Safe spaces for everyone?

[inthesomeday]

Okay, here's a concrete example.
https://twitter.com/samharrisorg/status/838175302505263105?lang=en Here is Sam Harris declaring that he is a "moderate", denouncing "both ends of the political spectrum." Now, understand that Harris' writing lends credence to a variety of nutty far-right concepts such as a Muslim invasion (or "Muslimization") of Europe, there is an article on his website entitled "in defense of torture," and has written extensively in support of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.

I honestly can't even imagine what a real MODERATE would look like. Somebody who truly had no inclination towards leftism or rightism. How would that work? In the US at least it's nearly impossible to imagine that. I guess we have social democrats but even those guys will say some horrible things about poor people if you question them about it long enough.

 

[Lexicus]

*Is a social democrat*

 

[inthesomeday]

*Is a social democrat*

Why did Donald Trump win the electoral vote?

 

[Lexicus]

Uh...because the electoral vote was designed to produce political outcomes that favored white supremacy, manifested at the time as the Slave Power?

 

[inthesomeday]

Good answer

 

[Ryika]

there is an article on his website entitled "in defense of torture,"

And did you ever read it, or did somebody just tell you the headline at which point you decided that it must be a terrible, immoral article just like you expect people to do here?

Because I did read it, and I actually think it's a great summary of the ethics involved in political torture.

I mean, what's your position on the idea of torturing a terrorist who has information that could prevent a dirty bomb from going off? Are you against it? Would you let millions of people die, just so you can tell yourself that the truth of "Torture is bad, mkay." is universal, without having to think about any morally grey territory? Most people would be okay with torturing a member of ISIS who knows the code that's required to refuse that damn bomb.

So where to draw the line? Is it okay to torture people who may or may not know that information? What about people who may or may not know important information that could lead to a swift and clear victory against a terror organization that would otherwise destroy people's lives over decades? There are some arguments for it. Many against it. Does the fact that we might save so many people equalize the disparity?

So many interesting questions to think about, and we still have no definitive answers to those questions. Even 11 years after he wrote that article.

 

[Lexicus]

And did you ever read it,

Yes, years ago...

So many interesting questions to think about, and we still have no definitive answers to those questions. Even 11 years after he wrote that article.

Everyone with a clue knows that in addition to being a hideous crime, torture doesn't work and so Harris' "interesting questions" are at best asinine and dangerous and at worst disgusting apologia for the criminals who ordered torture during the Bush administration.

 

[Ryika]

Everyone with a clue knows that in addition to being a hideous crime, torture doesn't work and so Harris' "interesting questions" are at best asinine and dangerous and at worst disgusting apologia for the criminals who ordered torture during the Bush administration.

I think you're not only mischaracterizing his position, you're completely misunderstanding his argument about torture during the Iraq war. His argument is that torture is not any more "evil" than dropping bombs or sending troops, and that doing one while pretending the other thing is the worst in the world, is hypocritical. He says that, if we're waging war, we should consider whether torture is a viable tool to make that war last shorter, and that just closing ones eyes to the potentials of torture, is pretending to take the high ground, when in reality, it creates more suffering overall.

Here's what he had to say about this, directly from the article:

Opponents of torture will be quick to argue that confessions elicited by torture are notoriously unreliable. Given the foregoing, however, this objection seems to lack its usual force. Make these confessions as unreliable as you like—the chance that our interests will be advanced in any instance of torture need only equal the chance of such occasioned by the dropping of a single bomb. What was the chance that the dropping of bomb number 117 on Kandahar would effect the demise of Al Qaeda? It had to be pretty slim. Enter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: our most valuable capture in our war on terror. Here is a character who actually seems to have stepped out of a philosopher’s thought experiment. U.S. officials now believe that his was the hand that decapitated the Wall Street Journalreporter Daniel Pearl. Whether or not this is true, his membership in Al Qaeda more or less rules out his “innocence” in any important sense, and his rank in the organization suggests that his knowledge of planned atrocities must be extensive. The bomb has been ticking ever since September 11th, 2001. Given the damage we were willing to cause to the bodies and minds of innocent children in Afghanistan and Iraq, our disavowal of torture in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed seems perverse. If there is even one chance in a million that he will tell us something under torture that will lead to the further dismantling of Al Qaeda, it seems that we should use every means at our disposal to get him talking. (In fact, The New York Times has reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured in a procedure known as “water-boarding,” despite our official disavowal of this practice.)

Which way should the balance swing? Assuming that we want to maintain a coherent ethical position on these matters, this appears to be a circumstance of forced choice: if we are willing to drop bombs, or even risk that rifle rounds might go astray, we should be willing to torture a certain class of criminal suspects and military prisoners; if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.

But just for perspective: You're okay with the use of potentially lethal force against those who have been labeled as a Nazi, but not okay with torturing terrorists in hopes of getting important information. Great moral compass.

 

[Lexicus]

You're okay with the use of potentially lethal force against those who have been labeled as a Nazi, but not okay with torturing terrorists in hopes of getting important information. Great moral compass.

