better results, understanding that saving their soul is just a by-product to them.
mikeash 9y ago
I don't think it's that it would be OK if it worked. It's just that when you're trying to convince people who think it's a good idea, "it doesn't work" is a lot more persuasive than "it's morally wrong."
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  This statement implies that effectiveness is more important than moral implications.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    If your goal is to get people to stop torturing, I would personally value effectiveness at getting them to stop above all else.
  - GhostVII 9y ago
    To someone who is morally OK with torture, it is much easier to convince them to stop by saying it is ineffective than by trying to change their morals.
    - darpa_escapee 9y ago
      Yes, but then they can pull out the ticking time bomb scenario and confuse plausible justification with efficacy.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    By definition it is, to people who advocate torture.
  - bluesroo 9y ago
    If the effectiveness is high enough, then for some people it could be as, or more, important. To create a overly ideal example as a counterpoint: There is a WMD of some sort hidden in a major city center. We have captured and are 100% sure that the head people who did the planning and planting of the WMD are in our custody. We have a morally reprehensible, but 100% effective torture method. 1. It is guaranteed that these people know the exact information. 2. Tens of thousands or more will be harmed or killed if it is not disarmed. 3. These people are the reason why the WMD is there to begin with. In this case I think that taking more drastic measures would be justified.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
I'm flabbergasted by how some western societies have become willing to debate torture during the last decade. > as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked Spot on. "I was trying to save million of lives" is not a valid excuse for committing atrocities. Especially given how easy it is to construct such narrative and use it to justify anything.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  > "I was trying to save million of lives" is not a valid excuse for committing atrocities Why not? If good men forfeit their lives to fight evil, why can't evil men be forced to forfeit their lives for the same? > use it to justify anything Then the issue is the "narrative" is false. We just have to improve standards of proof - if there is legitimate reason to believe lives would be saved, why not?
  - che_shirecat 9y ago
    by committing atrocities, you become the evil, even if you have an utilitarian excuse. saving more lives is ultimately meaningless as evil will always exist and people will always die as a result of it but the one thing we have complete agency in is our own actions and that will ultimately be what we will be held accountable for
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      I'm not religious, I only care about concepts such as "evil" so far as they are semantically useful lingual constructs. > we have complete agency in is our own actions and that will ultimately be what we will be held accountable for By who, and for what; consequence or intention? A utilitarian justification seems to me as good as any.
      - che_shirecat 9y ago
        Was my comment religious in any way? There's multiple ways that one could be held accountable for crimes against humanity, either by your government and laws or by the international community. There's really no point considering the issue from a nakedly utilitarian justification - why would you care about how many people you save then? If it's for their economic output or because of economic damage, why not just kill the poor or enslave the populace? Your stance is pure sociopathy and as such we obviously have no room for a reasoned discussion.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
paulsutter 9y ago
> not just because he thought they were wrong.. Not /just/, so yes he is a moral person who knows it’s wrong. And wise enough to add an argument that even an amoral person can understand. Because it’s clear that amoral people have been making the decisions.
cavanasm 9y ago
I've attended a talk he gave about torture at my university, and in that, he attacked torture from both the effectiveness and moral angle. There are apparently a LOT of people who push back even after accepting torture is worthless at getting information because they think the person being tortured deserves it / has earned it. EDIT: grammar.
Mz 9y ago
You are conveniently overlooking the fact that it clearly means he thought it was wrong. Additionally, he thought it was stupid, ineffectual and counterproductive. Given that the military is an organization that deals death to accomplish its goals, this is the stronger argument to make if you want to change how things get done. Moral people who have a serious commitment to improving things are wise to save their tears and ranting for private moments with people who care about them. Then set that aside, put on their public face and do what works best to move their agenda forward, knowing that no matter what they do, some people will drag their name through the mud.
kafkaesq 9y ago
I still can't believe how casually people talk about one of the shameful human rights abuses in recent history as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked. The point is that this guy took some actual risk (even if it's "just" career risk) to at least make a noticeable dent in the problem. While you and I just sit here and type about it. Meanwhile, your imputation above is simply illogical, and doesn't exactly do very much to help to solve the underlying problem, either.
oh_sigh 9y ago
So the moral human will not torture a man who planted a bomb somewhere in a city, which will cause hundreds of deaths if it goes off before being found?
WalterBright 9y ago
I oppose torture because: 1. We lose the moral high ground. 2. We give the enemy recruitment material. 3. We justify the enemy torturing our guys. 4. The enemy will fight much harder if they know that they'll get tortured if captured. They will be far less likely to surrender / capitulate. 5. Winning the peace after victory will be much harder. 6. The intelligence you get is likely to be crap anyway.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- memracom 9y ago
  That is thinking out of the box, something that military forces have great difficulty doing. Number 2, 4 and 5 quite publicly caused a collapse in the victory of the first Gulf War. It is too bad that there are not more Soviet and Russian WWII movies overdubbed in English, because the NKVD and the KGB really mastered this stuff back in the 40s and 50s. Not in all departments of the organization but in enough of them to become the masters of the Cold War.

