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"And yet he's a super nice guy. In fact, nice is not the word. Ronco is good."

So good he supports torture http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/12/09/ron-conway-bla...

A good person can still be "wrong" (for any given definition of it). Feinstein is wrong about AirBnB, and Conway is wrong about torture. I was a big fan of Christopher Hitchens' yet I think on balance he was wrong about the Iraq war.

For me, the main objection to torture is not that it often yields unreliable intel, or that innocents end up getting tortured to death, or that it produces more terrorists - all of which are true. I recognize torture sometimes saves lives, and I'm not unsympathetic to the emotion that it carries a somewhat satisfying vengeance component against an enemy who, in their own words, values death more than we value life. Yet my objection is about what effect torture has on us as a society. It's a plague on our house.

You don't object to innocent people being tortured to death?

If there was no societal impact, would those objections be enough for you to oppose torture?

"My main objection to driving drunk is not the whole 'running over pedestrians' thing, which does happen, but more the effect that it has on my paint job - I come home with all sorts of scuff marks."

> You don't object to innocent people being tortured to death?

Yes, I do object to that. Every single point I made against torture, I obviously support.

But hinging the entire anti-torture argument on innocents isn't going to be enough, sadly. Because of ambiguities about who exactly is innocent, and because of the relative ethics of torturing one possibly innocent victim in order to save potentially huge numbers of other innocents, a more profound argument is needed - one that covers the entire spectrum where torture is used.

In my opinion, this argument has to be about what torture turns us into.

Your interpretation of my comment is both very uncharitable and factually wrong.

Ah, I see. I misinterpreted your comment, apologies.

Would you mind elaborating on what societal impact you think participating in torture has on the US? I'm curious to hear the viewpoint of an American on this.

(From the perspective of a heathen foreigner, the US military has done despicable things for decades, so to some degree this is just business as usual.)

> I'm curious to hear the viewpoint of an American on this. [...] From the perspective of a heathen foreigner

Hey, that makes two of us ;)

But I'm also European, that means apart from the religious aspect, we're pretty much in the same boat as the US, and often times that boat is a heavily armed gunship. In the end, countries are not monolithic entities, or even single ideologies for that matter. People in power are susceptible to atrocious ideas, wherever they live.

> Would you mind elaborating on what societal impact you think participating in torture has on the US?

For what it's worth, I think the impact is that we (US and allies) become a society of torturers, as banal as that may sound. Once we internalize the fact that we are people who torture, our entire values compass becomes skewed.

So "good person" just means "one of us" and has nothing to do with ethics.

It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith. You may disagree with it, but "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.

> "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.

... for a rather arbitrary definition of "evil" (and "good"), one I don't share. Doesn't it make you think a little when every depiction and description of hell contains various forms of torture?

> It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith.

Imagine someone who just straight up punches people in the face without any warning for using the n word. Can that ever be in good faith? At what point is it OK to physically hurt others?

This doesn't justify torture, but I can imagine many situations where it physical violence can be good. I would say it is ethically good to physically harm someone if that harm prevents then from harming others, for example.

There are tons of questions surrounding when it is OK, but to say that physical violence is never appropriate is to live in a fantasy world where evil doesn't exist. There are some forms of aggression that cannot be successfully resisted without resorting to violence.

You know that it is just a slippery slope away from supporting violence against charlie hebdo, right?

It's really easy to come up with hypotheticals when violence stops other violence, with no other ill effects and no risk.

Real life isn't as pretty. You meet violence with violence and all you're guaranteed is violence. You may 'win', you may not, but all you're certain to achieve is perpetuating the cycle.

That's debatable. Remember the Geneva Convention?

Good faith and good intentions are not enough to create good in the world.

Oh yes it is

I think the only way it is possible to hold it "in good faith" is to be unconsciously bigoted. That is, you don't realize you're a bigot, probably because you haven't examined your underlying beliefs.

To see this most clearly, try to imagine a situation where you would find it acceptable for an American soldier to be tortured by some foreign power.

First, thank you for providing a thought experiment that challenged my own beliefs on the topic. Something like that is rare.

Given the social climate surrounding the issue, it seemed appropriate to switch to a throwaway. I'll strive to keep the discussion interesting and thought-provoking.

I'd like to followup with you and get some insights. Thinking over your example leads me to conclude, "There is no such thing as what's 'acceptable,' only what's effective."

Do you feel that's true, or off the mark?

Torture has been shown repeatedly to not be "effective" - people will say literally anything to get it to stop.

This makes it useless for getting a confession to a crime with no corroborating evidence. However, if you have a method of independently verifying the information you get, you can get useful information.

Note: I oppose torture, but effectiveness is orthogonal to my opposition. Something can be effective and still evil.

Not that effective for gathering reliable intelligence in a timely manner, but very effective for other purposes: To punish, to instill fear in potential enemies, to satisfy a need for revenge.

The "gathering intelligence" excuse is used only because it allows "good people" to convince themselves they support torture for rational, "good" reasons. Nobody would openly say they support torture because they want to see the enemy writher in pain and fear and be forced to eat their own shit. Even if this is the real reason.

I think we care about what's acceptable/unacceptable because we need a collective line in the sand for what would be self destructive.

I think if some concepts are not marked as non bargainable, they will eventually be common.

Torture and terror falls in this camp for me. If we agree there are cases it's ok to use them, eventually we'll have a neighbor tortured because of some other thing society abors.

