The problem I have, intuitively, with the torture option is that “one person tortured for 50 years” is not the only consequence. Other consequences include “now we’re in a society where I don’t have a right not to be tortured.” Sure, in theory torture will only happen when it’s globally utility-maximizing. Just like in theory my emails will only be read by the government if there’s reason to suspect they’ll reveal a crime or that someone involved in the correspondence is not a US citizen. I have no reason to believe this kind of promise.
Yes, I know this is analogous to “But how do I know the fat man will really stop the trolley?” And that’s why I didn’t comment on the main post.
Other consequences include “now we’re in a society where I don’t have a right not to be tortured.”
Suppose the torture is done completely secretly, such that only on the order of 1 person knows about it. Then what you know about your rights is unchanged. And I would submit what your actual rights are is also unchanged: you are already subject to torture by kidnappers, the insane, governments that don’t in fact prohibit torture, and even by government agents acting perhaps illegally in your opinion but not in someone else’s opinion.
So at least that consequence, that now everybody has to worry a little more about being tortured, I think is not a necessary problem here.
Yes, you can make assumptions that get around this. You then have to assume a lot of things about the competence of everyone involved, etc. You could also assume you have read certain Nazi research papers that prove that a person of this size is guaranteed to safely stop a trolley of that size on such-and-such slope and terrain. My point here is mainly to grump about thought experiments that demand I turn off all the doubt and paranoia etc. that are key to making reasonable decisions in the real world.
My true rejection of torture over dust specks comes from not being a utilitarian at all (and therefore doesn’t really belong in this discussion).
A thought experiment is a lot like a regular experiment, in that you need to isolate the variables being tested if you actually care about answering the question. All of those other factors (i.e. societal implications of torture, the physics which might allow you to inconvenience 3^^^3 people, the effects of mass eye irritation on the annual GDP of Peru) are all irrelevant to the issue; is an incomprehensibly huge amount of harm which is very widely distributed preferable to a large amount of harm inflicted on one person? And, in either case, why?
Or you can rephrase the thought experiment so that it’s about saving a person from torture vs saving people from dustspecks (rather than torturing people), and thus avoid right-based objections.
The problem I have, intuitively, with the torture option is that “one person tortured for 50 years” is not the only consequence. Other consequences include “now we’re in a society where I don’t have a right not to be tortured.” Sure, in theory torture will only happen when it’s globally utility-maximizing. Just like in theory my emails will only be read by the government if there’s reason to suspect they’ll reveal a crime or that someone involved in the correspondence is not a US citizen. I have no reason to believe this kind of promise.
Yes, I know this is analogous to “But how do I know the fat man will really stop the trolley?” And that’s why I didn’t comment on the main post.
Suppose the torture is done completely secretly, such that only on the order of 1 person knows about it. Then what you know about your rights is unchanged. And I would submit what your actual rights are is also unchanged: you are already subject to torture by kidnappers, the insane, governments that don’t in fact prohibit torture, and even by government agents acting perhaps illegally in your opinion but not in someone else’s opinion.
So at least that consequence, that now everybody has to worry a little more about being tortured, I think is not a necessary problem here.
Yes, you can make assumptions that get around this. You then have to assume a lot of things about the competence of everyone involved, etc. You could also assume you have read certain Nazi research papers that prove that a person of this size is guaranteed to safely stop a trolley of that size on such-and-such slope and terrain. My point here is mainly to grump about thought experiments that demand I turn off all the doubt and paranoia etc. that are key to making reasonable decisions in the real world.
My true rejection of torture over dust specks comes from not being a utilitarian at all (and therefore doesn’t really belong in this discussion).
A thought experiment is a lot like a regular experiment, in that you need to isolate the variables being tested if you actually care about answering the question. All of those other factors (i.e. societal implications of torture, the physics which might allow you to inconvenience 3^^^3 people, the effects of mass eye irritation on the annual GDP of Peru) are all irrelevant to the issue; is an incomprehensibly huge amount of harm which is very widely distributed preferable to a large amount of harm inflicted on one person? And, in either case, why?
In other words, what would your answer be in the Least Convenient Possible World?
Or you can rephrase the thought experiment so that it’s about saving a person from torture vs saving people from dustspecks (rather than torturing people), and thus avoid right-based objections.