The Ticking Time-Bomb Scenario: Would you torture someone to save tens of thousands of lives?

[Ian David]

"What if the only way to stop a ticking time-bomb and save thousands of lives was to torture someone? Would you do it?"

The correct response is not to say Yes or No.

Instead, you ask, "What if the only way to stop a ticking time-bomb and save thousands of lives was to have gay sex with someone. Would you do it?" (or straight sex if you're gay).

I can't claim credit for that response. I forget who said it first. I think it was either someone else from DU or Senator Al Franken.

Personally, yes, I might torture someone if I honestly thought it REALLY was the only way to stop the ticking time-bomb and if I thought the information I got would be accurate.

Of course, this is all based on the false assumption that torturing someone is actually an effective means of extracting accurate information.

But regardless of the outcome, I would also then submit myself to justice and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. If it's worth it for you to torture someone, then it should also be something important enough that you're willing to go to jail for it.

In other words, "Would you be willing to go to jail for the rest of your life, or be executed for Crimes Against Humanity, to stop a ticking time-bomb and save tens of thousands of lives?"

If the answer is "No," then you're a coward. And then you also have no business torturing someone. You have no business harming another human being for a cause for which you will not accept harm to yourself.

If you're not willing to have gay sex with someone (or straight sex if you're gay) to save thousands of lives, then you're either a coward or inexcusably selfish.

As for the gay sex corollary, my answer would be, "Yes, if the bomb is in a 'Blue' county. If it's in a 'Red' county, then only if I'm giving and not receiving. If it's in Oklahoma or Utah, only if I'm giving and not receiving, AND I get to use a condom. Unless it's with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Then I'd just do whatever he wants. Even if there's not really a bomb. Do you have Jon Stewart's phone number? Can you ask him to call me?"





I do not know if The CIA has done any research into using sexual favors to extract information from suspects in custody.

I know it works for James Bond in the movies.

Maybe, in the next season of "24," Kiefer Sutherland should fellate people instead of torturing them.

"Tell me where the bomb is!"
"No! No! Not until you swallow my whole load, you whore!"



"I'm sucking as hard as I can! You wanna cum in my mouth? You tell me where the bomb is NOW!"
"It's in the bell tower! The tower!"



"Thank you. I hope that was good for you."
"Eh. It was okay, Jack. My threesome with Camelia Kath and Elizabeth Kelly Winn last week was better. They let me do anal."



"I'll call you. I promise."
"CIA pig! You guys always say that!"

[sweettater]

1. What a disgusting

post! :puke:

[Ian David]

2. Thank you! I hope you gave it a Rec. n/t

[sweettater]

9. not a chance!

:puke: again

[aquart]

3. It was fine by me.

[AzDar]

27. Kinda got me worked up.

;)

[Ian David]

29. My work here is done. Jetpack... engage!

[man4allcats]

10. I don't know.

I guess I would have to say that compared to torture, I think it's quite refined. B-)

[Ian David]

14. While I did play some points for laughs and gross-out value, some serious points:

1) Are people who are willing to torture someone also willing to accept a burden upon themselves?
2) Are people who think torture is okay, because "anything goes" when it comes to saving lives, also willing to do something that they personally find repulsive (like sexual acts across the boundaries of their orientation)?

Key point: Would they say, "I would torture someone else to save lives, but I would not have sex with the "wrong" gender to save lives, nor would I accept jail or execution upon myself to save lives.

[man4allcats]

34. And the subtleties were not missed.

An excellent post which is why I recommended it. It reminded me to some extent of an early work by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, that I read years ago. :hi:

[Ian David]

42. Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Anarchy, State, and Utopia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Anarchy, State and Utopia)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2006)

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This libertarian book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award. It has been translated into 11 languages and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" by the Times Literary Supplement.

In opposition to A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, and in debate with Spheres of Justice by Michael Walzer,<1> Nozick argues in favor of a minimal state, "limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on." When a state takes on more responsibilities than these, Nozick argues, rights will be violated. To support the idea of the minimal state, Nozick posits an ultraminimal state as a thought experiment and attempts to show how it will, by the workings of an "invisible hand", lead to a minimal state.

<snip>

Moral Constraints and the State

Nozick arrives at the night-watchman state of Classical liberalism theory by showing that there are non-redistributive reasons for the apparently redistributive procedure of making its clients pay for the protection of others. Proponents of an ultraminimal state, which would not enforce this procedure, are correct to hold that its members' rights are a side-constraint on what can be done to them. So no utilitarianism of rights can justify the procedure on the grounds that protecting the rights of non-members through the procedure minimizes rights violations in the long run. The side-constraint view, which reflects the underlying Kantian principle that individuals are ends and not merely means, requires a different justification for the procedure. (See below.)

Nozick supports the side-constraint view against classical utilitarianism and the idea that only felt experience matters by introducing the famous Experience Machine thought experiment. It induces whatever illusory experience one might wish, but it prevents the subject from doing anything or making contact with anything. There is only pre-programmed neural stimulation sufficient for the illusion. Nozick pumps the intuition that each of us has a reason to avoid plugging into the Experience Machine forever. This not to say that "plugging in" might not be the best all-things-considered choice for some who are terminally ill and in great pain. The point of the thought experiment is to articulate a weighty reason not to plug in, a reason that should not be there if all that matters is felt experience.