I think Post-911 and the Bush Administration making statements that in order to save lives and prevent more terrorists attacks they had to torture terrorist suspects.

It is a kind of the ends justify the means, the type of road that leads to tyranny. Which is why the Patriot Act got passed and hasn't been repealed yet.

You know that terrorists will use torture and everything they got and won't stick to laws and rules to get their ends to justify their means.

So what prevents us from becoming just like the terrorists we are fighting? Does it really need a fight fire with fire, and it is not terrorism when we do it? Are there better ways to fight terrorism that we haven't considered yet?

> So what prevents us from becoming just like the terrorists we are fighting?

'prevented', not 'prevents'. That's a passed station now, it's official, it's documented and it's absolutely horrible.

You see, when a bunch of deranged idiots does something there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances, but when a nation state does something there are none, unless you want to claim they too are deranged idiots.

Ironic that US Special Forces trained the Taliban to fight the USSR in the 1980's and then later on their leader founder Al Qaeda using the same tactics to fight the USA.

I think US failed foreign policy helps create a lot of terrorist networks. We pulled out of Iraq and Syria too fast and then ISIS/ISIL took over in the power vacuum there. So in trying to end the war too soon, to score points for people back home, we actually made it worse in Syria and Iraq.

In leaving Afghanistan we gave control back to the Taliban.

So the US war effort in the Middle East has failed as terrorist networks just take back control.

The USA won't admit to the things it does, it covers up the Prism NSA spying system, it covers up the torture, it covers up murdering people with drone strikes, then it goes after the news media that reports on all of the bad things the USA is doing to censor it.

Maybe we cannot prevent being a tyranny, maybe it is too late? We had to become a police state with the Patriot Act and Prism in order to fight the war on terror and then what have we become over that?

rephrasing to remove definition-paint-shedding-whatever

Does there exist a scenario where you are personally OK with a soldier from your country being tortured by another?

If we're talking about effectiveness, you then have to define what's the criteria that you're optimizing for - that's mostly the difference between morality frameworks. Certainly there is argument that was made within utilitarianism that if 1 people are tortured so that hundreds of millions of people can avoid having a speck of dust in their eyes, it's still a net gain for happiness (and so it's an acceptable, even preferable scenario to happen).

The fact that it's impossible for human agreeing on the criteria to be optimized asides. Normally there are many reasons that we almost never make morality argument based on effectiveness (unfortunately, I'm not articulate enough to summarize those reasons in a comment). The trolley problem is a good example: if it was a straightforward effectiveness argument, we all know what the "rational" decision should be.

There are multiple morality frameworks, most including torture, and very few that don't. Western Christianity (ie. "New Testament") and it's "atheist variant" Humanism are fully opposed to torture (unless you count banishment as torture, which some do), but most other ideologies aren't.

Take the old testament, which is certainly a moral framework. Or, when it comes to frameworks in use, islam's moral framework, for example, specifies torture as punishment for crimes (whippings, beatings, certain prescribed forms of execution, forcing children to witness execution of convicted parents, ...). But this is not the exception, most religions support torture, mostly only as punishment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da%E1%B9%87%E1%B8%8Da_%28Hindu_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_and_corporal_punishment...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Punishments_in_religio...

It's not limited to religions either. For instance, most or all person cults support torture.

A lot of people have serious trouble with the concept of multiple moralities, yet of course that's exactly what different religions are. People seem to find it easy to tolerate, oh going to temple instead of church, but if you disagree on marriageable age, slavery, or punishment then you're a monster. Never mind that by that standard, the majority the planet's population fails.

> Take the old testament, which is certainly a moral framework.

The Old Testament (and ditto with the New Testament) is not a "moral framework"; it is a set of stories which have been incorporated as part of the justification or inspiration for numerous moral frameworks, many of which conflict deeply with each other.

Can we construct a situation where that would be appropriate? Well, let's get as close as we can, factoring out as many moral variables as possible, to make the question more concrete.

Let's imagine that it's the 1980s, during the Cold War. And let's create an inverse Dr. Strangelove setup.

Let's say that the United States, based on erroneous intelligence, has become convinced that a nuclear attack from the USSR is imminent. To prevent annihilation of the population of the United States, authorization is given to promptly and preemptively attack the USSR and the protocol is started.

Now, let's say that there are a number of persons who are able to disarm these attacks, and that one of them has fallen into KGB hands. The KGB has just one hour to prevent a nuclear holocaust.

To factor out another variable, let's assume that the general being held by the KGB is located somewhere that will be within the blast range of the mutual destruction, such that should the reciprocal attacks take place, the general will in the coming days die of a mix of radiation poisoning and starvation, no doubt a gruesome way to die.

How far is the KGB ethically entitled to go to try to extract the cancelation codes?

Now, "utilitarianism" was mentioned below, and the simple utilitarian would answer, as noted, that if there was even any chance of a small discomfort being removed for a great many, than it would be worth incredible pain for a single person. Such is a common attack on utilitarianism -- that it allows for persecuting the innocent.

However, that's a very superficial view of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism also considers that in trying to maximize the happiness (or some proxy for it) within society, that people care very much about some basic presumption of justice within that society. For instance, I would not expect a society which tortured suspected jaywalkers to be optimized for happiness. It gives us a sense of security and comfort to know that there are certain guarantees in our social systems.

