The Harris Formula


It’s nice to be able to sit back and let Mano take on Sam Harris. He’s laid out all the flaws in the standard Harris formula.

  • Invent incredibly contrived scenario in which all that you love and hold dear is imperiled.

  • Make the villain Muslim, especially a “Muslim jihadi”, who are especially dangerous because they look like all other Muslims, except that they are amoral fanatics who will die to kill you.

  • Resolve the scenario with an otherwise morally reprehensible solution that we would not accept in any real-world situation.

  • Sit back, preen a bit about how he is the only person brave enough to contemplate the unthinkable so coolly and objectively.

  • When people point out the absurdity of his excuses and his perniciously vile efforts to justify amoral acts, fall back on accusations that his critics didn’t actually understand what he wrote. He didn’t mean “Muslims”, he really meant “People other than Jerry Seinfeld,” for instance.

  • PROFIT.

He isn’t using reason at all. He’s making appeals to strong emotion (They’re going to murder your daughter!) and bigotry (They’re Muslims, so deranged by their evil religion that they will die for their wicked cause!). His fans accept those premises, and then fall all over themselves to condemn anyone who disagrees with the Harris Formula of wanting to help Muslims kill little girls.

Comments

  1. Chris J says

    It’s like Harris has made a mission of countering one informal statement: “Action X is never justified.” If he can get you to disavow that one absolute statement, he’s scored a victory against you and your argument that “action X isn’t justified in this kind of situation.”

    Dawkins has done the same thing… reducing his critics down into one straw argument, then spending an absurd amount of time pointing out how obviously absurd that absurd argument is.

    It’s the same as when people say oh, so now I can’t say anything anymore in response to being told that a certain thing shouldn’t be said. Link every reasonable statement to an unreasonable one, then beat that unreasonable statement into the ground. Then get all indignant when people keep arguing against you.

  2. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Trying to hide your bigotry, as Harris does, behind stupid and irrelevant hypotheticals, is dishonest and shows a remarkable lack of integrity. Therefore, I also conclude his fanbois suffer from the same lack of honesty and integrity, since they refuse to see the net result of their defense, which is allowing people of Islam to be treated different than everybody else. There are words that describe such results, like prejudice and paranoia.

  3. Reginald Selkirk says

    Invent incredibly contrived scenario in which all that you love and hold dear is imperiled.

    There is some use for extreme thought experiments if one is logic-chopping. For example, Party A says “I hold life to be absolutely sacred, and could never kill anyone.” Party B responds, “Oh yeah? Well what if X,Y,Z? Your moral value against killing is not absolute.” Fine, Party B has made a point about the absoluteness of Party A’s values.

    The flaw comes when, having carried out this exercise, one mistakenly thinks that they have proven more than they have. Party A still places a very high, but not absolute, value against taking human life. And the conditions postulated by Party B are unlikely ever to arise. In Harris’ thought experiments about torture, he also makes the counter-factual assumption that torture actually works. If one holds that torture is successful at extracting reliable information, then one has to accept their share of the burden of guilt for all of the witch hunts and inquisitions throughout history, which were based on that same faulty assumption.

  4. qwints says

    You can’t dismiss these hypotheticals as irrelevant, and you’re giving Harris way too much credit if you think he created the technique. Remember when Scalia pointed to the fictional character of Jack Bauer as defense of torture. Or how the CIA literally re-wrote a major film which portrayed torture as contributing to Bin Laden’s capture. How about when a “civil liberties scholar” treated the “ticking bomb” scenario as justifying torture on CNN in 2003?

    Much bigger names (Dershowitz and Posner) treated the ticking bomb scenario as obvious prior to Harris saying anything about it. For what it’s worth, wikipedia attributes the hypo to a French soldier’s book from 1960.

    It’s kind of silly to attack Harris in particular for re-stating a standard right wing talking point, which seems to have majority support in the US .

    Q: Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?

    Often justified 17%
    Sometimes justified 40%
    Rarely justified 19%
    Never justified 20%
    No opinion 4%

  5. brucegee1962 says

    Reginald, exactly. People like Harris spend prodigious amounts of ink or electrons attempting to get us to accept the premise “It is possible that, under certain extreme and frankly outlandish circumstances, torture might be something I could countenance morally.” Then they go giddily skipping on from that premise to the conclusion “Therefore, we shouldn’t have any problems with governments routinely using torture whenever they feel like it, as long as they use ‘keeping us safe’ as an excuse,” as if there isn’t any logical leap to cover between the two positions.
    Yes, there is.

  6. petesh says

    The trouble with logic of the Harris kind is that there are always unstated premises.

    There is also an implicit appeal to authority (his own) and a refusal to accept evidence that contradicts his stated premises, let alone his conclusion. Behind much of that lies a frankly childish assumption that the world does not in practice have porous boundaries or a grayness at the edge of generalities. This is frequently concealed by complexities of argument within the artificial confines of simplistic definition. Regrettably, Harris is not alone in this.

  7. nomadiq says

    OT just a little bit but Harris’s profiling justifications have gone from bigotry to just plan crazy. I had to re-read the Jerry Seinfeld argument a few times to make sure I was getting it right. Jerry Seinfeld? The tall, semitic looking guy, shouldn’t have to suffer profiling because he is too well know? Do we honestly think any number of middle eastern terrorist groups can’t find a guy amongst their lot that looks surprisingly like Jerry Seinfeld? (N.B. Seinfeld’s mother’s ancestry is from Aleppo, Syria). This is the ‘security’ issue with profiling (bigotry is another): As soon as you make a hole thats easy for someone to get through, that very hole will be attacked. And then to use Jerry Seinfeld as an example? Remarkably stupid.

    So I propose the following for Sam Harris to consider. How many blonde haired, blued eyed people are terrorists? We can certainly speed up the TSA process if all blondes/blues get an immediate pass and, in very real terms, redistribute that last 10% of resources in a better way. I’m blonde and blue eyed. I like this. We never do anything bad. Its just a reality that the only people we fear all have dark hair, olive skin and brown eyes (*cough* *cough* Muslim). And its a waste of resources making the TSA screen people like me and Anders Breivik. __end_of_snark__

  8. karpad says

    “Oh yeah? Well what if X,Y,Z? Your moral value against killing is not absolute.”

    The thing that really irritates me about this is that it doesn’t actually even refute the moral value of the statement, it only establishes that the speaker is a human being with moral failings.

    Take that Harris favorite ticking time bomb scenario: I have this person in front of me who, with their knowledge of the bomb and recalcitrance to speak, has control of the situation and a wicked willingness to harm others. And I, in my anger at their wickedness and fear for the safety of myself or others and desire to gain control of that situation, go about torturing that person.

    Say it somehow works and I save the day, I still gave into my fear and anger and did unspeakable harm to another person. I was not justified in doing so, my moral failings simply had a slightly less negative outcome. It’s not really any better than saying someone is going to beat me in a game of bowling, so I smash his knee with a tire iron and go on to win the bowling match. I’m doing a reprehensible thing to get an outcome I want. That my outcome is something more widely agreed upon as worthwhile doesn’t actually mean I’m behaving morally.

  9. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You can’t dismiss these hypotheticals as irrelevant,

    Since there is emotional twist, and nonsensical premises, they can and will be dismissed.
    If Harris’ hypothetical is to be considered, remove the emotional family connection. Then it is simply mental wanking, without the emotional component. Then, as part of the premises, add that torture is unreliable, or cite the reliability of a one-time torture event (I imagine it is very low). Also mention as a premise that that if the perp is willing to be a martyr, they are likely to lie their head off and allow the terrorist act to occur. So you would be a bad person for nothing.
    Only then, does the hypothetical begin to even come close to reality.

  10. says

    I’ve been writing a post about an excerpt from his new book I recently read. But every time I try to work on the piece, my eyes start glazing over: Harris is one of the most tediously boring and wilfully ignorant writers and thinkers I’ve ever encountered – and that is seriously saying something, my friends. I have managed to draw a pretty good bobblehead of him while procrastinating working on my post, though. So, you know, there’s that.

    Then I realized everything I was thinking and writing seemed oddly familiar to me. It turns out I alrady addressed his same rant a year ago here: http://perrystreetpalace.com/2014/10/09/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-sam-harris/

    *sigh* Apparently that exercise was so utterly mind-numbing I had all but forgotten about it. Maybe I’ll just post my Harris bobblehead (with a link to Mano’s blog) and be done with him.

  11. drken says

    Ah yes, the “ticking time-bomb” theory. As qwints pointed out, It seemed to get a lot of play after 9/11. But, as others pointed out at the time, what constitutes a “ticking time-bomb” or “eminent threat” always gets downgraded over time. Oh sure, there might not be an actual bomb waiting to go off in a major city, but this person knows people planning such a thing. Then it’s just that they know people who would do such a thing. It’s never the fantasy “24” scenario they use to initially justify it.

