Quote Originally Posted by taltamir View Post
I thought it was pretty clear i was talking about others...

If you torture bob the child rapist to death, you save jill the 8 year old from being raped by james, because james heard what happened to bob and is too afraid to do so himself.
You saved jill from james. Not saving jill from james because of some flimsy moralistic excuse (torture is always evil) is an evil act in of itself.
The whole "scarying people into not doing evil" efficiency is not generally agreed upon. I do not have them on hand, but I hear that studies have shown that (for example) capital punishment is NOT an effective deterrent to crime.

Torture may or may not be more efficient. Who knows?