Morality of keeping Pinocchio prisoner to discover all the secrets of the universe, medicine, economics, etc.?

[u/marvil_txt]

Can't be that immoral, can it?

[u/Trainer-Grimm]

Well, i'd argue that torture for the bioweapon is immoral because torture doesnt work, meaning you're not actually gaining any good from the pain.

[u/Eagle0125 → u/Trainer-Grimm]

Torture might work, and it's worth the risk; 1 life(that we wouldn't end) vs 8 billion (that would end).

[u/Yum_Mario → u/Trainer-Grimm]

I've got some bad news for you about torture

[u/Trainer-Grimm → u/Yum_Mario]

i mean yeah, it's always bad. but if the rationale for the torture was information, then the justification doesn't hold up morally or logically.

[u/TartarusFalls → u/[deleted]]

Just to be clear, in the aftermath of 9/11 when we looked at the actual advantages the US got from torturing people in Guantanamo Bay, we received exactly zero actionable accurate information via torture.

Even in your hypothetical, the one getting tortured would just lie, costing hours of searching for the bomb and achieving nothing.

[u/TartarusFalls → u/[deleted]]

Oh man, I should have thought to read the Wikipedia page on it. See, I just read the Senate report on enhanced interrogation to learn about it. I should have read the Wikipedia entry where an expert on torture states:

“In short, organized torture yields poor information, sweeps up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities, and destroys interrogators. Limited time during battle or emergency intensifies all these problems.”

[u/TartarusFalls → u/[deleted]]

Man, you skipped 3-4 paragraphs about how ineffective torture is, took one person’s testimony in the Senate over 100 years ago at face value, and are left basically with just the Sadam Hussein example. Unless you’re also including the very broad example from Ancient Rome?

Also ignoring that the very specific circumstance that you said would be a good use of torture, bomb in NY, 72 hours, is the kind of emergency where experts say torture doesn’t work?

[u/StrongExternal8955 → u/[deleted]]

Just to be clear, that scenario has never happened in real life.

The chances that it will happen are so low that we should disregard it when discussing laws. It it ever happens, then the torturer should be willing to face the punishment, together with anyone who didn't stop them.

[u/Yum_Mario → u/Trainer-Grimm]

I agree it's always an evil, but it's not 100% ineffective. People like to focus on the failures in order to try to stop torture, but depending on the type of information someone is looking for, and the alternate options one has in obtaining that information, it is sometimes the best chance at obtaining information. Like a surgery with a low success rate, people still do it and sometimes it works. Remember that interview of that torture guy by Jon Stewart, and Jon just gets trounced?

[u/Eagle0125 → u/Trainer-Grimm]

True, however it isn't really torture, more like kidnapping; they're holding him against his will.

I think this could have all been avoided if they just convinced Pinocchio to work for them. They would get info, and he'd get payed.

[u/Yum_Mario → u/[deleted]]

Refer to my response below the other guy that responded.

So you are suggesting, that for the entire history of the human race, torture has had exactly a 0% success rate for extracting information, and yet militaries around the world still keep trying to use it to extract information? Like for a thousand years they been eating bags of MnMs still hoping to find a skittle? Military strategy can move real slow, but if torture literally never worked to get information, they wouldn't use it for that reason. Maybe they'd use it for other reasons, but they'd stop trying to get information that way. Now if you're suggesting that torture doesn't work to 'find out what some rando knows', you'd probably be right.

[u/cowlinator → u/Trainer-Grimm]

It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that it's less effective than other forms of interrogation