    In the wise words of Trevor Philips, “Torture is for the torturer, or the guy giving the orders to the torturer… It’s useless as a way of getting information”.

    Torture is a political message that you’re willing to do anything to keep us safe. Say you’re against torture in all circumstances and you’re essentially admitting that you’d let Americans die rather than harm a terrorist. It’s admitting to weakness in the face of danger. It’s frightened people lashing out to make themselves feel safe.

  12. unclefrogy says

    I hate all hypothetical arguments at least when used in political or moral arguments. All of them are so contrived as to lead to one answer alone or one choice, the worst of them are about as realistic as a Popeye cartoon and about as useful. They are nothing less than a cheap way to manipulate others into saying what you want them to say, not in order to convince but to subdue.
    uncle frogy

  13. says

    As I said on Facebook after reading of Harris’ support for thought police and the execution of people for holding certain beliefs- “Where are Richard-fucking-Dawkins and his acolytes with their whines of “thought police” now?!”

  14. says

    qwints @4:

    It’s kind of silly to attack Harris in particular for re-stating a standard right wing talking point, which seems to have majority support in the US .

    Please tell me you’re not saying one shouldn’t criticize Harris’ comments because a lot of people agree with him.

    His comments are reprehensible. They should be criticized.
    And yes, his hypotheticals, which are so divorced from reality that they stand virtually no chance of ever occurring are irrelevant.

  15. says

    Yes, if I had to torture information out of someone to save my child’s life, I would. Yes. Absolutely. Without hesitation. It could even be someone I liked. Yep. I’d torture and kill someone to save my kid. Done deal. Happily admitted.

    And then, I would go to jail for the rest of my life. Deservedly so. Because if it is important enough for me to ruin/end someone’s life over, it damn fucking well should be important enough for me to willingly suffer the consequences of my actions.

    Wait…. you aren’t willing to go to jail for this? Then clearly, it wasn’t so fucking important now, was it? So what business did you have torturing that guy?

  16. F.O. says

    The democratic experiment in Rojava flies in the face of Harris ideas and many of mine.
    https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/evangelos-aretaios/rojava-revolution

    Devout Muslims building a democratic, religiously tolerant community where women are empowered (and often times cover positions of authority and leadership).
    They are fighting against ISIS and even in our anti-ISIS hysteria we barely mention them.

    Fuck, despite having to fight the ISIS directly they are not sliding into the authoritarianism we are told is necessary to face the enemy, they are going the opposite way and building a non-nationalistic, bottom-up democratic system where minorities of other cultures and religions feel like they belong.
    They have female quotas and ethnic quotas.
    Compare to what we are doing.
    Compare to Harris.

    I am not sure I can support anymore that religion breeds authoritarianism, intolerance and oppression of women.
    These people are no atheists, they are practicing Muslims and (while far from perfect) are doing so much better than too many atheists, than our secular societies.

    And few are talking about them: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis
    Turkey is undermining them, US is not helping them (I imagine not to anger Turkey?), EU pretends they do not exist…
    And they are on the front line against ISIS.

    People asking for peace with the Kurds in Turkey have just been bombed: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/12/suspicion-mounts-in-turkey-as-peace-activists-bury-their-dead

    And we are still barely talking about it, those people are fighting for everything we care for and get no support, no press.
    WTF.

  17. qwints says

    @NerdOfRedhead, you’re free to ignore them, but a scary number of people believe those hypotheticals justify torturing people. The US re-elected Bush after the horrors of Abu Ghraib were made public.

    Tony @ 14

    Please tell me you’re not saying one shouldn’t criticize Harris’ comments because a lot of people agree with him.

    No, just that’s it weird to discuss this particular class of hypothetical in the context of taking on Sam Harris rather than in the context of actual torture. Tens of millions of Americans who’ve never heard of Sam Harris think that torturing people to try and stop and a terrorist attack is justified. It’s really off putting to see PZ and Mano attack Harris’s position in the abstract.

  18. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    It’s really off putting to see PZ and Mano attack Harris’s position in the abstract.

    Why? It’s fighting bigotry where bigotry occurs.
    Funny how every time that one asks for evidence torture works, the answer is just like that for polygraph tests. It works, trust me. I don’t trust those who say it works based solely on their own words and handwaving.

  19. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Just after posting #19, I ran across this video, where an ex-cop explains how to have a perfectly true polgygraph test.
    Question everything.

  20. says

    qwints @18:

    No, just that’s it weird to discuss this particular class of hypothetical in the context of taking on Sam Harris rather than in the context of actual torture. Tens of millions of Americans who’ve never heard of Sam Harris think that torturing people to try and stop and a terrorist attack is justified. It’s really off putting to see PZ and Mano attack Harris’s position in the abstract.

    I don’t see what’s weird about criticizing the harmful ideas espoused by a guy who has a platform and followers. He’s been using his platform for years to spread some pretty damn harmful ideas.
    I don’t see this as much different from criticizing Richard Dawkins for making sexist or racist comments.

  21. Lachlan says

    Theorising about the edge cases of morality really isn’t for everyone, especially when you derive so much joy from condemning others as your moral inferiors, and especially when it’s someone that you don’t like who is broaching a sensitive moral topic.

  22. vaiyt says

    @qwints
    That’s who you think are Harris’ intellectual peers? Scalia, CIA propagandists and right-wing authoritarians? And you think that makes him less worthy of criticism?

  23. vaiyt says

    @Lachlan

    Theorising about the edge cases of morality really isn’t for everyone,

    The main problem here is that Harris makes it plenty clear that he’s not poking around the edge cases. His hypotheticals always are followed with analogies to real, very non-edge cases where he wants the same principles to be applied.

  24. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Theorising about the edge cases of morality really isn’t for everyone, e

    This isn’t an edge case. It is a blatant attempt to justify torture by setting up a construct where the required answer is yes, it is OK. No, it is never OK. That is reality.

  25. Artor says

    This was my comment over at Mano’s place:
    Exactly this. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, except there is never any real choice to be made. In that scenario, Sophie is being tortured by fucking Nazis, and they make her choose which of her children will be murdered next. Why would anyone put an iota of trust in Nazi torturers? In the same situation, I would assume the Nazis would force me to make a personally devastating choice, and then do whatever they felt like, probably whatever would cause the greatest anguish.
    In Harris’s ridiculous premise, why would anyone trust the crazed terrorist to keep his word? He wouldn’t plant his doomsday device only to not set it off. If I were to follow his direction, I’d assume he would set off the bomb anyway, and I would have to live with the crime of being a rapist. Fuck that ridiculous noise, and fuck Sam Harris!

  26. Lachlan says

    This isn’t an edge case. It is a blatant attempt to justify torture by setting up a construct where the required answer is yes, it is OK. No, it is never OK. That is reality.

    As far as I can tell, his hypothesis is that torture is sometimes justified, not that it is “OK” in the general sense, and he has demonstrated that, to my satisfaction anyway.

    The main problem here is that Harris makes it plenty clear that he’s not poking around the edge cases. His hypotheticals always are followed with analogies to real, very non-edge cases where he wants the same principles to be applied.

    Which are the non-edge cases? Each of the examples he used seem to me to be very rare, though plausible.

    We all accept that killing another human is sometimes justified. We all accept that murder is wrong. These two things are not in conflict, nor should they be in the case of torture.

    If your position is that torture should simply never happen in the real world, ever, regardless of the situation, then you’re essentially condemning people to die. If you believe that a situation where the torture could save lives is simply impossible, then I can’t agree with you there either.

    If you accept that a total prohibition on torture would result in the loss of some non-zero number of lives, but that the permission of torture to any degree would create a net increase in suffering, which you deem to be worse, then you may have a point. Even in this case, the libellous statements frequently made about Harris around here remain totally unjustified.

  27. consciousness razor says

    Lachlan:

    As far as I can tell, his hypothesis is that torture is sometimes justified, not that it is “OK” in the general sense, and he has demonstrated that, to my satisfaction anyway.

    How was this demonstrated? Quote him or put it in your own words. I think you’re wrong, that he’s done no such thing.

    If your position is that torture should simply never happen in the real world, ever, regardless of the situation, then you’re essentially condemning people to die.

    Nobody is condemning anybody. People do all die. So you have to make it more precise than this, if it’s going to mean anything useful. What exactly are we doing? What should we be doing?

    If you believe that a situation where the torture could save lives is simply impossible, then I can’t agree with you there either.

