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Changelog: On Torture

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b_sharp11/04/2010 2:09:13 pm PDT

re: #58 Killgore Trout

Agreed. Let’s suppose half of his confessions were bullshit. Of the real plots maybe another half would have fallen apart or not worked. That leaves maybe 25% of his original list.
Here comes the moral conundrum: Let’s suppose maybe one or two of those plots were foiled. How many lives saved would it take to make it worth waterboarding him? 50? 100? 1,000? 100,000? Let’s admit it, at some point there’s a moral obligation to do it.

We have a real world example here, so how about we not make up just so stories and look at that example.

Check the dates of the ‘plots’ he confessed to and compare them to the date he confessed.

Are there any where he confessed before the putative event? Of those, is there any record of the event happening or being stopped?

If you had a vision that told you your neighbour was going to inadvertently initiate a sequence of events that would kill a dozen people. Would you be justified in burying her alive to make sure the event never took place? What criteria would you use to determine if the vision was real or a hallucination?

If the vision told you she would initiate the sequence through an evil, malicious act, but the end result was unforeseen by her, would your actions be justified? How about if she had full knowledge of the event?

Would any of it be justified if your vision was nothing more than a bad bit of beef?