Comment by Arcus on May 5, 2011 at 2:34pm

Firstly, wouldn't that be a disproof of effectiveness and not a fallacy..?

Anyway, I came to think about one angle we haven't explored: Why do people torture?

An Essay by Arcus

Seems like a quite silly question, but it led my down the path of thinking of torture on in terms of right or wrong, but more in the terms of other crimes and psychology of the individual. 

I think I would torture in most of the even most outlandish scenarios mentioned, I might even kill someone who's hurt someone I care about. It doesn't really matter to my point, the point is that I can't say for sure that I wouldn't. And I know that in war or attacked, I would assert my right to murder by self defense. It is a bit odd to think of oneself as a potential killer, but it's actually easier than thinking of oneself as a potential torturer. I don't think anyone would honestly say that if on the front lines of a war, they would not shoot back at the enemy. If it's you or him, it's him - every time. Not even the diehard pacifist would say otherwise, unless they are suicidal.

Anyway, it made me think of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. I'm not going to go through it, you've most likely read the article, about the article, or even watched the movie based on it.  Well, it makes me wonder if torture is not but one of those psychological quirks of the human mind on a power trip. And where else can you experience the power trip it is to be the guard of a prisoner? And when even some of the brainiest of us, usually the ones which are least violent and has been on the losing side of pretty much any physical battle they have been dragged into can descent into such an abyss when the situations are tweeked just right, I just don't know if imposing rules is the best idea.

Because I follow the rules. It's where there are no rules, like in war, I would do horryfying physical things to others. I'm not a killer or rapist or theif or bad criminal. I speed, park illegaly, buy illegal drugs, smuggle some cigarettes, those kind of minor things you justify based on some rules being a bit too strict. Not in real life. I think any ex-soldier of forced draft would recognize that military life was not real life. 

So make some rules about it. Most people in the military obsess about rules. But when the unfortunate mix of being on the battlefield and feeling veeery far from home combines with absolute power of the others, better people than I have cracked under a much less perfect set of circumstances. If a general or president could it permiss it only under the most perfect set of circumstances, a de juro method of allowing but, while still de facto banning it, guys like me wouldn't do it, we'd stick by the rule. It wouldn't solve it, but it would get us quite a bit on the way. I don't bring a rifle to an airsoft game because I'd rather play by the rules whan win for sure.

War is a vile, horrible act because of all the murder and suffering involved. Any human unjustified suffering is the only axiomatic bad. Justified suffering is the corrective feeling you get after you've hurt someone you didn't want to hurt, and you deserve to suffer a bit for it. You've broken the rules. When murder becomes as far fetched for us as eating other people, there will be no torture.

But until such an idealized Star Trekkie state of humanity is reached, I'm a pragmatist - and torture needs to be legalized, I need some rules.

Comment by Arcus on May 5, 2011 at 2:37pm

(I just don't know if imposing rules is the best idea.)

should be

I just think imposing rules is the best idea.

I corrected half of one of my dreaded double negatives, but forgot the other one. :)

Comment by Cara Coleen on May 5, 2011 at 2:37pm

Wow, you've really done your homework. This is really interesting... and disturbing. From what you're saying, the govt just came up with a fake averted disaster, pinned it on this guy, and said they got the information from him through torture?

Comment by Heather Spoonheim on May 5, 2011 at 8:46pm

@Care - We'll likely never know for certain, although it is very reasonable to assume that Bush would have paraded the conspirators in a failed 9/11 style plot gleefully through the media.  Because of the secret warrants, arrests, and trials, we are left with those who can argue plausibly that the government just made those people disappear, like Maher Arar.  That of course, is an even scarier mechanism that needs to be stopped because we are left with the very real possibility of people being 'disappeared' in exactly the way narrated by old iron curtain rumours.  What we do know, however, is that Bush claimed to have used the information gained through torture to save the day but never provided a shred of proof that such salvation had been delivered.  Those who want to believe are then left with the defense that 'the government moves in mysterious ways', and when torture failed to stop the Marriott and Australian embassy bombings, I guess they can also say it was just part of Bush's plan.

 

@Arcus - I called it the ticking timebomb fallacy because hypothetical ticking time bombs are so often put forth as a logical justification of torture, when in point of fact the hypothetical ticking time bomb did not in any way justify the torture and the real life time bombs proved conclusively that the torture wasn't justified at all.  The evidence in the public record should serve quite conclusively to indicate that hypothetical ticking time bombs undermine the justification of torture rather than support it.

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