There's also the argument from the perspective of justice (i.e. an argument from rights rather than outcomes). The notion there is that you can construct a set of rights by supposing a "veil of ignorance" in which you do not know where you would fall in a society or situation. For instance, if nobody knew if they were the torturer or torturee, they might both agree that torture is wrong and that it should not be practiced. The "veil of ignorance" is basically what the grandparent's question on transposing nationalities was trying to get at.

The utilitarian viewpoint doesn't lend itself towards as clearly defined of a set of rules for right and wrong. On the other hand, a strict set of rights can draw questions at the extreme ends of the ethical spectrum.

In the abstract that's all fine and good but we're talking about some very concrete situations here that go nowhere near those extremes. Extremes are nice to come down on something 'in principle' but barring extraordinary concocted up scenarios to expose the weaknesses of having a pre-set mind about anything at all it is still very useful to come down to some ground rules that everybody lives by, for instance, laws and in this case the Geneva convention.

The idea is that then if someone decides to cross those lines that you try them in court to see if a judge sees it the same way, if not off to the slammer you go.

I agree. But sometimes thought experiments can be useful in sussing out why we hold certain values. Torture I don't actually consider to be one of those that's particularly opaque, but asking "Why do I think this is wrong?" and looking at the edge cases is often an enlightening process. (And I've been reading a good bit of political philosophy lately trying to resolve some dissonance on other topics where I found my own views inconsistent.)

It's the engineering mindset at work: reduction to extremes can give you a good idea of whether or not something has a discrete solution or if it is multi-valued. In this case it seems to me that it is likely to be multi-valued but only in non-real-world scenarios and for all intent and purposes you might as well treat it as discrete: torture == bad.

If you're inclined to go down that path: the Japanese treated US POWs terribly, and the US still dropped two nukes as a weapons test (there was credible intelligence Japan was in the process of surrendering because of the "regular" fire-bombing campaigns - but dropping nukes was seen as a great deterrent against Sovjet. And as a great opportunity for a field test).

Note: I'm mentioning this because you're scenario isn't quite as hypothetical as one might hope - for neither those bombed nor for the abused POWs.

Do very many people do this thought experiment and say "Wow, I'd totally let the European guy keep the codes to disarm the bomb, but I'd torture the brown one."?

edit: It's a serious question. The claim is that people who support torture do so because they're "unconsciously bigoted." That seems silly so I've posed a counter question: How many people's belief in torture falls apart if they imagine the subject looking like them/sharing their religious views/etc? I don't imagine it's very many.

It's a good question, I have no idea why you are being downvoted.

Consider a person who's moral principles are based on empathy. Empathy is well known to be racist - we simply don't feel equally bad is a black person gets pricked with a needle than a white person. (Errors like this are why I believe empathy is a terrible basis for morality.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Now consider path dependence. If you first think about a brown person being tortured, you (statistically) are more likely to accept it - you simply feel less empathy for this person. Then when you generalize to the case of a white person, you'll similarly support torture.

Conversely, if you first think about a white person being tortured and then generalize to a black person, you'll oppose it.

So it doesn't happen that belief in torture falls apart, what happens is the example you think of to start with determines that belief.

I still think that's a bit simplistic and maybe politically motivated. Of course groups have different feelings towards their members and non-members.

First study: why in the world didn't they report their findings of how black people felt watching white people get hurt? That's a pretty bad bias.

Second study: are these people just fishing for proof that white people are racist?

> The less privileged the target seemed, the less participants thought s/he would experience pain. In other words, participants associated hardship with physical toughness. Importantly, target race (Black vs. White) was no longer predictive of pain ratings once we controlled for participants’ perceptions of the target’s privilege,

but they just sidestep that part for the conclusion:

> The present work demonstrates that people assume a priori that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites. This finding has important implications for understanding and reducing racial bias. It sheds new light on well-documented racial biases. Consider, for instance, the finding that White Americans condone police brutality against Black men relative to White men

How am I supposed to take these people seriously? Experiment 5 showed that blackness only correlates with a deeper, more predictive factor but they ignore that to go on a socio-political rant about the plight of black Americans. They do everything they can to fit the results into a preconceived narrative. This isn't science, it's social activism masquerading as science. 90% of their "conclusions" was about things that weren't even part of the experiment.

This isn't bringing us any closer to understanding how and why people are able to do awful things like commit torture, which should be the goal here. Instead we have to put that question aside and ask why such political bias isn't being called out in science.

For the purposes of the original question, namely how the perceived race of the victim might lead someone to support torture, these questions are moot.

However, they are useful questions more broadly. Ultimately the issue is that people motivated by empathy are going to be inconsistent and biased. While this probably won't lead them to change their opinion, the example use case they first think of may drive their original opinion.

> To see this most clearly, try to imagine a situation where you would find it acceptable for an American soldier to be tortured by some foreign power.

Sure: If a company of US soldiers has infiltrated an area and is planning to blow up a church during a wedding, and one is captured, it might be acceptable to torture him for the information of the plot, so it might be averted. "Might", only if that is the very last resort and has at least some chance of success.

The reason it's hard to come up with such a scenario is that probably most of us assume American soldiers are acting on orders, and those orders are at least well-intentioned, even if they end up doing wrong.

That's not bigotry - it's perhaps naive.

edit: clarify the end

> "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people

I took air to mean that support of torture eliminates a person from the top strata of the category of "good person" - by itself a handwavy categorization - that should be held up as some kind of exemplar of virtue, as pg has done.