More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State_and_Utopia


Also:

Anarchy State and Utopia
by Robert Nozick
ISBN13: 9780465097203
ISBN10: 0465097200
http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0465097200

[man4allcats]

44. Crap! I read that?!

God I was smart back in those days! I wonder what happened. Makes me want to go back and reread. I still have my copy. What came to mind was an argument he made about being willing to accept responsibility for clearly illegal acts one commits in the name of principle on the premise that the sought after ends are justified by the means employed. Others have made similar arguments; notably Thoreau in the context of civil disobedience though depriving someone of their civil rights through torture can hardly be considered civil. Still, the basic concept applies. People who are not willing to suffer the consequences of such actions are not courageous individuals acting on principle; rather they are only cowards who have indulged a fetish.

[Bucky]

33. If you're not willing to take one up the wazzoo for America, you hate our way of life

Why do you hate democracy?

 

[phantom power]

4. It's also based on the false assumption that...

the "ticking time bomb scenario" will ever happen in real life. Here in the real world, people prevent bombs from being set. Or they are discovered and defused. The odds of actually having a culprit in custody while their bomb is ticking are jack and squat.

And another thing. We have absolute rules against some kinds of behavior, because if we don't, it becomes too easy to make up reasons to indulge in it. If history has taught us anything, the second you start saying "atrocity X is OK in situation Y," the powers that be will start telling us "we're in situation Y!! trust us!"

[Ian David]

7. Do you think if we switched from torture to fellatio, people would turn themselves in to get sex? nt

[JVS]

15. I can just see it now.

Tell us where the bomb is or we will fellate you yet again!

[Ian David]

19. Too much of a good thing becomes torture. You cannot use over-fellating.

The idea is fellatio INSTEAD of torture, not AS torture.

[Occam Bandage]

5. K&R for awesome. nt

[hobbit709]

6. Anyone fanatical enough to plant that kind of bomb

would most likely be able to hold out long enough so even if they broke, it would be too late to stop it going off.

[Ian David]

8. Or they would say something like, "The bomb is in building X" when it's really...

... in Building Y, all the way across town from Building X.

And perhaps there would even be a dummy bomb planted in Building X just to keep them busy until Building Y explodes.

[gratuitous]

26. Or . . .

If you know so much about the whole thing (you have the bad guy, you know he planted a bomb that's about to go off), but you don't know anything about his associates, his movements up to that time, or whatever grudges he harbors that a bomb will make better. No, this guy just dropped out of the sky without antecedent or anything, but nevertheless the authorities know he's a terrorist who's planted a ticking time bomb.

Things that make you go :wtf:

[Ian David]

28. What if Timothy McVeigh had been arrested two hours before his bomb went off?

Remember, he was arrested AFTER the explosion for driving a car without license plates, because he didn't believe the government had a right to force him to use license plates.

However, BEFORE the bomb exploded, the cops who had him in custody would have had no way to know what he'd been up to.

So it is unlikely they would have known that he knew there was a bomb somewhere.

[gratuitous]

36. Yes indeed

The "ticking time bomb" scenario sounds sooooo dangerous. Until you begin examining it, and you realize that it's got more holes than a golf course. It just flat doesn't make any sense. And as someone remarked up thread, as soon as you declare that "Scenario X" justifies torturing someone, it's amazing how many situations suddenly fit the Scenario X template. Or that might fit it. Or that don't look like Scenario X, but can we really be sure it isn't Scenario X?

[BurtWorm]

11. Woo hoo!

:applause:

[Bluerthanblue]

12. torture doesn't work- so NO- Its broadly understood that

information garnered as a result of torture is very unreliable.

The question is flawed. There is little to no evidence to support the use of torture as a means of discovering facts that would save lives. There is, however, quite a bit of evidence that shows it helps to create new enemies, and energizes existing ones.


If-than questions that make no sense are pretty silly.

imo

[Ian David]

16. Agreed. As I also pointed out in my OP. n/t

[Donald Ian Rankin]

41. I think you're confusing confessions with information.

Torturing someone makes them want to do what you want them to do.

So if the torturer knows beforehand what their preferred outcome is (did you do it?) then torture is unreliable.

But if they don't know the answer themselves (which airport is Mr X arriving at?) then it's much less so.

I think there are ethical reasons not to torture people sufficient to make the practicallity of it an issue, and that the practicallity of obtaining reliable confessions under torture is an additional reason not to do so, but I don't think the practicallity of obtaining reliable information under torture is so much of an additional reason.

[Downtown Hound]

13. Yes, I'd torture somebody to save thousands of lives

And I would definitely have gay sex with somebody also. The thing is, we have to look at the highly implausible nature of this question. If we have a suspect in custody and we know enough about him to know for certain that he's planted a bomb, why can't we figure out where that bomb is without resorting to torture? The idea that we'd ever be in this situation is a lot more probable in Hollywood than it ever is in real life. It's just a scenario that right wingers throw out to justify torture at all, most of which isn't even done to extract information but rather to degrade your enemies.

