For clarification, "non violently" means things like psychological methods, psychotropic drugs, sleep deprivation, etc. that are unlikely to kill a subject by themselves.
The United Nations Convention against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for "months or even years"; that "prosecution under Section 2340A may be barred because enforcement of the statute would represent an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority to conduct war"; and that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A
A few years ago I read that John Yoo was coming to a meeting of the local Republican Club to give a talk. I went there to confront him about torture. During the Q & A part of his talk I told him that, given a few minutes, I could make him say anything I wanted by waterboarding him, that water boarding was, contrary to his legal excuse-making, torture, and I could prove it to him. Of course he was unwilling to be tested on this point. I have been interrogated by being held underwater, so I know whereof I speak. He tried to justify what he did by saying we were at war. I immediately countered with”no war was declared.” He had nothing, of course, on that. Just continues living his comfortable minion life, for now, climbing the ladder.
I forget now but I think the controversy around his legal weasel wording had to do with the assertion that the treatment wasn’t going to kill the prisoner so it wasn’t actually “torture.”
That’s why he makes the big bucks. It’s why scientists prefer to use lawyers instead of rats now for research—there are just some things you can’t get a rat to do!
Steve Gutenberg. I would use Steve Gutenberg re-enacting his greatest movie scenes to obtain the information. Whether or not that's torture is a matter of opinion. 😁
I'd have him read out the script to his movie Threat Level: Midnight. The Office cast ACTUALLY filmed it and its on YouTube if you haven't seen it yet. It is...breathtaking. 🤣
Jon Bon Jovi once said anyone who wanted to torture him (and I'm sure there are many) should force him to watch the music videos from the first two Bon Jovi albums. I'd gladly subject that to anyone, even if it did not yield life-saving information. I'm a mean guy. But that is the extent of my appetite for ... uh ... destruction. (Don't worry. I'm too busy today to write and comment about Eighties bands all day.)
I could kill, easily, anyone violently trying to harm my loved ones or any other innocent person. I know this capacity is in me.
Certainly there are scenarios one can imagine--someone supposedly "known" to have put, say, a kidnapped victim in imminent danger of death or mutilation etc.--and torture is to save them--but there's really no scenario where this doesn't go wrong, really.
I'm a big fan of the quick dispassionate removal of the threat, when that can be done, or fighting to the death to defend one's home/territory.
For the rest I want to keep my own soul intact; it's always under threat by the sorts of vengeful thoughts I can't always resist entertaining myself with.
Oct 8, 2022·edited Oct 8, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
It over-indulges itself a lot, but what I like about these Israeli shows is how they're not in the least afraid to show the enemy is human and has understandable motivations.
I'd suggest bingeing all of Prisoners of War (on Hulu) first; that was just an exceptional show. The producers simultaneously made Homeland and it really pissed me off, seeing what they were capable of and how they cheapened and diminished it for the American audience, and the contempt for us that betrayed.
And for a truly ridiculous show that became something more: Juda. Israeli small-time thug gets turned into a vampire in Romania; falls in love with his turner; a Romeo & Juliet pairing fer shure.
I always struggle with scenes where the extremely recognizable because of flowing blonde hair character is trying to behave in a covert manner with said flowing blonde hair flowing in the open air at the height of noon.
But almost better than that was Saul Berenson trying not to get captured in Peshawar while wearing Western clothes and skulking from doorfront to doorfront.
But much better than any of those was Dennis Haysbert in The Unit trying to be unobtrusive doing covert missions in Afghanistan, wearing a Pukhtoon hat and behaving as though nobody would thereby notice a six-foot something black guy.
I find this a very interesting query: Seems like psy ops would fall under non-violent torture. And it is my current opinion that governments, corporations, media are all participating in psy ops of some form. So are they crossing a line ? Seems like it.
The practice of manipulation is as old as time. However, in recent decades it's become deeply researched, highly developed tool that institutions of all stripes wield - to acquire money and/or power (can't decide anymore which is the bigger priority to these people). In a previous time, I might have believed that psy ops was acceptable in a life-death/good versus evil situation (ticking time bomb, etc.) However recently I've come to realize that psy ops can manipulate a well-intentioned person to believe that crossing their perceived moral line is necessary (is life/death, etc.) I think one is obligated to thwart evil at the personal level but judging what is evil and when conflict and/or action is required in a wider scale is the dilemma of our time.
This, of course, is the point of post-modernism to blur the lines of both reality and morality and take advantage of humanity's characteristic lack of courage (otherwise known as libertarianism).
As with most issues, I don't think there's a blanket statement to be made on manipulation being a moral violation. For example, just returned from puppy training class - basis of which is to manipulate dog into good behavior.
I think we have to understand that our individual and societal problems are not binary. This has been very hard for the current society - absorbed with tech- to understand. Tech itself is binary - the program works or it does not. Life is not binary - problems are as unique and complex.
To the question at hand, in a ticking time bomb situation, before I even began to weigh the cost-benefit on using spiritual/physical/psychological violence to "save" the world, I would take a long hard look as to whether I was "inside the matrix" before I committed myself to a course of action. Prior to recent events, I wouldn't have even thought there was a "matrix" !
Yeah, I do that every time I have a suggestion, but as a (apparently) matter of policy they never reply, so I have no idea if I'm just throwing them down a black hole.
I had put in requests to manually ban someone a while ago because the system was majorly bugged and not allowing it and they never answered me, just several months later or so the person was all of a sudden banned.
I can easily imagine the technical and legal headache of formulating policy and so on on how to handle user suggestions, without setting oneself up for a major lawsuit down the years.
Hobby magazines used to have quite the blurb of legalese in miniscule size about how any and all reader suggestions sent in became their property in all ways ashapes and forms for ever and ever and that sending in a suggestion meant agreeing to those terms - haven't a single clue if it would have held up in a court here, but our judicial system for ideas/IP/trademarks and copyrights isn't set up the way I'v come to understand the US one is.
I followed an infringement suit a few years back (via PACER I beleive it was called) where a UK company had sued a US garage-scale operator who did add-ons for the UK company's products - was quite an education in its own right - no wonder you have so many lawyers.
I came from a somewhat challenging family and my dad liked to beat me with his belt, and one can develop from that a sort of revenge-by-proxy way of behaving, and when I was perhaps between 9-12 I really enjoyed making my brother, and once my cousin, cry by telling them scary or upsetting things. A horrible pleasure because it gives you great power you otherwise have nowhere else in your life.
