I've heard of this kind of thing but never thought about it too much because of how contrived it seems. Reading this what strikes my is the underlying assumptio

I've heard of this kind of thing but never thought about it too much because of how contrived it seems. Reading this what strikes my is the underlying assumption about the decision maker's confidence in the outcome of their actions. This is where people really end up deluding themselves, and what ends up justifying all kinds of horrible stuff. Shifting the conversation from morality to "we're sure this will work, eg we're sure they have wmds" ducks the moral question and just gets into a silly discussion about evidence. Torture and capital punishment are both good examples. If your only "ethics" is whether it's ok to torture someone to save millions of lives, you basically end up being able to find justification for it in any situation.