Iridian's page

Fortunately, we don't have to debate it since Mike has made the clear ruling that torture is evil. Period. At this point, personal moralities are irrelevant. The only remaining question is what is/not torture (defined as excessive pain and suffering).

You see, we agree here. My point is that there are no clear cut lines anywhere around this subject exactly because the question on what is and what's not torture is and will be grey. This question is not "the only thing that's remaning". It's the very only question that has ever been meaningful in this discussion.

We could replace the term "torture" with "booboo" and say "Booboo is evil, but we can't define booboo specifically." and be really none the wiser. They're just words. Saying booboo is evil without defining what booboo is specifically, is just empty. I exaggerate a bit here of course: torture and excessive pain do have some generally understood if hazy meaning and thus give some general guidelines which will probably be enough for most practical situations. This is probably more than was before this discussion. Like always, discussions push the grey area back a bit and that's a good thing.

But still, please do not pretend that the original question is somehow.. clearly answered. Even though it was opened with "is torture evil?" it's quite obvious that what was being searched for is not semantics and associations of the word torture. Instead, what is sought is actual guidelines on what kind of game play behaviour is evil and what is not, around all kinds of behaviour that revolve around the scope of intimidation and torture. Then answering this repeatedly with something along the lines of 'yeah torture is evil but it's actually up to you to decide what's torture and what's not when the situation gets hazy' does not really say that much.