If you know that capacity is in you, you really don't want to indulge it.
A capacity for pragmatism when contemplating doing horrible things to other human beings under the guise of obtaining a greater good is the foundational building block of monsters.
I know I would be the subject of some very dark fairy tales if I lived in an anarchic world. Thankfully, there are plenty of constructive principles to hang my behavior on. But I'm still the person friends would probably call to help get rid of a body.
I love books and movies about really good snipers. It's the skill and mental control, and explanations of the technical details, that mesmerize me. But killing for the sheer bloody joy of the gore and the screaming I find boring and cheap. I started out liking Dexter for the concept but it went so far off the rails, it really disappointed me.
You should read my story about a sociopath someday, and its sequel...
no im saying that torture should be reserved as only used to get life saving info out of an already abhorrent excuse for a human who has demonstrated psychopathic murderous tendencies against life.
ah fk it i wrote that above, reread it and feeling like i dont give a fuck any more, add harmful liars like journalists and politicians to the list
I'm genuinely very curious: what does the Bible explictly say about torture? I didn't remember any admonitions like this, and did a quick electronic search of a few major version, and didn't see any admonitions about torture.
I found the following in NIV:
Matthew 8:29
“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
Matthew 18:34
In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
Mark 5:7
He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!”
Luke 8:28
When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”
Hebrews 11:35
Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.
Revelation 9:5
They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes.
The first few Bible passages are demons, inside the possessed, addressing Jesus.
What is acceptable violence, if any, for Christians is a hard question. Torture implies an act on a helpless individual. Definitely not OK. On the other hand, Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have concluded that violence employed in the defense of others and, especially, in confronting evil is laudable and necessary. To turn one's cheek in the face of growing evil is to surrender to evil. Definitely not OK.
I am no scholar on this subject, but that's a quick summary of things I've read over the years.
Whenever the "golden rule" came up in Sunday school, I always asked the same question and never got a satisfactory answer: what about soldiers killing one another in war? Theologically, it would seem to depend on whether one's opponents were "evil," but this is not at all an easy definition when it comes to war.
You specifically carve out an exception for a "helpless individual." Is it because that person is, at that moment, helpless because they're your prisoner, despite whatever role they may play in a larger series of actions where innocents may be killed?
Yes, the Israelites were well-known to unsheathe their swords a time or a hundred...
My half-assed take on it from reading/listening to musings on the OT God: violence was necessary to ensure the survival of God's Chosen People in an extraordinarily cruel and violent time. They established the nation through which Jesus would enter the world.
Oct 8, 2022·edited Oct 8, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
Perhaps the original from which all psychological torture comes is the Ten Plagues. Completely unnecessary; God just toying with Pharaoh because He could.
Has always made it hard for me to enjoy Passover in completely the right spirit.
I remember reading in the scrupulous and largely intact government records that the ancient Egyptians and other Mediterranean kingdoms with extensive written bureaucracies kept at the time that this situation really set back the study of meteorology for many years and led to a lot of stupid additions to trendy restaurant menus.
Yes, they are in no position to defend themselves, so they must be treated humanely. The very opposite of what the US has done in the ME. Psychological torture (sleep deprivation, especially) can be as devastating as maiming.
In the film "Taxi to the Dark side" an interview with a CIA (iirc) interrogator revealed that physical torture produces poor, useless information compared to the process normally employed to extract information. People will say anything to make the pain go away.
Aquinas formulated the Just War Theory which sets parameters of engaging.
>> an interview with a CIA (iirc) interrogator revealed that physical torture produces poor, useless information compared to the process normally employed to extract information. People will say anything to make the pain go away.
This is true to a point. "The process normally employed to extract information" often includes non-lethal harming.
In the movie, the agent made it clear that no harm (physical or psychological) came to the prisoner. Small favors and privileges were granted in exchange for information. Assurances were made that they would intervene with foreign governments to prevent their families from being harmed. I watched the movie once about 15 yrs ago so all this is iirc.
100% agreed on turning away from evil. That is never acceptable. I approached the question from a perspective of torturing an individual for my own gain. I won't lose my soul to live a few more days.
Oct 8, 2022·edited Oct 8, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
You can look up the catholic church's old writings on the methods employed by the Inquisition if you have time to search. From what I recall if the accused heretic was unrepentant after the inital non-violent yet very brusque and threatening questioning, he or she was given a tour of the donjon and was shown the implements. If they still didn't confess, they were handed over to secular authorities to keep the priests' hands "clean".
The whole set-up was designed so that in the event of a confession, the belongings of the condemned were split between clergy and crown. Thomas de Torquemada is a good place to start.
Edit: another good one is this - "The Inquisitor's Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics" by Bernard Guy, who was a papal inquisitor. The relevant papal bull legitimising torture was called Ad Extirpanda, you could possible find a translation online.
It was part of broader study I was doing about social work and criminal justice because, as you pointed out, the situation did very colorfully illustrate a bureaucratic division of labor and notions of "clean/dirty hands" policies.
Oct 8, 2022·edited Oct 8, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
It's quite the horrible subject, and I remember experiencing what I can only describe as disassociation after a while, a feeling that was emhanced when I gave my mandatory talk on the paper before my professor and the rest of the group.
Looks went from bemused to horrified at the subject matter to horrified at my incredibly dry and clinical monotone.
As for methods, there are definite differences between torture-as-punishment and torture for questioning, and several older methods of execution were essentially torture unto death. When used as a punishment, when death wasn't the goal, it also varied between causing pain and humiliation as many punishments were carried out in public - indeed, it was long held that punishments /must/ be public to be just, else people culd suspect the ruler of murdering prisoners during punishment - and causing disfigurement and muilation or crippling someone.
One method used here up until about the 1500s was "ride the wooden mare". This was a torturous punishment danish and german mercenary soldiers tasked with bringing in the tax from the swedish freemen used on people not putting up with that. A sturdy plank, say 4" thick, is sanded until the edge is like a knife. Then the victim is seated on it as if it was a horse and weights are attached to his feet. He is then left there under guard from sunup to sundown.
A modern method used for extracting confessions is drilling holes in the teeth into the nerves and attaching electrodes and a 9V battery. Or simply taking a metal wire and using it to saw through the tooth. If you've ever experienced the feeling when a needle or a blade hits bone, you have an idea.
Edit: german executioners even "competed" in being the most accomplished when it came to breaking of bones and subsequnt hanging on wheel, as the limbs were "woven" into the spokes before the wheel was placed on a pole, the victim still alive...
