An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Following up on our thread the other day on the philosopher Christopher Tollefsen, an economist friend writes to argue that, from his point of view at least, it's all quite simple:
A simple cost-benefit accounting:
If...[enhanced interrogation] reduces the quantity and quality of life of one person by less than 100%, say, by 0.15, while it saves the life of another person, the remaining sum is 1.85. If one person is not...[subjected to such interrogation] and another person dies as a result, the remaining sum is 1.00. If more than one person is saved--if we are talking about 100 people saved, even with the probability of just 0.01, and the...[interrogation] is applied to that end--the remaining sum is again 1.85.
There are limits to this sort of analysis--some things are wrong because they're wrong, no matter how much they might increase some measure of net well-being--but it gets at something, doesn't it? Subjecting a terrorist to rough questioning, even to waterboarding, harms him only by some small fraction of the harm that, if the technique works, many other people might be spared. The simple math squares with our simple intuition--with our common sense.
Economics. It has its uses.
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Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Uh-oh, utilitarianism! While I agree with his ends, scientific calculations of moral questions always scare me. As Allan Bloom said: "When the liberal, or what came to be called the utilitarian, teaching became dominant, as is the case with most victorious causes, good arguments became less necessary; the original good arguments, which were difficult, were replaced by plausible simplifications- or by nothing."
Mar '11
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Much of economics provides an intellectual framework to buttress what most people think of as common sense. Dismal science, my foot!
Jan '11
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Well, that was one of Tollefson's points. If the interrogation is merely a cost-benefit calculation between some short-term pain and divulging information, then Tollefson argues that it might be an acceptable treatment.
But Tollefson argues that enhanced interrogation goes further; it breaks down an essential component of one's humanity. It damages the person psychologically to the point where he can't function normally any more. And if your psychological state is damaged beyond repair, then you'd have to evaluate the damage at 100%.
(Does it? I don't know. I suspect, like anything else, most people would put the horrific experience behind them and go on about their life. But I must secretly admit that I've never waterboarded anyone, so I can't say for sure.)
As it is, I don't really buy Tollefson's argument, but I think his argument already anticipated Peter's economist friend's objection. That was why Tollefson added that wrinkle, I think.
Mar '11
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
I have never heard an actual argument against utilitarianism, only a list of the supposedly negative consequences of accepting it, an ironically utilitarian argument.
Nov '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
"The good of the many outweighs the good of the one."
Mr Spock, as he is about to die in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Edited on June 6, 2011 at 11:34pmOct '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Odd concept there. What if one ran the numbers on the conquest or collapse of a culture or nation state ? Some manner of cost benefit study there.
Claire B. had a recent post about a child that came to a bad end in Turkey. The parents sued for damages and were told via the court that the child had not lived long enough for them to be attached to the child to justify the damage claim. Ponder that deeply.
To add a strange twist, what if the Turkish Goverment sued the the folk that killed the child for future tax revenues and contributions that may have been made by the deceased ? There is a new Orwellian story there.
In Third World environs should one kill a goat or a chicken one is liable for any future production the animal would have provided.
Throw that into the mental blender...Would like get a take on the logic there...
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Tollefsen tried, but--and here, I think, we agree--failed to demonstrate that "enhanced interrogation" is always and everywhere intrinsically wrong. He began his argument by saying that there are all kinds of nasty things we're allowed to do to each other just as long as we will, not these nasty things, but some higher end: In the name of self-defense, for instance, we're allowed to kill people. Then he failed--really, quite completely, in my judgement--to show why, say, waterboarding is any different. Allowed to kill people in the name of self-defense but not to waterboard them? What conclusion could be screwier than that?
If waterboarding isn't intrinsically wrong, then, as Bill McGurn showed, it falls into the large category of actions we may undertake as long as the ends are proportionate to this extremely unpleasant means. Which is sort of what my economist friend's arithmetic gets at, I figure.
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Bernard Williams' work on Moral Integrity come to mind specifically. Judith Jarvis Thompson's work adds to this as well.
Aug '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises shows that although maximizing "utility" may be a correct goal, any system set up to make decisions for groups of individuals based on some measurement of utility is an impossibility. Accurate cross-individual comparisons of utility and value are essentially impossible, therefore any designed or imposed system that claims to make such comparisons from an "objective view" is a contradiction in terms.
(I would try to include a quote, except that this point was spread across 130 pages of a dense philosophical treatise on economics.)
You might say that true utilitarian government policy is like a true free market: you can't regulate one into existence, it just sort of spontaneously exists in certain circumstances.
