Reuters: CIA tortured, misled, U.S. report finds, drawing calls for action

[s0crates]

 

You may have formed your argument in a way in which it appears valid, but your premises do not provide justification for the conclusion. Specifically, your premise that "If people make false confessions while being tortured, then torture is not a good way of discovering the truth." (which is actually a premise with it's own, unsubstantiated conclusion, which itself invalidates your argument) certainly does not justify the conclusion:

"3. Therefore torture doesn't work as a means of discovery."

 

It doesn't justify the conclusion in a very basic way. You make a jump from - it is proven to produce false information - to - it's cannot produce true information.

 

 

Oh I think I see what you are saying.  You are charging me with an equivocation.  You take "torture is not a good way of discovering the truth" to be a proposition distinct from "torture doesn't work as a means of discovery." Is that it?

 

I take those propositions to mean the same thing, but if it pleases you I'd happily settle for the conclusion "torture is not a good way of discovering the truth."

 

And incidentally, equivocation is an informal fallacy, not a formal one, which would mean that if this is indeed your charge, then you are not challenging the validity (the logical form) of the argument, but the unclear expression in it (the soundness).

 

http://www.triviumpursuit.com/articles/formal_informal_fallacies.php

 

 

Regardless, I do see what you are saying about the possibility of getting true information despite the possibility of getting false information, although I think my second argument addresses that concern.

[s0crates]

Which for most people would be a flippant way to respond, but you seem to be well versed in deductive reasoning, as well as philosphy, so I bring it up in this way because I would think if nothing else you could appreciate the back and forth (which it appears you do, at least to me.) All of that is to say - I'm not trying to be an ass here...

 

. . . . 

 

PS - I'm enjoying the conversation with you. My post has the intent of furthering the conversation, not belittling or attacking you for your thoughts. Not sure if that needs to be said or not, it's hard to tell with forums...

 

And for the record, I do enjoy the dialogue, so thank you.  Cheers!

[s0crates]

 

You created an argument that conveniently ignores the context of these situations. I can demonstrate this by a simple proof by substitution:

Lets substitute "Torture" with tradition interrogation practiced by our own law enforcement, and "accused terrorist" with "accused citizen of the United States".

 

1. A person being interrogated (the "accused") could either lie or tell the truth

2. The person interrogating ("investigator") either (y) knows if the accused is lying, or (z) does not know if the accused is lying

3. If (y) then interrogation is unnecessary because the investigator already knows the truth

4. if (z) then interrogation is ineffective because the investigator cannot know when the accused has told the truth

5. Therefore interrogation is either unnecessary or ineffective. QED

 

Except no one would argue that because, fault logic and reasoning aside, we know interrogation is effective and necessary for our judicial system to work as effectively as it does; while simultaneously admitting that there are false confessions (for a variety of reasons) and that the system can still be improved and in no way has reached maximum effectiveness.

 

 

I actually think that proof by substitution works.  Confessions really aren't very good evidence, especially when given under duress, and it could be argued that allowing them as evidence is a flaw in our judicial system. 

 

That said, it might help make this more intuitively plausible to you if we were to distinguish between levels of interrogation.  Although I think all testimonial evidence is unreliable, I might concede something like this: The more coercive the interrogation, the less reliable the testimony. So voluntary testimony would be better than testimony given under duress, which would be better than testimony given under torture.  

[s0crates]

 

But back to the faulty logic and reasoning - these cases do not exist in a vacuum. This is not the only information they have; they have years of conflicting information they have to sort through and try to act on. They have information from wiretaps, from other interrogations, from what's collected by soldiers and special forces on the ground, and from spys they've recruited that are inside the organizations. To sit back and jump to the logical conclusions you have is unjustified with the information we have. 

 

 

You call my reasoning faulty, then offer me lots of evidence in support of my conclusion.  If we have all this information from wiretaps, spys, boots on the ground, etc., then there is no need to torture people for information.

[s0crates]

 

Which is not, in any way, close to what some articles and some people are presenting as the findings in this report. Which also says nothing to the idea of what it means to "... obtain in other ways", because putting a puzzle together in hindsight is a lot easier than when you're in the middle of it. It also says nothing to the important of corroborating information (for instance, the very people being critical of the CIA are the same people to jump on them and call them incompetent when they make a mistake related to not gathering enough information... so they're incompetent for making a mistake by acting without 'enough' information, but when they corroborate information it's all the sudden useless...)

