Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I finally get it. Reality tv is "The Sims" for lazy people, right? No wonder it's so popular." -- katestine, 2004-03-11

(*grumble* I programmed the VCR, rewound the tape I'd just watched and planned to re-use, and fell asleep before the thing finished rewinding so I never turned the VCR off. No Joan of Arcadia for me tonight. *grumble* OTOH, I slept for six and a half hours straight, which is a refreshing change from the hour or two at a time I've been getting lately.)

Some thoughts about torture (and not the fun kind (which I really haven't written about enough recently come to think of it (but I digress...))):

acroyear70 asserted that torture is always wrong. lokifrost gently stated that, "Sometimes the ends justify the means", and got back both moral and practical rejoinders saying, no, they don't.

I'm inclined to agree with what acroyear70 and blueeowyn wrote in that thread, but I must admit that a tiny corner of my mind agrees with lokifrost in theory. Can one concoct a hypothetical situation in which one would consider the ends not, perhaps, to justify the means so much as to outweigh the means? A scenario in which one could imagine choosing to inflict torture despite one's own abhorrence of it? Severe time constraints, innocent lives at stake, absolute certainty that the prisoner has -- and can be made to reveal -- the information which will save those lives ... We saw a similar decision last season on Star Trek: Enterprise last season, though not as clearly delineated as I would have liked, and Captain Archer's soul-searching regarding his decision afterward has not been examined as deeply as I had hoped it would be.

So I read the gentle, understated, "Sometimes the ends do..." and knew one of the places that could come from, but at the same time could not bring myself to raise my voice in defense of torture even so. And not just for the very real practical reasons -- poor reliability of information thus gained, especially when you're not 100% certain you're actually holding the person with the answers you seek; providing one's enemies more reason to dig in their heels, fear to surrender, seek revenge, etc. And not just for the "because then we become what we hate" argument either, though the argument I'm about to present comes close to that.

So, how to reconcile "I can imagine a hypothetical situation" with "but dammit, it's wrong"? Two ways come to mind, one of which I'm much more comfortable with in fictional characters than in life: One can say, "I know this is wrong, but my cause is more important to me than my career, social standing, and my soul[1], so I shall sacrifice all of those to solve this problem now, and accept that I am forever tainted by this act." You can probably see why that solution is much tidier in a novel or a movie (or a television series), where the perpetrator can be made to suffer -- and the audience know it -- "the right amount" of angst as punishment (or turn into a clear-cut villain) than in real life. And how it can be applied to an individual but is a very poor fit for an organization ... or a nation. It makes for some compelling characters[2] (and cheesifies some others when handled poorly by the author or the actor), and I can see an individual in real life making that choice, but it doesn't seem like a great basis for moral teaching, or for policy.

You want your fictional characters to fuck up, morally and otherwise, every so often. It gives you a story. You really don't want your real-world political leaders to do so; you know they're going to, but you hope they don't.

I propose another way to look at the moral problem of torture. Borrow a concept from Judaism. That phrase I can never remember when I need it, that translates to "building a fence around the Torah". Consider:

• I can, as already noted, construct a hypothetical situation in which many people would say torture "makes sense", such as the defense of large numbers of innocent people at risk, but change sides, reshape a couple of axioms, and the other side in that hypothetical struggle can equally justify torture to prevent my agents from interfering. I may wish to save several hundred people from being killed today; they may be killing those people in order to save several thousand of their own from being killed next year. Or we may be pitting the destruction of a few hundred lives against the obliteration of a culture, which makes one-to-one comparisons difficult (or at least subjective).
• In the above case, I'll feel that I have acted morally by using torture "only when it was absolutely required", but my opponent will not merely say that I was "willing to use torture", but honestly believe that the ends for which I committed torture were unjust.[3] The arguments I use to justify torture in extremis, my opponent can turn around and use right back at me. (This is a moral argument in addition to the political argument that using torture provides my enemy with excuses to do the same or incites vengeance.)
• I can construct "grey area" situations which will make even those who condone torture in extremis uncomfortable answering. If we allow this much, does that mean we also allow this much else? (Yes, the "slippery slope" argument, but focussing on how one decides more than "will lead to" predictions.)

So I say it makes sense to "erect a fence" around the idea that torture is wrong: to say that even though (some of us) can justify torture in the most extreme circumstances, that our inability (as mere humans living in the real world) to know with absolute certainty that the conditions for morally defensible torture are unambiguously met means that the idea of torture at all is too risky. That despite being able to construct hypothetical situations in which torture might be justified, for all practical purposes we must act as though torture can never be justified.

That is, even if you believe that torture can be justified "as a last resort", in practical terms that means it should never be used at all because it's so hard to know when the end of the rope has been reached, and so tempting to make excuses just a little bit early.

Note that the practical considerations still exist as well, even if you don't buy my moral argument. But lest we be tempted by even what small expediencies torture may provide, let us not leap that fence[4].

Especially not as a nation, and never as a matter of policy.

[1] Yes, I'm deliberately being melodramatic here, and yes, as a born-again Christian I personally believe "once Saved, always Saved", so one's sould would not be literally forfeit, but I wish to reinforce that the moral question is of that great a magnitude. Also, even though one's Salvation is irrevocable, one is still responsible for one's acts. The decision I'm painting here is a "damn oneself to save others" situation by analogy even if it does not invoke literal damnation. I think the melodrama is appropriate.

