Suppose it could somehow be shown that excrutiating torture for convicted first degree murderers reduced such murders by x%. If there was some way of absolutely insuring that no innocent people were ever convicted and if the Constitution was amended to allow this, what would x have to be to make you in favor of it?

( I am talkuing about future murderers who would be aware of the impending punishment. Not those allready convicted.)

Any Positive Expected Value, but the torture should be done in a private place, such as "Bobby's Room".

So we have exactly two choices for this question? The status quo or torture?

Wait, it must be a never fails prison only system vs a never fails torture system right?

I don't have an answer yet, but this is related.

The deterrent value of a punishment must depend on the likelihood of false imprisonment. If I have an 80% chance of being wrongly arrested then the cost of doing something that increases my chance of imprisonment to 90% isn't nearly as high as if my initial chance was .01%.

This should become widely known, then we can have a campaign to reduce false imprisonment based on its deterrent effects.

100 (b/c then we'd never have to actually torture anyone)

Depends highly on the effects caused on the first degree murderers. If it somehow emotionally or physically debilitates them, x would need to be near to 100. If its effects are merely painful and a huge deterrent but leaves them otherwise OK in the long term, x would only need to be maybe 10%. In reality it's probably somewhere between the two extremes.

There are just so many other potential side effects of the torture that decrease in murder rate isn't enough to decide what x ought to be.

We already kill some convicted 1st Degree Murderers.

The OP mentioned excruciating torture (but did not state it would be to the point of death).

always hate question that put the impetuous on me to make up a highly arbitrary line. Safe it to say i would be okay with it if 1 torture eliminated all further murders and not okay if torturing every murderer only prevented one murder. Via continuity we can conclude a line does exist somewhere between these, but its precise location is going to be pretty arbitrary and nearly impossible to deduce a priori from some fixed moral system.

FYP

You are questioning the assumption. It doesn't matter the rational, given that it DID make x% different, would you be okay with it?

101%. Torture is not acceptable behavior.

I meant to the point of death. Or that execution (or life in prison in states where execution is disallowed) would follow. I didn't mean torture in lieu of present punishment.

I mean for this question to elicit whether the principle of "civilized men don't torture" overrides saving innocnt lives. And if so, to what degree.

The answer to your question is to NEVER torture. It has dehumanizing effects on the whole society in addition to the suffering inflicted. Not a world I would like to live in. The society must not be as or more evil than the criminals.

So convicted 1st degree murderers (with 0% chance of wrongful conviction) should be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect. They should just be kept out of society.

How about pizza delivery, high-speed internet, and conjugal visits?

Although I wouldn't put it in such hippy-dippy terms this poster has an important point.

One problem with trying to reduce moral questions to cost-benefit equations is you ignore that people and societies are defined and thus changed by their actions.

When a person or a society starts to sanction torture this is inevitably going to have psychological ripple effects on the individual/society and on the way the individual/society is viewed and treated by others.

I dont have any moral objection to torturing murderers if it reduced the murder rate. Assuming no false convictions, ~1% would prolly be enough. However, with the potential side effects on society I would need to think long and hard before coming to any conclusions about whether it’d be a good plan... (obv, still assuming 0 false convictions)