Yeah, I mean you say this sarcastically but I actually think these are great morals, part of the reason I think it's acceptable to use potentially lethal force against Nazis is they love torturing people

if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.

Yeah - and Harris does support the waging of modern war, so what does this tell you?

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, I mean you say this sarcastically but I actually think these are great morals, part of the reason I think it's acceptable to use potentially lethal force against Nazis is they love torturing people

And of course you would only be okay with a person being punched if it is clear that the person who is called a Nazi is actually a Nazi, and not just a person who disagrees with you, right? Which is why of course you condemn Antifa violence against protesters of-- ...oh wait, no you don't.

Yeah - and Harris does support the waging of modern war, so what does this tell you?

What kind of a void statement is that? Almost every person supports "waging of modern war", if the circumstances require it to prevent a greater evil. The difficulty is to assess when "the circumstances require it to prevent a greater evil", and when it's just a war for a country's own gain disguised as benevolent interventionalism. Harris is very clear about his opinion that the only justification for war is if the alternative is worse. You can argue that he's drawing the line at the wrong position, but you've done nothing to discredit his moral position. When it comes to the Iraq war in particular, Harris never spoke out in support of it, and I am pretty sure his position that his position was and still is that the outcome was a disaster.

And of course you've also moved the goal post that him making an argument that torture may have a place in some fringe cases is a bad thing in itself.

 

[Lexicus]

Which is why of course you condemn Antifa violence against protesters of-- ...oh wait, no you don't.

I'm on record calling some of Antifa's tactics counteproductive and condemning instances of Antifa violence that I thought were stupid, including when they mistakenly attacked a Syrian immigrant for "looking like a fascist." Your obsession with Antifa is not my problem.

What kind of a void statement is that?

It's simple. Harris is setting up an (in my view, fatally flawed, but we'll leave that aside for now) moral equation that if you support the war on terror generally, you must support torture as well. This would be all well and good if it were being used as a polemic tool to attack the war on terror itself; but Sam Harris is not doing that. His essay makes it clear that he feels his support for the war on terror necessitates his support for torture.

Let's examine some other bits from Harris' essay:

I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror. In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, this is not a comfortable position to have publicly adopted. There is no question that Abu Ghraib was a travesty, and there is no question that it has done our country lasting harm. Indeed, the Abu Ghraib scandal may be one of the costliest foreign policy blunders to occur in the last century, given the degree to which it simultaneously inflamed the Muslim world and eroded the sympathies of our democratic allies.

Notice how Abu Ghraib is described - it wasn't a "travesty" because of the flagrantly criminal and disgusting behavior that actually went on there - it was a travesty because it set back the fundamentally just cause of the US and its allies! Harris is obviously far more concerned with harm to the US that resulted from Abu Ghraib, than harm to the people who were actually imprisoned there. To me that is a reprehensible position but it is in keeping with Harris' writing on a variety of subjects.

While we hold the moral high ground in our war on terror, we appear to hold it less and less.

Keep in mind, this article was written in 2005. It is impossible to interpret this sentence as anything other than an expression of support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And those wars had already killed far more people than 9/11 did, so to say that we had the moral high ground in the war on terror would entail essentially arguing that the lives of the people we killed in those places held less moral weight - a lot less - than the lives of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Harris expressed similar sentiments in his public exchange with Noam Chomsky, in which he insisted that the missile strike on Al-Shifa was morally preferable to 9/11 despite the fact that the Al-Shifa strike resulted in the deaths of, according to the best estimates, approximately twenty times more people than the 9/11 attacks.

The rest of his essay is largely irrelevant and misguided because he doesn't understand that everyone knows torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence information and the only reason anyone ever tortures anyone is to terrorize, or for sadistic pleasure. That is why people with a clue (and/or a shred of conscience) oppose torture categorically.

 

[Ryika]

I'm on record calling some of Antifa's tactics counteproductive and condemning instances of Antifa violence that I thought were stupid, including when they mistakenly attacked a Syrian immigrant for "looking like a fascist." Your obsession with Antifa is not my problem.

This is hilarious, given that later you accuse Harris with this:

Notice how Abu Ghraib is described - it wasn't a "travesty" because of the flagrantly criminal and disgusting behavior that actually went on there - it was a travesty because it set back the fundamentally just cause of the US and its allies! Harris is obviously far more concerned with harm to the US that resulted from Abu Ghraib, than harm to the people who were actually imprisoned there. To me that is a reprehensible position but it is in keeping with Harris' writing on a variety of subjects.

Notice how Lexicus describes Antifa's tactics - it's not "bad" because he has a moral objection to it - it's "bad" because it doesn't achieve the goal he wants to achieve! Lexicus is obviously far more concerned with harm to the cause, than harm to the people who were labeled as Nazis and then physically assaulted. To me that is a reprehensible position, but it's what one has to expect from him, isn't it?

And the funny thing is, when I say this about you, it is true, when you say it about Harris is just nonsense.

