azza1625/createdebate-arguments huggingface dataset:
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

That is a logical fallacy known as the 'slippery slope'. Your argument is baseless.No, it's an argument based upon how governments work. A slippery slope argument would be if I said "it'll start with torture, then we'll lose freedom of speech, then freedom of religion, and suddenly we'll be in the United States of North Korea!"Torture is applied to people BEFORE there is proof of guilt. Now take ten minutes and reread that, over and over again, until it sinks in. It means that you only need be SUSPECTED of a crime or link to some important political target, and you could be kidnapped and tortured. Then realise that it is in government interests to apply torture to political dissidents in order to maintain stability. Terrorism is only the thin part of this wedge.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Torture is applied to people BEFORE there is proof of guilt.A search warrant allows officers of the law to completely turn your house upside down. Without the warrant, it's called invasion of privacy, breaking and entering, vandalism, etc... This is all done before any conviction by court. Now, torture should be regulated the same way to prevent abuse.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

A search warrant allows officers of the law to completely turn your house upside down. Without the warrant, it's called invasion of privacy, breaking and entering, vandalism, etc... This is all done before any conviction by court. Now, torture should be regulated the same way to prevent abuse.We already have laws that prevent it from leading to abuse: it is illegal in most civilised countries.Also, quit using the phrase "prevent abuse" with torture as if torture can ever be nonabusive when it is by definition a form of abuse.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

We already have laws that prevent it from leading to abuse: it is illegal in most civilised countriesIt's called a ban, as in sweep it under the carpet even though it's happening on a regular basis, in most civilized countries. It's called politicians can't be fucked dealing with it because most people are like you: don't deal with the problem, just ban it and ignore it when it happens and if anyone points out the fact that it happens, just show them that our laws ban it so it must mean it's not happening.Abuse, Doesn't work, Human rights.Next!
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

This is an extreme example, and so can not be used for the general examples.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

Now try arguing that torturing people actually serves the needs of the many.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

It is, as always, dependent on the circumstance.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

There's no such thing as black and white in this world when it comes to moral issues. Torture? Would that REALLY get the information you need out of them? Or would it just get them to tell you anything to stop the pain. To back this statement without criticising it would be moronic in my opinion. Torture is illegal for many, many reasons, and to want it legalised is fairly sadistic of you in my eyes.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

It is an acceptable risk - them lying. It's much better than the hypothetical bomb going off. By the way - I am not much of a sadist. If you asked if I were a masochist, I'd agree to an extent. If you asked if I were insane - I would say no, but mildly psychopathic.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

I disagree with it being "an acceptable risk", suffering for an invalid out come through physically and psychologically crippling pain isn't acceptable to me.Hmmm, you're a very wise man, neither of us will sway the other's opinion on this topic, but I look forward to seeing you in later topics.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

So then tell me, is One mans life worth more than millions?Torture is necessary with the right kind of enemy.Lets take a dog for example (We don't torture dogs, but just hold on) if your dog chews up something your not just going to let it get away with it, no! Your going to slap it or whatever.The point being is some people ONLY respond/obey to pain just as dogs do.Another, if someone had kidnapped your daughter/son/wife/husband/Whatever! and you found him would you torture him to get the information out or would you pussy foot around and ask him polity and bring roses to him?And don't tell me its not the same if the government is doing it it's always the same.Personally I would just kick someones ass for doing that, but, that's just me.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

This isn't about what we'd personally do, because anyone would do anything to save a loved one. "Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information."I've not said one man's life is worth more than millions.Target the question instead of trying to provoke a personal response.We're talking about military trained people here, not government. And everyone is susceptible to corruption, what about some sick fuck torturing people and enjoying it?! And for that person to be found innocent, and then his/her confession to be followed up by the police wasting time and resources, time and resources which could've been spent following a more liable lead.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

