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Comment by rriepe | Hacker News Reader

I think this is missing the point. Shooting people works at what it sets out to do. Torture doesn't. Despite this, they're both portrayed as effective in getting their intended outcomes.

The problem isn't portraying torture, but portraying it as something that always gets actionable, accurate information.

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The problem is both.

Torture is both ineffective and immoral.

Portraying it as effective is a problem.

Portraying it as morally acceptable is a problem.

Yeah but the moral argument for torture boils down entirely to whether or not it works, aside from a few sadists who think of it as revenge or a deterrent.

Effectiveness and morality are independent, I think.

What moral argument is there if it's ineffective?

The point isn't that there may be an argument that it's moral even if it's ineffective, but rather that, even were it effective there's no moral argument to be made for it.

This is clearly not true. If it were an effective means of getting accurate information, then there would be moral arguments for using it in some situations, to prevent even worse events (An imminent nuclear attack? Biological weapons attack? Whatever horrific scenarios you care to imagine) from coming to pass.

Sure, one could argue that.

My only point was that morality isn't necessarily related to effectiveness. But some moral positions could of course depend on effectiveness.

I don't believe in these mathematical greater evil arguments. I assume you would not kill a baby even if it was guaranteed to prevent a plane crash killing a hundred people.

One should not make relativistic moral calculations with fundamentally unacceptable acts.

You don't believe it, because you consider some acts fundamentally unacceptable, in your moral framework.

That doesn't have any bearing on other people's moral frameworks, in which relativistic calculations may be the right thing to do.

Your point seems to be : people have different moral frameworks. Mine differs to some others. This seems self evident.

That's exactly right. In this light, what one should and shouldn't according to a single person (what your last post was about) doesn't have any meaning when discussing what many individuals could value: that's on a higher meta level.

It becomes at best a statement of opinion, and at worst it can be taken as dismissive of the values of others.

Correct - its a statement of opinion. Yes, I think most of us are dismissive of some values of some others and that's OK.

> Yes, I think most of us are dismissive of some values of some others and that's OK.

I don't believe this is a very useful property of a conversation which is about trying to understand how the world squares with opinions that people can hold.

Someone could consider revenge to be moral, no?

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