 

The report itself does not say that no meaningful information was obtained; they specifically, and carefully, make that clear. What they say is that no information that prevented an attack was obtained that could not have been obtained in other ways, or was not information the CIA already had.

 

 

You keep almost making my point for me, but then missing the obvious inference.

 

The very idea of getting information from torture that we "could not have obtained otherwise" is preposterous. I'm not ignoring this point, I'm pointing out that it is absurd.

 

If we have no other way of getting information besides torture, then we have no way of verifying that the information we are getting by torture is true. If we do have another way of getting the information, then there is no need to torture.

 

How can I make this any clearer than it already is?

[tshile]

Please re-read the article you link carefully before bringing up this particular point again, as it actually explains what I'm trying to tell you fairly well.

 

Not that I don't appreciate the lesson in logic, but I am fairly competent when it comes to the distinction between validity and soundness.

 

Thank you for the correction  I am obviously not as competent; I knew that going in but didn't let that stop me

...

I take those propositions to mean the same thing, but if it pleases you I'd happily settle for the conclusion "torture is not a good way of discovering the truth."

...

 Then we are in agreement. I do not intend to argue the quality (as in: that is of superior quality compared to others) of the method, only that the arguments presented for why it's bad are faulty in a few ways; one being the incompleteness of the information, the other the jumping to conclusions.

 

I understand the fallacy concerns and I'm often one to point those out, so you get no argument from me. But fallacies are just that, fallacies. They're not sound, valid arguments in the deductive reasoning way, but that doesn't mean they're irrelevant.

You call my reasoning faulty, then offer me lots of evidence in support of my conclusion.  If we have all this information from wiretaps, spys, boots on the ground, etc., then there is no need to torture people for information.

 

That's because I don't entirely disagree with you on everything. My main point is that the argument about the information and its usefulness has evolved into a ridiculous argument. By the standards implied by many, if a piece of information is not a 'key' piece to preventing an imminent attack, then the information is useless. That implication is simply not true and takes the incredibly complex task of a world-wide intelligence operation and reduces it to absurd levels, removing all context. Especially with all the hindsight talk about information 'already in possession of the CIA' or that could be 'obtained in other ways.'

I actually think that proof by substitution works.  Confessions really aren't very good evidence, especially when given under duress, and it could be argued that allowing them as evidence is a flaw in our judicial system. 

 

That said, it might help make this more intuitively plausible to you if we were to distinguish between levels of interrogation.  Although I think all testimonial evidence is unreliable, I might concede something like this: The more coercive the interrogation, the less reliable the testimony. So voluntary testimony would be better than testimony given under duress, which would be better than testimony given under torture.  

 

Which is fine and I agree. The same can be said of witnesses, as you point out. But it's the world we live in. We do not have magic boxes that tell us the truth. We are forced to create a system like this. It has faults, but we have a wide range of options spanning from not interrogating or using witnesses, to torturing false confessions and using clearly dishonest witnesses.

 

The world it seems you aspire to does not and will not exist. There will always be margins of error. We just have to decide what is acceptable and what is not; which evolves over time.

You keep almost making my point for me, but then missing the obvious inference.

 

The very idea of getting information from torture that we "could not have obtained otherwise" is preposterous. I'm not ignoring this point, I'm pointing out that it is absurd.

 

If we have no other way of getting information besides torture, then we have no way of verifying that the information we are getting by torture is true. If we do have another way of getting the information, then there is no need to torture.

 

How can I make this any clearer than it already is?

 

I'm not intending to argue that if we have no other way of getting the information besides torture. And no, I do not think that means torture is an inexcusable way of obtaining the information. I think it is completely reasonable to believe there are circumstances where it is warranted; they are limited in scope, but they exist.

 

I'm simply saying that, in my opinion, it's entirely possible to obtain useful information through torture and I do not believe the senate report is comprehensive enough to show that. If it were not the case then why are there people in the CIA that say it does work? Are they just monsters that enjoy torturing people? Are they lying?

 

The intelligence game is an incredible one for many reasons (and that's coming from someone who likely understands very little of it). The issue of verifying the information is a good one, but it is on the people with the information. There are tactics for this. People are trained in this stuff; it works (talking general interrogation here.) It does't work all the time... but it can, and does work.  This is not a mysterious thing. It's a science and an art. A lot of work (centuries of it) has been put into interrogation.

heh. and we haven't even really discussed what the definition of torture, which is itself an entirely different problem.

 

i watched jon stewart jaw about 'sleep deprivation' the other night and you would have thought it was on the level of power drilling through one's hands to force information out of them.

