Peterkin

Does anyone really know the full answer to that? Nature, nurture, culture; parents, school, church, personal experiences and encounters, laws of the land, readings, arguments in smoky rooms late into the night, soul-searching well into the morning.... One builds one's moral system over a lifetime. as I mentioned early on, the ethical system of a society should come from not knowing on which side of the "situation" each legislator may someday find themself.

That, too has been amply answered. No, it is NEVER right, under any circumstances. Even if it's less wrong than some alternative, it's still wrong. This isn't complicated. What's complicated is the psychology of the people involved in legislating, authorizing and carrying out morally grey procedures for morally murky purposes.

Just to make octuply clear: Yes, I might do it; I don't know. Yes, I would ban it, unhesitatingly.

Unfortunately, no. You get one reconstructed and delayed tunnel or bridge for the price of two. Some errors may be doe to poor communication.... or miscalculation. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/18407/embarrassing-moments-engineering-and-what-they-taught-us

That all happened on Page 1. No, even in the very remote possibility of torture being the only available path to a positive outcome, it is never right. Even in the unlikely situation where it is the lesser of two wrongs, it is still wrong. The perpetrator of such a wrong may be able to justify it on a grey scale, but cannot make it ethically correct. The question has been answered, on its own terms. Repeatedly. The contrived scenario, however, is very far from any real situation in which real people have to make real decisions.

I have explained till I'm red, white and blue in the face! I take moral responsibility for the wrongs I may do, for my own reasons, with my own hands. I don't make other people, especially victims, do my dirty work.

NO

I've answered all of them at least twice. There are different wrongs; I would consider some wrongs, not all possible wrongs. I have explained why. At last twice. If you, as the detective in charge, send a victim (which is what the father of a kidnapped child is) into the cell with a prisoner you tell him is absolutely guilty, that father is taking on the responsibility of the interrogator (you). If he fails to extract the information, or it's too late, or it's incorrect, that becomes his failure (and it should be yours.) He puts his own morality on the line in order to save his child, and it later turns out he did it for no gain, or to a wrongfully accused suspect, it becomes his tragedy (though it was your mistake). I might threaten, bully, even beat a suspect if I were convinced he had the information - and answer for my methods afterward, and pay whatever penance was required. I would live with my decision to do wrong. But I would never pass that responsibility on to a victim. That's the issue of disagreement. Slightly emotional, angry? You expect him to be controlled enough to get reliable information from a captive you just told him with absolute certainty intended to hurt, violate a kill his child. That's a lot to ask of "hulking brute" : you must assume he's cool-headed.

Is that how you would feel in his place? I say there is nothing obvious about a passive guard being able to stop an accidental manslaughter, or a prisoner unconscious or otherwise rendered incapable of speech. None of your caveats changes the moral issue of shoving your responsibility onto a person whose emotional condition, capabilities and limits you don't know and put him in a situation whose outcome you don't know. You are in control: whatever happens is on you. In the stated circumstances, in a real life situation, it's very unlikely that you would know at this stage. The search would not have been delayed for laboratory findings or comparison of time-lines or witness statements, or any correct investigative procedures. And that also doesn't alter your evasion of moral responsibility for what happens. So, what table are you pounding with this just-so-happens-big-cool-headed father?

I did. You put a hulking brute, who is out of his mind with rage and fear for his child, in with a smaller, weaker prisoner you told him is 100% guilty of kidnapping his child. What did you expect to happen? I do not deny having said that I might do something I consider to be wrong. Can you really not see the difference between doing myself that I can take responsibility for, and causing another person - someone whose capabilities and limits I don't know - to do something for which he has to take the responsibility? That, BTW, is not a relevant case. The information there is already known. If you had caught the kidnapper in the act, you would already have the child and wouldn't need to extract information.

Sure. The father kills the perp; the child is also killed because he doesn't get the information; later the father kills himself for having failed to protect his child; the mother falls into a profound depression; their other two traumatized children grow up in the shadow of this single tragic event.... I'm glad it wasn't my decision precipitated this sequence. I never did. I admitted that, in an extreme situation, I might be capable of doing what I consider wrong to prevent a greater wrong. I did not ever consider encouraging another person - especially one who is incapable of rational thought atm - to do so.

That may happen sometimes, but it can't be the norm, or society would break down and cease to function. More likely, it could never been established in the first place. We do when the other guy shows up an hour late at the wrong meeting-place, or all the walls of a building lean outward. When a bridge or tunnel started at two end fails to match up in the middle as planned, the discrepancy is not due to verbal misunderstanding but mathematical miscalculation. Most of the time, in most transactions and social interactions, people understand one another quite well - in fact, much meaning is communicated indirectly, in oblique or coded language, coupled with intonation, facial expression, gesture and context.

