Damned Republicunts

[Edwardo Piet]

But the information is used to prevent terrorist attacks which kill people, including women and children. And the victims of torture still live. I feel that it is important to protect innocent human lives and, if waterboarding someone who has sworn to take innocent lives, could save peoples' lives I think it would be justified. Don't get me wrong. I'm not just for indiscriminately torturing people, but just as killing could be justified for the right reason, so could torture.

Killing one person to save more than one person is still an experience of being killed from the perspective of every person killed.

The grief suffered from the loved ones, friends and family of one person killed is still grief suffered from the perspective of every griever, regardless of how many other families may experience similar feelings if more are killed.

Killing and suffering is wrong and I'm not sure it can be aggregated quantitatively. Sure 10 pin pricks is 10 times worse than 1, but an infinite amount of pinpricks could never reach the qualitative pain of one person merely experiencing a very painful migraine.

Aggregation is a big problem in ethics IMO.

John Taurek has argued that the idea of adding happiness or pleasures across persons is quite unintelligible and that the numbers of persons involved in a situation are morally irrelevant.[107] Taurek asks whether "we should, in [certain] trade-off situations, consider the relative numbers of people involved as something in itself of significance in determining our course of action[?]" Taurek tells us that "The conclusion I reach is that we should not." Taurek's argument looks at a trade off situation: "The situation is that I have a supply of some life-saving drug. Six people will all certainly die if they are not treated with the drug. But one of the six requires all of the drug if he is to survive. Each of the other five requires only one-fifth of the drug. What ought I to do?" Taurek's basic concern comes down to there being no way to explain what the meaning is of saying that things would be five times worse if the five died than if the one died. "I cannot give a satisfactory account of the meaning of judgments of this kind," he writes (p. 304). He argues that the six persons in this situation, if considered equal in all other respects, should all be given an equal chance of surviving: "I am inclined to treat each person equally by giving each an equal chance to survive." (P. 306.) Each person in the situation can only lose one person's happiness or pleasures. There isn't five times more loss of happiness or pleasure when five die: who would be feeling this happiness or pleasure? "Each person's potential loss has the same significance to me, only as a loss to that person alone. because, by hypothesis, I have an equal concern for each person involved, I am moved to give each of them an equal chance to be spared his loss." (P. 307.) The basic concern here is cogent: while one can understand why more pain or sadness is worse for an individual subject since someone experiences that greater pain or sorrow. But in virtue of what should we take five people's pain or sorrow (all else being equal) as worse if no single person experiences that pain or sorrow? Parfit[108] and others[109] have criticized Taurek's line, and it continues to be discussed.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitaria..._criticism

[Darkstar]

But torture doesn't even work...

You think that would make this a moot point, but I guess a lot of people are still convinced that it does.

Humorous, but also informative:
https://youtu.be/zmeF2rzsZSU

[Thumpalumpacus]

Then surely you can find another way of obtaining it.   Especially since killing someone isn't likely to yield information, just as torturing someone isn't likely to yield information.

I just can't understand why you wouldn't allow torture to save peoples laves, but you would allow killing people to do so. Why is waterboarding worse than killing someone? What other way would you suggest to obtain the information from a hardened terrorist?

Probably because a headshot in the heat of combat is very different than deliberately planning the long agony of someone who as likely as not will lie to you to make you stop.

Not only are you deliberately engaging in sociopathic behavior (unlike killing in combat), your method of choice is as least as likely to fail as it is to succeed.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Oh, and.people can and do die under torture, so let's not pretend that accidents death under torture is okay, unless you're willing to defend the idea that the ends justifies the means ... which you're sorta doing already.

[Lek]

Oh, and.people can and do die under torture, so let's not pretend that accidents death under torture is okay, unless you're willing to defend the idea that the ends justifies the means ... which you're sorta doing already.

I'll be honest with you.  Since I'm no expert, I don't really know if torture works or not.  I also don't believe in most types of torture.  But I can't see what is worse about waterboarding avowed killers of children, in an attempt to find out information that could saves lives, than outright killing people to defend ourselves.  Isn't killing people already a matter of the ends justifying the means? Maybe war itself is unjustifiable. The problem with war is that you can't make it neat and clean. It's a perplexing issue.

[downbeatplumb]

Oh, and.people can and do die under torture, so let's not pretend that accidents death under torture is okay, unless you're willing to defend the idea that the ends justifies the means ... which you're sorta doing already.

I'll be honest with you.  Since I'm no expert, I don't really know if torture works or not.  I also don't believe in most types of torture.  But I can't see what is worse about waterboarding avowed killers of children, in an attempt to find out information that could saves lives, than outright killing people to defend ourselves.  Isn't killing people already a matter of the ends justifying the means? Maybe war itself is unjustifiable. The problem with war is that you can't make it neat and clean. It's a perplexing issue.

And so again we see the atheists show superior morals to the theist.

[Lek]

I'll be honest with you.  Since I'm no expert, I don't really know if torture works or not.  I also don't believe in most types of torture.  But I can't see what is worse about waterboarding avowed killers of children, in an attempt to find out information that could saves lives, than outright killing people to defend ourselves.  Isn't killing people already a matter of the ends justifying the means? Maybe war itself is unjustifiable. The problem with war is that you can't make it neat and clean. It's a perplexing issue.

And so again we see the atheists show superior morals to the theist.

Yes. Atheists are beyond reproach in their morality.

[downbeatplumb]

And so again we see the atheists show superior morals to the theist.

Yes.  Atheists are beyond reproach in their morality.

No we are not. But it does seem in this regard we are all showing more compassion than you, the only proponent for the use of torture. Even though you have been shown that it is ineffective and hardens the way the US is viewed.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Oh, and.people can and do die under torture, so let's not pretend that accidents death under torture is okay, unless you're willing to defend the idea that the ends justifies the means ... which you're sorta doing already.

I'll be honest with you.  Since I'm no expert, I don't really know if torture works or not.  I also don't believe in most types of torture.  But I can't see what is worse about waterboarding avowed killers of children, in an attempt to find out information that could saves lives, than outright killing people to defend ourselves.  Isn't killing people already a matter of the ends justifying the means? Maybe war itself is unjustifiable. The problem with war is that you can't make it neat and clean. It's a perplexing issue.

People die being waterboarded, too. If you're not certain that torture works, what you're really saying is that you're willing to grab the opportunity to perhaps get useful intelligence in exchange for the certainty of debasing your own human empathy. That is a different situation than live combat where you shoot an enemy aiming guns at you.

But live combat doesn't mean subjecting your opponent to excruciating suffering; it means killing them as quickly as possible, which is quite the opposite. The aim is not to inflict ongoing pain in pursuit of your objective, but rather, taking victory as it presents itself to you, be it through death or surrender. Torture, on the other hand, presents no sure means of obtaining your objective, commits yourself to further desensitization if your initial efforts aren't successful, and leaves it in the hands of your victim to determine the success of your efforts.

As for "believing" in some types of torture but not others, how can you make such a judgement unless you yourself have been so afflicted?

Finally, in the Cheney "bomb going off in 24 hours" scenario, the victim actually has more power than the torturer, because while the torturer must keep his victim alive in order to be useful, the victim may simply have already decided that his death, however it comes, garners him those virgins, and remain silent for just enough time to allow the putative operation to be carried out.

[Minimalist]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/federal-...s-statute/

Federal court strikes down Wisconsin anti-abortion law similar to Texas statute

Fucking republicunts keeping poking their noses into vaginas.