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> If you were asked: “Would it be good if this 0day was used to apprehend a terrorist?” you would probably say “this is good”. If you were asked “would it be go
by bambax 2mo ago
> If you were asked: “Would it be good if this 0day was used to apprehend a terrorist?” you would probably say “this is good”. If you were asked “would it be good if this 0day is used to arrest someone and then torture and waterboard him 183 times?”, you would probably say “this is bad”. So if your 0day was used to capture KSM, it is probably good? Or bad? Things get very complicated very quickly.
This is a version of the very classic problems "does the end justify the means" (should one torture a terrorist to prevent other terrorist acts). Much to the chagrin of utilitarians everywhere, the answer to that question is NO, because answering yes leads to a bottomless hole of infinite evil.
- stackbutterflow 2mo agoUS TV shows in the years after 9/11 are hard to watch now because they're plagued with pro torture scenes. I don't know when exactly but it seemed to have disappeared.
- albumen 2mo agoThis is too simplistic an argument re utilitarianism. It assumes torture definitely works, and that there’s no further consequences. Many utilitarians might say “no” too, given that there is no persuasive evidence that torture is a superior intelligence-gathering method to well-conducted non-coercive interrogation; and that it’s likely to produce unreliable information alongside whatever truths it elicits. It’s a decidedly grey world.