1. I'm not talking about torture for enjoyment only for information.2. MILITARY IS GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. Did you know if you get a tattoo in the military and its not a military tattoo you are charged for defacing Government property? Yeah, fuck you.3.I've not said one man's life is worth more than millions. I wasn't accusing you of that I was asking.4. For your last paragraph make it easier to understand..your all over the place and your grammar is bad.5. his isn't about what we'd personally do, because anyone would do anything to save a loved one. A country you are loyal to is a loved one. I love Germany, I love the US but I hate US's politics right now but I still love the country.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

1. I'm saying sooner or later someone will come along like that. It'd take a sick man to torture another man in any case from my perspective.2. I didn't know that. Laws are different in Britain, my friend's had one done since joining. Yeah, fuck you.3. You most certainly implied that I thought that.4. My thoughts flowed, and my grammar was fine apart from a ". And".5. That's what you made it about, moron.- You can't pick apart my argument by making a cute little list.- Your interpretation of what I say is not what I'm trying to say at all.- You're going off topic, and taking it out of context, and making it overly personal.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.Cliches don't make an argument, besides the fact that allowing the torture of suspects doesn't benefit the many, because our legal system presently protects the many from torture.So really you should phrase it as:The needs of the few agents, police, and investigators outweigh the needs of the many citizens who require a set of rights to feel protected even in unusual circumstances.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

They will not feel protected after another 9/11.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."And if you don't think having the United States government adopt a policy of torturing people for information they want is a sacrifice of liberty you're hopelessly blind.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Nobody has given me a real argument other than 'if you can't see that you are blind'. Americans will feel less safe if they become a bombing range for terrorists.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

So your counter argument is, to sum up... 'screw liberty, screw morality, screw principles, just give me safety'.Or... we should be a nation of cowards with no ethics.The founding fathers would be so proud. The English make it through the BLITZ from Nazi Germany without abandoning their core principles as a nation and embracing the torturing of prisoners for intelligence. Americans get one building complex knocked down by some whackjobs living in caves halfway around the world and they should toss every core ethical belief they hold out the window in panic and terror. That's the path you want the nation to take. Joy. I'm going to have to remember to regularly take a little time out of my day to be thankful people who think like that are not in charge of the country anymore. They did quite enough damage before 2009.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

How is protecting ourselves an act of cowardice?Your arguments are quite annoying - you combine words meant to evoke an emotional response along with sarcasm and dull examples.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

If you didn't understand the perfectly clear explanation the first time why should I think you would understand it if I repeated it? Well, I'll try anyway.The English had courage. They were under MASSIVELY higher levels of threat and defended themselves with honor and integrity and did not let fear drive them to abandon their principles and ethics.You on the other hand, at the first sign of trouble, run screaming for a torturer to protect you from the scary people and to hell with principle or ethics. THAT is what makes "protecting yourself" an act of cowardice. It's easy to talk a big game about how the US is the nation of truth and justice and freedom when nobody is threatening it. But if you don't have the guts to stick by that when one little fringe whackjob organization knocks down a couple buildings you're all talk. the English managed to do it when the entire Naze empire was razing their major cities to the ground. THEY had fortitude. THEY had the courage of their convictions. What the hell do you have?How do you not comprehend that the primary concern of ALL cowards is protecting themselves before any other considerations? What do you think MAKES them cowards?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Call me a coward if you want, but don't call yourself a hero when you're walking around up in the clouds and can't see reality. People know the US torture. People are neither blind nor stupid. For all its moral high grounds, the US does torture and sneaks around doing it. So call me a coward, but you'll get respect from me if you see reality and deal with it like a man instead of like a mouse.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

You, the person who ignores the assessments of actual profession interrogators in the military and intelligence commmunities because he thinks he knows how torture REALLY works... thinks that the only effect of making the United states an international pariah is that people "think whatever they want" but apparently don't do anything about it, and have just recently implied that fighting the nazi's and torturing prisoners holds moral equivalence... are giving me advice on not ignoring reality?and you, the guy so primarily concerned with protecting his own backside that he'll compromise ANY principle or ethic to do it are suggesting I deal with things like "a man"?You're precious.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

lmao... yes and yes! btw, have you taken your emotion suppressing pills today?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

