Last time, I hope, I swear.

Just one final quick thought on torture, I hope to be my last. Sam Harris refuses to denounce torture because, in some hypotheticals in his head, it comes in handy. That logic of course means you can’t ‘categorically’ denounce anything as immoral, because any bad act could, in theory, lead to overall good consequences. Harris sees this as a deep insight.

In other words, this grown man just recently came to understand teleological ethics, the idea that, sometimes, the ends justify the means. Most people get that sometime in elementary school I’d imagine.

The issue isn’t far-fetched hypotheticals. The issue is the overwhelming likelihood of bad consequences, and the innate odiousness of the act itself. Rape might lead to the conception of a child who grows up to be the next Gandhi; we don’t condone rape. Murder might prevent future crime; we don’t condone murder. An innately awful act that has overwhelmingly negative results is immoral. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s probabilistic. It’s called being an adult.

We issue universal proscriptions against certain acts, aka, crimes, because we know that leaving the choice to commit these actions, as well as those far less dangerous, up to the vagaries of individual choice places us all at risk. Risk of bigots, of the crazed, of the selfish and virulent… people like Sam Harris, in other words, who think themselves fit to judge your innermost beliefs and find you guilty.

Public ethics, to my mind, are utilitarian. You can’t condone evil in pursuit of incredibly unlikely, implausible, and largely hypothetical goods, while the evil act itself causes very real, very large, and almost certain negative consequences. It’s bad math, bad policy, and bad ethics.

Let us also note the short memory of people like Harris who cannot comprehend the risk in giving a government the kind of power to do these things, in secret, and without accountability. All Harris cares about is reducing his risk of being killed by scary Muslims; he can’t grasp the risk of being killed by much more powerful, and numerous, people closer to home.

That’s it. Speech over. This blog now returns to lighter topics for a good long while.