It's a point I happen to agree with, and regardless of whether or not you think Dante would create a special place in hell for rich guys who provide political cover for torturers, it does undermine to some extent the premise of of pg's article.

Writing an article like this about someone you actually like is dangerous. As Pappy Boyington said, "Show me a hero and I'll show you a bum."

Good people can't ever support anything with (moral) downsides?

By most definitions, a good person cannot support evil actions ("moral downsides", really?), no.

Considering that most choices -- and all hard ones -- have such downsides, then no such people exist and the term as you've used it is not useful.

It's not the moral downsides so much as torture is a race to the bottom. It's like, which side can be more awful.

Did you even read the first sentence I wrote?

Indeed I did; it's precisely what I was replying to. No matter how good a person is, they will encounter moral dilemmas (or at least, there exist moral dilemmas that could be posed to them) with no good option. For any one of these situations you can say "OMG! I'm so indignant that they chose A" ... And the same for B.

By that standard, there cannot exist good people.

> No matter how good a person is, they will encounter moral dilemmas (or at least, there exist moral dilemmas that could be posed to them) with no good option. For any one of these situations you can say "OMG! I'm so indignant that they chose A" ... And the same for B.

It's as if you believe every moral choice, including the choice to support or oppose torture, is a choice of equal moral consequence such that a person deserves praise whichever way they choose. I don't intend to sign on to this new ethical theory of yours.

I do not see a similarity between the critique I gave and the position you attributed to me. Could you reply more directly to the point I made?

Okay, let's start over. I'll pick things apart as well as I can.

> Good people can't ever support anything with (moral) downsides?

"Moral downsides" is not, as far as I know, a term of art in ethics or religion so it is hard to know what you mean, but I'm pretty sure you've been downvoted for underplaying the importance of a decision to support something many of us believe to be intrinsically evil.

> Indeed I did; it's precisely what I was replying to.

You were replying to post where I indicated that having chosen to support torture removed Ronco from the category of person so admirable we should hold him up as an example for the rest of us to follow. This is - usefully, I think - a lot more specific than dividing the world into "good people" and "bad people."

> No matter how good a person is, they will encounter moral dilemmas

That is part of the human condition, yes.

> (or at least, there exist moral dilemmas that could be posed to them)

There also exist math problems that could be posed to them. I wonder why you've gone all hypothetical here.

> with no good option. For any one of these situations you can say "OMG! I'm so indignant that they chose A" ... And the same for B.

There are, hypothetically, moral dilemmas such that every outcome is equally bad.

The decision to support torture is not one of them. I do not believe even a supporter of torture would characterize the decision to engage in torture or not to engage in torture as a decision such that deciding one way or the other will result in equally bad outcomes.

> By that standard, there cannot exist good people.

Whatever.

>Okay, let's start over.

Sure thing; I hope some of it will make more sense now.

>"Moral downsides" is not, as far as I know, a term of art in ethics or religion so it is hard to know what you mean,

First of all, I never used that term; I referred to downsides, and clarified the context in a parenthetical. Because so much of grandstanding about torture is apparently from a deontological perspective (cf. your insistence on things being "intrinsically evil"), this was simply to clarify that the "downsides" were with respect to a moral calculus, not e.g. some CBA of material costs.

Second, certainly you can compose concepts together, even when that combination of the words is not formally enumerated in some lexicon?

Third, it feels much like you're calling me ignorant by unnecessarily drawing attention to specific phrases and complaining about them not being in the official lingo. Now that you know what I'm referring to, could you either a) give the standard term for it which you would not have complained about, or b) apologize for the insinuation, or c) explain why you were unable to infer meaning of a new term the normal way?

>but I'm pretty sure you've been downvoted for underplaying the importance of a decision to support something many of us believe to be intrinsically evil.

That would be a bad reason, since I never "underplayed" the importance of this, which would suggest some sort of "well, yeah that's bad, but no big deal". I'm complaining that, if you are going to write someone off every time their decision has a downside, they can't win, no matter how good they are, and so the existence of such downsides isn't a strike against their goodness at all, any more than a politician is evil for recognizing the existence of tradeoffs between funding for hospitals and funding for schools. (Can you believe (Jack|John) (John|Jack)son? He supported reduced funding for (school|hospital)s! Does he not thing (education|health care) is important?)

>>(or at least, there exist moral dilemmas that could be posed to them)

>There also exist math problems that could be posed to them. I wonder why you've gone all hypothetical here.

That was simply to avoid the (slimy) trick of refusing to engage moral dilemmas -- i.e. consider someone praiseworthy simply because they never had to encounter a hard choice. Is that a reasonable caveat?

>There are, hypothetically, moral dilemmas such that every outcome is equally bad.

>The decision to support torture is not one of them. I do not believe even a supporter of torture would characterize the decision to engage in torture or not to engage in torture as a decision such that deciding one way or the other will result in equally bad outcomes.

Why the focus on the case of the outcomes being equally bad? A "supporter of torture" can (and usually do) agree that torturing people is bad, but not as bad as letting millions die when the bomb goes off. (This is where people usually muddle the distinction between "it wouldn't work" and "it would be bad even if it did work".) They simply don't regard the badness of that option as a dealbreaker. (There's no requirement that the options be equally bad for the logic to apply.)