...and the the crows starts to feed.
The record, from memory, was 86 individual bones broken without killing the man punished.
Scalding. Ranged from dripping boiling water on hands or feet, to dunking the victim in boiling oil. Or dripping molten metal on them.
Sometimes a part of the body would be flayed and then have ice water poured on it until numb and then salt or vinegar or something similar would be poued on the wound before the numbness wore off.
I've seen apocryphical mentions of the old teutonic tribes using impalement for perpetrators of rape (their definition of it off course): not through the ass or along the spine but through the chest into the ground: the victim was held down and the stake driven through, ideally in such a way it didn't kill the victim who was then let up to stagger around with a wooden stake through his torso until he died.
But that may well be celts or franks telling tall tales to romans about "those people over the river".
People who vote "not at all" have never been put into a situation involving a loved one's life being in mortal danger and they need information to keep their loved one alive. Trust me, when it comes to that you would be plying vise grips on finger and toenails in no time flat. And before it was over you would be wielding a sawzall on extremities and applying tourniquets so those responsible for them to give up the information you must have to save your loved one's life. Before it was over you'd be standing over their body. And whether you got the information or not you would be sure that you did all you could to save your loved one and have no regrets.
1. I think "non-violent torture" is an oxymoron and that such thing does not and can not exist.
2. Info that is only "potentially" life-saving is not sufficiently justifiable for using torture (even nonviolent torture) to obtain.
Regarding "potentially", we've seen that metric used enough by the Left to justify anything and everything - "if it only saves one life", "if it stops the seas from rising", etc. I don't GAS about "good intentions", which is another form of "potentially".
I've never seen 24! Before a certain year I probably haven't seen 90% of the TV shows I'm pestered about.
No, this was actually inspired by me taking my old textbook (the one mentioned in the previous thread about confessions) and reading a section about the difference between interrogations for the purpose of confession and the purpose of intelligence, which of course got me thinking about the stuff our military and intelligence groups here have now become notorious for, and I'm further fascinated by our moral judgment of individuals against the way institutions behave vs. individuals vs. ourselves.
If my child or other loved one were, say, kidnapped and in danger, I would have someone tortured to find out where they were, if that’s what it took. And I say “have them tortured” because that would be difficult for me so I’d have to outsource the torture to a psychpath. Which is the beginnings of the State if you really think about it.
As with all (?) things, this is the type of question where the answer is always conjecture unless you have been in a situation at least resembling the one in the question (and being the object or the agent means less than we want to admit).
Thank you, Captain Obvious for that, now on with the show:
No idea really. If you want an answer according to principles or values, I'd need the option "Lethal" without the "up to and including". To mutilate and destroy another himan totally and then keep them alive is for sadists, not me.
Any more detail would needs be based on hypothetical (should that be: "hypoethical" perhaps?) scenarios, and that means the answer is conditional and open-ended to the point of eternity.
And that's without the usual well-known problems of information obtained via torture.
There was a criminologist who was studying psychopaths and determined that there was observable brain differences in the frontal portion where impulse control is apparently supposedly located.
He was giving a lecture in a foreign country and someone broke into his hotel room in the middle of the night to rob him. He said he always advises his students, academically, if they are ever in that situation, give them what they want. Unaccountably, though, he found himself jumping the guy, who broke off his knife blade in the professor’s throat. He survived the incident but now he says that when asked about his position on capital punishment, he finds himself conflicted. As an academic libtard, he is against it, but as a grounded human body with now healed but once slashed vocal cords, he is for it. He is on the horns of Yogi Berra’s dictum: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
I have quite a bit of experience with torture on the receiving end. The first time I was arrested in a foreign country with another person who was actually a participant in a “crime.” I was not involved and had no idea what had happened. I spent the night in a tiny lockup with a guard sitting watching me with a rifle across his knees. I thought it must be all theater to extort a payoff. The next morning we were taken to the inner drive-in courtyard of a police station in the nearest city in a pickup. I stayed in the passenger seat tied up while the other guy was taken away. I noticed a group of about 10 cops were looking at me and muttering and glowering. One came over to my side of the truck and suddenly punched me in the throat through the open window. I moved away from the window. After a while they brought the other guy back and the two of us were sitting with our backs against the cab and three guys with rifles sat on the edge of the tailgate watching us. We started driving and soon stopped for gas. The other guy suddenly jumped up and ran with his hands tied. I thought, Wow! Suicide! I immediately heard pop pop pop pop! They told me to lay face down in the truck bed. I kept hearing more pops so he was still running! We drove a little ways and I could hear them beating on him with the gun butts. Then they threw him back in the truck. I could see his leg and that he was shot through the calf. He said “I wish I was dead.” Then we drove out to an isolated spot in the hills and they started interrogating him, hitting him in the ribs to encourage him to talk. After a while it was my turn. I became aware that I needed to shit. I calculated that if I was going to get the same treatment, there would be less chance of rupturing my guts if I was empty so I asked if I could shit. To my surprise they said OK and I proceeded to take the biggest shit of my life! Then they said, “Well, are you going to tell us the truth?
I said, “I already did.” “OK, we will have to do this the hard way then.”
So, with my hands tied, one guy on each arm, and one guy kicking me in the solar plexus over and over. It was obvious that if we did not survive the interrogation, we were in the sticks, we would just disappear and no one would be the wiser. I had no idea where the shotgun was or where the dynamite was, but it became obvious that if I could not come up with something, I was going to get beaten to death. I figured I had to concoct a story that I could prove was “malarkey” later in court. As soon as the pain threshold went down, I would deny the elements I had told them, and we would repeat the cycle. They wanted a description of an accomplice. I was afraid I would accidentally describe someone they would spot and grab off the streets of the tourist town, so I said the guy was 6’6” and had red hair to try not to have it be likely that they would see such a person. Then, of course, when the pain went down I would tell them it was all bullshit I was making up. One of the things I noticed was the main interrogator was shaking so hard that he could barely write down what I was saying on his notepad. I felt pity, thinking, “Man, everything you put me through, you are going to have to experience someday. Karma, Baby! I would not want to be you!
Using animals for research is wrong too Maques monkeys used for neuralink is the stepping stone to human experimentation. human experimentations been going on worldwide under the guise of improving life for humans
Animals sacrificed for food should be an appreciated and humane process. Our Step into animal research was our step into research on humans.