by c3534l 9y ago

unfamiliar 9y ago

Well, it depends on your moral framework. If torturing someone could potentially save hundreds of lives then it could quite easily be argued for.

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
Only if you live in a moral vacuum. EDIT: Most of the moral decisions western society has taken about how we show act are on the principles of first doing no harm and respecting the rights of the individual. This ranges from medicine to the principle of innocent until proven guilty and using the legal standard of beyond reasonable doubt. By torturing someone you are defying almost every moral decision societies have ever made. EDIT AGAIN: Wow just wow. Heavy heavy downvoting for speaking against normalization of torture. Please explain yourselves?
- Smaug123 9y ago
  Or you're one of many varieties of utilitarian.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. It's only logical. The think about morality is that everyone can have their own, or none at all. Not everyone is bound to value the welfare and freedoms of others as highly as they value their own. And the same goes on the tribal level--not everyone values Them as highly as Us. You can create any number of moral structures that would allow for torture that still do not allow for indiscriminate violence.
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    All the structures you describe are what I what define as living in a moral vacuum...
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      So your moral system requires that its adherents view incompatible or competing moral structures as inferior. So what? They can do the same to yours. You can say that people with other types of morality have no morals, but that does not make it true. The reality is that they may actually have morals, and you just don't like the ones they have.
      - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
        > You can create any number of moral structures that would allow for torture that still do not allow for indiscriminate violence. They do however allow for someone to sit down and decide in a quiet methodical way they they are about to deliberately injure another defenseless human being. > So your moral system requires that its adherents view incompatible or competing moral structures as inferior. So what? They can do the same to yours. In some cases yes. For example anyone that justifies torture or slavery.
        logfromblammo 9y ago
        So now your tribe and this hypothetical torturing tribe view each other as inferiors. You're "weak", and they're "cruel". Now what? Do you boycott and embargo trade with them? Do you go to war preemptively, or only after one of yours gets tortured by one of theirs? Perhaps you launch a propaganda campaign to depict them as mindless savages that revel in the pain of innocents? Maybe you single them out at the border, and loudly demand that they publicly pledge to not torture anybody while they are visiting your territory? That isn't likely to make them stop torturing. I'm not seeing your point. An argument from morality only works for people who share your morals, a group that necessarily excludes those people who engage in torture. People who share your morality already don't torture. An argument regarding the efficacy of the technique is more likely to get a torturer to stop, whereas the moral argument only reinforces a pre-existing aversion. And thanks to cognitive dissonance, the longer someone has been torturing, the less likely they are to listen to anyone telling them that torture is wrong. If you reframe it as an evolution in effective interviewing technique based on recent scientific research, they have a psychological "out" that allows them to stop torturing without having to reframe themselves as a bad guy.
- edanm 9y ago
  As I understand your comment, you're saying that there is no "morally justifiable" moral framework under which torture would be acceptable. Other people here obviously disagree, using e.g. the trolley problem as an example scenario - would you torture 1 person to save X people from death? This is a legitimate moral question, and I don't think it's anywhere near "decided" at this point. Also, you write: "Most of the moral decisions western society has taken about how we show act are on the principles of first doing no harm and respecting the rights of the individual." Well, much as I would love to live in that world, I don't think it's the one we live in. I mean yes, theoretically this might be true, but practically speaking, there have been plenty of wars involving the west where I don't think many people will say that the West was 100% in the right. There are plenty of situations where we don't care about individual rights that much. E.g. most libertarians will say that basically the entire rise of the welfare state is explicitly against individual liberty. I'm not even sure most socialists will disagree with that! Most importantly, even if the general principle is to try not to do harm, it still doesn't really solve the torture "dilemma". There certainly are some pacifists who cling to "do no harm" as a founding principle, but they're not considered to be the standard view (nor do they claim they are).