    It doesn’t need to be impossible that it could save someone’s life. It needs to be justified. Saving a life doesn’t entail that something is justified. We could get rid of every automobile on the planet, and it would save lives. That does not justify getting rid of every automobile on the planet.

    There simply needs to be sufficient reason not to do it. That is what such a justification would look like. If that’s so in every real-world situation, then it is so. Period. There is no requirement for some sort of logical or physical impossibility.

    If you accept that a total prohibition on torture would result in the loss of some non-zero number of lives, but that the permission of torture to any degree would create a net increase in suffering, which you deem to be worse, then you may have a point.

    So, maybe, it hasn’t been demonstrated, contrary to the first claim you made. And of course, it wouldn’t need to have anything to do with accepting an empirical claim that torture actually does save lives. I’m not aware of any actual evidence that this is true, so you have your work cut out for you there. But saving lives is also not the only relevant factor to consider, as I just pointed out above.

    Even in this case, the libellous statements frequently made about Harris around here remain totally unjustified.

    What libel? Quoting his own terrible bullshit is more than enough to do the job, isn’t it?

  28. says

    @#27, Lachlan:

    If your position is that torture should simply never happen in the real world, ever, regardless of the situation, then you’re essentially condemning people to die. If you believe that a situation where the torture could save lives is simply impossible, then I can’t agree with you there either.

    Okay, let’s take your absolutely ridiculous hypothetic at its face value: you have someone who you believe has the information necessary to prevent some sort of attack. Let’s even assume that — even though obviously you can’t actually prove their guilt, because if you could do so you would already know the information necessary to avert the attack — they are actually guilty!

    So, either they can tell you the truth under torture, or they can lie.

    If they tell you the truth, then their plans are foil and they get punished. You’re not going to release them if they’re a terrorist capable of actually setting up a real attack*. That means they get life in prison at best. Probably they get killed. No incentive for them to do this.

    *You may not have noticed this, but the FBI has given out more than 40 warnings of imminent terror threats since 9/11/2001. Not a single one actually materialized. They’ve also had more than 60 (obviously high-profile) arrests of would-be “terrorists” where the contemplated crime was actually an act of “terror”, as opposed to simply ordinary crime framed as “terror”, and in practically every case, the “criminals” were basically led along by the FBI, who provided all the plans, materials, and money involved until they had enough evidence to arrest. Left alone, these people would never have been threats. Actual terrorists who are capable of successfully carrying out a plan are super-rare, and so they aren’t going to be turned loose. (Heck, we don’t even turn innocent people loose.)

    If they lie, though, then at worst (from their perspective), they have delayed you (while you go and act on what they said) and temporarily halted the torture. And if they can keep delaying you with lies until the attack, you will no longer have a reason to torture them — and there’s a good chance they can then use their “lack of knowledge” to demonstrate that they were innocent all along and that you are a criminal. And since you failed to avert the attack, it’s you who will be in trouble, not them.

    Any terrorist in the modern world who was savvy enough to actually carry out a plot would know this in advance and have made up, rehearsed lies ready to feed you.

    Therefore, any information you get from torture should always be presumed to be false.

    Therefore, torture should automatically be presumed to be useless, and people who attempt to justify it by hypotheticals are immoral, evil people who ought to be shunned.

  29. says

    We can play this game with any scenario, really.

    My kids are hungry. But there is no food available. And no refrigeration units. However, Harris happens to be sitting in the next room.

    So it’s like, totally cool for me to go over, chain him to the radiator, and start cutting bits off and cooking them to feed my kids. Have to leave him alive, cause otherwise the meat would spoil.

    That’s cool, right?

    And since that it totally cool, we shouldn’t arrest any murderers.

  30. consciousness razor says

    Have to leave him alive, cause otherwise the meat would spoil.

    That’s cool, right?

    Depends on how fast all of you eat, really. His wounds could become infected pretty quickly.

    But sure, it saves lives, therefore it’s obviously okay.

    Not everybody’s life, but who gives a fuck about saving literally every life? ….Wait. No, it’s really more about the quality of life, not simply being alive…. unless they’re people you hate or if they look tasty. Hmm, that doesn’t work either.

    Fuck, sure, whatever, it’s cool. Harris has demonstrated it, maybe, probably well enough for me to be satisfied with torture perhaps, because really it’s no big deal one way or the other. We’re just bullshitting here, and it makes no difference to any actual people. Right?

    And it’s not at all libelous or dishonest, to say that he did demonstrate it when actually he didn’t. That’s only after the phrase “Simon says…”, and it has to be something bad that Harris actually wrote, which he wanted to say but didn’t want to say but did say and said he didn’t. That’s clear enough, right? Those are some good ground rules. We should starting making public policy like this, right away.

  31. consciousness razor says

    We should starting making public policy like this, right away.

    Or we should start. Either way, it’s as coherent as everything else.

  32. laurentweppe says

    The trouble with logic of the Harris kind is that there are always unstated premises.

    The first of which being “I AM a peerless intellectual therefore anyone who disagree with me is a cognitively limited nincompoop who must be browbeaten into submission for the Greater Good

    ***

    Where are Richard-fucking-Dawkins and his acolytes with their whines of “thought police” now?!

    Dawkin’s & co school thoughts regarding thought police summarized:
    Thought police is bad when I’m at risk of being it’s prey.
    Thought police is great when it’s people I don’t like who are targeted.

  33. unclefrogy says

    ghee whiz when when “El Jefe” is around he takes the entertainment away.
    I understand it is your judgement and your site. I just kind of enjoy watching and reading the exchanges. Everyone of the stupid statements batted down numerous times until they stop. Must be the mood I’m in wanting trouble of some kind. Though the comments do eventually get down to the bottom of the question pretty well in the threads with some obstinately ignorant commenter go charging off into irrelevancy.
    uncle frogy

  34. says

    I left this at Mano’s place (and have edited it a little; Grud knows if it’s any more coherent):

    It’s worth noting that while Harris constructs baroque hypothetical horror-shows to defend torture and attempts oh-so-cleverly to corner people into admitting they’d engage in it personally, the US government’s actual torturers (active since at least 2001 and very likely for decades before) require no cartoonish supervillainy as justification. In Camp X-Ray and countless other nameless black prisons, alleged evildoers and enemy combatants experience “enhanced interrogation” as a matter of course if it’s believed they have pertinent information (hell, it’s a major plot point of marketed-as-true-story Zero Dark Thirty and numerous espionage fictions that such treatment is vital for counter-terror operations) or often simply as punishment. Meanwhile, at Abu Ghraib (to name perhaps the most infamous venue), prisoners were apparently tortured and humiliated for the amusement of their guards with little excuse, however flimsy, regarding information they might have had.

    There is absolutely no reason for Harris to construct elaborate follies to justify (or insist on compliance with) hypothetical acts of torture while actual people are actually being tortured with far less justification than “imminent nuclear holocaust”. Why not turn his apparently considerable intellect to defending the Pentagon’s actually considerable infrastructure of torture, including but not limited to black sites, extraordinary renditions, extra-legal killings and enhanced interrogations, instead of indulging in third-act action-movie tropes?

    Additionally, I find it odd for any vocal non-religious activist of Harris’ general type to be in favour of torture. If the infinite agony of Hell is too extreme to accept as a just punishment for non-compliance with dogma but temporary agony as punishment for non-compliance with an interrogator is justifiable, I have to wonder where the cutoff point between “some” and “infinity” is. How much torture is too much torture for Harris? Would he draw the line at torturing a child if the child knew where the bombs were? Would he draw the line at personally torturing someone he loved if it were the only way to save the world? Would he finally stop indulging in infantile fantasies if I threatened to have a komodo dragon eat him alive from the feet up? What if the komodo dragon was starving to death and the only way to save the world was for the dragon (I call her “Kapak”) to eat Sam Harris so as to gain sufficient strength to pull Batman to safety so he could defuse the bomb?

  35. Lachlan says

    razor @ 31

    Saving a life doesn’t entail that something is justified. We could get rid of every automobile on the planet, and it would save lives. That does not justify getting rid of every automobile on the planet.

    Actually that would kill a great many people through starvation. Anyway, of course I agree that there are some accounts and balances to be done. My suggestion is that this accounting doesn’t always come out against torture.

    The Vicar @ 29

    I offered no such hypothetical, nor does every realistic hypothetical have those properties (desire to carry out a cosmic plan, no fear of death, etc.), so we can scratch most of that. I prefer the scenario, which I believe Harris himself gave, about someone who’s stolen a car without realising that there’s an infant in the back. We saw them steal the car on CCTV. They didn’t know about the child until later caught and informed at the police station. They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt. It’s a hot day, the child will die soon if they can’t obtain this information. Is this situation absurdly contrived or unrealistic? Not even close. And if you still wouldn’t condone any kind of coercive information extraction techniques (read: torture), then I’m not sure what to say to you. That’s almost certainly a dead child that needn’t be so.

