> They never wanted to address in the cases where torture would likely work (for a current example - a passcode to unlock a iPhone that you could check on the spot), would you still be morally opposed?
The good old car keys fallacy of torture: "if someone threatened to beat me with an iron bar unless I handed over my car keys, I'd give them my car keys"
Replace with: "someone threatens to beat you with an iron bar unless you give up the passcode to the strong-room protecting your family, so they can murder them". You still going to do it?
You've implicitly assigned a low value to the information you're willing to torture someone for, and ensured the information is easy to verify, therefore, obviously someone will just give up the information.
But why would you so desperately need low-value information in the first place? Why would specific torture be needed, but "mild inconvenience" would not work - given as how the information is apparently of no serious value to the person holding it. And of course, if it's high-value information you run into other problems like how beyond a certain point the person can't actually remember their name, or recall any complex information, so the idea you could "beat a passcode out of them" is highly questionable.
Proven by the practical methods by which Osama bin Laden was located by the CIA: the CIA fed a story to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty that they successfully tortured it out of a prisoner. They definitely tortured the prisoner...but all the useful information was obtained using regular interrogation techniques before they water-boarded him 100+ times.
Providing of course the secondary problem: if torture - in this case water-boarding - worked, why did 100+ efforts fail to yield any better information then what they already had?
> Replace with: "someone threatens to beat you with an iron bar unless you give up the passcode to the strong-room protecting your family, so they can murder them". You still going to do it?
Actually replace with someone is asking you and then ripping out your fingernails one by one when you hesitate or give the wrong answer. What are the chances that you are able to resist, even if you obviously want to?
Some percentage of people, maybe even a large percentage are going to enter a point where the only focus will be on getting the pain to stop, no matter the consequences afterward.
Not some other person who you can construct to be weak to torture. What would you do in that situation?
Do you believe you'll somehow lose your mind so completely to pain that you'll somehow accurately understand and answer the question, yet be unaware of the consequences?
What about the Jack Bauer 24 situation.
A terrorist attack is ongoing, like 9/11 or the Boston Bombing. You have one of the perpetrators of the attack in custody. You need to interrogate him and get information on other conspirators so that the terrorist attack ends your time table and not the plotters
You're going to be beaten with an iron bar until you tell your torturer the passcode to access the strong-room/safe/GPS coordinates of your family. If you give them the information, they will kill them all.
Are you going to do it?
That's the whole point: because you don't prioritize their objectives, you don't evaluate whether you think it would work in terms relevant to you. You don't believe in terrorist attacks, therefore you wouldn't protect a terrorist attack. But a terrorist would. The 9/11 hijackers embarked on their mission already expecting to die.
The good old car keys fallacy of torture: "if someone threatened to beat me with an iron bar unless I handed over my car keys, I'd give them my car keys"
Replace with: "someone threatens to beat you with an iron bar unless you give up the passcode to the strong-room protecting your family, so they can murder them". You still going to do it?
You've implicitly assigned a low value to the information you're willing to torture someone for, and ensured the information is easy to verify, therefore, obviously someone will just give up the information.
But why would you so desperately need low-value information in the first place? Why would specific torture be needed, but "mild inconvenience" would not work - given as how the information is apparently of no serious value to the person holding it. And of course, if it's high-value information you run into other problems like how beyond a certain point the person can't actually remember their name, or recall any complex information, so the idea you could "beat a passcode out of them" is highly questionable.
Proven by the practical methods by which Osama bin Laden was located by the CIA: the CIA fed a story to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty that they successfully tortured it out of a prisoner. They definitely tortured the prisoner...but all the useful information was obtained using regular interrogation techniques before they water-boarded him 100+ times.
Providing of course the secondary problem: if torture - in this case water-boarding - worked, why did 100+ efforts fail to yield any better information then what they already had?