The question is so open-ended that "lethal" is the only answer that covers all circumstances. To take it to an extreme, would I torture some serial killer that was on his deathbed anyway in order to save my child? You betcha! Hell, I'd bring my own thumbscrews.
Seems too like a lot of themes related to this question are covered in vampire mythology. Not so much the garlic and sunlight bits, but rather how characters handle the obligation to kill in order to live.
Depends on what scenario I was most interested in.
- WYT (would you torture) a serial killer to save your child? (Hell yes.)
- WYT one serial killer to save another serial killer? (Eeew, no.)
- WYT one of your children to save another? (That's too dark for this delicate snowflake to contemplate. Though if one of the kids were a serial killer...)
Or more generalized:
- WYT one random stranger to save another random stranger? (Hello trolley problem)
- WYT one random stranger to save a friend/family member?
- WYT one of your friends/family to save another?
So we have some variables to define: the Us vs. Them (i.e., family vs. not) rating, the perceived moral quality of the torturee, and (as others have talked about) the reliability of the life-saving information received.
Pretty sure if I kept going down this path I'd end up with a torturability_matrix.xlsx. Not even Dexter was that nerdy.
Then your question does the job quite admirably! But whether the quality and content of the dialogue thus stimulated is what you were aiming for, idk. I only skimmed the previous comments, but saw a lot of "it depends". Not sure if that's the gutter-audience's natural craving for nuance or if it's the broader taboo against admitting one might have a horrible evil torture vampire in one's nature.
I'd be curious to know if the results would have been the same if the question had been phrased as "To what extent would you be willing to torture a stranger purely to obtain information that could potentially save the life of your loved one?" The question isn't as interesting, largely because there's not as much room for "it depends", but it's more straightforward and I do wonder if any of the "not at all, by any means" folks would change their answer or not.
Also, I wonder if I'd change my own answer of lethality if it really came down to it. I like to imagine I'm a toughie who'd do anything for my people, but who can know, really? Best not to find out.
(1) Hasn’t every kind of torture been proven to elicit inaccurate information?
(2) Better to let 1,000 guilty go free than imprison a single innocent. Same concept applies here.
(3) No one has the authority to “torture” another. If someone had my kid, I might be willing to do ANYTHING to save him, but I should suffer the consequences.
I have to say, I might if the person being saved was innocent, helpless, in very real danger, etc. or someone close to me, especially anyone under my protection.
Personally, I'm not sure I would be any good at it. I'm pretty good at playing situations to avoid true danger, so I haven't ever even come close to needing those skills.
Gutenberg -- or "the Gootz" as we cool kids use to call him -- would make an excellent interrogator. Maybe include Michael Winslow as the "good cop", making ear-pleasing mouth sounds to cajole him into confession.
I've accepted a long time ago that it's probably impossible to enjoy the fruits of civilization with clean hands. I'm mainly interested in exploring lines. Arguing about one's own culpability is just making excuses.
If it helps, a lot of us are mentally healthy enough to at least be concerned about being psychopaths and try to channel our energies with interesting and provocative content. :)
For clarification, "non violently" means things like psychological methods, psychotropic drugs, sleep deprivation, etc. that are unlikely to kill a subject by themselves.
Ahh...then I might should have chosen this answer instead of " whatever it takes"
You write like John Yoo.
The United Nations Convention against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for "months or even years"; that "prosecution under Section 2340A may be barred because enforcement of the statute would represent an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority to conduct war"; and that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A
Wow. Just wow.
A few years ago I read that John Yoo was coming to a meeting of the local Republican Club to give a talk. I went there to confront him about torture. During the Q & A part of his talk I told him that, given a few minutes, I could make him say anything I wanted by waterboarding him, that water boarding was, contrary to his legal excuse-making, torture, and I could prove it to him. Of course he was unwilling to be tested on this point. I have been interrogated by being held underwater, so I know whereof I speak. He tried to justify what he did by saying we were at war. I immediately countered with”no war was declared.” He had nothing, of course, on that. Just continues living his comfortable minion life, for now, climbing the ladder.
Was Yoo really attempting to assert that waterboarding wasn't torture???
I forget now but I think the controversy around his legal weasel wording had to do with the assertion that the treatment wasn’t going to kill the prisoner so it wasn’t actually “torture.”
Bah, that's horse shit. Torture has never been so narrowly defined as to be only lethal things.
I love nuance but that's just dissembling nonsense and he knows it.
That’s why he makes the big bucks. It’s why scientists prefer to use lawyers instead of rats now for research—there are just some things you can’t get a rat to do!
Upon further consideration, I could lethally torture someone if my children's lives were at stake. No question.
Same, but I would extend my circle a little wider.
Steve Gutenberg. I would use Steve Gutenberg re-enacting his greatest movie scenes to obtain the information. Whether or not that's torture is a matter of opinion. 😁
It is. In a class of its own.
Hey Police Academy holds up! 😂
🤣🤣🤣 I'm going to have Steve act out the part of the cop who did the sound effects.
Better yet, Michael Scott! 😂😉
I'd have him read out the script to his movie Threat Level: Midnight. The Office cast ACTUALLY filmed it and its on YouTube if you haven't seen it yet. It is...breathtaking. 🤣
Oh….it’s real….and it’s magnificent! 🤘
I was so happy when I found it on YouTube. Still better than The Room.
Would "torture" include putting something like "Love Shack" on the stereo?
Yes, but only if you get all the way through one full playing of the song, otherwise it's just mean.
Multiple playings are war crimes.
I don't know if it's quite a war crime, but ...
Jon Bon Jovi once said anyone who wanted to torture him (and I'm sure there are many) should force him to watch the music videos from the first two Bon Jovi albums. I'd gladly subject that to anyone, even if it did not yield life-saving information. I'm a mean guy. But that is the extent of my appetite for ... uh ... destruction. (Don't worry. I'm too busy today to write and comment about Eighties bands all day.)
OMG. Cracking me up!
Hey, that's one of my favorite party/dance tunes. Monster in my pants is pretty dam cool also.
I know! Me too.
Hilarious. That'd be second for me right after "We Built This City" by Starship.
"We Built This City," worst song ever! I always change the channel.
Thanks for the earworm, fuckwad.
Hey! Ryan said it first! 🤣 He's the one that got it running through my head. He's an evil, evil man. SMH. 😉
I have tried to come up with one worse since I read this.
To no avail.