    In my opinion, murder is a worse crime than torture. More specifically, there are forms of torture which could serve their purpose (extracting information) which are not as bad as murder, though I could imagine forms of torture which are in fact worse than murder. We (as a society) have managed to agree that sometimes killing is justified. This agreement has not corrupted our moral views on murder in the slightest. We look at every scenario of justifiable homicide, and decide whether it is in fact justified, and if not, charge the accused with murder. What makes torture different? So different that even thinking about it hypothetically or speaking about it, other than to say it is never justified, makes you a persona non grata? I’ll hazard a guess: politics, not reason.

  36. Penny L says

    Interesting how few people are actually quoting Harris’ argument, or are focusing on the wrong hypothetical. Harris’ point is to juxtapose torture with collateral damage (a topic I’ve been arguing about on another thread).

    Rather, it seems obvious that the misapplication of torture should be far less troubling to us than collateral damage: there are, after all, no infants interned at Guantanamo Bay. Torture need not even impose a significant risk of death or permanent injury on its victims; while the collaterally damaged are, almost by definition, crippled or killed.

    He then puts together another hypothetical:

    To learn that one’s grandfather flew a bombing mission over Dresden in the Second World War is one thing; to hear that he killed five little girls and their mother with a shovel is another. We can be sure that he would have killed many more women and girls by dropping bombs from pristine heights, and they are likely to have died equally horrible deaths, but his culpability would not appear the same.

    Now consider his final sentence:

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

    He’s making the point that modern war and collateral damage affects far more people on the battlefield than does torture, and that being killed or maimed in a bombing is much worse than, for example, being waterboarded where the prisoner is unlikely to be physically harmed.

    I think he’s wrong but for much different reasons that most of the commenters – control. Events on the battlefield are out of the control of either side most of the time. It is a chaotic situation and perfect information is impossible to come by. That is why there will always be innocent civilians killed or maimed, bombs don’t discriminate.

    But a prisoner has been taken off the battlefield and is under the control of one side. They are no longer a threat, and while they can and should be interrogated, causing further deliberate harm to a person completely under your control is immoral.

    And I too find the vitriol against Harris a little off-putting (bigot?). He’s begging for his mind to be changed on this subject:

    I hope my case for torture is wrong, as I would be much happier standing side by side with all the good people who oppose torture categorically. I invite any reader who discovers a problem with my argument to point it out to me in the comment section of this blog. I would be sincerely grateful to have my mind changed on this subject.

  37. dianne says

    To learn that one’s grandfather flew a bombing mission over Dresden in the Second World War is one thing; to hear that he killed five little girls and their mother with a shovel is another.

    No, it’s not. Not really. At least, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to conclude from the example. The only way that I can see the bombing being any “better” is that if my grandfather were the bomber at least he was, on some level, forced to do it. OTOH, Harris doesn’t say anything about why he killed the girls and their mother with a shovel, so it’s not clear to me what one is supposed to conclude. That it’s better to be descended from a murderer who kept his hands clean than from one who got blood on them literally?

  38. says

    Tony

    “Where are Richard-fucking-Dawkins and his acolytes with their whines of “thought police” now?!”

    shows we’Re not thinking big enough.
    “That’s sexist, you shouldn’t say that!” obviously makes you the Thought Police™ and you are wrong
    But “if you think that we will kill you” makes you the Thought Execution Commite™ and a Great Philosopher™

    Lachlan

    We all accept that killing another human is sometimes justified. We all accept that murder is wrong. These two things are not in conflict, nor should they be in the case of torture.

    If your position is that torture should simply never happen in the real world, ever, regardless of the situation, then you’re essentially condemning people to die. If you believe that a situation where the torture could save lives is simply impossible, then I can’t agree with you there either.

    Bullshit. You’re equating two things that are not the same. Killing people can be justified because by killing the attacker you prevent others from being killed. It works because corpses cannot pull triggers.
    Torture is proven to NOT WORK. You do not gain anything by torturing the suspect. No matter how much you wish for it, you do not become the great hero who saves lives. You just become a torturer.
    In order for “torture can sometimes be justified” to be even up on the table you’D have to demonstrate that:
    A) torture reliably saves the lives of innocent people
    B) torture doesn’t hurt innocent people.
    C) you can reliably identify the cases where innocent lives will be saved

    We saw them steal the car on CCTV. They didn’t know about the child until later caught and informed at the police station. They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt. It’s a hot day, the child will die soon if they can’t obtain this information. Is this situation absurdly contrived or unrealistic? Not even close. And if you still wouldn’t condone any kind of coercive information extraction techniques (read: torture), then I’m not sure what to say to you. That’s almost certainly a dead child that needn’t be so.

    What is it with Harris apparent delight in contriving “thought experiments” where small children die agonizing deaths?
    Yes, this is fucking unrealistic.
    1.) Your scenario already has evidence for the crime built in. That’S the problem when you want to avoid the “what if you got the wrong people” objection. Your criminals have no incentive to lie.
    2.) OBviously the police caught them. Where? You got all this police who apparently caught the thieves close to the car and all they can think about is “torture them”? Why close to the car? because if there’s still time to save the child, they can’t have gotten far. Your time is ticking. Torture isn’t quick. You’re the one who’s condemming
    the child to death because you’re wasting your time with a method that’s been proven to be futile instead of being out there looking for the car.
    So, yes, the scenario is absurd in the real world. Of course it makes total sense if you believe that Holly wood is real…

    So different that even thinking about it hypothetically or speaking about it, other than to say it is never justified, makes you a persona non grata? I’ll hazard a guess: politics, not reason.

    Wrong, reason and solid scientific evidence.
    Hank Says

    How much torture is too much torture for Harris? Would he draw the line at torturing a child if the child knew where the bombs were?

    Would he torture the child because their parent who knows where the bomb is is watching via Skype?

  39. dianne says

    We saw them steal the car on CCTV. They didn’t know about the child until later caught and informed at the police station. They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt. It’s a hot day, the child will die soon if they can’t obtain this information.

    That’s an easy one. The police offer a bargain by which they charge them with a lesser crime, possibly one that will result in only community service, in exchange for their saying where they dumped the car and point out that if the child dies they’re going to likely be in deep trouble and going to prison for a very long time because their lack of cooperation will seem extremely callous to a jury. The police will have the location of the car quicker than they could even fill the bottle for the waterboarding, no torture necessary. If, OTOH, they go through with torturing the suspect they risk wasting time as the suspect says whatever they think will make the torture stop, true or not, and risk the conviction as the jury may frown on the police’s technique and refuse to convict given what the suspect went through.

  40. consciousness razor says

    Actually that would kill a great many people through starvation.

    No, it wouldn’t. I get to make up anything I want about my own hypothetical word problem. Remember? It would in fact save people’s lives, because they won’t be killed in automobile accidents. That’s not something you get to dispute as a reasonable and informed person, unlike the case of torture saving lives, because the data on that has been in for a very long time.

    We will of course have a need to transport goods like food, and automobiles are not the only form of transport ever invented. Hence, it would not result in starvation, because by getting rid of automobiles it is not therefore stipulated that we would be so stupid as to fail to find some way or another of doing the things we use automobiles for.

    So if they’re not necessary, why do we still use them, if we could save lives by not using them? Because “it could save lives” is not a sufficient justification for whatever random thing that pops into your head. Actual moral philosophy that people should take seriously requires more work than that.

    Anyway, of course I agree that there are some accounts and balances to be done. My suggestion is that this accounting doesn’t always come out against torture.

    Who cares what you suggest? Point to some sort of reason and evidence that could conceivably be persuasive to somebody that this is correct, or don’t bother sharing your idle musings about torture with us. I’m a little on the fence about it, but I’m tempted to say you’re obliged to not share your idle musings about torture. So it’s less like “don’t bother” and more like “shut the fuck up.” This is not good for us. You’re free to speak, but if it’s not going to be worthwhile, you should at least try to avoid being so fucking awful.

    I prefer the scenario, which I believe Harris himself gave,

    Oh, well, you prefer it…. Well, then. That helps a lot.

    about someone who’s stolen a car without realising that there’s an infant in the back. We saw them steal the car on CCTV. They didn’t know about the child until later caught and informed at the police station. They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt. It’s a hot day, the child will die soon if they can’t obtain this information. Is this situation absurdly contrived or unrealistic? Not even close. And if you still wouldn’t condone any kind of coercive information extraction techniques (read: torture), then I’m not sure what to say to you. That’s almost certainly a dead child that needn’t be so.