I wasn't entirely convinced about all of them, either. However, as the verdict in those cases came after a trial, not instead of a trial, I'm more inclined to believe it was accurate. In the present example, someone has been picked up that the police are sure is one of the perpetrators, and they need information from him or her very quickly - so there is no time for a thorough investigation, let alone a trial. How often are the police sure they have the right guy and turn out to be wrong - maybe 30 years or a hanging later? No, I didn't consider that a valid option. I can take responsibility for my own actions; not for those of a distraught hulking brute.

Yet again, that came with an IF I simply don't accept as pertaining to real life. Already answered.

Sez who? Anyway, the problems of mistaken identity and misinformation don't just disappear if the father happens to be bigger than the suspect. In fact, the problem may be exacerbated if the father, unversed in the finer points of enhanced interrogation, accidentally kills the suspect or renders him (?her) incapable of speech before they can utter a coherent sentence.

Sure, but not by the police or the law-makers or anyone who enters into a discussion of ethical behaviour. The victims have already been victimized before the question was asked.

Yeah, it's kind of Mickey Mouse. When I was young, this was a thing - I suppose more of a fad. At that time, I encountered nobody as indifferent to colour as you seem to be and find it hard to fathom. I guess I ran with a fairly artsy crowd, so maybe that created a bias. Like the MBTI is now, except that employers didn't make prospective employees take personality tests back then, though they might give a general competence or IQ test, to see if you could handle the job; whether you fit in was your problem.

For you, the colour is associated with an experience. For me, colour is significant in itself. I doubt the Luscher personality test would work for either of us. I just took it and the result is pure BS.

Nobody who hasn't been faced with those circumstances knows what they would do. Nobody who has no killed knows what it would take for them to kill. We can only imagine. I imagine there are situations where someone has to choose between evils - but that doesn't make the lesser evil good. It's the self-deception I'm arguing against. If you have to do a wrong, own it.

Interesting. It's the first and most important thing I notice, right after light or dark. I hate the recent SF movies where all the sets are shades of metallic blue: I can't look at them for more than a few minutes.

Which type is that? Egyptian protesters? Chinese class-aliens? Random guys kidnapped for bounty in Iraq? Torture is not exclusively used to elicit information. It doesn't work on regular cowardly people, because we just say whatever we're expected to say, whether it's true or not, whether we we know anything useful or not; we just babble. Yes, we've seen the war movies, but we're not living in one. Captured spies are the smallest minority of people abused in custody. The most common purpose of torture is to force confessions from suspected criminals, or make an example of political nonconformists and disobedient subjects of dictators large and small; to make dissidents recant and denounce their leaders and their cause. Of course, there is the sadistic element, as in Abu Ghraib.... and many other prisons, where it's not about information, or revenge, or any practical end - just domination. If you authorize your enforcers to torture whom they capture, you allow all of that, because you attract sadists and bullies and emotionally unstable people to your enforcement agencies. This is not good for the unarmed population. There are three questions: Would I do it in some imagined situation? A: Maybe. Would I give my police force blanket permission to do if they thought it's warranted? A: No. and Is it ethical? A: No.

Let's get this straight first: There are no psychologists like Jordan Peterson - he's a one-off, and he's nuts. Real psychologists have little or nothing to say about feminism, since it is a political movement, not a psychological one. Conservatives, OTH, have been drifting rightward for some decades now, are now well into the shadowlands of fascism or feudalism, whichever they can achieve faster. Of course it's different today from what it was in the past - everything changes over time. A political movement has to respond to political events and the changing needs of its membership. Of course the far right says (not what it really thinks, ever) that feminism is evil - I mean, look at all the revolutionary stuff feminism has brought about. Women are getting as much as 80-85% of the pay men get for the same work; they're given as much as six weeks off for maternity leave, and they're allowed to travel to a different state - unless the vigilantes stop them - to get an abortion.

I was reminded today of a book I had in the 60's called The Luscher Colour Test. It came with a set of cards like samples from the paint store. The colours you like and don't like supposed tell a lot about your personality. Only, I find that far too general. Yes, there is something to green being restful and red being exciting, but it's not very informative. I think people have particular, personal associations with some colours to which they respond strongly, while they may be indifferent to or ambivalent about other colours. There is also a great variety in colour perception. Do you find that the colour scheme of a room affects your mood when you're in it? How long does it usually take to have an affect? Do you decorate your home according to an emotional atmosphere you intend to create? Are there colours in your environment that you deliberately avoid or seek out? Do you look for particular colours in different moods or situations? Do some paintings, garments or objects attract or repel you because of their colour?

Thanks! I don't want to do it; just wondered, in case Genady wants to collect more information.

Would you expect a wide, general sample?