Another factor, like you said, is dependent on just how accurate the information gotten will be. If you feel the need to torture somebody to prevent a bomb from going off, then you likely have a limited amount of time. How are you going to know that the terrorist isn't going to lie to you and send you in the wrong direction just to wear down the clock? Now you might threaten him with ungodly pain if he does this and he might be afraid of what's going to happen to him if the bomb does in fact go off, but let's say he was a true believer and was willing to go through that pain? So the bomb goes off. Are you now going to go through with what you promised? Because now you're not torturing to save lives. You're torturing out of revenge. A whole different ballgame.

[Ian David]

18. Agreed. And even if he gives you wrong info, and the bomb goes off...

... he can always say something like, "There was a second bomb where I told you. Someone must have moved it. Let me go and I'll tell you who has it, so you can find him."

Even after the first bomb goes off, they can always lie to invent some other reason why you should keep them alive, or present you with some other lie to stop more torture.

They could say they know where OTHER bombs are. Or OTHER terrorists.

[Locrian]

23. but how do you KNOW he has info?

But how do you KNOW he has info? Is THAT a prerequisite? Or do you just THINK he knows.... how sure are you???

That has to be factored in.

[Downtown Hound]

32. Good question

And like I said, if you KNOW he has info, then why don't you know where the bomb might be?

[Bu Megdi]

17. The question is quite difficult.

The question is quite difficult.

[Locrian]

20. false assumption, and different motives

>>>Of course, this is all based on the false assumption that torturing someone is actually an effective means of extracting accurate information.

It also assumes that we KNOW (how do we KNOW?!) that the person even KNOWs information about the ticking time bomb. So, would you torture 2 people if you didnt know which one had info? 10? 100? 1000?



But torture DOES work - for a different and more sinister purpose. Cenk on TYT had this great point on torture: "It works." It works because you get BAD information (what you want to hear) that can be used as propaganda or justification (like IRAQ invasion, propaganda of soldier "confessions" ala Vietnam, etc)

The torture "handbook" is supposedly a a Chinese manual for "Torturing to Obtain BAD information" precisely because you can then USE this info for whatever justification you want. NOT because you get the "truth".

[Ian David]

22. Torture does not save lives. Torture just gives material for propaganda, and breeds new enemies. n/t

[Locrian]

24. exactly

And it was very useful for Cheney to have false info to invade Iraq.

[Oregone]

21. Or would you torture someone to save your own child/spouse/family?

I think the honest answer is "yes". But we are people, and we are, in such a scenario, emotionally involved. You do not based government policy on how stressed and emotionally involved people would react in extreme situations. I would probably also hunt down and murder someone who killed my family, but I do not support a general death penalty. Doesn't make sense eh? Well, we are human. Humans don't make sense. Our irrational nature needs a sane government and sound laws to protect us, from ourselves.

[Ian David]

Agreed. And this is why I am glad that there are laws that would stop me from doing that.

I am glad that it is illegal for me to hunt down and kill someone who harmed a member of my family. That law makes me behave in a way more conducive to a civil society.

And this is why Republicans want laws against things like gay marriage-- because they want a law that will keep them, personally, from being tempted to marry someone of the same sex.

[mmonk]

25. If Santa Claus robbed houses instead of leaving toys, would clog up your chimney

or put snipers on rooftops and create a dragnet to capture him?

[FirstLight]

30. Torture is for dummies!

any interrogator worth their salt is well versed in psychology and knows how to manipulate someone's words and psyche, and even the good ones should know how to interpret non verbal cues... like a good poker player.

The problem with bush and hos entire approach, from foreign relations to this os that he uses braun instead of brain.

I think it is an insult to the intelligence community to use them in this way. they don't spend years on training in the field and know about foriegn countries and their ways for nothin. If an operaive can go into a country and blend, get information from the populace without being detected, and make it ourt alive with no ned for oience or the cowboy approach...THAT's a good agent.

the dumbing down of our nation is in every facet of it's behaviors...

[Xenotime]

31. Torture is for people who put actions before words.

[Bucky]

35. Exactly how many ticking time bomb scenarios have we had in US history?

zero

[Bragi]

37. Cheny said torture works

He said numerous real plots were foiled through torture.

And I can't see any reason to think he would lie about this.

<Head explodes>

- B

[smiley_glad_hands]

38. Possibly would, but I certainly wouldn't institutionalize it. eom

[chrisa]

39. Torture doesn't work like...

In the movies. They would just give you false leads to stop the pain, and waste your time until the bomb goes off.

[tuckessee]

40. Would you torture tens of thousands to save one life?

Giving the track record for accuracy as practiced by the American military-intelligence complex that is more likely the real world scenario.

[leftstreet]

43. C'mon! This is a Capitalist system! Just offer them $$$$$$ n/t

[jtrockville]

45. The end never justifies the means.