[2] Jack Bauer on the television series 24 is an interesting case; he starts the first season as a somewhat flawed, but basically just "tough and willing to make the hard choices" hero. By the third season I perceive a gradual shift -- a "slippery slope" -- as he becomes less heroic while remaining incredibly effective and important. The impression I get is that he himself is at least partially aware of this but is too busy with immediate problems to have time to figure out what it means. If there's another season, I look forward to seeing whether the writers dig into that more.

[3] This is not an argument for "moral relativisim", but it is a matter of a) epistemology and b) politics/PR (mostly epistemology). I can "know" that I am right but not be able to show that I am right, in which case I cannot expect others to accept that I was right just because I say so.

[4] Or rather, let us get back on the right side of it and stop whatever unofficial and/or secret torture our personnel may be engaging in, stop the semantic games and "where's the line" gamesmaship on the "non-torture duress" interrogations, put an end to the idea of shipping prisoners to countries were torture is legal so that "we" aren't the ones in the room, and start living up to our own Constitution in general.

Doh! No wonder my toes got cold while I was typing that last entry. 287 Kelvins according to the thermometer on my desk. I need new slippers. (The ones I have are all falling apart.)

• A bunch of "scienticians" run an important experiment involving a Brita filter and cheap vodka, after equipping themselves with such important items as control vodka, science crackers to cleanse the palate between tastes, a science funnel, and a sober note-taker. Includes notes on future experiments needed (for example, their tasting samples were too small to test their hypothesis regarding the effects on hangover likelihood).
• The Christian Hanky Code, so that you can tell whether you're about to start a conversation with a heretic or someone who agrees with you, and a less bloody solution than Arnaud came up with in 1208. Red hanky on the left for creationism as metaphor, red hanky on the right for creationism taken literally, etc.
• Platypuses Have More Sex [Chromosomes] ... for the platypus, it turns out to be not, XX vs XY as it is for most mammals, but XXXXXXXX vs XYXYXYXY. Tangents include tidbits about sex chromosomes in birds and in howler monkeys.
• A lot of the musical folks on my friends list sing, and most pop music has words, but ohiblather asked who plays (and listens to) instrumental music for fun, with a separate comment thread here on LJ, and that led to another thread, with musings about holding an audience's attention in cellio's journal. I mention this in case any of my instrumentalist friends who don't already read those two journals want to take a peek... (And no, not just because cellio said nice things about The Homespun Ceilidh Band.)
• Trek-Classic Communicator Bluetooth cell phone interface. (eBay auction; ends 2004-11-14, so unless the page gets archived someplace, the link will eventually go stale.) Prototype. "It works within a 10 meter radius of your phone so you can leave your mobile in your pocket or a bag and recieve calls by opening the flap and pressing the button." Pretty.
• A device that automatically moves electrodes through the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. (from New Scientist) Scary-sounding (the article even concedes that) and vaguely squickful, it could be important: "Implanted electrodes are usually unable to sense consistent neuronal signals for more than a few months, [...] at the Huntington Hospital, also in Pasadena. This loss of sensitivity has a number of causes: the electrodes may shift following a slight knock or because of small changes in blood pressure; tissue building up on the electrodes may mask the signal; or the neurons emitting the signals can die." This device adapts to changing conditions by sensing the direction of the strongest signal and moving in one micron increments toward it. "If the signal voltage starts rising very rapidly we know we are in danger of puncturing a neuron, so it backs off,"
• Rules for Radicals: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have- Nots on how to take it away." Link is to a short blog entry quoting/summarizing from a 1971 book by Saul Alinsky.
• Fred sent this URL under the heading "Products we don't need". An unusual set of refrigerator magnets.
• Fred also wrote up a detailed account of his day as an Election Judge on the 2nd and emailed it to various people. A few of us asked permission to post it on the web, and blueeowyn got to it first. It's worth reading for a look at what security and authentication measures are in place, and on which points the process could stand some improvement.
• And one more that I first got from Fred but have seen others link to as well: Saturn's rings are ... well, ringing. They emit radio bursts that only need to be slowed down by a factor of five to put them into the range of human hearing (of course they also need to be converted from radio to acoustical vibration, but hey, if they propogated as sound waves in a vacuum that'd be magic, so this is sufficiently musical and nifty in my book). "The tones are short, typically lasting between one and three seconds, and unlike the ethereal sliding tones associated with other cosmic processes, every one is quite distinct. The evidence suggests that each tone is produced by the impact of a meteoroid on the icy chunks that make up the rings." They're also described as "melodic".

Something I keep forgetting to mention (and am going to dash off in rough-draft form before I can forget it again:

I've seen statements in a few different articles and essays about the "chaos" of the US election process, asserting that uniformity in equipment and procedures is desirable so that the various states "can learn from each other's experiences".

That's true up to a point, but not entirely. If the next state over is doing the exact same thing as you're doing, it's a larger test population for the thing you're doing but it's one large experience, not two smaller ones. If you each try different innovations, you have each other to compare to. That's when you "learn from each other's mistakes".

There's also the "monoculture vulnerability" argument regarding attempts to tamper with the system.

There are attractive aspects of uniformity as well, and we should probably be moving in that direction overall; I'm just not convinced that complete uniformity is a desirable goal in and of itself. Let it be a side-effect of having learned from each other what things work well. Let convergence be a natural process, not an imposed condition. Mere similarity of methods and practices, as opposed to lockstep adoption of One Way, is probably sufficient to remedy the chaotic aspects of our current system-of-systems.