I'm done with you. Either you have some kind of severe psychological issue or you're somewhere in the vicinity of 12 years old and either one of those possibilities leaves me just wasting time trying to engage you in rational discussion.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Yes, if you can't debate with a clear head, you oughta leave the topic. It's not for the faint of head.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

Yet, you base your argument on the fact that if we don't torture people for information that there is no other to find information and, because of that, we will certainly face another terrorist attack. You provide no logical or statical warrant for this claim so, how can this argument be seriously considered?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

I did not intend on creating the impression that torture is the only way to go. Nor do I believe it is the most effective. However, on a case-to-case basis, torture should be an option - there may be times when other things work, when torture works, or when nothing works.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

You say that you don't intend to give off the impression that torture is the only way to go but, your arguments all rely on the fact that torture is the only way to stop the lives of many losing their lives. You assert that torture could have stopped 9/11. You offer no other options in the debate besides torture.Morality dictates that torture never be used because by doing so we undermine our own cause of spreading democratic ideals.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

I do not have any democratic ideals - frankly, I agree with most political systems over democracy. I do not believe that morality has a place in war. Nor do I claim that torture could have stopped 9/11. What I did say was that torture could stop future occurrences. Of course, there are sure to be some that may 'slip by'.I recall reading news articles in which Osama bin Laden promises more attacks, and North Vietnam stated a desire to 'wipe America off the map.'http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_koreas_nuclear Can we allow this to happen?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

I do not have any democratic ideals - frankly, I agree with most political systems over democracy. I do not believe that morality has a place in war. Nor do I claim that torture could have stopped 9/11. What I did say was that torture could stop future occurrences. Of course, there are sure to be some that may 'slip by'.This is why people downrate you all the time. You display a child's understanding of ethics and morality. I shouldn't be surprised though, this site attracts teenagers and you're probably still in high school.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Regarding democratic ideals -I think America should butt out of the affairs of the rest of the world. What right do they have to democratize Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

I think that you misunderstood the meaning of my words. I meant was that morality mustn't be the prime thought on everybody's mind during a war. If you have a choice between torturing a member of the nation with whom you are at war, or allowing your own people to die - is the former not a better choice?People have a very odd notion of morality. The enemy must be subdued so that they cannot harm our own people.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

I think that you misunderstood the meaning of my words. I meant was that morality mustn't be the prime thought on everybody's mind during a war. If you have a choice between torturing a member of the nation with whom you are at war, or allowing your own people to die - is the former not a better choice?I think you simply have no concept that wars are fought with a code of ethics. The point of ethics is that you cannot just disregard them when it's convenient. If you have a code of ethics which exhaults human rights and fair trials before punishment, breaching those ethics is not an option. You chose beforehand to obey a more restrained set of rules of engagement, and the justification for those rules has become a sort of central point of your nation, a matter of honour, based upon seeing how wretched governments become who do not have these ethics.It's that simple. You can't make the argument "well it might save lives" because this isn't about efficiency. This is about defending a way of life that was very hard to obtain in the first place, and that demands the sacrifice of playing with gloved hands.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

I have never been to war. I do not know the first thing about war other than what I've read.But this is war! You don't try each and every solder before you shoot them - why should torture be any different?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

