re: #289 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

It’s easy to come up with one-off circumstances where this could be true. I.e. you happen to have a rifle and you know that a person is unknowingly carrying a bomb/plague/whatever into a town and you don’t have time to go get him/you’re chained to the ground, so you shoot them.

These situations are not, however, real, or applicable to torture, because in the case of torture you can always decide to use another method. You never are like “Welp, torture is my only option”.

The “ticking bomb” scenario is a favorite because it invokes an emotional response, one that can be easily tailored for audience. But it’s always a stacked deck, there’s no time to pursue other methods besides torture, the guy you’re torturing is the only one with all the right info, and he’ll never lie to you or just babble anything he can think of to make the torture stop.