    Why can’t you say to the person “you will not only be charged with theft but also murder” (or appropriate charges as the case may be)? This tends to get a person’s attention and cooperation, no torture required. Why does it not occur to you to even mention it? They simply “refuse,” as if that’s an adequate description of every reasonable attempt short of torturing them.

    Facing a much harsher prison sentence (one this person should justifiably be charged with) is just one example of the kinds of consequences people care about, other than “I’m going to be tortured in 5 minutes if I don’t give in.” There’s nothing almost certain about it here — there is much much more about this actual human being, along with the actual situation they and police are in, that you haven’t even attempted to establish. Sometimes you don’t even need any real cooperation, because you can get enough information out of people without that. It’s almost like you’ve already assumed they only have that one button, as this evil cartoon character in your mind, so it must be pushed or else. Indeed, it’s not almost like that — it is that. Why do you think you prefer this?

    If you’re going to hold someone responsible for the death of that child, who is responsible? Who did something wrong, assuming the police (however unrealistic this is in the US ) weren’t a bunch of torturing fuckers and attempted to do their actually legitimate jobs of enforcing justice?

    Is it true that the police were wrong to not torture the person, because they’re somehow to some degree responsible for the child’s death?

    If so, how the fuck do you make any sense out of that? The person was utterly uncooperative, so it’s the police’s fault, because somehow beating the shit out of them would make the person sensible? Is that how humans work? They’re like my old TV, which just needs a good whack sometimes to start working properly again? (Of course, it doesn’t even work for the TV….)

    If not, what exactly do you think you’re saying when you say “they should have tortured the suspect”? Are they supposed to believe it will work? If they don’t, then what? What crime have the police committed, by not committing torture — murder? Or should the law not recognize those people are responsible, even though you think in fact they are responsible? What the fuck should anybody at all do, at any time, if they take themselves to agree with you that some kind of torture is maybe sometimes okay? How the fuck are we supposed to tell what that means or what’s important about that position?

  41. dianne says

    How about this scenario: I’m traveling in Iraq. Suddenly “special forces” come and kidnap my guide who I happen to know is an apolitical type who has no connection to ISIS, al Qaeda, or any other organization classifiable as “terrorist”. Because I’m a US-American, the special forces leave behind a soldier to get me back to some place they approve of. Am I justified in grabbing his gun and shooting him in the kneecaps, then stepping on his legs until he tells me where they took my guide? I’d be doing it to save an innocent person from imprisonment, torture, and likely death.

  42. Lachlan says

    razor @ 41

    If not, what exactly do you think you’re saying when you say “they should have tortured the suspect”?

    Actually I never made the claim that “they should have tortured the subject”, and that the police should be culpable for not doing so. Straw, straw, as far as the eye can see. I claimed that in that instance, (obviously with all verbal avenues exhausted), the use of torture would be justified. You’ve failed to tell me how it isn’t, other than to make the ingenious suggestion that they try verbal threats. Threats frequently don’t work, and time in this scenario is in extremely short supply. So as far as I’m concerned, that example remains valid, and refutes the idea that torture is never justified.

  43. dianne says

    Threats frequently don’t work, and time in this scenario is in extremely short supply.

    Threats don’t always work, but as Giliell points out, torture pretty much never works. Unless you can provide some evidence that it does. Otherwise, you are, at best, proposing to waste time in a scenario where you have already stated that time is short.

  44. laurentweppe says

    Would he torture the child because their parent who knows where the bomb is is watching via Skype?

    Now that you mention it, I’m starting to wonder if Tom Kratman isn’t Harris’ pen name.

  45. dianne says

    I think WithinThisMind’s analysis at 16 is a good one. So I’d like to ask anyone willing to defend the use of torture in whatever scenario to add this to their scenario: If you use torture you will be able to stop whatever it is that was going to happen (the bomb going off, the child dying, your car keys from being lost for another 5 minutes–whatever scenario you like). However, afterwards you will NOT be greeted as the triumphant hero. You will be tried for crimes against humanity or similar and imprisoned for it. Are you still willing to use torture? I don’t care whether you think that you should or should not be punished in this scenario. It’s just part of the scenario that you WILL be, fair or not. Do you still do it?

  46. says

    dianne

    If, OTOH, they go through with torturing the suspect they risk wasting time as the suspect says whatever they think will make the torture stop, true or not, and risk the conviction as the jury may frown on the police’s technique and refuse to convict given what the suspect went through.

    IIRC, people used to confess that they fucked thed evil and rode on broomsticks…
    I mean, even if we stay within Harris “totally realistic scenario”: How do you know the thieves actually know whwer the car is? How can you tell if “I don’tk now!” is just a lie to cover their ass (apart from the fact that you got that solid CCTV video evidence which makes denial futile…) so you break a few more bones or the truth because they got totally lost or because they handed it over to somebody else?

    Lachlan

    . I claimed that in that instance, (obviously with all verbal avenues exhausted), the use of torture would be justified.

    You have failed to show any evidence that torturing them would indeed be more effective than playing a round of MOnopoly or baking cookies or doing nothing.

  47. says

    Torture Justification Scenarios 101 – Child Endangerment (Variant #4475):

    We saw them steal the car on CCTV. They didn’t know about the child until later caught and informed at the police station. They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt. It’s a hot day, the child will die soon if they can’t obtain this information.

    They’re on tape stealing the car? Then you don’t need threats. Just show them the tape and tell them what kind of sentence they can expect for vehicle theft, child endangerment and negligent homicide. If they’re not singing (or if their lawyer isn’t ready to deal) by the time you finish the word “homicide”, either they’re implausibly stupid or you’re not very good at explaining things.

    I’m baffled as to what part of this ludicrous scenario could possibly justify torture.

  48. dianne says

    I’m baffled as to what part of this ludicrous scenario could possibly justify torture.

    There’s a quote in one of Bujold’s novels where a character says something like, “People fall in love with the idea of ‘making the tough decision’ and lose the creativity needed to find a way that they don’t have to make that decision.” (Sorry for the paraphrase-I don’t have the book with me.) I think Harris has fallen so in love with the idea that there would be a situation where he would have to use torture and only he is brave enough to make that decision and save the day that he’s forgotten that other solutions can not only work better but actually be a win-win for everyone.

  49. consciousness razor says

    Actually I never made the claim that “they should have tortured the subject”, and that the police should be culpable for not doing so. Straw, straw, as far as the eye can see. I claimed that in that instance, (obviously with all verbal avenues exhausted), the use of torture would be justified.

    Yes, morally justified. What the fuck could it mean to say that it would be justified to torture, in order to save a child, but on the other hand it is not the case that they should have tortured? Where the fuck in logical space am I supposed to find a coherent position that looks anything like that?

  50. consciousness razor says

    You’ve failed to tell me how it isn’t, other than to make the ingenious suggestion that they try verbal threats.

    You need to give me a reason to do something that is obviously (indeed purposefully) harmful to a person. It’s not my job to explain to you why you don’t have a good reason. You just don’t have one, which actually I don’t even need to say. It’s just the case that you don’t have one. The end. Whether I tell you that makes no difference, since this isn’t the fucking high debate club and nobody is keeping score.

    The rest is a probably-hopeless attempt to get you to think and communicate thoughts. Maybe some decent reasoning about something will appear while you work on that, but I’m starting to doubt it. Not my problem.

    Threats frequently don’t work, and time in this scenario is in extremely short supply. So as far as I’m concerned, that example remains valid, and refutes the idea that torture is never justified.

    Again, who the fuck cares how it is as you’re concerned? You’ve got no good reason, that could be put into words or numbers or pictures or interpretive dance moves or whatever the fuck works for you, so you’ve got fucking nothing at all.

  51. says

    dianne @49, I like it. Seems very plausible to me that someone’s dedication to being the Good Guy Who’ll Cross The Line When Needed – even just in an abstract, first-year-of-philo-at-uni-and-I-want-to-be-(seen as)-edgy kind of way – would indeed stifle their lateral thinking powers. That applies to just about anything though: once you’ve decided that your way is right and you’ve constructed some situations that justify it, it’s easy to lose the ability to think of any other way. For his part, Harris seems stuck in a groove where Muslim thought-criminals are a greater threat to US domestic peace than, say, the near-daily murders committed by unhinged, well-armed domestic terrorists. Accordingly, any deprivation or harm to Muslims can be justified – Harris seems either unwilling or unable to think his way out of this groove and it’s to his detriment. He’s in need of a Kobayashi Maru moment.

    We all have our grooves, though: one of mine is “avoid using security/interrogation techniques that are immoral or unethical, especially those proven to be utterly useless and even counterproductive in achieving their stated aims”.

