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Notes -
Oh, I don't think we disagree as much as you think; when I spoke about coercion/pressure to commit torture, I was very much picturing something unglamorous and "selfish", not a "torture a terrorist into releasing vital information" trolley problem, or even judicial arguments about deterrence. I'm talking about a scenario where even by cold hard utilitarian analysis, refusing would still be the moral thing to do - but where many ordinary, well-intentioned people would probably give in, and even you or I cannot be entirely sure what we would do. Say, some Saw-style thing where a sadist kidnaps you, tortures you a bit, then pushes you into a locked room with a bound victim and orders you to torture them even more severely, or else he'll torture you some more instead - though still not quite as badly as what he's asking you to do to the other guy.
That being said, we still disagree around the edges, insofar that I don't think anyone ever deserves to be tortured in a vacuum, even the worst POS you can imagine. I'll only go as far as saying that if you need to torture information out of someone to save more lives/prevent more suffering, then it is more acceptable to torture an evil man than an innocent; but we're talking about a spectrum of necessary evils.
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