Kill 99, Save 100

Imagine that you're in charge of a military prison. You've just been told that a terrorist attack is planned that will kill 100 people. You have identified 99 prisoners who might have information that will allow you to sucessfully thwart the bomb plot. You have permission to torture the prisoners, and even to kill them, if that's what it takes to extract information.

Do you have a moral objection to brutally torturing 99 people in order to save 100?

How does killing someone get information out of them to stop a terrorist attack . . .

Still a completely flawed method, but I guess some people like using it.

I'm going to start a poll: "If you had a chance to stop a terrorist attack by catching Osama bin Laden on the Moon, should we revive the Apollo program and send Marines to the Sea of Tranquility?" It's about as realistic.

It's as "realistic" as any of the justifications for torture that have been in the news.

I'm posing it as a question of moral principles.

The info doesn't have to come directly the murder victim. It could be extortion.

Or it could be that you want to make a point to the prisoners who are next in line for interrogation.

Or you're just so brutal you get carried away and people die. Oops.

Whatever. Imagine a kind of extreme depraved/righteous indifference to your prisoner's quality of life.

you're asking if it's OK to be a terrorist and perform terroristic acts to 99 to prevent another terrorists from performing terroristic acts to 100

It's always wrong.



and YES..torture is a method of terorrism.

the white hatters hear about an evil plot to brutally murder 100 people. "this shall not come to pass" swears their fearless leader. "we will expose this evil plot by any means necessary and stop it in its tracks!"

so they bring in a suspected terrorist and interrogate him. "please let me go, i know nothing" is all he says. so they torture him. "stop torturing me!" he screams. but he refuses to say anything about a plot to kill 100 people, and eventually he is left to die from the torture.

one by one, terror suspects are interrogated and tortured. "stop torturing me!" is all any of them say. one by one, they die, and the white hatters are none the wiser.

finally, the 100th terror suspect is interrogated and tortured. "how can we stop the evil plot to brutally murder 100 people" he is asked.

"stop torturing me," he said calmly.

and so he dies.

and the white hatters are none the wiser.

In my screenplay, the 100th prisoner escapes with his life and the fearless leader proclaims "We have exposed the evil plot! 100 lives have been saved!"

One of the whitehat interrogators knows the score, and almost reveals it, but the other whitehatters intimidate him into silence.

Menacing stares.

Fade to black.

You mean, of course, the government is assuming such power. No government should have the right to kill people unless it's actual fighting in a war. And torturing is always inhumane and wrong.

Someone who is being tortured will tell you SOMETHING just to get the torture to stop - and chances are, it's not accurate information. It could even be a trap of some sort.

Technology marches on. What if we develop more effective tortures?

To argue against the efficacy of torture is like the viability portion of Row v. Wade. It's a short-term debating point that undermines the broader moral argument.

Wrong is wrong. Put them on a scale and weigh them to see which is greater or lesser, if you need to.

I don't. If it is wrong, it's not a tool to achieve right. War does not equal peace. Torture and killing do not equal saving lives.

Outside of the obvious ethical considerations, it isn't effective. Torturing 99 people to death might, in someone's fantasy world, stop the terrorist attack meant to kill the 100, thereby leaving one life in the positive balance. But it sure will spark more terrorist attacks, and more lives lost, further down the road. Feeding the rage, hatred, and certainty of future atrocities is not the way to save a life. Acting like your enemy doesn't defeat them. It makes you one of them.

... under the right circumstances. If your family is being threatened and you believe that torture could eliminate the threat, if an innocent child is in danger and you have your hands on a scumbag that you think knows something that could save the child, etc. Even if we couldn't be sure the torture would be effective, I think we'd do it.

The danger is that the circumstances are not quite as we perceive them and we start torturing innocents - I think that's what will happen 99% of the time where we think torture is justified.

The shame of the US is that we seem to have engaged in torture, and it seems to have been approved at the highest levels, where the circumstnace did not at all justify it.

If I understand correctly, gottaB is posing a hypothetical to ask if the end justifies the means. The answer is no.

Even if you are a total moral relativist and pragmatist, there are still three reasons to reject the argument that the end justifies the means.

1) In real-world situations, the means cannot be depended on to secure the desired end. In the hypothetical example, you could torture 99 to death and be sure that 99 were dead, but that might or might not end up saving the 100. There's many the slip twixt cup and lip.

2) In real-world situations, it is never possible to be sure that other, more rational and humane means cannot accomplish the same end. If we concentrate on finding some other way to save the 100, chances are we won't "have" to kill the 99 after all.

3) Once you legitimize the end justifying the means, you can justify anything. You could justify killing everyone on earth, for example, in order to save them from eternal damnation.

You say "No."

