Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Torture

This simulated French game show recently duplicated a famous psychological experiment, in which people were tested to see whether they could be induced to give painful or dangerous electric shocks to random strangers, in this case for money.

This post looks at possible answers should you be asked to torture someone...I will refer to those possible answers as Yes, No or Other.

Yes - if you give this answer, you are a despicable cretin and unworthy of calling yourself a human being. Please immediately throw yourself into a lion pit and help make the human race a little bit saner...and less congenitally stupid.

No - better, but this is kind of an underachiever response and still has the drawback of leaving a threat to your fellow human beings wandering around loose. Let's face it, someone sociopathic enough that they'd ask you to torture people may end up inflicting that torture on other innocents, perhaps someone you care about.

Other - I am postulating for the sake of argument (or perhaps sanity) that the best possible response if you are ever asked to torture somebody is to immediately hospitalize the person making the request. A broken nose, a broken jaw, broken kneecap or ruptured spleen: these may be sufficient to communicate to the person you're dealing with that attacking innocent and vulnerable people can have very dangerous consequences. At the very least, it could render them unable to harm innocent people until the proper authorities put a stop to their insanity.