    (And as an aside, sometimes in my more paranoid moments I think the US Gulf War 2.0 torture program was never intended to actually gain information, rather it was designed as provocation – to inflame tensions in the Muslim world and inspire even more acts of violence so as to justify ever more military adventurism and geopolitical interference and hegemonic expansion. No idea how true that is – I suspect maybe I’m giving US foreign policy geniuses too much credit. /tangent)

    During WWII, the British had the right idea when interrogating German officers: put them up in nice digs with nice food, chum up, get them sozzled, have a chat and presto! Vital information without spilling so much as a single Teutonic tear, much less a drop of blood. Far more effective than a car battery to the nipular regions. Honey and flies and all that. Of course, today’s official enemy isn’t nearly so civilised, is he? Him and his unruly beard and funny hat and deranged doom-god (nothing at all like our chap – decent, kind, blue-eyed and we’ll give him a pass on the long hair and kaftan). Tie Ahmed or whatever-his-name-is to an electrified bed frame and bring a hose – there are three suitcase bombs to find in three different capital cities, only one hour to find them and this guy knows the combination to the safe that has the key to the bus depot locker that has the disarm code to one of them, which when entered will give us clues to the next two!

    Also, release the komodo dragon.

  52. says

    Hank and Dianne
    Yep, it’S this “being in love with “being edgy”. NOt just Harris, but Dawkins et. al., too. They think that just saying things that others find abhorrent and despicable and sexist and racist makes them “edgy” and “great thinkers” and “original”. They’re acting as if a world in which we shun torture was a natural existence and not a world at which we arrived after torturing probably millions of people over the centuries. Not torturing people and not killing people for their beliefs isn’t the old-fashioned way we need to rethink in order to make progress. It’s what the world used to be before we actively decided that that was a bad place

  53. alkisvonidas says

    What’s amusing is that, historically, torture has almost never been used as a means of obtaining information. It has mainly been used for two reasons:

    a) Extracting a confession on pre-determined charges, so that you look as if you have solved the case, or simply have a “culprit” and close the case, or

    b) (De)programming someone, turning them into the kind of person that you desire (this can always be achieved with enough determination and resources, as the human body and mind can only take so much abuse before cracking. It is simply a matter of breaking the mind before you break the body).

    So what I’m saying is, even medieval inquisitors were actually not silly enough to think torture works for intel.

  54. says

    Yep. The fact that torture has been shown to be a shite method for extracting information seems to consistently escape the attention of Harris and his cadre of uni bar-dwelling amateur Batmen. You’d think anyone with pretensions toward deepthink would take into account practical considerations such as “will this work?”

  55. leerudolph says

    diane@49: “Do you still do it?”

    Okay, this is very counterfactual because I think I would never, under any circumstances, torture. But for the sake of your argument, I’ll assume that my resolve not to torture has been broken in some scenario, and that I have in fact tortured. I think that I can honestly say that I would in that case accept that I should be tried, convicted, and sentenced accordingly, because (I think) my resolve #1 not to torture and my resolve #2 that people who are charged with committing crimes (in this case, crimes against humanity) be tried fairly, convicted if found guilty in that fair trial, and sentenced accordingly (I won’t say “punished” because that’s not what I think should happen to convicts) are separate resolves (and your argument, as presented, doesn’t compel me to assume that #2 has been broken just because #1 has been).

    Of course your argument wasn’t presented to me, but to “anyone willing to defend the use of torture in whatever scenario”; and I suspect (as I assume you suspect) that most, or all, people like that would find (upon honest self-examination) that—even if they would (otherwise) profess to share my resolve #2—they would break that resolve in whatever circumstances would lead them to torture. That is, for them #1 and #2 are not independent (as my introspections, no doubt colored by my self-regard, have led me to believe that they are, for me).

    I hate counterfactuals.

  56. Saad says

    Quick question:

    Why did Harris make this scenario about torturing a Muslim with a nuke or a seven-year old girl being choked to death?

    Why isn’t it about the nuances of when it’s okay to behead a white male atheist?

    Like Hank_Says said at #35, that he’s picking the scenario that was actually happening in real life (except without any of his justifications) is very telling. He’s clearly supporting the torture of Muslim detainees and nothing more. It’s not a hypothetical musing. Context matters. Can’t believe anyone who calls themselves a rational, skeptical person would fall for it.

  57. Saad says

    It’s like a white American man in the year 1800 saying “Let’s calmly discuss when it would be justified to beat a black man and make him work in your farm without pay for the rest of his life.”

  58. Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia says

    @60 Saad
    And just like that white american man, they seem incapable of comprehending that none of these shit is either rational nor makes any sense whatsoever when you actually take reality into account. All you get is stunned reactions at the mere idea that what they are saying is not perfectly rational. It’s fucking not, grow up…

  59. says

    You know something just occurred to me.

    A friend of mine is out of work at the moment. I did some math, and you realize if we killed all the men between ages 17 and 29, he’d not only be certain to get a job, but demand would be high enough that he’d probably get a raise to.

    So its justifiable, right? I mean, look, I just justified it. My friend would be better off. So, we cool?

  60. dianne says

    @withinthismind 62: Not only that but most crimes are committed by young men so it’s likely that we wouldn’t be killing too many innocent people. At least, there’d be reasonable doubt about the victims being innocent and the deaths of those that are can be written off as a Tragic Error (TM), right?

  61. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    As far as I can tell, his hypothesis is that torture is sometimes justified,

    It is never justified unless you can provide conclusive third party evidence it works, and doesn’t allow the enemy to torture our guys. Since that isn’t the case, you have neither evidence it works nor only we can do that, you are full of shit.

  62. says

    They’ve dumped the car somewhere, and refuse to tell the police its location, thereby admitting their guilt.

    Sounds like an opportunity to negotiate.

    Al these scenarios involve a ridiculous assumption that neither party is willing to negotiate AT ALL. That flies in the face of reality. That’s why these scenarios come across as mere attempts to manipulate: they are. It is the “philosopher” that, by crafting such a scenario, who is telling the big lie.

  63. says

    @63
    Exactly.
    And that’s the stupid part of these mental masturbation thought experiments. Put in enough caveats and wishful thinking, and anything can be justified.

    If by nuking Earth, we could pave the way for cockroaches to evolve into a truly Utopian civilization, its justified, right? Not only justified, but necessary, right?

    If by demolishing our solar system, we could create a highway bypass that allows an alien civilization to get medical treatment for its people 73% faster thereby saving 2.4 billion lives per year, good old Sol goes bye-bye right?

  64. dianne says

    If by demolishing our solar system, we could create a highway bypass that allows an alien civilization to get medical treatment for its people 73% faster thereby saving 2.4 billion lives per year, good old Sol goes bye-bye right?

    Well, that would pay for itself in lives saved within 4 years. And the Earth, at least is clearly a military target, so I suppose might as well…

  65. says

    The thing is, we can probably all agree that it is possible – however unlikely – that there may be some kind of extreme scenario in which we, personally, would torture someone or approve – however reluctantly – of their torture. But I suspect for most of us this would be some kind of in-principle, in-the-abstract agreement, rooted in our desire to avoid absolutist thinking, and not an avenue another person could use to extract from us some general approval of torture.

    It is being open to a mere possibility, similar to leaving open the door to the small possibility that there exists somewhere evidence for a god, or evidence against biological evolution – sure, it is possible that this evidence exists, but it’s very unlikely, and until it actually turns up it’s very safe indeed to proceed as if it hasn’t and most likely won’t. You could try all sorts of hypothetical scenarios on me and try to get me to admit what kind of evidence would convince me of god’s existence or the falsity of evolution, but until such evidence actually appears it’s just word games; no assent to any specific scenario will necessarily persist beyond the boundaries of said scenario absent actual evidence.

    Ditto with torture: maybe I’d indulge you and agree that yes, I’d torture the nuke-wizard to stop him from destroying the world, but that doesn’t bind me to agreeing with some general point that torture is justifiable in the real world. Your doomsday scenario in which torture is the only viable option is contrived to the point of ridiculousness and very likely an exercise in self-justification; I would probably only assent to it to make you stop talking to me. I can only withstand so much.

    Having said that, no – I won’t be engaging with your hypothetical torture-porn. Certainly not while real, live human beings are actually being tortured, by the self-appointed “good guys”, and for far less compelling reasons than any self-serving supervillain scenario.

  66. D L says

    @ 2 (Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls)

    “People of Islam” may be shortened to “Muslims.”

  67. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    D L #69

    “People of Islam” may be shortened to “Muslims.”

    Reinforcing the concept they are PEOPLE.
    Other human beings, not an abstract name to be othered.

  68. D L says

    @ 37 (Penny L)

    “Interesting how few people are actually quoting Harris’ argument, or are focusing on the wrong hypothetical.”

