Hello, I’m Pang Ying.

In October 2020, an open letter attributed to a Guangxi university student claimed that 600 million people earning under RMB 1,000 were dragging China down and proposed that students kill them all within a month to save money and land.

How should we refute this: by saying the murder would not rejuvenate the country, or that people are ends rather than tools and killing for profit is wrong? The first says it will not work; the second that it is wrong. The strongest answer is both. The statement is extreme and horrifying, but exposes a common logical distinction:whether something works and whether it is right, today’s subject.

Consider retaliatory violence, rescue torture, a female gaze responding to the male gaze, killing one to save a hundred, or a tax on obesity.

Working means achieving the intended practical goal. Rightness asks whether conduct is moral, just, and proper. A two-by-two matrix yields four outcomes:effective and right; effective but wrong; ineffective but right; ineffective and wrong.

Begin with rescue torture, which intuitively may work but be wrong.

Rescue torture inflicts physical or mental suffering on an alleged offender to force disclosure useful to an emergency rescue.

Suppose we torture a captured terrorist, or even family members, to locate hostages or a bomb and save innocent lives.

Supporters want to show it both saves lives and is moral; opponents that it does neither.

First consider effectiveness.

Supporters cite successful examples and data, or appeal to simple inference, emotion, and intuition.

A terrorist group has planted a bomb in a crowded square. Torture a captured member or family until the location is revealed and hundreds or thousands survive.

A paper argues torture weakens resistance and increases confession. A CIA report claimed Abu Zubaydah became cooperative after waterboarding in 2002 and helped prevent radiological attacks in Washington and New York.