Zoë and Torg discovered that the information about Oceanus was incomplete. That deficit would have resulted in a lot of kids being possessed, tortured, and killed in spite of their attempts were it not for Meander, who also nearly got horribly possessed. They themselves may have been in danger...

Now Mme. Grenouille implies that Gwynn might have squeezed out incomplete information from Mme. Champignon.

We also know that the funnel doesn't just "murder" or "execute" demons, but that their secrets are "forcibly and terribly taken". That phrase implies monstrous torture.

IRL, we know that torture often begets false or incomplete information, with the missing pieces almost always being crucial information. In this respect, the funnel appears to mirror real life.

IRL, we don't condone torture. Partly that's because we don't want our enemies torturing us, but also because the false and incomplete results suggest that the ends do not justify the means. Yes, I know the demons are "pure" evil (most of them), and if I had the choice of storing them in the Book or dispatching them, I would choose dispatching them. No doubt most of our gang would make the same choice without a thought. But torture... ...that's another matter. Can it be justified? Especially if the information it begets is unreliable.

None of this is spec, but I anticipate that some of the discussion that could ensue might be. So I decided to put it in SRC rather than Reactions.

That’s due to the relationship between the information and the torture process. Pain is applied because you aren’t providing information…the longer you hold out, the more pain is applied to persuade you to talk. “Talking” is what (theoretically) ends the pain, therefore the tortured is incentivized to say something, anything to make the pain stop, even if that “anything” is 100% made up.

I’m assuming the funnel just…rips their soul out, as one might rip out someone’s liver. The process is painful, but it’s not like you could provide a false liver to make the pain end sooner. It’s “torture” in the sense of “it also hurts a lot,” but being disassembled is just inherently painful. What you get in the end is what was there to remove.

So no, I don’t think the funnel provides inaccurate or incomplete information because it’s “torture.” If the funnel is incomplete or inaccurate, it might be because demon/fey knowledge is incomplete, or perhaps it’s susceptible to self-delusion, “the lies we tell ourselves.”

Don't kid yourself, swmartian. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!

I assume only the same or worse about most demons.

Djublonskopf: You are accurate on torture IRL. I'm unconvinced about the funnel process, although I think you have a good chance of being correct. Still, if there's a way to withhold information, I'm sure the tortured demons will do it - and the more crucial the information is, the more reason they'd have to withhold it.

But whether you're correct or not, I'm not sure it matters. Incomplete information can be more dangerous than no information at all - unless, of course, you understand the information is likely to be incomplete and are able to plan for the unknown. Torg and Zoë are damn lucky to be alive. And they may not be had it not been for the combined unexpected interference from Meander and the unreliable and transient "team player" mindset of Bun-Bun.

So the question remains unanswered: If you're not going to get all of the information you need, and you are quite likely to get dangerously (perhaps even fatally so) incomplete information, then is getting that information enough to justify torture?

Spirantz: Similarly, while amusing, your response doesn't really answer the question. I have no real problem killing cows (or rather allowing someone else to do it), and I'd have zero qualms about killing demons. But I don't see any point in torturing either one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't consider the use of funnel on demons to really be torture. Yes it's horrific and probably painful, but that's just a byproduct of you "photocopying" their minds.

It's like when you need to get the bones out of a human who doesn't want to give them to you, even though you asked nicely. So you throw them into a wood-chipper and then sift out the bone bits from the goop at the other end. I'm not torturing them, that's just the process.

Yeah, I have no interest in actually discussing something like torture. Go figure.


Information is a completely other story though. It's pretty unheard of to ever have all pieces of information relevant for making decisions. You cannot predict the future.

Gathering information is increasingly more important as decisions become larger or higher-risk. That can help you come up with multiple scenarios so that if something bad happens, you're not caught making reactionary decisions in the moment.

I'd be more concerned about how reliable the information you DO have actually is. Is it from a trustworthy source? How do you determine trust? How relevant is the information to your specific situation? Is it being applied in the correct manner towards achieving your goal? In Gwynn's case, do the methods (here's your niftyverse torture arguement) justify taking it this way? Where do ethics apply in the niftyverse.

Before determining whether or not you want to apply your different methods, you'd have to weigh the value of the potential gains. To do that, I'd look at the reliability of the information as one part. How trustworthy is the information from the a magic funnel that rips information out of the souls of demons? Demons aren't typically trustworthy. Many grunts may have wrong information either from their own cluelessness. Do demons go to school? What biases do they have? Were they fed incorrect information to keep them in line? How narrow of a view do they have of the entire picture?

Anyway. It's still basic ethics training to me (with a demon/comic twist). Is the trouble and potential harm worth the potential reward? Too bad Gwynn didn't have a research ethics board to talk this through...

OK, Zill; sure, torture is just a byproduct of the process. And if the process produced a sufficient amount of good information, I don't believe I'd have asked the question, because I'd be good with that - at least for the niftyverse.

So Spirantz is really on the right track. This discussion is really about information. And while ethics may still be a question, the real question is whether the funnel produces enough good information to be worth the effort (let alone the ethics). We don't have enough information at this point to answer that question definitively.

We do know that the funnel provides the gang with the identities and locations of bad demons doing evil things to people. So far so good. However, the information needed to stop the bad guys was in one case so deficient that Torg and Zoë would not have been able to stop the evil things from happening and may have even died themselves except for a stroke of luck. My concern is that they don't appear to be reflecting on the inadequacy of their information or the consequences.

As for the source of the information, to a large extent, what we know of the funnel is from Sharon Gall and indirectly from Lady Tomb (aka Tombsy; aka Tombsy's daughter). Lady Tomb is not reliable. I want to believe Sharon Gall is reliable, but that is a biased belief based on her being a good guy in an alternative universe where Schlock was also a good guy. We know that Sharon appears to be manipulated by fate spiders and their goal(s) may be completely different than the gang's goals.

As for the current situation, we have to let it play out. Perhaps Gynn's confidence is because she already has all the information she needs and is prepared. But if she doesn't, then she's not only risking her own existence, she's also risking Riff's. She is his only lifeline out of his current situation. On the other hand, if she is to be that lifeline, she may have to take big risks..... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The people and demons themselves are definitely all of questionable trust...even ones that you'd want to believe in.

But then again, if you get consistently good results from all of the information that you've attained from a source, that WOULD build some amount of trust. And if you have no other options or paths to follow....yeah, you'll probably opt to follow it if the rewards are great enough.

Then again, Riff's dad also fell for that logic Poopypants 'predicted the future' to such crazy accuracy that he became the bug's pawn.

What have we learned from this? Never trust anyone or anything, except when it's immediately useful, but be wary of that always building towards a greater doom, as strung along by Bugs, Spiders, and possibly immortal kings next?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ indeed!

Wait, isn't Gwynn being hunted by another thing made out of bugs? I'm thinking maybe Pete was traumatized by insects as a child.