    It’s less interesting when you realize that they’re doing it because they are starting with the premise, “Sam Harris is bad,” and reverse engineering all comments to come to that conclusion. It’s dishonest, irrational, and pathetic.

  69. D L says

    @ 70 (Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls)

    “Other human beings, not an abstract name to be othered.”

    Holy wow. Using the term “Muslims” is offensive and, er, ‘othering’? When you referred to an ex-cop, shouldn’t have said “mammal who travels in law enforcement circles”?

  70. Rowan vet-tech says

    I don’t start with Sam Harris is bad. I start with ‘Torture is bad. These hypotheticals are really pretty stupid. Racial profiling is wrong, doesn’t work, and ignores that there are many sources for terrorists. Pre-emptively killing people is a horrific idea.’ I then proceed to ‘Sam Harris does/ wrote these things. Sam Harris is not a good person.’

    I mean, it’s perfectly possible to read his stuff and come away horrified without any prior knowledge of him, good or bad. I happen to be such a person.

  71. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Using the term “Muslims” is offensive and, er, ‘othering’.

    Yep, when there is no context that they are people, and not a “boogie man” group.

    When you referred to an ex-cop, shouldn’t have said “mammal who travels in law enforcement circles”?

    Typical non-sequiturs from somebody not getting it. Stop trying to pretend Harris isn’t a bigot. His own words, once you get past the vain attempt to not sound like one, and look at what his results are, say otherwise. And since you defend a bigot, what should I consider you as?

  72. Intaglio says

    There was a massive thread on Alternet a couple of months ago when Harris’ arrogance revealed itself in his originally private exchange with Chomsky.

    Shorter version: Harris wanted a public discussion but agreed to a private exchange of ideas; Chomsky said he would prefer it to be private; Harris agreed to privacy and then revealed himself to have no understanding at all of ethics; Harris (not understanding even that he had been shown to be an utter fool) asked (begged) to be allowed topublish; Chomsky agreed, and I suspect was rather surprised that someone would wish to show themselves as such a fool; everyone laughed at Harris.

    It didn’t stop his fan boiz (and they are almost all boys) piling in saying he wasn’t shown up by Chomsky and intent means something and … and … LEAVE POOR SAMMY ALONE! It did not matter whether you quoted Harris or established fact as far as these hero worshipers were concerned. Harris could do no wrong

  73. dereksmear says

    @59

    Indeed and he called specifically for the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, saying that it would be morally peverse not to torture him. He also said that we should not be worried about the misapplication of torture in Guantanamo Bay because there are no women or children interned there, instead those being tortured there are, in Harris’ words, “rather scrofulous young men, many of whom were caught in the very act of trying to kill our soldiers” .

  74. dianne says

    He also said that we should not be worried about the misapplication of torture in Guantanamo Bay because there are no women or children interned there,

    Where to begin on this one? First off, it’s not true that there are no children interned at Guantanamo, children as young as 14 have been held there. (Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-children-old-men).

    Second, what’s with the courtly sexism? It’s not as though women have never been involved in terrorist acts. World view failure on Harris’ part?

    Third, quite a number of the men held at Guantanamo clearly have no link to al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, or any other terrorist group. There is essentially no due process involved in who gets sent there and the usual assortment of screwups and malicious placement has occurred because of this.

  75. Saad says

    dereksmear, #76

    those being tortured there are, in Harris’ words, “rather scrofulous young men, many of whom were caught in the very act of trying to kill our soldiers”

    That’s….. what you do in war…

    There’s a term for “the very act of trying to kill” soldiers; it’s called combat.

    If being caught trying to kill soldiers is grounds for torture, then he has just condemned a large chunk of the U.S. armed forces.

  76. Dunc says

    There is essentially no due process involved in who gets sent there and the usual assortment of screwups and malicious placement has occurred because of this.

    It’s actually worse than that – some of them were simply handed over by Afghan bounty hunters in exchange for cold, hard cash, with no attempt to verify who they were and no questions asked.

  77. Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia says

    @77 dianne
    Don’t you know that if they are brown, 14 year old children are not really children?
    @78 Saad
    It’s only wrong when “they” do it, because they are monsters, but it can’t be wrong when “we” do it because we are the good guys and the good guys can’t do wrong, at most they can make occasional regretable mistakes.

  78. says

    BTW, I am very suspicious of people who claim that they know what they would do in an extreme situation they have never been in. Personally, I hope to do the right thing, and thinking about moral dilemmas beforehand is a good exercise like making an escape plan in the case of fire.
    That means that of course I have not spent much time thinking about raping people because of the magic wizzard nuke*, torturing people because of all small girls being slowly suffocated to death and I havealso not made escape plans for sudden attacks of 200 cubic metres of vanilla custard landing on the balcony.

    *It is also telling that those rape scenarios always seem to presuppose cis men. Sure, cis women can rape other cis women, but somehow I get the impression that the rape means violent penetration by penis…

  79. dianne says

    @79: Right. I forgot to add depraved indifference to the list of ways people end up there. It’s disturbingly similar to the way that people end up in for profit prisons.

  80. Saad says

    If I am to seriously address this hypothetical, the person with the nuke is the one causing the rape and they’ve just raped two people. I’d be a victim too.

    I don’t see how anyone can consider having sex with someone against your will (and out of the necessity of saving your family) consensual.

  81. dianne says

    I havealso not made escape plans for sudden attacks of 200 cubic metres of vanilla custard landing on the balcony.

    I actually do more or less have a plan for this situation. The Boston Molasses Disaster made an impression on me. (/off topic)

  82. says

    dianne

    I actually do more or less have a plan for this situation. The Boston Molasses Disaster made an impression on me.

    I had to google that. OK, it’S bizarre. But I don’t think the chocolate factory nearby stores that much stuff!

    Saad
    Absolutely! Your autonomy would be as much removed as the other person’s

  83. anteprepro says

    Torture is okay sometimes. Because the ends justify the means. Sophisticated morality, for sure.

    And this shit:

    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.

    Also I have to love the further justification of torture because bombing innocent civilians is worse. Yes, it is. Dismissing the casual murder of brown people, including children, as “collateral damage” was also a vivid display of America’s moral depravity in the Iraq War. They are both bad. They were both decried by the far left and justified by the right, while most of the moderates seemed to buy the justifications and not the criticism. They were both things we did anyway, and pretty much continue to do anyway. This isn’t a hard problem. It is just rather telling that Sam Harris has ultimately decided to defend his position on torture by also supporting bombing innocent civilians. So fucking sophisticated.

    And yes, Harris is far from the only person saying this shit. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to be criticized, harshly, for continuing to be an apologist for the atrocities we have committed and attempting to justify doing it indefinitely into the future, and doing so from a very visible position in the atheist community. For pretending to be a philosopher when ultimately just being a discount Rush Limbaugh, we should be talking about him. For being one of the “Four Horseman” and one of the leading voices among atheists, representing us, while making Fox News pundits sound more reasonable and moral, we should be talking about him. Saying that we shouldn’t be paying negative attention to Harris being Harris is just asinine, until the day where Harris is a nobody and no-one else is paying positive attention to him.

  84. anteprepro says

    Penny L:

    And I too find the vitriol against Harris a little off-putting (bigot?). He’s begging for his mind to be changed on this subject:

    Do you realize how long Harris has been beating on this particular drum? “He’s begging for his mind to be changed on this subject”? Amazing, then, that his position on the matter has not changed in a decade, despite a prolific amount of criticism. I am sure it is just because Sam Harris’s position is so perfectly reasonable that it is impossible for anyone to find fault in it!

    Or, perhaps, imagine an absurd and unrealistic hypothetical: That Sam Harris is being disingenuous and is saying that he would like someone to change his mind purely as a rhetorical device, while re-stating a position he has held for a long time and that he will most likely never budge from it, no matter how reasonable the counter-argument.

    I know, I know, it borders on implausible, but for the sake of Philosophy, sometimes we need to venture into bold and counterintuitive thought experiments, to contemplate the possibilities, no matter how unlikely.

  85. Dunc says

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

    You know what? I’m OK with that.

  86. says

    Dunc @ 88:

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

    You know what? I’m OK with that.

    Aye, me too.

  87. anteprepro says

    Dunc and Caine: I would be too. But we don’t even need to accept that ultimatum as written, because Harris is one slimy “philosopher”. He is conflating “collateral damage” with “modern war”, which is incredibly dishonest. But that’s Harris for you.

  88. D L says

    @ 73 (Rowan vet-tech)

    “Racial profiling is wrong, doesn’t work, and ignores that there are many sources for terrorists.”

