4 ms·

I don't really believe in ethics or principles. Those are just words people use to dress up their preferences about how the world should work. Where do you dra

I don't really believe in ethics or principles. Those are just words people use to dress up their preferences about how the world should work. Where do you draw the line therefore zero is a standard approach from the nays in almost any policy debate, but it is easily defeated. I draw the line somewhere. Not sure where. I'd have to figure it out if I ever heard evidence that Convinced me torture is useful.

jlgreco 13y ago
If torture were useful and ethics don't exist, then why would you draw the line anywhere other than "one less victim"?
- sokoloff 13y ago
  Because of a thing called the discount rate. For future or uncertain outcomes, one rationally discounts the amount they are willing to pay right now, with 100% certainty, against the future and/or uncertain outcome. There's a possibility (IMO, a certainty) that torture isn't 100% effective, and there's some number greater than 100 of deaths that I'd need to avoid a year from now to torture 100 people today. (some of those 100 might die anyway before the terror event; we might thwart the terror event via some other means; the terror threat may itself disappear [death of those terrorists or other means]) It's just another case of "pay me $1MM today and I promise to pay you back exactly $1MM in 20 years"...
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  One less victim of what? Torture, or the thing torture is preventing? Anyway, the answer is trivial: you'd decide the same way you decide anything else with a marginal cost and a marginal benefit. If the country has to torture one person for a day to save a thousand people fifty quality-adjusted life-years each, it seems like an obvious win. OTOH, if it's five million people for one QALR, we've wasted far more years in torture than we've saved, and we'd have drawn the line somewhere lower.
flyinRyan 13y ago
So you're saying you have no character. Thanks for admitting this on a job site...
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Oh, believe me, moral expressivists are very much employable as long as their preferences align with society's. This tends to be the case because of shared neurophysiology and socialization.

jlgreco 13y ago

If torture were useful and ethics don't exist, then why would you draw the line anywhere other than "one less victim"?

sokoloff 13y ago
Because of a thing called the discount rate. For future or uncertain outcomes, one rationally discounts the amount they are willing to pay right now, with 100% certainty, against the future and/or uncertain outcome. There's a possibility (IMO, a certainty) that torture isn't 100% effective, and there's some number greater than 100 of deaths that I'd need to avoid a year from now to torture 100 people today. (some of those 100 might die anyway before the terror event; we might thwart the terror event via some other means; the terror threat may itself disappear [death of those terrorists or other means]) It's just another case of "pay me $1MM today and I promise to pay you back exactly $1MM in 20 years"...
jamesaguilar 13y ago
One less victim of what? Torture, or the thing torture is preventing? Anyway, the answer is trivial: you'd decide the same way you decide anything else with a marginal cost and a marginal benefit. If the country has to torture one person for a day to save a thousand people fifty quality-adjusted life-years each, it seems like an obvious win. OTOH, if it's five million people for one QALR, we've wasted far more years in torture than we've saved, and we'd have drawn the line somewhere lower.

flyinRyan 13y ago

So you're saying you have no character. Thanks for admitting this on a job site...

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Oh, believe me, moral expressivists are very much employable as long as their preferences align with society's. This tends to be the case because of shared neurophysiology and socialization.