That's the same thing I'm criticizing on your part. You could equally well play the game of "he advocated letting millions of people die! Bad!" Well, sometimes you can't win. The very best people can be placed in that dilemma, and their having to take one bad branch should not be a strike against them.

The point I was trying to express in one line originally.

> I never "underplayed" the importance of this, which would suggest some sort of "well, yeah that's bad, but no big deal".

Okay, you don't think you're underplaying the importance of a person's support of torture, but in saying things like this you are lumping all a person's transgressions together:

> if you are going to write someone off every time their decision has a downside

This is absolutely not "every time," this is the time the guy used his influence to provide public support for the institution of torture by America instead of using his influece to condemn it.

Incidentally, I'm not talking about writing someone off. I'm talking about excluding him from the very enthusiastic category person we should admire as an exemplar of good which pg created for Ronco. (seriously, he invoked the Bible)

> they can't win, no matter how good they are, and so the existence of such downsides isn't a strike against their goodness at all, any more than a politician is evil for recognizing the existence of tradeoffs between funding for hospitals and funding for schools.

I agree that if we regard all moral transgressions as being equally serious then it makes no sense to draw the distinction between good and bad acts, or perhaps even good and bad people. I just think that is an absurd premise.

> Why the focus on the case of the outcomes being equally bad?

A choice between equally undesireable alternatives is usually what is meant by "dilemma." Some of that is just the dictionary, but more intuitively it's just not usually worth arguing about the cases where one choice is regarded as worse than another.

> That's the same thing I'm criticizing on your part. You could equally well play the game of "he advocated letting millions of people die! Bad!"

In much the same way that I do not believe all moral transgressions are equally serious, I do not believe all arguments are equally sound.

I really appreciate your response, but I think there is a problem with our mental model of a moral paragon.

Is it really smart to believe that childlike simplicity of purpose is morally admirable? That never being seen to take a side in an ugly situation with horrible tradeoffs on all sides is a prerequisite for being a top quality "good person"?

My sense is that rather than courageous, it is extremely easy to take sides like opposing torture in all forms at all times. Such positions receive automatic praise and require little complex thinking. That does not necessarily make them wrong, but we should subject them to an extra shade of rational skepticism.

Relatedly, it is obvious to me that when Ronco takes a pro-torture position, it is not out of personal weakness or malice, as people seem to imagine, but could only be the result of serious careful thought. A sociopath, for example, would never ever take a position so likely to garner knee-jerk criticism for no personal gain. I suppose a troll might, but he is extremely obviously not a troll.

> Is it really smart to believe that childlike simplicity of purpose is morally admirable?

I don't have any idea what you're talking about but I'm guessing we like "smart" rather than "childlike simplicity."

> That never being seen to take a side in an ugly situation with horrible tradeoffs on all sides is a prerequisite for being a top quality "good person"?

On the contrary, regardless of how you define "good person," I suspect having taken a side would be a necessary factor. The more relevant factor would be having chosen the correct side.

> My sense is that rather than courageous, it is extremely easy to take sides like opposing torture in all forms at all times. Such positions receive automatic praise and require little complex thinking. That does not necessarily make them wrong, but we should subject them to an extra shade of rational skepticism.

I don't think the amount of effort or risk involved in reaching a moral decision can be considered an indicator of that decision's correctness. We would not consider someone who took one second to decide to help an old lady across the street to have acted more morally than someone who had to take a little more thought to make the decision based on the same reasoning, after all. And plenty of decisions to choose ethical conduct over unethical conduct are quite easy for most of us to make - you can think of your own examples. Effort isn't any sort of reliable indicator.

"Good", "evil" and "good faith" are all too ill-defined to be used in a philosophical discussion like this: you will have to define them. It's fine for pg to used, because a) He's almost using good as the opposite of mean, and b) He's not discussing about morality. When it comes to morality discussion, a lot more bets are off and you have to be careful on what basis you're defining "good", "evil" and the like.

To be more on point, there are a lot of "evil" people that are acting on good faith - the comical image of an evil genius who's hell bent on taking over the world for his own greediness or for fun doesn't really exist in real life. You can truly believe that the best way to win a war for your country (and help your fellow country men) is to exterminate the other country, so you make an order to massacre everything that move. That would be evil acting in good faith.

Perhaps he could have the opinion that, as he tweeted, "the CIA saved American lives" in good faith. But he was criticizing a 525-page Senate report on the same day it came out, December 9th. This report has a lot of details on CIA misrepresentations on how they "saved lives". I doubt he read the report before he tweeted.

I don't think that's in good faith.

It is in good company, as Dick Cheney admitted he hadn't read the report, while still asserting it was "full of crap".

Let me give a single example of the kind of CIA claims about the effectiveness of torture that the report documents. On page 188, the report describes a briefing George Tenet and a CIA lawyer gave to some White House officials. (See footnote 1101 for a partial list of attendees.) Their slides included the claim that their torture techniques helped identify Richard Reid.

Richard Reid was arrested before the CIA tortured anyone under this program. This program could not have helped catch Reid unless it also involved the use of a time machine.

You may think this is a silly example, but the report documents dozens of instances of this level of misrepresentation. Footnote 1393 demonstrates another causality inversion that the CIA thinks they caused, in which they tortured someone in 2003 to get enough information to disrupt a plot in 2002.

