Niteshift

With the blessing of the admins, I thought I'd see if we could have some fun with situational ethics.

The rules are simple: 1) I am not taking sides. My role will be devils advocate in this. If I challenge a position or ask questions, it is not because I disagree (or agree), but to get you to explain and support your position. Please refrain from arguing directly with me, because I won't be arguing back. (Which will be hard enough for me, so help me out will ya )

2) Most of your questions about the scenario will be answered in the narrative. If you need further info to make a decision, just ask.

The object here is to see how YOU think, not how a bunch of links or editorials think. This is all about YOU and how you view your ethics.

We will start with Scenario #1, then, later, scenario #2 will appear and we can see how ethics may or may not change when the situation is altered and brought onto a smaller scale.



Scenario 1:

A terrorist group has planted a nuclear device in the center of a large US city. Several members of the group were located, but tried to shoot it out with the police. 1 is in custody unharmed. The bomb has been located, but the bomb squad tells you that it is equipped with anti-tamper switches and that attempting to disarm it would almost certainly detonate it. There is not enough time to evacuate even 25% of the population. Nuclear experts estimate that approximately 100,000 people will be killed immediately or die within months due to radiation poisoning.

You are tasked to interrogate the terrorist in an attempt to find out the disarm code. So far, he has refused to tell you anything but his name. The bomb is set to detonate in 2 hours.

What would you find acceptable as a means of getting the info out of him?

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Plainsman1963

How do I answer that fully and succinctly? Hmm, let me see if what's in this pipe clears it up for me....

15 minutes later...

Now. What would be acceptable to me in this scenario? Anything I could physically or emotionally do to this person to get the information.

Herb Ninja

I don't know what extent I would go. I don't think I could bring myself to cut off fingers and such. But 100,000 lives over 1 measly terrorist.... might be tempting to get a little extreme. Peace, HN-

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ThaNarc

They really make bombs with disarm codes? Kind of defeats the purpose does it not.In this paticular situation, assuming their is a disarm code...., sure anything you do to the person is find. He has lost acsess to basic human rights about the time he decided it's okay for a 100,000 other people to lose their most Basic right.

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S2

Anything that we could discuss over a long distance telephone line--

Logos

I'm making assumptions about the terrorist's religious background.

Understanding what little I do about the beliefs of Islamic fundamentalists. They would rather die than fail a mission.

Beliefs are a tough thing to get around sometimes. 2 hours aren't enough time to try and understand then change those beliefs. I doubt that any level of physical torture would work, drugs might, but beliefs can be rooted quite deep.

From the point of view of the terrorist (I assume the terrorist belief is based in islamic faith) dying and taking out that many people in the process entitles one to many many virgins in the afterlife. (an assumption as well.)

I imagine I'd be calling a few psychic hotlines...

That however doesn't really answer the question, what would I find acceptable given my ethics...

physical harm and torture wouldn't make me any better than the terrorist. Could saving that many lives balance the acts of physical harm out? psychological manipulation using either drugs or hypnotism, or a combination of both would likely be acceptable from my perspective.

Logos

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JTP

I would do ANYTHING that would produce results. I don't think I would be very concerned about the morality of my actions. Imagine the crap-storm after the bomb blows and all those people die. I doubt many people would accept "we didn't want to be just like them..." as a viable excuse for allowing the death of 100,000 people.

MickityMike

Anything, and I mean anything, would be acceptable in this situation. I'd even be fine with physically and brutally torturing members of this man's immediate family right in front of him.

Whatever it takes.

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Yana Usdi

The problem with situational ethics is that they are too easy to use, they've been used too often in the past to justify too many things that seemed rational at the time. Normally they turn out in hindsight to have been a mistake.

The general consensus in the intelligence community seems to be that torture doesn't work, it's not just a matter of moral objections, it's a combination of the fact that under torture some will say anything they think you want to hear, and the fact that there's others out there like the Buddhist monks in Nam who would light themselves on fire then calmly sit lotus style and burn. Torture is a low effect method overall, it's unreliable with those you do have an effect on and totally ineffective on others.

There's no such thing as a "truth serum" as such, but there are some such as ecstasy that lower inhibitions and make it more likely that victims of trauma and such would be able to deal with and talk about things that they may have buried for years, before it got popular as recreation it was mostly used by psychiatrists just for that reason. I'd figure non-violent methods of the sort that are intended to just get them talking and break down inhibitions would be more useful. Once you get that mouth moving they'll say more than they realize.

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HappyMan

Scenario 1:

Anything, sometimes ethics and morality have to take a back seat to brutal pragmatic action. One person's life is not worth 100,000.

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Bla.

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