Cites
You quote me, yes. I recal writing that. How in the world do you extrapolate from those words to a citation of the idea that merely discussing torture makes it more likely? You'll have to walk me through it slowly; the logic by which such a conclusion is reached escapes me entirely.
, the conventional wisdom that the show 24 made implementation of torture more politically feasible.
Humans react to depictions of actual torture in a manner similar to the thing itself being real. Furthermore, the show was itself a positive argument for torture. So it's no surprise then that it would have that effect; positive arguments -- if accepted, and mere popularity is a form of acceptance -- do tend to cause the things they argue for to be treated as valid.
That's not even remotely similar to what we're doing here.
You admit the essential elements of this charge.
Look; I already once asked you to stop with the dishonest conversational tactics. What, exactly, made you believe that going on from there to link to a comment by me and claim that I said things in it that I absolutely did not say would be acceptable?
Why do you feel it necessary to do this? What is your purpose?
Look, people keep telling you that you are trying to fight the hypo.
Yes, and in doing so all of you thus far are in fact doing exactly that to me. You reject, universally, the notion that secondary consequences are still consequences and then claim that by pointing this out I am the one who is 'fighting the hypothesis.
This is simply untrue. I have come to a conclusion that is not accepted here. I have justified and argued for that position extensively. No one has offered, as yet, anything resembling or approaching the resemblance of a valid reason why all consequences should not be considered as consequences. I have requested that this be done repeatedly -- all such requests have gone unanswered.
I am, based on this, sufficiently justified in asserting that I am the one who is correct and all those with that reaction are the ones in error -- that's how evidence works, after all.
You reject, universally, the notion that secondary consequences are still consequences and then claim that by pointing this out I am the one who is 'fighting the hypothesis.
I reject that the consequences you listed are secondary consequences. They are direct consequences of torture.
For those not familiar with the topic, Torture vs. Dustspecks asks the question: "Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?"
Most of the discussion that I have noted on the topic takes one of two assumptions in deriving their answer to that question: I think of one as the 'linear additive' answer, which says that torture is the proper choice for the utilitarian consequentialist, because a single person can only suffer so much over a fifty year window, as compared to the incomprehensible number of individuals who suffer only minutely; the other I think of as the 'logarithmically additive' answer, which inverts the answer on the grounds that forms of suffering are not equal, and cannot be added as simple 'units'.
What I have never yet seen is something akin to the notion expressed in Ursula K LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you.
I believe that any metric of consequence which takes into account only suffering when making the choice of "torture" vs. "dust specks" misses the point. There are consequences to such a choice that extend beyond the suffering inflicted; moral responsibility, standards of behavior that either choice makes acceptable, and so on. Any solution to the question which ignores these elements in making its decision might be useful in revealing one's views about the nature of cumulative suffering, but beyond that are of no value in making practical decisions -- they cannot be, as 'consequence' extends beyond the mere instantiation of a given choice -- the exact pain inflicted by either scenario -- into the kind of society that such a choice would result in.
While I myself tend towards the 'logarithmic' than the 'linear' additive view of suffering, even if I stipulate the linear additive view, I still cannot agree with the conclusion of torture over the dust speck, for the same reason why I do not condone torture even in the "ticking time bomb" scenario: I cannot accept the culture/society that would permit such a torture to exist. To arbitrarily select out one individual for maximal suffering in order to spare others a negligible amount would require a legal or moral framework that accepted such choices, and this violates the principle of individual self-determination -- a principle I have seen Less Wrong's community spend a great deal of time trying to consider how to incorporate into Friendliness solutions for AGI. We as a society already implement something similar to this, economically: we accept taxing everyone, even according to a graduated scheme. What we do not accept is enslaving 20% of the population to provide for the needs of the State.
If there is a flaw in my reasoning here, please enlighten me.