I could kill, easily, anyone violently trying to harm my loved ones or any other innocent person. I know this capacity is in me.
Certainly there are scenarios one can imagine--someone supposedly "known" to have put, say, a kidnapped victim in imminent danger of death or mutilation etc.--and torture is to save them--but there's really no scenario where this doesn't go wrong, really.
I'm a big fan of the quick dispassionate removal of the threat, when that can be done, or fighting to the death to defend one's home/territory.
For the rest I want to keep my own soul intact; it's always under threat by the sorts of vengeful thoughts I can't always resist entertaining myself with.
First and last paragraphs, bingo.
It would be extremely difficult to perform any kind of torture without knowing for sure the information was true AND would --for sure-- save lives.
And the problem with torture is that people lie to get it to stop.
Assume in this instance that the methods will get reliable intelligence.
It is true that people lie to get it to stop, but it can (not necessarily SHOULD) also employed effectively in this regard.
Fauda and Prisoners of War are exceptional in exploring these complexities, I think.
It over-indulges itself a lot, but what I like about these Israeli shows is how they're not in the least afraid to show the enemy is human and has understandable motivations.
I'd suggest bingeing all of Prisoners of War (on Hulu) first; that was just an exceptional show. The producers simultaneously made Homeland and it really pissed me off, seeing what they were capable of and how they cheapened and diminished it for the American audience, and the contempt for us that betrayed.
(edited for spelling)
And for a truly ridiculous show that became something more: Juda. Israeli small-time thug gets turned into a vampire in Romania; falls in love with his turner; a Romeo & Juliet pairing fer shure.
I always struggle with scenes where the extremely recognizable because of flowing blonde hair character is trying to behave in a covert manner with said flowing blonde hair flowing in the open air at the height of noon.
But almost better than that was Saul Berenson trying not to get captured in Peshawar while wearing Western clothes and skulking from doorfront to doorfront.
But much better than any of those was Dennis Haysbert in The Unit trying to be unobtrusive doing covert missions in Afghanistan, wearing a Pukhtoon hat and behaving as though nobody would thereby notice a six-foot something black guy.
I find this a very interesting query: Seems like psy ops would fall under non-violent torture. And it is my current opinion that governments, corporations, media are all participating in psy ops of some form. So are they crossing a line ? Seems like it.
Well, that's the question: do you believe there is a bright line for all human behavior where this is concerned, and where is it?
The nuance you described is a big part of it.
The practice of manipulation is as old as time. However, in recent decades it's become deeply researched, highly developed tool that institutions of all stripes wield - to acquire money and/or power (can't decide anymore which is the bigger priority to these people). In a previous time, I might have believed that psy ops was acceptable in a life-death/good versus evil situation (ticking time bomb, etc.) However recently I've come to realize that psy ops can manipulate a well-intentioned person to believe that crossing their perceived moral line is necessary (is life/death, etc.) I think one is obligated to thwart evil at the personal level but judging what is evil and when conflict and/or action is required in a wider scale is the dilemma of our time.
This, of course, is the point of post-modernism to blur the lines of both reality and morality and take advantage of humanity's characteristic lack of courage (otherwise known as libertarianism).
So then, is all manipulation a violation of human rights or at least a moral violation?
As with most issues, I don't think there's a blanket statement to be made on manipulation being a moral violation. For example, just returned from puppy training class - basis of which is to manipulate dog into good behavior.
I think we have to understand that our individual and societal problems are not binary. This has been very hard for the current society - absorbed with tech- to understand. Tech itself is binary - the program works or it does not. Life is not binary - problems are as unique and complex.
To the question at hand, in a ticking time bomb situation, before I even began to weigh the cost-benefit on using spiritual/physical/psychological violence to "save" the world, I would take a long hard look as to whether I was "inside the matrix" before I committed myself to a course of action. Prior to recent events, I wouldn't have even thought there was a "matrix" !
I'm confused by your definition of "libertarianism". Why are they indicative of humanity's fundamental lack of courage?
No doubt
Anyone who chose anything other than fully lethal is lying to themselves. Read Christopher Browning. Read Solzhenitsyn.
I just changed my mind. You're right.
I wish the poll tool let people change their votes.
And told me they did. Because I'm fascinated by these kinds of metrics.
Mail in a suggestion to Substack about that maybe?
Yeah, I do that every time I have a suggestion, but as a (apparently) matter of policy they never reply, so I have no idea if I'm just throwing them down a black hole.
I had put in requests to manually ban someone a while ago because the system was majorly bugged and not allowing it and they never answered me, just several months later or so the person was all of a sudden banned.
I can easily imagine the technical and legal headache of formulating policy and so on on how to handle user suggestions, without setting oneself up for a major lawsuit down the years.
Hobby magazines used to have quite the blurb of legalese in miniscule size about how any and all reader suggestions sent in became their property in all ways ashapes and forms for ever and ever and that sending in a suggestion meant agreeing to those terms - haven't a single clue if it would have held up in a court here, but our judicial system for ideas/IP/trademarks and copyrights isn't set up the way I'v come to understand the US one is.
I followed an infringement suit a few years back (via PACER I beleive it was called) where a UK company had sued a US garage-scale operator who did add-ons for the UK company's products - was quite an education in its own right - no wonder you have so many lawyers.
It creates a kind of low-level, often unseen feeling of mistrust and unkindness that has absolutely pervaded several aspects of US culture.
I came from a somewhat challenging family and my dad liked to beat me with his belt, and one can develop from that a sort of revenge-by-proxy way of behaving, and when I was perhaps between 9-12 I really enjoyed making my brother, and once my cousin, cry by telling them scary or upsetting things. A horrible pleasure because it gives you great power you otherwise have nowhere else in your life.
If you know that capacity is in you, you really don't want to indulge it.
It is interesting that this discussion has gone onto side-roads about sadism as opposed to violent pragmatism.
I would not necessarily say that anyone willing to engage in deadly pragmatism is also necessarily a sadist.
But I do understand your point.
A capacity for pragmatism when contemplating doing horrible things to other human beings under the guise of obtaining a greater good is the foundational building block of monsters.
Yep.
But I think it's the foundational building block of humans.
Exactly. Civilization was invented to find useful outlets for bad instincts.
One of my favorite movies ever is War Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Hunt
Nothing like having a genuine good use for your otherwise disallowable tastes.
I loved that movie.
I know I would be the subject of some very dark fairy tales if I lived in an anarchic world. Thankfully, there are plenty of constructive principles to hang my behavior on. But I'm still the person friends would probably call to help get rid of a body.