[s0crates]

 

I'm not intending to argue that if we have no other way of getting the information besides torture. And no, I do not think that means torture is an inexcusable way of obtaining the information. I think it is completely reasonable to believe there are circumstances where it is warranted; they are limited in scope, but they exist.

 

 

Not me.  I think it is categorically wrong (wrong in all cases, regardless of the consequences).

 

That said, I have been reasoning on strictly consequentialist grounds, and I think it can be demonstrated we should not torture on those grounds alone.

 

Could you provide an example of a case where you think torture would be warranted?

[s0crates]

 

I'm simply saying that, in my opinion, it's entirely possible to obtain useful information through torture . . . 

 

 

And I'm saying it is not, because people, who tend to give false information to begin with, are even more likely to give false information under duress. So how can an interrogator know whether or not he is getting false information?  

 

Either the interrogator knows enough to know if the suspect is telling the truth, in which case there is no need to torture the suspect, or the interrogator does not know enough to know if the suspect is telling the truth, in which case there is no way to determine if what the suspect is saying is true.

If it were not the case then why are there people in the CIA that say it does work? Are they just monsters that enjoy torturing people? Are they lying?

 

 

Of course there are people in the CIA who say it doesn't work too. Why do they say it doesn't?

 

Those that do, well maybe they are monsters.  Take Abu Ghraib for example, I don't think that was done to extract vital life saving information. I think that comes from a complete loss of the sense of right and wrong.

 

This is another part of the problem with the ticking time bomb argument, it gives morally bankrupt people a theoretical ground on which to justify something patently abhorrent, from which point it is much easier to justify such evil in cases where there is no possible benefit whatsoever.

[tshile]

Could you provide an example of a case where you think torture would be warranted?

 

 

When a high level al qaeda is in custody, one with proven roles in financing, planning, training, and executing high-level terrorist acts (ie: something more than random person walks into random market and detonates a bomb.) When all other reasonable options have been exercised and there is a reason to believe he is holding out. When any and all leverage for more traditional interrogative techniques has been exhausted. At that point 'torture' (sleep deprivation, waterboarding, making them stand in certain positions, etc. i'm not sure where the line is... there is one... not sure where it is) produces an avenue for creating leverage to continue interrogations in an effort to get to the information.

 

I get that even if you humor me by agreeing to see that as a reasonable standard, we still have a hurdle of unaccountable, unsupervised agents performing this. That hurdle will never go away. It is what it is, and I'm not happy about it. There's also the slippery slope argument; fallacy or not we have proof via this report that the CIA took the techniques too far in terms of who they subjected to them.

 

So how can an interrogator know whether or not he is getting false information?

By taking all of his/her experience, the wealth of information the CIA has regarding the subject, and drawing conclusions. Yes, you're going to get information that leads you down the wrong path because you don't have enough corroborating information to rule it out but it warrants looking into due to the serve implications of the information. That happens. Nothing you can do about it. 

 

It doesn't mean the process cannot be effective.

 

Of course there are people in the CIA who say it doesn't work too. Why do they say it doesn't?

Because of the information in the report. There's plenty of data that suggest it's not a superior way of getting information. Their morals and their knowledge on the techniques, including any experiences they have personally, show that it's not worth the moral cost of doing it.

 

I also think the conversation (in the public) has unfortunately devolved to an all-or-nothing conversation. There is no differentiation between someone like KSM, and someone they caught riding a truck around the desert with an AK slung over his shoulder. So you get a general - this is not an effective method for getting information - response over it. The report itself doesn't say it doesn't work... as I said earlier, they carefully (very carefully) worded how it does/doesn't work. It comes as no surprise the media is incapable of noticing that and discussing it in an intelligent way.

I respect their opinions and they know more about it than I do. I just don't accept them as an absolute authority on the issue, and see how a large portion of the conversation is determined by morals not comprehensive and irrefutable facts that go one way or the other. 

 

Those that do, well maybe they are monsters.  Take Abu Ghraib for example, I don't think that was done to extract vital life saving information. I think that comes from a complete loss of the sense of right and wrong.

 I think what went on at Abu Ghraib is worse. They were, from what we know, doing this to prisoners captured on the battlefield and were doing it for their personal amusement or vengence, not as a calculated decision weighing morality, legality, and the imporantance of potential information.

 

This is another part of the problem with the ticking time bomb argument, it gives morally bankrupt people a theoretical ground on which to justify something patently abhorrent, from which point it is much easier to justify such evil in cases where there is no possible benefit whatsoever.

There's tons of problems with it. At the end of the day I do not care what the talking heads on cable news or the politicians with not so much of a days worth of interrogation training ("enhanced" or not) think on the issue. They're perpetually trying to score political points, often at the expense of being an hypocrite hoping it goes unnoticed.

If we were limited in our discussions on issues by the talking points put out there by the media and politicians then any hope for intelligent conversation, on any topic, ever, goes down the drain.

 

Not me.  I think it is categorically wrong (wrong in all cases, regardless of the consequences).

I saved this one for last  I believe at this point we're at an impasse. 

 

With all the back and forth, and the clarifications, I do not think you are "wrong" on any of it. I just simply do not appeal to the moral standard you do. I think the people I described above as being the type I'm ok with this being done to forfeited any entitlement to rights as a human when they decided to dedicate their life to attacking civilians for their various reasons. I find it morally questionable to protect the rights of said people at the expense of innocent civilians.

[s0crates]

 

I saved this one for last  I believe at this point we're at an impasse. 

 

With all the back and forth, and the clarifications, I do not think you are "wrong" on any of it. I just simply do not appeal to the moral standard you do. 

 

Perhaps you are right about this, but I don't think I'll be needing that high moral standard to make a strong case against torture here. Torture can be demonstrated to be bad strictly in terms of costs and benefits, consequence, prudence, or whatever we are calling the weaker moral standard.

[s0crates]

 I think the people I described above as being the type I'm ok with this being done to forfeited any entitlement to rights as a human when they decided to dedicate their life to attacking civilians for their various reasons. I find it morally questionable to protect the rights of said people at the expense of innocent civilians.

 

There is something to be said for people who do heinous things deserving heinous punishment.  I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment, but I can understand the argument.  It's fair, it's justice.

 

Yet that is not what we are talking about in the case of torture.  We aren't talking about a punishment.

 

How do you know that the person being tortured isn't an innocent civilian?

 

How do you know innocents will suffer if you don't torture? 

 At the end of the day I do not care what the talking heads on cable news or the politicians with not so much of a days worth of interrogation training ("enhanced" or not) think on the issue. They're perpetually trying to score political points, often at the expense of being an hypocrite hoping it goes unnoticed.

If we were limited in our discussions on issues by the talking points put out there by the media and politicians then any hope for intelligent conversation, on any topic, ever, goes down the drain.

 

 

For what it is worth, I tend to agree with the sentiment that the MSM is not a reliable source of information or opinion.  In honesty I haven't been paying much attention to the coverage of this, what I'm talking about is more from my own thinking on the topic of torture in general.

 

I hope you don't take me to be parroting the views of some talking heads.

 

 I think what went on at Abu Ghraib is worse. They were, from what we know, doing this to prisoners captured on the battlefield and were doing it for their personal amusement or vengence, not as a calculated decision weighing morality, legality, and the imporantance of potential information.

 

How does something like that happen? What are the necessary preconditions?

 

I would argue that one of the necessary preconditions is a certain loss of respect for other people's humanity, the kind that might come from treating people as mere means. This isn't a slippery slope.  This is cause and effect.  

 

If you think that is too strong, I think it can at least be shown from history that efforts to dehumanize the other are a necessary prerequisite to atrocities.

 

It doesn't mean the process cannot be effective.

 

 

I'll concede that torture can be effective, but only in cases where it is unnecessary (cases where the torturer already has enough information).

[s0crates]

  

When a high level al qaeda is in custody, one with proven roles in financing, planning, training, and executing high-level terrorist acts (ie: something more than random person walks into random market and detonates a bomb.) When all other reasonable options have been exercised and there is a reason to believe he is holding out. When any and all leverage for more traditional interrogative techniques has been exhausted. At that point 'torture' (sleep deprivation, waterboarding, making them stand in certain positions, etc. i'm not sure where the line is... there is one... not sure where it is) produces an avenue for creating leverage to continue interrogations in an effort to get to the information.

 

 

Okay a couple things to point out here:

 

1. Notice this is a long list of ifs: torture is permissible if you know someone is a high level terrorist, if you know he has information, if you have exhausted all other options, if the circumstances are dire, etc. When you start putting together a list of ifs like that you are basically just begging the question.

 

2. Assuming that we do have all this "proven" information, why don't we just go off of that information and the means we used to get it? What more is to be gained by the act of torture?

 

It seems that if we know enough for torture to be effective (we know the person has information, and we will be able to tell when he gives us accurate information), then we already know enough for the torture to be unnecessary.  (And if we don't know enough, then the torture will be ineffective, because we won't know what information given to us is the right information).

 

Given the moral gravity (which I think is apparent to any sensible human being), why do something that is either unnecessary or ineffective?

[Destino]

Have we been reduced to discussing the merits of torture on the likelihood of its success and benefit? Well my faith on humanity takes hits all the time, what's one more?

[s0crates]

Have we been reduced to discussing the merits of torture on the likelihood of it's success and benefit? Well my faith on humanity takes hits all the time, what's one more?

 

Of course I agree with your point.  As I said a couple times, I think torture is categorically wrong.

 

I only mean to point out that the traditional arguments given in defense of the practice fail on their own terms.

[Burgold]

You keep almost making my point for me, but then missing the obvious inference.

The very idea of getting information from torture that we "could not have obtained otherwise" is preposterous. I'm not ignoring this point, I'm pointing out that it is absurd.

If we have no other way of getting information besides torture, then we have no way of verifying that the information we are getting by torture is true. If we do have another way of getting the information, then there is no need to torture.

How can I make this any clearer than it already is?

Just to play devil's advocate... Just because we can obtain intel from sources other than torture would not invalidate the interrogation. After all, replication and confirmation of results is important too.

Intel gotten through wiretaps, snitches, etc could be wrong or incomplete too. That is one reason you want data from several sources.

That said, I don't believe torture is a good tool and oppose its use in most situations.

[s0crates]

Just to play devil's advocate...

In this case that idiom seems unusually literal.

 

Just because we can obtain intel from sources other than torture would not invalidate the interrogation. After all, replication and confirmation of results is important too.

1. This is the point though. Torture may be effective in such cases (where we already have information), but in those cases it would be unnecessary (as opposed to "invalid"). This is because we already have other means of acquiring the information in such cases (and could presumably get corroborating information by those means).

2. Doesn't this implicitly reject the standard ticking time bomb argument (according to which there is no other way to get the information)?

 

Intel gotten through wiretaps, snitches, etc could be wrong or incomplete too. That is one reason you want data from several sources.

If the information from the other sources isn't good (that is if we don't know already), then it seems the torture will necessarily be ineffective. How could we know in such a case (where the information we already have is inconclusive) that the person being tortured is telling us the truth and not merely what he thinks we want to here?

It seems to me that in such cases of uncertainty that the torture could not give us any way of being more certain.

[s0crates]

To be clear, here is my argument again:

1. Either an interrogator knows when his subject is lying or he does not know when his subject is lying.
2. If he knows when his subject is lying, then he already has the information he seeks (rendering the interrogation unnecessary).
3. If he does not know when his subject is lying, then he has no way of knowing when he has gotten the information he seeks (rendering the interrogation ineffective).
4. So interrogation is either unnecessary or ineffective.

 

(I should point out that this argument seems to apply to all interrogations, but it is especially strong in cases where the interrogation technique is torture, because in those cases you are very likely to get false information, since the person being tortured will say anything to get the torture to stop, as in the example of the Salem women confessing to having orgies with demons).

 

Perhaps it would help me if you could tell me which of those propositions you disagree with and why . . .

[Larry]

s0c: 

 

Your argument is based on the assumption that extracting information which might be false, is useless. 

 

I assert that it's certainly possible for information of questionable accuracy to have some value. 

 

(For example, in the ticking time bomb scenario, if you extract the location for the bomb, you send somebody to that location, to see if the bomb's there.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.  But your odds of finding the bomb are still better than searching at random.) 

 

----------

 

Now, though, the folks defending torture: 

 

I haven't seen any of your analysis recognize the fact that extracting information that "well, it might be useful, even if it's just to confirm something we already know", comes at a cost. 

 

Torturing people is not an exercise in which well, if it gains us anything, no matter how trivial, well, it's better than not torturing. 

 

I made the point, when we were first sending people to GTMO.  (And we started releasing people from GTMO). 

 

That well, I can see the wisdom of having such a place, for interrogating people who have put nuclear bombs in New York. 

 

But, people who put nuclear bombs in New York, don't get released, after we find the bomb.  (They don't get released, ever.  Because they might have the ability to get another bomb.) 

 

That the fact that we're willing to release so many people from GTMO, makes it very clear that our standard for sending people there isn't "hid a nuclear bomb in New York".  It's "he might know something that might be useful". 

 

(And this report confirms that statement, as well.  That we're applying this power to vastly more people than we can justify, using extreme scenarios.) 