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    Maybe I did make a small error which would clarify things. s/Most of the moral decisions western society/Most of the decisions that stand the test of hindsight as having a moral basis that societies have taken/ Whereas your position seems to be - things are a little bit shit anyway so what is the harm in making some more bad decisions. > As I understand your comment, you're saying that there is no "morally justifiable" moral framework under which torture would be acceptable. Other people here obviously disagree, using e.g. the trolley problem as an example scenario - would you torture 1 person to save X people from death? This is a legitimate moral question, and I don't think it's anywhere near "decided" at this point. This is not a relevant question. There is a simple question - are you prepared to hurt the person tied down in front of you in cold blood?
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    Since you bring up the "Trolley Problem" I'd like to share a recent Radiolab piece on the subject[0]. There are apparently competing parts of our brain, and whichever is the "loudest" (most active) is what determines our actions. The tagline of the episode is >Most of us would sacrifice one person to save five. It’s a pretty straightforward bit of moral math. But if we have to actually kill that person ourselves, the math gets fuzzy. Basically, a more primal part of our brain is likely to scream "NO" when faced with a decision of being the one to directly end another human's life. When there is distance between the decision and the action, more "rational" parts of our brain have the upper hand. [0]https://www.radiolab.org/story/driverless-dilemma/?utm_source=local&utm_medium=treatment&utm_campaign=daMost&utm_content=damostviewed https://www.radiolab.org/story/driverless-dilemma/?utm_sourc...
- Smaug123 9y ago
  I'm going to give an analogy in response to your EDIT AGAIN. I claim that it's morally indefensible to torture a fish. Even if thousands of humans are to die unless I torture this fish (for some reason), you must refuse. It's torture. To advocate otherwise is to normalise torture, and to go against every moral decision societies have ever made. (Let's ignore the fact that factory farms exist, a moral abhorrence on a gigantic scale if you care about the welfare of animals; whether or not that abhorrence is balanced by an even greater moral benefit from the wide-scale eating of meat they enable. To be clear, I'm explicitly not giving an opinion on whether factory farms are a net benefit; to discuss that aspect further would be to miss the point of the argument entirely.) If I took your moral system and also assigned worth to the well-being of fish, it's quite possible that I could end up with that. But I hope you agree that the views of my second paragraph are at best ridiculous, and at worst abhorrent. So something must be wrong either with the generalisation of your argument, or with the assumption that the well-being of fish is worth defending. So either caring even a little about the well-being of fish makes me a moral vacuum, or some part of your argument doesn't generalise away from "torture of humans". Do you at least see that your argument doesn't have overwhelming force? I'd hope that a worthy moral framework would generalise more easily than this facet of yours that you've presented.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Once you bring in animals, the morals really change. We humans draw a very strong boundary on super precious human life vs everything else. Not here to debate why we do it, but that's how we've done it for ages.
- naasking 9y ago
  > Only if you live in a moral vacuum. Utilitarianism is a perfectly valid moral theory. Not all ethics are deontological.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    The utilitarian case isn't as clear-cut as you seem to think it is.
    - naasking 9y ago
      Deontological ethics aren't clear-cut either. That's why ethics is still philosophy and not science.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > By torturing someone you are defying almost every moral decision societies have ever made. This is obviously not true; torture has been accepted by most societies.
- eps 9y ago
  ... or if your child is among these hundreds.