You probably need to get more pigs first.
"makes note to herself for the contingency file"
I love books and movies about really good snipers. It's the skill and mental control, and explanations of the technical details, that mesmerize me. But killing for the sheer bloody joy of the gore and the screaming I find boring and cheap. I started out liking Dexter for the concept but it went so far off the rails, it really disappointed me.
You should read my story about a sociopath someday, and its sequel...
questions: whos life might it save?
whom would i be torturing?
cos if it was biden or something i would have to change my answer from steve gutenberg (i dont know who he is)
Well, you tell me. What would different cases be for those questions? Who would you be willing to save, and who would you be willing to torture?
to save a loved one and i had to torture fauci, no problem, anything goes but mostly its not my sport
So, only for personally loved ones, and only people you already hated?
hate has nothing to do with it, hes already guilty of mass murder in anyones eyes with a functioning brain
OK, but in that instance, you're talking about torturing someone as criminal punishment, not as interrogation.
Different question, at least as far as this thread is concerned.
no im saying that torture should be reserved as only used to get life saving info out of an already abhorrent excuse for a human who has demonstrated psychopathic murderous tendencies against life.
ah fk it i wrote that above, reread it and feeling like i dont give a fuck any more, add harmful liars like journalists and politicians to the list
I went with non-violently, but depending on the life potentially being saved I could see some violence being justified.
What makes an individual life valuable compared to others for you to bend in that way?
Anyone I am responsible for that isn't able to protect themselves would merit the bend to me.
I'd like to think that I could do non-violent for most any and all life, but for the chillun - whatever it took.
I'm a Christian. The Bible has opinions on such things. They matter.
I'm genuinely very curious: what does the Bible explictly say about torture? I didn't remember any admonitions like this, and did a quick electronic search of a few major version, and didn't see any admonitions about torture.
I found the following in NIV:
Matthew 8:29
“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
Matthew 18:34
In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
Mark 5:7
He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!”
Luke 8:28
When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”
Hebrews 11:35
Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.
Revelation 9:5
They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes.
Nothing that appears to be proscribing it.
The first few Bible passages are demons, inside the possessed, addressing Jesus.
What is acceptable violence, if any, for Christians is a hard question. Torture implies an act on a helpless individual. Definitely not OK. On the other hand, Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have concluded that violence employed in the defense of others and, especially, in confronting evil is laudable and necessary. To turn one's cheek in the face of growing evil is to surrender to evil. Definitely not OK.
I am no scholar on this subject, but that's a quick summary of things I've read over the years.
Whenever the "golden rule" came up in Sunday school, I always asked the same question and never got a satisfactory answer: what about soldiers killing one another in war? Theologically, it would seem to depend on whether one's opponents were "evil," but this is not at all an easy definition when it comes to war.
You specifically carve out an exception for a "helpless individual." Is it because that person is, at that moment, helpless because they're your prisoner, despite whatever role they may play in a larger series of actions where innocents may be killed?
My strict interpretation of Biblical scripture is that ALL violence SEEMS to be proscribed, of any kind.
But there are also many instances of the OT God sanctioning war upon His enemies, including perpetrating some very nasty stuff in the process.
Yes, the Israelites were well-known to unsheathe their swords a time or a hundred...
My half-assed take on it from reading/listening to musings on the OT God: violence was necessary to ensure the survival of God's Chosen People in an extraordinarily cruel and violent time. They established the nation through which Jesus would enter the world.
Is it fair to say- at the risk of giving unintended offense- that the rules changed?
Agreed. The OT world (as Guttermouth puts it) was a different place prior to Jesus' arrival.
Read the old testament. LOTS OF WARS!
That's what "OT" meant. :)
Perhaps the original from which all psychological torture comes is the Ten Plagues. Completely unnecessary; God just toying with Pharaoh because He could.
Has always made it hard for me to enjoy Passover in completely the right spirit.
I remember reading in the scrupulous and largely intact government records that the ancient Egyptians and other Mediterranean kingdoms with extensive written bureaucracies kept at the time that this situation really set back the study of meteorology for many years and led to a lot of stupid additions to trendy restaurant menus.
Even Jesus' apostles carried swords.
Yes, they are in no position to defend themselves, so they must be treated humanely. The very opposite of what the US has done in the ME. Psychological torture (sleep deprivation, especially) can be as devastating as maiming.
In the film "Taxi to the Dark side" an interview with a CIA (iirc) interrogator revealed that physical torture produces poor, useless information compared to the process normally employed to extract information. People will say anything to make the pain go away.
Aquinas formulated the Just War Theory which sets parameters of engaging.
>> an interview with a CIA (iirc) interrogator revealed that physical torture produces poor, useless information compared to the process normally employed to extract information. People will say anything to make the pain go away.
This is true to a point. "The process normally employed to extract information" often includes non-lethal harming.
In the movie, the agent made it clear that no harm (physical or psychological) came to the prisoner. Small favors and privileges were granted in exchange for information. Assurances were made that they would intervene with foreign governments to prevent their families from being harmed. I watched the movie once about 15 yrs ago so all this is iirc.
100% agreed on turning away from evil. That is never acceptable. I approached the question from a perspective of torturing an individual for my own gain. I won't lose my soul to live a few more days.
Yeah, to be clear, the example definitely isn't intended to be that. I'm mainly talking about a classic ticking time-bomb moral dilemma.
You can look up the catholic church's old writings on the methods employed by the Inquisition if you have time to search. From what I recall if the accused heretic was unrepentant after the inital non-violent yet very brusque and threatening questioning, he or she was given a tour of the donjon and was shown the implements. If they still didn't confess, they were handed over to secular authorities to keep the priests' hands "clean".
The whole set-up was designed so that in the event of a confession, the belongings of the condemned were split between clergy and crown. Thomas de Torquemada is a good place to start.
Edit: another good one is this - "The Inquisitor's Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics" by Bernard Guy, who was a papal inquisitor. The relevant papal bull legitimising torture was called Ad Extirpanda, you could possible find a translation online.
I have researched this thoroughly. I wrote a few reports about the Inquisition in high school and college.
Great - and morbid. Though seeing as I've written two papers on methods of execution I'll be over here blacking the kettle...
It was part of broader study I was doing about social work and criminal justice because, as you pointed out, the situation did very colorfully illustrate a bureaucratic division of labor and notions of "clean/dirty hands" policies.