It's simple. Harris is setting up an (in my view, fatally flawed, but we'll leave that aside for now) moral equation that if you support the war on terror generally, you must support torture as well. This would be all well and good if it were being used as a polemic tool to attack the war on terror itself; but Sam Harris is not doing that. His essay makes it clear that he feels his support for the war on terror necessitates his support for torture.

Which is perfectly fine if he thinks the war on terror is the lesser of two evils and torture makes it an overall even lesser evil. His thinking is based on diminishing the overall suffering that happens. Again, you can disagree with his assessment of the situation, but claiming that it makes him fundamentally immoral? That's just nonsense.

The rest of his essay is largely irrelevant and misguided because he doesn't understand that everyone knows torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence information and the only reason anyone ever tortures anyone is to terrorize, or for sadistic pleasure. That is why people with a clue (and/or a shred of conscience) oppose torture categorically.

I already quoted Harris' argument against this in a post above. Torture does not have to be "reliable" for it to be worth a consideration, it just has to work "sometimes", which it does, to have a discussion about whether it works "often enough" . I'm not even really on Harris' side on this, but it's very clear that you're just ignoring his argument with this "Everybody knows it doesn't work reliably!", when Harris already acknowledges that, and gives his position on why he things it's still a net-positive.

I mean again, the obvious example of a dirty bomb. If you have to torture 10.000 people to get the information that saves the lives of 4.000.000 from one of them, is that still worth it?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Opponents of torture will be quick to argue that confessions elicited by torture are notoriously unreliable. Given the foregoing, however, this objection seems to lack its usual force. Make these confessions as unreliable as you like—the chance that our interests will be advanced in any instance of torture need only equal the chance of such occasioned by the dropping of a single bomb. What was the chance that the dropping of bomb number 117 on Kandahar would effect the demise of Al Qaeda? It had to be pretty slim.

This isn't sound reasoning. Bomb number 117 on Kandahar had whatever level of effect that it it did on the demise of Al Qaeda, but in advance of dropping it, one couldn't know how much that might be. It might be nothing; it might be the bomb that broke Al Qaeda's back. But it was dropped in the hopes that it would contribute something to that cause, and the belief that it at least might. If it is your premise (and he takes it as his premise) that "confessions elicited by torture are notoriously unreliable," then you know in advance of your conducting the torture (what you couldn't know in advance of dropping the bomb) that you will derive nothing valuable from it; you will receive notoriously unreliable information. You've tortured a man. You got nothing valuable from it. And you knew in advance of the torture that that's what you would get from it.

 

[warpus]

I honestly can't even imagine what a real MODERATE would look like. Somebody who truly had no inclination towards leftism or rightism.

You're not describing a moderate. A moderate is not a person who has no political leanings. That wouldn't make much sense.

 

[Lexicus]

And the funny thing is, when I say this about you, it is true, when you say it about Harris is just nonsense.

Not the first time you've flagrantly and totally misrepresented things other people said to try to make a point.

Which is perfectly fine if he thinks the war on terror is the lesser of two evils and torture makes it an overall even lesser evil. His thinking is based on diminishing the overall suffering that happens. Again, you can disagree with his assessment of the situation, but claiming that it makes him fundamentally immoral? That's just nonsense.

It makes him fundamentally immoral, in my view, because my view is that the war on terror is fundamentally immoral and so are its supporters, whatever rationale they use to support it.

it just has to work "sometimes", which it does,

Which it doesn't. I mean, it "works" insofar as its real goal is to terrorize those subject to it, which it accomplishes admirably. But it never works as a method of gaining actionable intelligence.

 

[inthesomeday]

It makes him fundamentally immoral, in my view, because my view is that the war on terror is fundamentally immoral and so are its supporters, whatever rationale they use to support it.

(Inb4 "wow lexicus that's pretty fascist of you")

 

[Ryika]

Which it doesn't. I mean, it "works" insofar as its real goal is to terrorize those subject to it, which it accomplishes admirably. But it never works as a method of gaining actionable intelligence.

So you argue that there is not one person who either being threatened with torture, or as a result of torture, would give true information about something in hopes that they don't have to go through more torture in the future?

(Inb4 "wow lexicus that's pretty fascist of you")

Please respond to the Punching Nazis thread, I really want to see where that's heading.

 

[Lexicus]

So you argue that there is not one person who either being threatened with torture, or as a result of torture, would give true information about something in hopes that they don't have to go through more torture in the future?

You should probably research what "actionable intelligence" means

 

[Ryika]

So that was an attempt at moving the goal post after all. Then I'm glad we both agree that torture works as a method to get information.

 

[inthesomeday]

Please respond to the Punching Nazis thread, I really want to see where that's heading.

I'm not in a place where I can watch the video you linked ATM. In the video I saw the Nazi was clearly yelling at the POC, making gestures at them and invading their personal space. It's possible the video has been cropped to just the punch or something, in which case I think you can probably go find the uncropped video without my help.