Check it out for yourself; you can read the Senate report's 525-page executive summary here:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

and the CIA's response here:

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/CIAs_June2013_Response_t...

Maybe I'm wrong about torture, and maybe I'm misreading or misunderstanding the report. But I think Conway's dismissal of the report without reading it is in bad faith.

Except he doesn't say "torture is sometimes permissible". He supports the specific actions of CIA where torture were used, but didn't lead to reliable intelligence of value. So it was not a "ticking time-bomb scenario", it was "torture because we have the power to do it".

> It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith.

No it is not. Certain things are just incompatible. "good person" and "supporter of torture" are a good example of this.

The illusory "effectiveness" of torture doesn't matter, you may as well ask if slavery is profitable, as others have pointed out. If you're asking that then you have already lost your way.

If this upsets you, then that's on you.

In fairness, he'd probably be really nice to any torture victims if they ever pitched their startup to him.

And if he didn't invest in their startup and made sure no one else invested either, he'd probably be really nice about showing them the door.

I am totally opposed to torture but I have no problem believing someone is "good" even if they think the CIA's actions were correct. Similarly, I try not to fall into the trap of thinking that people who disagree with me are either lying or stupid.

If you look closely enough at anyone, you will find something to dislike about them. Funny thing about people. Funnier thing: if you look closely enough at anyone you dislike, you can find something to like about them.

People are probably mostly the product of their environment and I doubt anyone here knows Ron Conway well enough to discuss his position on torture. Let his actions speak for him; you can be opposed to torture under pretty much any circumstances, as I am, and still regard someone with a different point of view as basically good.

I really wish your comment didn't get so much of the attention in this thread, it's a bit of a distraction from what should've been the main point of the article.

Yes, it does rather take away from endlessly extolling the virtues of the man.

Cool, so we're People magazine now, only with a SV focus.

"Silicon People".

Wow, that really works in more than one way.

HN's been a pretty shameless gossip site for a while, nice to see folks finally dropping all pretense about it.

Bluntly, People magazine does more in-depth coverage of its subjects than pg's post does of this guy. They would have felt compelled to give a number of examples of things he's done that a reader might actually see as good, as opposed to just asserting it a few times.

Beyond that, the post is just some hand-waving about a claimed trend with little support. That's why the torture thing blew up - it was an actual, specific ethical matter involving the guy instead of a generic business hagiography (he's good, but you wouldn't want him mad at you, blah blah blah).

He said the CIA saved lives and that Feinstein should listen to her experience vs political staff. That's not a defense of torture. Even assuming you're opposed to any torture in all cases, you can still criticize the torture report and defend organizations involved.

Anyhow, I'd like to think that our goodness as people is not necessarily determined by our political tweets.

There is a lot of discussion in this thread if torture theoretically could be morally justified - ticking time bomb scenarios and so on. But his support is not for some theoretical scenario. It is for the actual CIA actions where people were tortured, where it didn't result in reliable intelligence, and where the CIA lied about the effectiveness of the torture.

Of course, even if the torture didn't lead to intelligence of any value, it still might have been effective. The purpose of torture when used around the world is not primarily to produce intelligence. The primary purpose is to punish, to instill fear into the enemy, and to provide satisfaction. You can still support torture even if you know it does't provided intelligence of value, if you believe the other purposes justifies it.

Bu can you really be called a "good person" if you support torture for the sake of the fear and the pain and the satisfaction? I guess you can - if you are rich and influential enough.

I just don't see where he made any of these arguments. My take is that he generally supports the CIA and does not like Feinstein. That's a perfectly reasonable stance. I take issue with the idea that torture is ok or produces anything of value. But in this case, the most disturbing part for me is that it was government policy.

He linked to http://www.ciasavedlives.com which includes these lines:

The SSCI Majority would have the American people believe that the program was initiated by a rogue CIA that consistently lied to the President, the National Security Council, the Attorney General, and the Congress. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing.

... Congress was in the loop. The so-called "Gang of Eight” of top Congressional leaders were briefed in detail on the program. The briefings were detailed and drew reactions that ranged from approval to no objection to encouragement to be even more aggressive. Again, none of this context appears in the Majority's report.

I think those are fair points. If I had only 140 character to make this comment, maybe I'd be perceived as a bad guy too?

Everyone responding to this comment is arguing as if "good" and "bad" are provable facts. It's an opinion. You can't disprove it.

tl;dr Ron Conway posted these tweets:

https://twitter.com/RonConway/status/542383330193190913

https://twitter.com/RonConway/status/542404171865927681

Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon, are boring.

Ron Conway's tweets about the CIA are not really interesting.

Ron Conway's actions to deliver funding, connect people, and general effect on the Silicon Valley startup atmosphere are very, very interesting.

Obligatory disclaimer: I strongly support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and am shocked! Shocked I say! -- that Obama has not yet closed Guantanamo Bay after this many years in office.

your tl;dr leaves this out

"Interestingly, it was just several weeks ago that Feinstein was the one expressing her distaste for one of Conway’s projects. He’s a big backer of AirBnB, and Feinstein penned an opinion piece in The Chronicle urging Lee to veto the Board of Supervisors’ legislation allowing short-term rentals in private homes. Lee sided with Conway and AirBnB."

"Here are your winnings, Sir."

The movie was Casablanca.

Right after the line

> am shocked! Shocked I say

was the line

"Here are your winnings, Sir."

Someone didn't like/know that movie?