Banthum 9y ago

In war we regularly maim and kill teenagers, using bullets and explosives. This is entirely intentional and done to save our troops and our people and to win the conflict. If it's necessary to win a fight that matters, and it works, it is okay. See: allied bombing campaigns in WW2 wherein we intentionally roasted thousands of babies and grandmas. The self-indulgent alternative is a recipe for extinction. And you can't have much influence over the world if you're not there. If you're not brutal enough, you just end up handing the future to someone more brutal, which is itself a wrong. Just like it'd be wrong to let the Nazis take Europe because you didn't want to roast babies and grandmas.

ourmandave 9y ago
See: allied bombing campaigns in WW2 wherein we intentionally roasted thousands of babies and grandmas. See: War Crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
- edanm 9y ago
  You might not like it, but the GP has a point in that this is how war is usually conducted. Trying to sweep it under the rug is, IMO, morally wrong all by itself. If you're doing something, at least admit it. Not all of the things GP is talking about are considered warcrimes, and it's sometimes a word thrown around to make it look like we care about something after the fact, but we still do it.
  - wfo 9y ago
    It is how war is usually conducted, and perhaps there is a justification for total war if something poses an existential threat. But you need to consider this in the context of actual reality, where nearly all "war" is really a police action taken extrajudicially by ultrapowerful states against guerilla groups or civilian populations in order to ensure the dominance and power of wealthy global interests. Every war in the cold war was like this. The doctrine of the acceptability of mass slaughter of innocents is how the people with weapons have chosen to use them in these non-existential "wars" but that isn't a justification for that choice.

kbutler 9y ago

> as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked. It's an interesting thought experiment in ethics, analogous to the Trolley Problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem). Assume a nuclear bomb will be detonated in the city, killing and horribly injuring millions of innocent people. The individual who is responsible is known, with no doubt, and there exists some level of pain you can inflict upon him which will, without doubt, prevent the explosion. What degree of pain is acceptable to inflict on that person? Make him sit in the comfy chair? Give him terrible squinty looks? Give him a paper cut? Paper cut with lemon juice? ... If you choose not to take that action, are you responsible for or complicit in the deaths and injury to those people? What if you were one of the co-conspirators, and having second thoughts, could compel the other individual to stop it?

xtian 9y ago
What is the benefit of spending time on such a contrived scenario? This is the ethicist's version of "assume a spherical cow". In actual reality you will never have any certainty about the outcomes of interactions like these. All you have control over is whether or not you hurt the person in front of you.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > All you have control over is whether or not you hurt the person in front of you. I tend towards believing that people who bring up the "WHAT IF NOOK BOMB" type scenarios are really just looking for justification that their existing belief in torture is A-OK.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    It's more nuanced. They are trying to make the claim that there might be some situations where it's justifiable. Not that it's "A-OK" all the time.
    - r00fus 9y ago

positr0n 9y ago

I mean, there can be a valid debate on the moral cost of torturing X people to to (potentially) save Y lives with the information extracted. But torturing someone is stupid and doesn't work, so we don't even need to have that debate. I'd probably be in the same camp. I'm against torture because it's stupid. I haven't bothered to think through the moral implications because why bother?

edanm 9y ago
Personally, whenever I find that I don't have to solve a moral dilemma (or any dilemma) because it's clear-cut either way (one way has all upsides), I tend to be nervous that I'm missing something. Humans are really really good at cognitive dissonance. I'm not saying I know whether torture works or not, I'm just saying, it's awfully convenient that most people harp on the "it doesn't work" idea, and that means the burden of proof IMO should be much higher to show it doesn't work (assuming your default belief is that it does work, which is most people's default prior).
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  If we're thinking about this purely scientifically (ignoring the ethics for a moment) then you're asking the wrong question. The question is not "does torture work". The question is "which techniques get the interviewee to honestly reveal what they do (or don't) know". Or to put it another way, the relative results should be your focus.
  - edanm 9y ago
    That's a good point. One of the reasons that I semi-assume that torture works, is that there are security agencies that continue to use it. That also means they choose to use torture versus other means, although there, you could argue that they're doing it as a time/cost-saving measure, and that you could theoretically get similar results with more work. That's actually a pretty strong argument against my "I assume it works because it's used" argument.
    - 9y ago

Maarten88 9y ago

> just in case you were tempted to think he was a morally decent human being He is only practicing what he preaches: he knows you won't convince anyone by confronting them and telling they are human rights violators. They probably see themselves as patriots, and simply don't care. You might, however, convince them by telling them your method will get them better results, understanding that saving their soul is just a by-product to them.

mikeash 9y ago

I don't think it's that it would be OK if it worked. It's just that when you're trying to convince people who think it's a good idea, "it doesn't work" is a lot more persuasive than "it's morally wrong."