But this is war! You don't try each and every solder before you shoot them - why should torture be any different?I suppose the best distinction can be described in a very horrendous anecdote.Imagine you are walking home, and manage to find someone who will drive you. He seems nice, but in fact he has been eyeballing you for days and decided you were the one. Your door is locked and he manages to sedate you with a chloroform-like substance, catching you completely off guard. He's clearly planned something... special for you. You wake up, strapped to a table in a garage. He's in front of you, intimidating you. It seems you were his prey. He is going to rape you. After he satisfies himself with you this way, he shows you some bolt cutters, and a blow torch. He tells you he has some fun things planned for you. He's going to cut each one of your digits off, one at a time, and he's going to use the blowtorch for well... best not to talk about THAT. You are his now, and he is going to make you suffer in every way possible before finally letting you die.The point of this lurid tale is that any one of us would rather die quickly than experience that kind of pain, that kind of horror. THAT is the difference between the ethics of torture and killing. Death can be quick, but torture puts you in the hands of someone sadistic who might enjoy what they do, it might put you in the hands of someone who does it for their duty and you are just scum who has to be dealt with. In either case you're going to feel pain, humiliation, trauma, because your capturers think you know something. You are theirs now, you have no rights, you have no representation, you are even expendable in some jurisdictions.Sure, this is war, but as a country I wouldn't want to be known for such atrocities. I wouldn't want to be a member of a country that treats its captives with such disregard. I would like to hope that we can rise above this type of behaviour in the same way we rose above cannibalism and slavery. Both of those, by the way, have extremely rational arguments in their favour but you would be hard pressed to find someone who wishes to sink to level of eating another human being, or owning them, now in our modern culture.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

I can, in a way, understand your point of view. However - doesn't the people in the yet-to-unfold terrorist attack get rights? Why should they have to die to save somebody else from torture?same way we rose above cannibalism and slavery.America was never involved in cannibalism.P.S. If my family were starving, I'd prepare a human for them to eat - if there were no other options. The life of my family comes first - I'll try not to eat any CreateDebaters, though (except for Crackers).
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

They will not feel protected after another 9/11Personal rights and liberties endure for decades, even centuries. Issues like terrorist attacks or wars do not offer justification for reducing our rights for a short-term gain that has decades-long consequences.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

And the deaths of thousands do not have decades-long consequences? What about resultant wars, etc.?
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

Since it is the opinion of any actual professional interrogator I've eer seen give an opinion on it it that torture doesn't actually work for acquiring useful intelligence, your question is irrelevent since it wouldn't save the lives of thousands or prevent any wars.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

And the deaths of thousands do not have decades-long consequences? What about resultant wars, etc.?Do you realise that it took from the reign of early Christianity to the Enlightenment, centuries of fear and rule by royalty before weakly defined ethics concerning basic human rights began to resemble anything that we have today? Do you realise that centuries ago people were slowly tortured in devices like the Brazen Bull (look it up), thumb screws, among others? It took years of suffering before we finally achieved a set of ethics that prohibited this kind of abuse, and history has shown that with any kind of law, once you give something up it may take decades to get your right to it back.So how could you rationally defend us simply abandoning a core human right of protection over fear of a war or some dead people? People may die, as a consequence of our adherence to first-world ethics, but we will have PROTECTED those ethics that MAKE us first world, which took blood and tears of many generations' suffering to see come to fruition.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

We are dealing with terrorists. They are using everything they have to be against us. Naturally we should use everything we have fight with them and protect our people - torture is one of the tools we have and we should use it when it's necessary.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

Inter arma enim silent leges
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

That does not mean all things are legally justified in times of war.Hence the existence of  war crimes .
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

War crimes were not an issue in Ancient Rome - when this quote was first written.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: No

Well, they are an issue now... which kind of makes the original quote invalid.
Debate: Interrogators Should Be Allowed To Torture Suspects For Information
Side: yes

So there are a few outcomes with the debate about torture. Perhaps you do torture a few terrorists (who despise our country anyway, even before the torture), then you find out information and save hundreds or even thousands of lives from an attack. Or maybe you don't torture. Then you could technically get lucky and catch the attack before it happens, but without intel. That's tough to do though and most likely, due to a lack of information, the terrorists would find a way around our securities to attack again. The way I see it, it's torturing a few terrorists who want us dead and saving hundreds or thousands of lives. Or we don't torture and let our own citizens die.