Mar '11
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Harry Graver, Intern
Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Bernard Williams' work on Moral Integrity come to mind specifically. Judith Jarvis Thompson's work adds to this as well. · Jun 6 at 2:46pm
Thank you for the recommendations. I actually own Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, but after reading the first 50 pages of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the most tedious of philosophical works I have every encountered, I was a little disenchanted with that author. I will give this work another chance. I will have to look into Thompson's work.
May '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Peter Robinson:
Cost-benefit analysis is one of the tools engineers use to make decisions. While numbers and formulas make it seem objective, deciding the "best" definition of your cost function can make it very subjective.
You can come up with all kinds of different, conflicting results, just by changing the basic structure of the cost function between, for example, linear, exponential, logarithmic, root-sum-squares, etc., not to mention tweaking the numbers (read: assumptions) that go into those functions.
Here's an example of the games you can play with cost functions:
Is it really twice as good to save the lives of two people than one? What if you save 20 at the cost of 18, is that also twice as good as saving one life?
Is waterboarding seven terrorists for information at 0.15 apiece (=1.05) worse than killing one terrorist? What if waterboarding warrants a 0.12 deduction instead of 0.15?
Edited on June 7, 2011 at 2:18amMay '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Mark Wilson
Is it really twice as good to save the lives of two people than one? What if you save 20 at the cost of 18, is that also twice as good as saving one life?
Is waterboarding seven terrorists for information at 0.15 apiece (=1.05) worse than killing one terrorist? What if waterboarding warrants a 0.12 deduction instead of 0.15?
To continue the thought, in situations where you don't have access to reliable data (what is the numerical value of a human life or death; how do lives and deaths sum together; what is the numerical value of enhanced interrogation or torture; how do you account for economic impact; what is the probability the information saves lives), what you end up doing is picking arbitrary values and calculating an arbitrary result.
In engineering this analysis is typically done to bound the problem, and you make a decision based on the likelihood of particular input values being correct. Real data eventually comes in to validate your answer.
When there is no real data, like here, you spend days fiddling with inputs until you get results you like, which you had chosen in advance anyway.
Edited on June 7, 2011 at 2:24amRe: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson
When there is no real data, like here, you spend days fiddling with inputs until you get results you like, which you had chosen in advance anyway. · Jun 6 at 5:10pm
Edited on Jun 06 at 05:24 pm
Before Mark Wilson's fine reductio ad absurdum, I retire the field.
Sep '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Robert Promm: "The good of the many outweighs the good of the one."
Mr Spock, as he is about to die in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan · Jun 6 at 2:32pm
Edited on Jun 06 at 02:34 pm
"I didn't lie; I exaggerated." -- Mr. Spock, Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khant.
May '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
I will heartily second you on this, however!
Peter Robinson:
Subjecting a terrorist to rough questioning, even to waterboarding, harms him only by some small fraction of the harm that, if the technique works, many other people might be spared. The simple math squares with our simple intuition--with our common sense.
Feb '11
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Mark Wilson's analysis is excellent and it's something I've done in reports -- you change the assumptions to come up with the answer you (or your client) wanted in the first place. It's done all the time.
Peter Robinson's comment -- "Subjecting a terrorist to rough questioning, even to waterboarding, harms him only by some small fraction of the harm that, if the technique works, many other people might be spared. The simple math squares with our simple intuition--with our common sense." -- is really, really bad. Doing such things establishes precedents. People push boundaries to advance their careers. Pushing this boundary, I would submit, is not a good thing either for the individual doing this or for all the rest of us. The argument for the technique has already been pushed by those justifying "enhanced interrogation", i.e., torture, from ticking time bomb to picking up information on a courier who might just someday lead to Osama bin Laden. So don't argue that this is not a fluid boundary because it is. It's the same sort of thing as Jews were going to be sent to Madagascar and were instead sent to the lagers.
May '10
Re: An Economist Looks at Enhanced Interrogation
Hang On:
Peter Robinson's comment -- "Subjecting a terrorist to rough questioning, even to waterboarding, harms him only by some small fraction of the harm that, if the technique works, many other people might be spared. The simple math squares with our simple intuition--with our common sense." -- is really, really bad. Doing such things establishes precedents. People push boundaries to advance their careers. Pushing this boundary, I would submit, is not a good thing either for the individual doing this or for all the rest of us. ... So don't argue that this is not a fluid boundary because it is. It's the same sort of thing as Jews were going to be sent to Madagascar and were instead sent to the lagers.
I seconded Peter's bottom line, that it agrees with our intuition and common sense, in spite of the bad cost-benefit analysis.
Do you really take the position that these guys must be subject to nothing more than gentle questioning, surrendering the opportunity to gather intelligence, at the risk that we would slip down a moral slope toward some Nazi-like extermination of Muslims?
Don't we get to invoke Godwin's law here?