I am so disappointed you didn't start schooling us on torture devices and methods.
It's fascinating to me. You know so much about it.
You're going soft on me Rikard!
It's quite the horrible subject, and I remember experiencing what I can only describe as disassociation after a while, a feeling that was emhanced when I gave my mandatory talk on the paper before my professor and the rest of the group.
Looks went from bemused to horrified at the subject matter to horrified at my incredibly dry and clinical monotone.
As for methods, there are definite differences between torture-as-punishment and torture for questioning, and several older methods of execution were essentially torture unto death. When used as a punishment, when death wasn't the goal, it also varied between causing pain and humiliation as many punishments were carried out in public - indeed, it was long held that punishments /must/ be public to be just, else people culd suspect the ruler of murdering prisoners during punishment - and causing disfigurement and muilation or crippling someone.
One method used here up until about the 1500s was "ride the wooden mare". This was a torturous punishment danish and german mercenary soldiers tasked with bringing in the tax from the swedish freemen used on people not putting up with that. A sturdy plank, say 4" thick, is sanded until the edge is like a knife. Then the victim is seated on it as if it was a horse and weights are attached to his feet. He is then left there under guard from sunup to sundown.
A modern method used for extracting confessions is drilling holes in the teeth into the nerves and attaching electrodes and a 9V battery. Or simply taking a metal wire and using it to saw through the tooth. If you've ever experienced the feeling when a needle or a blade hits bone, you have an idea.
Edit: german executioners even "competed" in being the most accomplished when it came to breaking of bones and subsequnt hanging on wheel, as the limbs were "woven" into the spokes before the wheel was placed on a pole, the victim still alive...
...and the the crows starts to feed.
The record, from memory, was 86 individual bones broken without killing the man punished.
Wow. Nothing under the sun has really changed imo. It's just lurking under a thin crust of a shared belief in a precarious social contract.
Yeah. A cynic is never off duty, eh?
Here's another horrible method:
Scalding. Ranged from dripping boiling water on hands or feet, to dunking the victim in boiling oil. Or dripping molten metal on them.
Sometimes a part of the body would be flayed and then have ice water poured on it until numb and then salt or vinegar or something similar would be poued on the wound before the numbness wore off.
I've seen apocryphical mentions of the old teutonic tribes using impalement for perpetrators of rape (their definition of it off course): not through the ass or along the spine but through the chest into the ground: the victim was held down and the stake driven through, ideally in such a way it didn't kill the victim who was then let up to stagger around with a wooden stake through his torso until he died.
But that may well be celts or franks telling tall tales to romans about "those people over the river".
Pandas are still bears, maybe? :)
You know, "lions and tigers and bears, oh my". I've no latin education but I think it translates to "To eradicate/exterminate" in english.
I was referring to Matthew 7:12 "the golden rule" “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. . . .”
Ah. That makes sense.
Thanks for your patience with the repost.
I would gladly torture anyone that tortures animals.
I could execute them with no hesitation. But I do not wish to become them.
I didn't say they wouldn't die in the end, just like those poor animals.
Yes, I know.
People who vote "not at all" have never been put into a situation involving a loved one's life being in mortal danger and they need information to keep their loved one alive. Trust me, when it comes to that you would be plying vise grips on finger and toenails in no time flat. And before it was over you would be wielding a sawzall on extremities and applying tourniquets so those responsible for them to give up the information you must have to save your loved one's life. Before it was over you'd be standing over their body. And whether you got the information or not you would be sure that you did all you could to save your loved one and have no regrets.
Explanation:
1. I think "non-violent torture" is an oxymoron and that such thing does not and can not exist.
2. Info that is only "potentially" life-saving is not sufficiently justifiable for using torture (even nonviolent torture) to obtain.
Regarding "potentially", we've seen that metric used enough by the Left to justify anything and everything - "if it only saves one life", "if it stops the seas from rising", etc. I don't GAS about "good intentions", which is another form of "potentially".
I just think if I'm torturing somebody, I don't get to consider myself the good guy anymore.
Have you been watching re-runs of 24?
I've never seen 24! Before a certain year I probably haven't seen 90% of the TV shows I'm pestered about.
No, this was actually inspired by me taking my old textbook (the one mentioned in the previous thread about confessions) and reading a section about the difference between interrogations for the purpose of confession and the purpose of intelligence, which of course got me thinking about the stuff our military and intelligence groups here have now become notorious for, and I'm further fascinated by our moral judgment of individuals against the way institutions behave vs. individuals vs. ourselves.
So. Now you know the whole bloody rabbit hole.
If my child or other loved one were, say, kidnapped and in danger, I would have someone tortured to find out where they were, if that’s what it took. And I say “have them tortured” because that would be difficult for me so I’d have to outsource the torture to a psychpath. Which is the beginnings of the State if you really think about it.
>> I’d have to outsource the torture to a psychopath. Which is the beginnings of the State if you really think about it.
Yes, it is!
Very astute observation!
As with all (?) things, this is the type of question where the answer is always conjecture unless you have been in a situation at least resembling the one in the question (and being the object or the agent means less than we want to admit).
Thank you, Captain Obvious for that, now on with the show:
No idea really. If you want an answer according to principles or values, I'd need the option "Lethal" without the "up to and including". To mutilate and destroy another himan totally and then keep them alive is for sadists, not me.
Any more detail would needs be based on hypothetical (should that be: "hypoethical" perhaps?) scenarios, and that means the answer is conditional and open-ended to the point of eternity.
And that's without the usual well-known problems of information obtained via torture.
Don't write when you can speak. Don't speak when you can nod.
Nothing like that is going on here.
Totally depends on who’s life and how many...
There was a criminologist who was studying psychopaths and determined that there was observable brain differences in the frontal portion where impulse control is apparently supposedly located.