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
This statement implies that effectiveness is more important than moral implications.
- mikeash 9y ago
  If your goal is to get people to stop torturing, I would personally value effectiveness at getting them to stop above all else.
- GhostVII 9y ago
  To someone who is morally OK with torture, it is much easier to convince them to stop by saying it is ineffective than by trying to change their morals.
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    Yes, but then they can pull out the ticking time bomb scenario and confuse plausible justification with efficacy.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  By definition it is, to people who advocate torture.
- bluesroo 9y ago
  If the effectiveness is high enough, then for some people it could be as, or more, important. To create a overly ideal example as a counterpoint: There is a WMD of some sort hidden in a major city center. We have captured and are 100% sure that the head people who did the planning and planting of the WMD are in our custody. We have a morally reprehensible, but 100% effective torture method. 1. It is guaranteed that these people know the exact information. 2. Tens of thousands or more will be harmed or killed if it is not disarmed. 3. These people are the reason why the WMD is there to begin with. In this case I think that taking more drastic measures would be justified.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

I'm flabbergasted by how some western societies have become willing to debate torture during the last decade. > as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked Spot on. "I was trying to save million of lives" is not a valid excuse for committing atrocities. Especially given how easy it is to construct such narrative and use it to justify anything.

Chris2048 9y ago
> "I was trying to save million of lives" is not a valid excuse for committing atrocities Why not? If good men forfeit their lives to fight evil, why can't evil men be forced to forfeit their lives for the same? > use it to justify anything Then the issue is the "narrative" is false. We just have to improve standards of proof - if there is legitimate reason to believe lives would be saved, why not?
- che_shirecat 9y ago
  by committing atrocities, you become the evil, even if you have an utilitarian excuse. saving more lives is ultimately meaningless as evil will always exist and people will always die as a result of it but the one thing we have complete agency in is our own actions and that will ultimately be what we will be held accountable for
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    I'm not religious, I only care about concepts such as "evil" so far as they are semantically useful lingual constructs. > we have complete agency in is our own actions and that will ultimately be what we will be held accountable for By who, and for what; consequence or intention? A utilitarian justification seems to me as good as any.
    - che_shirecat 9y ago
      Was my comment religious in any way? There's multiple ways that one could be held accountable for crimes against humanity, either by your government and laws or by the international community. There's really no point considering the issue from a nakedly utilitarian justification - why would you care about how many people you save then? If it's for their economic output or because of economic damage, why not just kill the poor or enslave the populace? Your stance is pure sociopathy and as such we obviously have no room for a reasoned discussion.

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paulsutter 9y ago

> not just because he thought they were wrong.. Not /just/, so yes he is a moral person who knows it’s wrong. And wise enough to add an argument that even an amoral person can understand. Because it’s clear that amoral people have been making the decisions.

cavanasm 9y ago

I've attended a talk he gave about torture at my university, and in that, he attacked torture from both the effectiveness and moral angle. There are apparently a LOT of people who push back even after accepting torture is worthless at getting information because they think the person being tortured deserves it / has earned it. EDIT: grammar.

Mz 9y ago

You are conveniently overlooking the fact that it clearly means he thought it was wrong. Additionally, he thought it was stupid, ineffectual and counterproductive. Given that the military is an organization that deals death to accomplish its goals, this is the stronger argument to make if you want to change how things get done. Moral people who have a serious commitment to improving things are wise to save their tears and ranting for private moments with people who care about them. Then set that aside, put on their public face and do what works best to move their agenda forward, knowing that no matter what they do, some people will drag their name through the mud.

kafkaesq 9y ago

I still can't believe how casually people talk about one of the shameful human rights abuses in recent history as if torturing a person would still be okay if worked. The point is that this guy took some actual risk (even if it's "just" career risk) to at least make a noticeable dent in the problem. While you and I just sit here and type about it. Meanwhile, your imputation above is simply illogical, and doesn't exactly do very much to help to solve the underlying problem, either.

oh_sigh 9y ago

So the moral human will not torture a man who planted a bomb somewhere in a city, which will cause hundreds of deaths if it goes off before being found?

WalterBright 9y ago

I oppose torture because: 1. We lose the moral high ground. 2. We give the enemy recruitment material. 3. We justify the enemy torturing our guys. 4. The enemy will fight much harder if they know that they'll get tortured if captured. They will be far less likely to surrender / capitulate. 5. Winning the peace after victory will be much harder. 6. The intelligence you get is likely to be crap anyway.

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memracom 9y ago
That is thinking out of the box, something that military forces have great difficulty doing. Number 2, 4 and 5 quite publicly caused a collapse in the victory of the first Gulf War. It is too bad that there are not more Soviet and Russian WWII movies overdubbed in English, because the NKVD and the KGB really mastered this stuff back in the 40s and 50s. Not in all departments of the organization but in enough of them to become the masters of the Cold War.