Most like, HN doesn't encourage random pop-culture references that don't actually add anything to the conversation.

My post did "add to the conversation" -- it was the rest of the irony of the statement I responded to and its suggestion about the OP.

It's not a "random" reference, to pop-culture or otherwise; instead it's a famous statement about public posturing and image and now solidly part of US culture and, thus, fully relevant to the OP.

If you want something that at first glance looks more serious, read my post

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920204

in this thread. There I reference Goffman, about the most serious source there is on public image. The quotes from Casablanca are nearly as good.

But if you want something much more serious, sure, see

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8919311

on non-linear duality theory and Lagrangian relaxation as an improvement on simulated annealing.

"Here are your winnings, Sir"

competes with both Goffman and duality theory for relevance.

I mean, you did see the movie, right?

If you're really trying to say that torture is 'bad' (and not illegal -- which it sort-of is), you need to really flex some intellectual muscle and not merely just claim it.

It's a been a pretty hotly-debated issue in (politico-)philosophical circles for the past 400 years; so don't think it'll be easy.

It was my impression that the torture debate was settled after World War II: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

Torture is wrong, bad, illegal, and ineffective. In a modern world it shouldn't be supported, even from an "Old Testament" sort of good guy.

Small correction: the Geneva Convention says nothing about the effectiveness of torture, although other sources may.

And the philosophical debate is far from over; it is ongoing: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/ Reading some of the literature can be quite fascinating.

Ouch, the down-votes :(

You're getting down voted because, knowingly or not, you're using conversational terrorism [1] techniques.

Wary minds see/hear these words and immediately ignore any of your content. Think of it as a debating equivalent of pulling a godwin.

[1] http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

What conventional terrorism technique have I used? Here's an analogue of what happened.

Bob says: yeah it's pretty easy to see that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.[1]

I say: not so fast, you can't just claim things like that. I mean it might be intuitive or 'generally accepted' (and even stochastically probable!), but the truth-value of such a statement is difficult to prove.

[1] Goldbach's conjecture.

I'm not sure philosophers debating is a useful signal about whether an issue is settled. I'm having a hard time thinking of a topic on which philosophers would not debate.

I'm perfectly happy claiming lots of things which have been hotly debated in (politico-)-philosophical circles for a long time. And so, I imagine, are most people, including (politico)-philosophers themselves. That everyone doesn't agree with me on everything doesn't lose me sleep.

Why is this post being downvoted so much? Although I don't agree w/ the author's position, torture and its effectiveness are still debated.

Actually, I never even stated my position!

For the record, I'm pretty sure torture is usually morally wrong. But I also think that there are many cases where it may be permissible, e.g. the ticking time-bomb thought experiment.

(Detractors of the ticking time-bomb experiment will argue that it's a fabricated scenario which never happens in real life. I don't think that's true.)

How about: torture is always wrong. But sometimes I will sacrifice my immortal soul (torture somebody) to save somebody I love. And its still wrong, and I will be prosecuted for it. But my child will live, or whatever.

How about we actually use philosophical argument and not this weak wishy-washy stuff. Perhaps contextualism is true? Perhaps actions themselves have no moral connotation but rather moral decision can only be made within a contextual framework.

I think to say "torture is always wrong" is just something to say to fit in socially. I don't think you can make moral decisions about any action murder, theft, etc; there must be a contextual framework and hierarchy of values.

That's a way to analyze it. But not all moral frameworks are going to yield to academic dissection. I'm not so worried about finding a chapter in my philosophy text to label it; we can instead explore our existing moral foundations and answer honestly.

If you must rationalize it, go ahead. But you can argue yourself into any number of conclusions. In the end that's a game with no winner.

> How about we actually use philosophical argument and not this weak wishy-washy stuff.

His argument is clearly based on the philosophical framework of Virtue Ethics. You can refer to the literature on that, if you want the arguments. Though I can tell you now, contextualism is quite orthogonal to Virtue Ethics.

FWIW, I don't think it's "wishy-washy" at all, definitely less so than stating "I'm against torture mostly, except for <contrived hypothetical situation>".

> I think to say "torture is always wrong" is just something to say to fit in socially.

This is just assuming bad faith. People that base their moral framework on things like Virtue Ethics definitely don't do it for social acceptance.

> I don't think you can make moral decisions about any action murder, theft, etc; there must be a contextual framework and hierarchy of values.

In theory, maybe. In practice, similarly to utilitarianism, it is completely unworkable. It's the wrong way out, morality is not a matter of engineering, fortunately there are other options.

'Ticking time bomb' isn't even effective in theory let alone practise. It's just a weak and puerile excuse for sadistic bullying.

This thread speaks volumes about the low moral character found in people like 'Ronco' and much of the SV wannabe culture.

I don't think you understand the ticking time-bomb thought experiment. It's well-bounded and presents a very compelling argument for the moral permissibility if we're virtue ethicists or requirement, if we're utilitarians, of torture.

The only counter-argument is, does it actually happen in real life? Some say yes, some say no.

The counter argument is that it's based on a moronic assumption that the person being tortured is guilty and yet will reveal the correct location and instructions on how to disarm the device while the clock is still ticking. That holds water for nobody but a sadist looking for cover or a dimwit who has seen too many episodes of 24.

That exact scenario has occurred many times in real-life.

For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/world/kidnapping-has-germa...

The assumption is not at all moronic.

