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Comment by jules | Hacker News Reader

We make cost-benefit analyses all the time. With any military operation the collateral damage has to be weighed against the target. The fact that we freak out over torture yet kill innocent people in collateral damage is completely irrational. On the scale of harm, torture that leaves no physical harm is behind cutting off people's limbs, and that is far behind killing people. Now, torturing innocent people is worse than torturing (most likely) guilty people who (most likely) know something that can save lives. But for some reason mentioning torture reflexively shuts people's brain off yet killing innocent people in collateral damage is fine if subject to a cost-benefit analysis.

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Given that one of the most commonly discussed and unpleasant torture methods involves simulating the experience of drowning, I've often wondered why so few people consider inflicting that exact same experience on many enemy sailors by means of missile or torpedo to be even remotely bending the rules of engagement. Granted, the person that fires the fatal shot probably isn't an incorrigible sadist and may even be at imminent risk of a similar fate themselves, but they're still inflicting that suffering with a similar level of intentionality and certainty to a CIA operative with a bucket...

Hurting enemies while they're fighting, presumably to make them stop being able to hurt you or whomever you're protecting, has always been granted a special moral free pass.

But if there is no fight occurring, and the enemy is subdued and unable to cause harm, then the situation has changed a bit, into a greyer area.

I've also met a guy who has used water-boarding in the field, and he didn't seem like a sadist. He felt pretty bad about using it, though he thought it effective and necessary.

Using war to justify torture is like using murder to justify rape.

Are saying that collateral damage is not justified under any circumstance? Otherwise your witty response does nothing to adress the point that I made. We already do not condone murder nor rape.

War is a barbarism at industrial scale, which humanity, unfortunately, haven't managed to eradicate. There are however certain undertakings to reduce human suffering: bans of certain particularly inhumane or indiscriminating weapons, prohibitions of deliberate targeting of civilians, and yes, elimination of torture.

If you make an effort to reduce suffering it comes as a complete package: people quick to torture are the same people who would use Sarin on civilians. There is simply no middle ground. The concept of innocence doesn't come into play anyway. Wars are mass murders stemming from greater social and political processes; a conscript soldier guarding a fuel depot is not any more "guilty" apriori than his civilian relative.

There is more or less intellectual consensus that wars cause suffering, and attempts are made to reduce the misery. Propagating torture is not serving a good cause here. You essentially argue that a "lesser" crime is acceptable in context of a "greater" crime going on anyway. If one's going to kill the victim might rape her anyway.

That is not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that compared to collateral damage the discussion about torture is completely out of proportion. Of course the concept of innocence comes into play. I'm not talking about war. I'm talking about drone strikes against terrorists which also kill their wives and children vs torturing a terrorist. The drone strikes are an almost unimaginably greater evil, and yet time and time again you have people taking a hard line stance against torture yet are willing to make a cost-benefit analysis in the case of drone strikes or special forces operations.

Note that I am not taking any pro or contra torture position. I'm merely pointing out the moral inconsistency.

Torture is harming with intent. Collateral damage is hurting by neglect. People pay attention to intent when judging.

The intent of e.g. a drone strike is to kill the target. So even in terms of intent that is worse. The thing is that nobody even cares about that: arguments against drone strikes are virtually always about collateral damage of innocent people. Compare and contrast with the discussion about torture where people are not even willing to make a cost benefit analysis.

> The intent of e.g. a drone strike is to kill the target. So even in terms of intent that is worse.

For you and me yes. For people who believe targets are "bad people" worth killing it's noble intent.

Well, lets talk about people who are not like that, but people who think drone strikes are might be okay in certain circumstances. My point is that those are the same people who say that torture is not okay under any circumstance. That is the inconsistency I'm pointing out.

I think in case of drone strikes those people can claim that people (other than target that should in their opinion be killed) are killed by accident.

In case of torture you can't claim that individual you torture is somehow accidentally hurt. Probsbly those people would be fine with torture if they thought hurting the tortured individual is desired outcome.

It's not really an accident though if it's a likely outcome. The point is simply this: on the one hand people accept a substantial probability of killing innocent people and intentionally killing guilty people if the upsides are good enough, but these same people are unwilling to accept mere torture of guilty people no matter the upsides.

Maybe it's something about drones being remote. Torture was shown so many times on tv that it's closer to home. Not many pictures of people blown to bits by invisible thing in the sky.

The question why people are so bad at intuitively weighing harm is a different but interesting question. There have been some studies that suggest that there is an inverse relationship. When asked how much money they would give to save 2 lives people offer less than they do when asked to how much they would give to save 1 life. Not less per life, less total. As the number of lives goes up, what they offer goes down. This may have something to do with abstracting the harm. With torture it's easy to understand what's happening. With a single death it's harder to fathom how much is lost. The thousands that die in traffic each year hardly register.

The incompetence of humans to intuitively make moral judgements is precisely why we should think rationally about morality rather than emotionally.

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