Are you opposed to methods of self-defense that risk injuring innocents? In general, if a country is under an unprovoked attack, are you opposed to the attacked country using artillery to defend itself, even though the use of the artillery can kill innocents? If you are not opposed to the use of artillery in this circumstance, would you be opposed to the use of this same artillery in, say, a test, where the test would also endanger innocents? Say the test would endanger the innocents but to a lesser degree than in the self-defense example, would you oppose it? If you oppose the use of artillery for the test, but not for the self-defense, why do you reach different conclusions on these different circumstances?

I think in any case where the "end" is good, the means to reach that good "end" are justified. The difficulty is whether the means can actually reach the good "end."

My belief in this case is that torturing the 99 people to death will not,in the long run, save a single life. It will probably lead to more such confrontations, and ultimately to more deaths, on both sides.But, that is saying that the means will not bring about the desired good "end."

I think a lot of actions can be justified, but not merely by the intended end. The means must be justified on their own - they can't be justified just by invoking the desired end. I didn't mean that means can never be justified, only that a desired end does not automatically justify the means.

Is that justified? And how does that square with your statement: The means must be justified on their own

If the killing of innocents is justified on its own, that seems to say that it's alright to kill innocents. No need for any good "ends" to justify it.

What I mean is that you can't justify the means, any means, simply by invoking the desired end. I didn't intend to say that the desired end is irrelevant to any consideration of the morality of the means, only that it cannot be in itself a justification.

The hypothetical isn't flawed--your attempt to square it with reality is flawed.

All hypotheticals involve assumptions; in this case, "that will allow you to sucessfully thwart the bomb plot"

When you begin with an admittedly untrue premise, you can indulge any flight of fancy you want. What's the use of that? An argument that does not connect with the real world at any point is an argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Real-world caveats are very important in any philosophical consideration of whether the end can justify the means.

Numbers are not everything in morality. Why are the 99 prisoners? If they are prisoners because they were all apprehended red-handed planting bombs intended to kill civilians it changes things. If they are all shoplifters it changes things.

If you're questioning numerical approaches to morality you should start with "would you kill 99 innocent people to save 100 innocent people?"

If you're questioning whether torture and murder of prisoners is ever justified you should ask if we would torture one man to save 100,000 innocent people.

I

Why not ask "Would you torture 99, 999 to save 100,000"? It's the same principle, taken to an extreme. Apologists for torture would like us to picture the minimal case, in which few people are damaged, in which the torture isn't as severe as it could be, in which the victims of torture might not themselves be innocents. That's baloney. If you want to justify torture, justify the sadistic, merciless torture of 99,999 in order to save 100,000. If a supporter of torture can convincingly justify that, then I'll consider their point about the justice of torturing a few in order to save many.

so I'll explain my point differently. The n-1 approach is designed to both criticize the "lesser of two evils" argument, as well as expose the fallacy of the 1:100,000 argument.

Ask yourself, if 99,999 is absurd, at what point did it become absurd? Is 99,998 absurd? 99,997? 50,000?

Alternatively, start with one. Is two reasonable? Eleven? One hundred and eleven? One thousand, one hundred and eleven? At what point is the monstrosity of the construction apparent?

Nothing justifies it. Not on EITHER SIDE. Period.

If we sink to their level, that makes us WORSE. Not only do we know what they are doing is wrong, by sinking to their level we de-evolve ourselves in the process.

Besides, how do you know there are only 99 people involved? Will all 99 people reveal all the names of their uncaptured co-conspirators? What if they lie? Many might prefer death to saying a thing. Torture is ultimately unreliable. And a gamble. A gamble the US has lost, by the way... it's going to be a VERY LONG time before we're seen as trustworthy again.

I'd tell the public there is about to be an attack and tell them as much as I could about details, and not play the rather dim "Boy who cried Wolf" routine that bushitco* has been doing for 3 years.

Besides, mindgames on the enemy are more effective than primitive physical torture. Psychological chicanery is all that is needed. It's a matter of having the TALENT to pull it off... it's not all about physical force. Remember, the pen is mightier than the sword.

However if I were a government agent/official of the United States I would not do it because it is unconsitutional.

The way you framed the question gave a clear indication that the murder of the prisoners was not necessary but allowed. There would be no real need if I were the interrogator to kill more than one of them and if I were to decide to kill it would be only one chosen from among people I have proof are guilty of dispicable crimes to set an example and a threat to the other prisoners.

This all of course is if I was acting on behalf of either some non-governmental soldier of fortune type operation or of another country where this is not forbidden in the consitution

Imagine that some of your prisoners were innocent, and that some of the potential victims of the bomb plot were despicable.

99 is still less than 100, right?

:kick: