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So what about those who feel a very strong internalized distaste for law-and-order types who fantasise about extreme punishments, especially when the extreme punishments happen to always be for members of their outgroup? Many of them probably think that your viewpoint is pretty evil, and would at least be willing to go as far as locking you up in solitary if that were the only way to stop you from actualising it. Do you figure their feelings on the matter are also an evolved taste that certain human populations naturally develop which reflects a logical viewpoint, or do only your feelings align with the truth?
Perhaps some might even like the idea of torturing the would-be torturer. Would you prefer to fight to the death against those people (who, if they don't have a numerical advantage over you, certainly don't seem to have that much of a disadvantage) over who gets to get tortured in the end, or do you think you could come to a compromise where neither of you tortures and you could resolve your differences in a different way?
I would definitely prefer to live in a country with the reasonable amount of Risk-Care assessment that (per the view in my post) encourages saving millions of lives from a torturous death. If someone disagrees I am completely unbothered — what can I do but express my argument? This discussion is not about the most efficient practical form of procuring the legal remedy in the courts, it’s higher order than that. To me, wanting to do maximal evil to a person that wants to effectively minimize maximal harm (and torturous death) does sound like a perverse and antisocial worldview. But maybe you can get a society up and running on such principles. I would listen to someone argue that this leads to the best results, despite my doubt.
The laziest nontrivial argument to do whatever it takes to stay torture-free is that we are in a society that at least tries its darndest to maintain a pretense of shunning deliberate torture even if it is for the greater good, and all the most recent ones that did not maintain this pretense seem pretty terrible to live in.
I do concede that wanting to have all those who advocate living by the sword die by the sword and only then abolish swords is somewhat gratuitously brutal, and I'd personally be quite contented with merely locking up anyone who was involved in introducing torture. (Note that this is not to say I want to lock anyone up for arguing for it, as long as it is not implemented. That would run up against other principles.)
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This argument proves too much. It can apply to any type of punishment for anything. If you want to lock people up for bank robbery, someone could equally well say "what if someone thinks that viewpoint is pretty evil and is willing to lock you up for expressing it"?
The symmetry with bank robbery doesn't hold, because "jailing bank robbers is unjust" is a minority position, and opposition to any jailing at all is even more so. On the other hand, opposition to torture in general is (mercifully, in my eyes) still mainstream, as is the belief that extreme punishment for negligence is unjust. Argue for jailing bank robbers and most people will nod along and no norms will be changed. Argue for torturing scientists who oversaw major accidents, and you will only leave us with additional torture, because abstract principles like "no torture" are always softer than tribalism like "if we torture, it better be the outgroup". This will neither be torture that you want (because you and your people are in a minority (as weighted by power) disagreed with ~ despised by the majority) nor torture that I want (because I don't want there to be torture).
If many people think like you this is circular reasoning; if nobody supports it because it's a minority position, that makes it a minority position even if it wasn't already.
I'm also skeptical that you'd stop objecting to torture if it proved to be popular.
This argument could be made for other things too. It has not, for instance resulted in the death penalty, or even long sentences, being applied tribally.
I wouldn't, but I never claimed that I would. However, I'd stop being able to use this particular argument towards my interlocutor. If torture were popular, I would consider his position merely immoral, and I don't think that this is the forum for trying to shift someone's value function. Given that it is as unpopular as it is, though, I believe his position is not only immoral but also instrumentally bad for his own ends, and I am trying to use that as an argument to get him to drop it. Is there a problem with having ulterior motives (which I think I'm being pretty upfront about) in trying to stop someone from making a mistake?
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Interesting point. I don't think those two quite satisfy the criteria to be a perfect model of torture, because the death penalty seems to only be applied to people who are too low-class to matter to either tribe in every country where I'm equipped to judge its tribalism and there was never an established principle against long sentences (and there are examples where they were applied tribally, e.g., famously, interbellum Germany), but you are probably right that my expectation that it will inevitably become so needed more careful thought. I still think that the circumstance that the proposed motivating use will be interpreted as blatantly tribal makes it highly likely.
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