[s0crates]

s0c:

Your argument is based on the assumption that extracting information which might be false, is useless.

I assert that it's certainly possible for information of questionable accuracy to have some value.

(For example, in the ticking time bomb scenario, if you extract the location for the bomb, you send somebody to that location, to see if the bomb's there. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But your odds of finding the bomb are still better than searching at random.)

I'm not sure I agree. It seems that you are in no better a situation with only potentially misleading information than you are with no information. In your example, if the information the subject gives you is misleading, then you are actually in a worse situation than you would be "searching at random," because you are diverting resources on a wild goose chase. This seems to be intuitively implausible to people (perhaps because it is actually very difficult to imagine a scenario where you have no information and yet you have somebody from who you know you can get information), but I find it hard to escape the logic.

This situation is only compounded by the fact that information extracted by torture is not only "potentially misleading," it is probably misleading. I think most will agree that the more duress a person is under when they give testimony, the less reliable the testimony. Do I need to bring up the Salem women again?

Regardless of how persuasive you find that, there are other problems with the ticking time bomb scenario too. Consider: If you already have the person with the information in custody, and you already know that the person in custody has the information, then it seems as if you must already have a pretty good source of information.

Look at it this way: First you have to assume that there is some dire emergency that demands you use any means necessary to get information (really an unlikely scenario to begin with), and then you have to assume you have a guy who knows said information in your custody already (somehow), and then you have to assume you know that he knows that information (somehow), and then you have to assume you know that he knows without knowing what he knows (somehow).

It just gets even stickier, because you then must make the further assumption that you will know when you get good information (as opposed to misleading information). How will you know? Your answer to this seems to be, well we'll send somebody to check. I don't really buy that, but even were I to grant it, please notice how far down a long chain of assumptions we've come already to get to this point.

[Larry]

I'm well aware of the assumptions and artificial constraints imposed by the ticking time bomb scenario. I've pointed them out, numerous times.

None the less, I observe that information of questionable truth still has SOME value. Heck, I'm sure the CIA has people whose job is to sift through reports of questionable truth, to try to find truth in them. (I assume they drink a lot).

(Now, whether it has ENOUGH value, to justify the costs of torturing people? I can certainly see arguing that no, it doesn't. I'm simply pointing out that you cannot prove that it has ZERO value.)

[s0crates]

I'm well aware of the assumptions and artificial constraints imposed by the ticking time bomb scenario. I've pointed them out, numerous times.

None the less, I observe that information of questionable truth still has SOME value. Heck, I'm sure the CIA has people whose job is to sift through reports of questionable truth, to try to find truth in them. (I assume they drink a lot).

(Now, whether it has ENOUGH value, to justify the costs of torturing people? I can certainly see arguing that no, it doesn't. I'm simply pointing out that you cannot prove that it has ZERO value.)

 

Fair enough. Perhaps I make the case too absolute (although I have to think the supposed "value" would be VERY MINIMAL). Still I think the general point would stand in probabilistic terms.

 

It seems you agree with the idea that the supposed benefits are marginal when compared to the costs, and that is really my point.  

 

To be honest I find this whole cost-benefit approach to morality, well, immoral. Just trying to beat them at their own game, you know?

[chipwhich]

Fair enough.

 

To be honest I find this whole cost-benefit approach to morality, well, immoral. Just trying to beat them at their own game, you know?

 

You and Larry have a lot of opinion without a lot of facts on what value they achieved.  Ya have a lot of articles and such.  I can promise ya one thing, someone knows the truth, and it's not either one of you

[s0crates]

You and Larry have a lot of opinion without a lot of facts on what value they achieved. Ya have a lot of articles and such. I can promise ya one thing, someone knows the truth, and it's not either one of you

Captain Red Herring returns!

Do you ever actually advance reasons or evidence in support of your beliefs?

[chipwhich]

Captain Red Herring returns!

Do you ever actually advance reasons or evidence in support of your beliefs?

 

There isn't a Red Herring when an argument is made that has no factual basis just opinion.  If anything your argument is the Red Herring.  If you have one piece of FACT, please share.  I don't and I freely admit it.

[s0crates]

There isn't a Red Herring when an argument is made that has no factual basis just opinion. If anything your argument is the Red Herring. If you have one piece of FACT, please share. I don't and I freely admit it.

Honestly I'm not convinced you know what facts and opinions are . . . and what of reasons? or don't you believe in those?

Saying the word fact, even in caps, is not an argument.