That's a completely different scenario with different motivations and no bearing on the ticking time bomb one. (And even in that case note the information came too late to save the victim.)

In a ticking time bomb scenario, a suspected terrorist might or might not give up the correct location of the device in many circumstances - could be a lead pipe, asking nicely, bribery, being attractive, making a convincing moral argument, or they may be unwilling, or unable in the event that they are innocent. Clearly none of those can be assumed and it won't be the same each time.

So even if one were to look at it from a purely amoral utilitarian viewpoint - even on those kind of sociopathic terms it is still absurd and very telling for an individual to seize on torture as a magic bullet for obtaining success. When we also consider that torture is widely documented as ineffective for gathering information, we are left with sadists, stupids, and immature creeps whose understanding of the world is based on action movies.

It is documented by people trying to make an emotional point that it is ineffective. It is so obvious that I cannot believe intellectual people fall for the idea that because we find torture morally disgusting that is must be "ineffective." That is purely an emotional argument to make us feel better about our emotional decision. When does torture become ineffective? Why is it that threatening a child with going to bed early or a criminal with jail time to give up co-conspirators can be effective but "torture" cannot? Where on the spectrum does it become ineffective? Such a delineation does not exist and we all know it. If we want to ban it on moral grounds then fine but let's not delude ourselves. It makes us feel nice to say it doesn't work. No one argues it is this perfect mechanism, neither is sending your kid to bed early, but to say it wholly does not work is spurious.

This is the big lie. In fact it's documented time and time again by experienced interrogators that it's ineffective e.g. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an_fbi_interrogator_on_the_...

On the contrary, the only people proposing torture are doing it from a purely emotional standpoint. And what a disgusting and shameful emotional standpoint they are revealing themselves to have.

Nonsense. You are claiming it is ineffective and your proof is an op-ed written by one FBI interrogator.

Did you actually read the original article [1]? Nowhere does Ali Soufan really make a case that torture is actually ineffective. Soufan makes claims that digging through receipts and conventional methods were more effective than whatever "torture" the CIA actually did but nowhere is the claim "torture is not effective" substantiated.

You are showing your emotions by claiming that anyone that could think torture could be effective (setting aside the decision to use it based on moral grounds) must only be doing so because of emotions. Is thinking that digging through someone's receipts during an investigation also an emotional position? What you have made is a non sequitur.

Take the emotion out of it. Where is the actual evidence or theory of why it cannot possibly work? The problem you have is that any example of torture yielding the intending information disproves your position entirely. You will really make that claim? As well, I asked what is the delineation because everyday parents as well as police use the tactics on the spectrum of discomfort to yield results often-times (nothing is perfect) the results are obtained. So where is this magical line of delineation? I don't think it exists. You are only proving the point that the fact based decision of whether or not torture can be effective in yielding information is being made based on emotion rather than reality. The Mexican military have used the tactics of torture to discover information that they were trying to find and in instances they did yield that information. [2] Again, any instance that shows that it "works" disputes directly your claim. Now, again, this is separate from our decision not to use such tactics because they are wholly disgusting and morally despicable but we are being coy if we claim it does not work because we want to make ourselves feel better.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/opinion/06soufan.html?_r=2... 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07...

> Where is the actual evidence or theory of why it cannot possibly work? The problem you have is that any example of torture yielding the intending information disproves your position entirely.

You are missing the point entirely. Sure it can sometimes work (hence my lead pipe comment). However, it is widely documented as one of the poorest methods available for getting accurate information. The only reason left for favouring it therefore is simply an emotional one - and a deeply nasty emotion at that.

Your pseudo-utilitarian line of argument could just as well be applied to rape or murder. But these are cultural universals - the fact is that all societies consider these things, including torture, to be immoral and crimes (and yes they still occur of course). To be debating 'both sides of the argument' in these issues as if it were somehow a reasonable activity is therefore objectively a sign of individual and societal sickness.

Don't fool yourself, the systematic practise of torture is no different from the systematic practise of murder or rape (indeed it often includes those acts even in modern times) - to be an apologist for this is something that will shame you to your grave. To paraphrase Father Phil from The Sopranos, now you can never say that nobody told you.

All this hatred directed at Ron Conway, whom I don't really have any opinion, in a thread about an article Paul Graham wrote that has nothing to do with torture ...

This smacks of the kind of inane, conversation drowning behavior of PETA. What is theoretically wrong with the "ticking time bomb," since you wrote that specifically? What is the lapse in logic or the shaky philosophical flaw in the "theory?" And then you go and besmirch the whole "SV wannabe culture" because they don't have the same thoughtless moral certainty that you do.

Reasonable people can disagree and it does not mean one side is evil or one is stupid, necessarily. I think it is a bit much to say Ron Conway is despicable or whatever because of this.

Wow, a rare sane comment in this whole subthread. What are you still doing on this site?

Ticking time bomb covered in other comments.

It's not quite about torture per se (which is actually a clear moral good vs evil issue - after all you don't hear people saying we need to consider both sides of the rape argument to reach a balanced view).

Point here being that PG wrote a feelgood piece about the SV great and good that will be lapped up by many who are engaged in tech. Central to the piece is that Ronco's success was down to his great character so it is entirely on topic to discuss. But (a bit like Google's "don't be evil") when you scratch the surface of the subject there's a quite different story which reveals the article as a bit of a propaganda piece (whether or not unwittingly).

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