He was giving a lecture in a foreign country and someone broke into his hotel room in the middle of the night to rob him. He said he always advises his students, academically, if they are ever in that situation, give them what they want. Unaccountably, though, he found himself jumping the guy, who broke off his knife blade in the professor’s throat. He survived the incident but now he says that when asked about his position on capital punishment, he finds himself conflicted. As an academic libtard, he is against it, but as a grounded human body with now healed but once slashed vocal cords, he is for it. He is on the horns of Yogi Berra’s dictum: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
I have quite a bit of experience with torture on the receiving end. The first time I was arrested in a foreign country with another person who was actually a participant in a “crime.” I was not involved and had no idea what had happened. I spent the night in a tiny lockup with a guard sitting watching me with a rifle across his knees. I thought it must be all theater to extort a payoff. The next morning we were taken to the inner drive-in courtyard of a police station in the nearest city in a pickup. I stayed in the passenger seat tied up while the other guy was taken away. I noticed a group of about 10 cops were looking at me and muttering and glowering. One came over to my side of the truck and suddenly punched me in the throat through the open window. I moved away from the window. After a while they brought the other guy back and the two of us were sitting with our backs against the cab and three guys with rifles sat on the edge of the tailgate watching us. We started driving and soon stopped for gas. The other guy suddenly jumped up and ran with his hands tied. I thought, Wow! Suicide! I immediately heard pop pop pop pop! They told me to lay face down in the truck bed. I kept hearing more pops so he was still running! We drove a little ways and I could hear them beating on him with the gun butts. Then they threw him back in the truck. I could see his leg and that he was shot through the calf. He said “I wish I was dead.” Then we drove out to an isolated spot in the hills and they started interrogating him, hitting him in the ribs to encourage him to talk. After a while it was my turn. I became aware that I needed to shit. I calculated that if I was going to get the same treatment, there would be less chance of rupturing my guts if I was empty so I asked if I could shit. To my surprise they said OK and I proceeded to take the biggest shit of my life! Then they said, “Well, are you going to tell us the truth?
I said, “I already did.” “OK, we will have to do this the hard way then.”
So, with my hands tied, one guy on each arm, and one guy kicking me in the solar plexus over and over. It was obvious that if we did not survive the interrogation, we were in the sticks, we would just disappear and no one would be the wiser. I had no idea where the shotgun was or where the dynamite was, but it became obvious that if I could not come up with something, I was going to get beaten to death. I figured I had to concoct a story that I could prove was “malarkey” later in court. As soon as the pain threshold went down, I would deny the elements I had told them, and we would repeat the cycle. They wanted a description of an accomplice. I was afraid I would accidentally describe someone they would spot and grab off the streets of the tourist town, so I said the guy was 6’6” and had red hair to try not to have it be likely that they would see such a person. Then, of course, when the pain went down I would tell them it was all bullshit I was making up. One of the things I noticed was the main interrogator was shaking so hard that he could barely write down what I was saying on his notepad. I felt pity, thinking, “Man, everything you put me through, you are going to have to experience someday. Karma, Baby! I would not want to be you!
Torture for me would be having to deal with Flash Slothmore in the movie Zootopia in order to get my first cup of coffee in the morning.
I could kill someone to save myself or another person. But torture to inflict pain I would be unable to do it no matter who it was.
Using animals for research is wrong too Maques monkeys used for neuralink is the stepping stone to human experimentation. human experimentations been going on worldwide under the guise of improving life for humans
Animals sacrificed for food should be an appreciated and humane process. Our Step into animal research was our step into research on humans.
The question is so open-ended that "lethal" is the only answer that covers all circumstances. To take it to an extreme, would I torture some serial killer that was on his deathbed anyway in order to save my child? You betcha! Hell, I'd bring my own thumbscrews.
Seems too like a lot of themes related to this question are covered in vampire mythology. Not so much the garlic and sunlight bits, but rather how characters handle the obligation to kill in order to live.
How would you phrase the question?
Depends on what scenario I was most interested in.
- WYT (would you torture) a serial killer to save your child? (Hell yes.)
- WYT one serial killer to save another serial killer? (Eeew, no.)
- WYT one of your children to save another? (That's too dark for this delicate snowflake to contemplate. Though if one of the kids were a serial killer...)
Or more generalized:
- WYT one random stranger to save another random stranger? (Hello trolley problem)
- WYT one random stranger to save a friend/family member?
- WYT one of your friends/family to save another?
So we have some variables to define: the Us vs. Them (i.e., family vs. not) rating, the perceived moral quality of the torturee, and (as others have talked about) the reliability of the life-saving information received.
Pretty sure if I kept going down this path I'd end up with a torturability_matrix.xlsx. Not even Dexter was that nerdy.
How about if I wanted to ask a single question to stimulate dialogue?
Then your question does the job quite admirably! But whether the quality and content of the dialogue thus stimulated is what you were aiming for, idk. I only skimmed the previous comments, but saw a lot of "it depends". Not sure if that's the gutter-audience's natural craving for nuance or if it's the broader taboo against admitting one might have a horrible evil torture vampire in one's nature.
I'd be curious to know if the results would have been the same if the question had been phrased as "To what extent would you be willing to torture a stranger purely to obtain information that could potentially save the life of your loved one?" The question isn't as interesting, largely because there's not as much room for "it depends", but it's more straightforward and I do wonder if any of the "not at all, by any means" folks would change their answer or not.
Also, I wonder if I'd change my own answer of lethality if it really came down to it. I like to imagine I'm a toughie who'd do anything for my people, but who can know, really? Best not to find out.
(1) Hasn’t every kind of torture been proven to elicit inaccurate information?
(2) Better to let 1,000 guilty go free than imprison a single innocent. Same concept applies here.
(3) No one has the authority to “torture” another. If someone had my kid, I might be willing to do ANYTHING to save him, but I should suffer the consequences.
Hell, no. That’s my vote.
Whose life?
You tell me!
I have to say, I might if the person being saved was innocent, helpless, in very real danger, etc. or someone close to me, especially anyone under my protection.
Personally, I'm not sure I would be any good at it. I'm pretty good at playing situations to avoid true danger, so I haven't ever even come close to needing those skills.
“Is it SAFE?...Is it SAFE?” I’ll never forget that line from that movie. Damn!
Gutenberg -- or "the Gootz" as we cool kids use to call him -- would make an excellent interrogator. Maybe include Michael Winslow as the "good cop", making ear-pleasing mouth sounds to cajole him into confession.
For the purposes of this specific scenario the torture is high-value goal-oriented. I think it's a different moral discussion than sports and leisure.
I've accepted a long time ago that it's probably impossible to enjoy the fruits of civilization with clean hands. I'm mainly interested in exploring lines. Arguing about one's own culpability is just making excuses.
I think it's more dangerous for people to convince themselves otherwise than to tolerate this reality.
Well said
No, you. :)
I mean, there are interrogation techniques that are basically that.
If it helps, a lot of us are mentally healthy enough to at least be concerned about being psychopaths and try to channel our energies with interesting and provocative content. :)
LOLOLOL