    You cannot cite an example of Harris advocating racial profiling, because none exists. It is, however, slightly racist to equate Islam with brown people, as you and many commenters here do so frequently. There are Muslims of all races and nationalities. Islam is a religion, not a race. Why is that so difficult for you and your ilk to understand? (hint: it’s because when you hear “Muslim,” you picture a stereotype)

  89. says

    DL

    You cannot cite an example of Harris advocating racial profiling, because none exists. It is, however, slightly racist to equate Islam with brown people, as you and many commenters here do so frequently.

    1.) So, how do people look “conceivably muslim”?
    2.) I dreamed that bullshit about “young men of semitic origin?
    3.) Have you actually talked with, you know, muslims about this racialised issue?

    Same fuck as always…

  90. anteprepro says

    Harris Fan Infinity Plus One sez:

    You cannot cite an example of Harris advocating racial profiling, because none exists.

    Internet Says:
    http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling
    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/15/sam-harris-racial-profiling-muslims-airports_n_8140318.html
    http://www.salon.com/2015/10/10/sam_harris_dangerous_new_idiocy_incoherent_islamophobic_and_simply_immoral/

    Your quibble that it isn’t racial profiling because Muslim isn’t a race belies the problem: How do you profile Muslims if Muslims can look like anything or anyone?

    Why don’t you and your ilk understand that we can see you talking out of both sides of your mouth?

    (More extended rebuttals to Sam Harris’s nonsense on profiling:
    http://www.loonwatch.com/2012/05/sam-harris-profile-the-muslim-looking-people/
    https://eternalbookshelf.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/who-looks-muslim/ )

  91. dereksmear says

    @91

    “We are now mired in a religious war in Iraq and elsewhere. Our enemies–as witnessed by their astonishing willingness to slaughter themselves–are not principally motivated by political or economic grievances. How many more architects and electrical engineers must fly planes into buildings before we realize that the problem of Muslim extremism is not merely a matter of education? How many more middle-class British citizens must blow themselves up along with scores of noncombatants before we acknowledge that Muslim terrorism is not matter of poverty or political oppression? It is not enough for moderate Muslims to say “not in our name.” They must now police their own communities. They must offer unreserved assistance to western governments in locating the extremists in their midst. They must tolerate, advocate, and even practice ethnic profiling.” (Bombing Our Illusions, 2005)

  92. Saad says

    D L, #91

    Since you claim the profiling is done based on religion, how would you profile a brown-skinned Muslim but would let a brown-skinned ex-Muslim go hassle-free?

    This oughta be good.

  93. anteprepro says

    How to non-racially profile Muslims:

    The direction they pray in.
    Possession of a Q’uran.
    Devoutly mentioning Allah.

    And that’s about it. False positives include ex-Muslims who currently carry around a Q’uran, religious studies students, non-Muslims who accidentally prayed in the general direction of Mecca, and Arabic-speaking non-Muslims. False negatives include Muslims who happen to translate Allah out of Arabic, don’t carry a Q’uran everywhere, or didn’t decide to pray while waiting in a line.

    Go fucking save the world with all those practical warning signs, Harris and Co., you complete non-racists, you.

  94. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You cannot cite an example of Harris advocating racial profiling, because none exists.

    Sorry asshole fanboi. The net results of SH’s stated fuckwittery, is to not profile anybody who isn’t or doesn’t look like a Muslim. The net result of that, namely the inverse, is profiling anybody who doesn’t pass the brown paper bag test, and looks vaguely like they came from somewhere from West Africa to the Phillipines. That is profiling. You can’t/won’t think through what SH says to the net results of what he says. I and most of us here can do that. What is your excuse to defend his bigotry?

  95. D L says

    To be clear — you all believe that Sam Harris is an advocate of racial profiling, but does not want to say so explicitly because he is afraid to voice an unpopular opinion, but not so afraid that he does not voice the opinion at all? Something like that?

    It seems to me that Harris has not shied away from writing about beliefs that are unpopular with many readers on a wide range of topics, including, religion, gun control, torture, and security, to name a few. If he believed that racial profiling was the way to go, he’d likely say so (and certainly would not undermine his argument by, for example, including himself in the group to be profiled).

  96. anteprepro says

    To be clear — you all believe that Sam Harris is an advocate of racial profiling, but does not want to say so explicitly because he is afraid to voice an unpopular opinion, but not so afraid that he does not voice the opinion at all?

    He just doesn’t call want to call his profiling racial profiling. Same reason you don’t want to admit that there is a racial component to the bigotry against Muslims. It just easier that way.

    If he believed that racial profiling was the way to go, he’d likely say so

    He has. He just calls it “ethnic profiling” instead of “racial profiling”. Which is more accurate but it is functionally the same fucking thing. (Or rather, racial profiling is a subset of ethnic profiling. And both are stupid and abhorrent practices for the same reasons).

  97. Saad says

    D L, #99

    you all believe that Sam Harris is an advocate of racial profiling

    People just cited examples where he’s calling for profiling based on race and appearance. He also said in that he himself has an appearance that should be profiled, meaning racial profiling. That’s from the horse’s mouth, idiot.

    Since Islam is a religion, as you yourself have acknowledged, he couldn’t possibly have been calling for profiling based on religion.

    Also, profiling someone “who looks Muslim” is called racial profiling. Pull your head out of your hero-worshipping ass already.

    Oh, and answer my question at #96.

  98. dianne says

    False positives include ex-Muslims who currently carry around a Q’uran, religious studies students, non-Muslims who accidentally prayed in the general direction of Mecca, and Arabic-speaking non-Muslims.

    I wonder what would happen if I read a Q’uran while waiting in the “no, honestly, I’m not a terrorist, TSA has already checked” line at the airport? Maybe said a quick prayer facing east too or something. Would they make me take off my shoes? Or would my lightish skin protect me from being not racially profiled?

  99. D L says

    @ 101 (Saaaaaad…)

    “appearance that should be profiled, meaning racial profiling . . . Also, profiling someone ‘who looks Muslim’ is called racial profiling”

    You are as confused as your question at 96.

  100. says

    The first Muslim I ever met personally was in the late ’90s – he was a white guy in his early 20s, same as me, and a convert (a recent one too, judging by his zeal). It was at a bus stop in a beach suburb of Adelaide, here in Australia. He struck up a chat as we waited for a bus and before I knew it I’d learned that Jews controlled the world’s finances, that Bill Clinton was a secret Jew because he apparently went to temple once and that he hated it when people assumed his skullcap was a Jewish yarmulke.

    All this guy would’ve had to do to get around Harris’s Muslim Profile today, were he inclined, was pocket his skullcap (taqiyah, I think?) and stroll through security. White guy with short hair and a full beard in Adelaide in 2015? Almost certainly a hipster. Possibly irritating but not threatening. Not the droid you’re looking for. Move along.

    Profiling by any superficial characteristic such as wardrobe or demographic is useless, because all a potential evildoer has to do to avoid being profiled is alter their appearance. Rebuttals to Harris’ pro-profiling stance written by security professionals have indicated that it’s far more effective to look for behavioural tells than to assume membership in any targeted groups.

    As for whether profiling Muslim-looking-people is racial profiling, well, technically it’s not as “Islamic” isn’t an ethnicity, but you can bet your arse that’s how it would play out. Tell your Average Joe Airport Screener to look out for “Muslims” and guess who they’ll pick. Not the bearded white guy with hat-hair.

  101. Saad says

    D L, #103

    Did you come up with an answer to my question yet?

    I’ll reword it.

    What line of reasoning would you use to profile a brown-skinned Muslim at the airport while letting a brown-skinned ex-Muslim go without any extra scrutiny?

    You are the one who said Islam is a religion so Harris’ profiling is not about race or ethnicity. I look forward to you answering my perfectly valid question (a question which immediately follows once you make the claim that Harris means profile based on religion and not looks).

    Thanks.

    Also, I’m not confused. I’m a brown-skinned ex-Muslim.

  102. says

    You are the one who said Islam is a religion so Harris’ profiling is not about race or ethnicity. I look forward to you answering my perfectly valid question

    I’d also like to see DL’s response to the actual Harris quotes.

  103. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You are as confused as your question at 96.

    No liar and bullshitter, you are confused on how to profile. Either you do it directly or indirectly. The net result is profiling. Harris, being the political dog whistler he is, prefers the indirect approach, saying what he isn’t looking for. But the net result is the same, and any non-fanboi sees: People of color, as Muslims go from West Africa to the Phillipines, and anybody who isn’t a Xian, Jew, etc. That is bigoted profiling. Prove otherwise with evidence. Philosophs don’t believe in evidence. Which is why they should be ignored.

  104. Saad says

    Giliell, #106

    I’d also like to see DL’s response to the actual Harris quotes.

    Looks like they’re taking the usual bigot apologist’s way out.