Question of sensibility (repeat)

[Adron]

A 95% chance for an individual to receive a swift merciful death, vs a 5% chance among the population to have their rights suspended, forced to live in a cage in a work camp for 50 years, then tossed out on the street with a short apology... I don't think swift merciful death is that bad.

[Adron]

And now a report from the future...

The inauguration of our new secret police has been highly successful over the past years. Every day, they drive around in the ghettos, picking up those about to commit murders. After receiving their notice of stripping of human rights, the subjects are swiftly moved to our interrogation rooms so that we may extract the details of their plottings.

Our initial 95% accuracy has been 10-fold improved; we now have a 99.5% success ratio on obtaining a confession within the four week long interrogation/torture/probation period. Of course, all those admitting their crime are immediately executed.

Strangely enough, our pickup crews do not report that their search behaviour has changed to explain this amazing improvement. We have however seen great improvements among the torturers, having picked up new talents and creative new methods, reducing the average time to confession to merely a matter of hours.

Quite probably, future research will show that our initial less than 99% accuracy was not a flaw in our pickup groups, but merely the failure of our interrogation team to properly extract the confession within the time frame set out in the "stripping of human rights" warrant. It may therefor be necessary to reacquire previous subjects for a renewed round of interrogation with the latest advancements in interrogation technology.

These were the latest news from the bureau of crime prevention.

[Arta]

Rule:

The answer, clearly, is proportionality. If you're going to imprison someone for 20 years then you need a much greater certainty than 95%.  If you're going to take their gun away for a week and then give it back, 95% is perfectly fine.

Invert:

I agree that some black & white issues exist; however, I do not agree that they are common. In fact, I think they are rare, and they almost always involve a body count. I also think that the oversimplification of issues such that they become black and white is very dangerous. It is also, unfortunately, a rather common political spin technique.

[Grok]

And now a report from the future...

The inauguration of our new secret police has been highly successful over the past years. Every day, they drive around in the ghettos, picking up those about to commit murders. After receiving their notice of stripping of human rights, the subjects are swiftly moved to our interrogation rooms so that we may extract the details of their plottings.

Our initial 95% accuracy has been 10-fold improved; we now have a 99.5% success ratio on obtaining a confession within the four week long interrogation/torture/probation period. Of course, all those admitting their crime are immediately executed.

Strangely enough, our pickup crews do not report that their search behaviour has changed to explain this amazing improvement. We have however seen great improvements among the torturers, having picked up new talents and creative new methods, reducing the average time to confession to merely a matter of hours.

Quite probably, future research will show that our initial less than 99% accuracy was not a flaw in our pickup groups, but merely the failure of our interrogation team to properly extract the confession within the time frame set out in the "stripping of human rights" warrant. It may therefor be necessary to reacquire previous subjects for a renewed round of interrogation with the latest advancements in interrogation technology.

These were the latest news from the bureau of crime prevention.

Love it.  So very Minority Report meets Sgt. Hans Georg Schultz.