You quote a sentence that says "Torture can get useful information (if the person being tortured has that information) - no one doubts that", and then say that is wrong, and then say that torture can get useful information.
Yes, if you torture the right people you will get useful information. People who are tortured will give up the information they have at some point.
The problem is that we often torture people who have no information, and so they tell us what we think we want to hear.
> Torture can only possibly get useful information if the person you're torturing HAS that information. Of course that can work -- no one doubts that.
You are wrong. For many people it is an item of faith that torture cannot produce useful information. In my opinion, these people are generally overattached to the principle that good results come from (morally) good acts, and evil acts necessarily produce bad results.
Yes, my "you are wrong" was not denying that torture can get useful information. It referred to the comment "no one doubts that", which is wrong. That's why I followed it by saying "for many people it is an item of faith that torture cannot produce useful information".
> you have no way to tell if the info is correct or not, and the prisoner has no incentive to give you the correct information
(In the following, I'm trying to just discuss the technical aspects of this. When I ask if or suggest that something would be effective, it is not meant to imply that if torture can be made effective then it is OK to do it. The ineffectiveness of torture as currently practiced is just one argument against torture, and so if it can be made effective that still leaves the other anti-torture arguments intact).
Wouldn't this largely depend on what type of information you are trying to get and how much you already know? If you already have information that I know that you are not supposed to know, and I don't know you already have it, you can ask about that while interrogating me in addition to asking about whatever it is you are really trying to get. That should give you some feedback on whether or not I'm giving correct info.
Wouldn't it also depend on how many other people you are interrogating over the same subjects? If you are questioning me and several other people about a particular thing, and I make up something on the fly to get you to stop torturing me, my made up story might not be the same as the made up stories of other people, whereas the stories of the people who tell the truth will agree. Of course, we could all have been trained to expect to be interrogated over this, and all have consistent prepared lies to give. Your counter to that would be to try to capture and interrogate lower level people or people who were less directly involved so that they are less likely to have prepared stories to give.
I can believe that torture as currently practiced is almost always ineffective, but I suspect that this may be due to them relying on psychologists to figure out how to do it rather than bringing in engineers, scientists, and mathematicians and treating it as some kind of noisy and unreliable channel problem.
> I’m always shocked at how many people will argue that torture is always ineffective.
It's effective at getting the victim to say whatever they think will make the torture stop. People aren't stupid though, they know the truth won't necessarily achieve that goal. Sometimes the truth will simply encourage more torture.
Falsfiable statements then require verification, presumably against a more reliable source of information. But if you have a more reliable source of information, what additional confidence did the torture provide? And if you don't have a more reliable source of info for verification, then the torture still provided no confidence in the information.
The best interrogators know that befriending your captives provides considerably better information, and it doesn't produce more enemies or escalate the conflict. Imagine if torture had been routine during the Cold War.
> so unless serious brain damage occurred, the subject wasn't going to forget after torture.
Really? You have data on this? I'd love to see it.
However, there are multiple problems with your scenario.
The biggest being: what happens if the individual DOESN'T KNOW? He's going to tell you anything he can to get you to stop, and, if you could verify the crucial piece of information, you wouldn't be torturing him in the first place.
So, even if I concede that torture works when you know you have the right person (and I do not), the problem is that you can't distinguish whether you have the right person and whether he actually knows the information you want.
> Torture obviously works. It just also creates a lot of false information from people who don't know the answer and will say anything to make the torture stop. But that's much more nuanced and quite different from the refrain we constantly hear that "torture doesn't work."
How do you determine, ahead of time, when torture will work and when it will produced false information?
>People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop.
You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question. Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done.
You may think it's not effective, but that should be argued on its own merit. You're assuming the conclusion, then pretending that everyone else does and are therefore unjustified.
> I've heard many times that "torture doesn't work" but I never understood how or why
Imagine you're suspected of a crime or terrorist act, but you are innocent.
Your captors however are sure of your guilt and determined to find out what you know by torture.
The more you insist you know nothing and that you are innocent, they more they believe you are resistant to their torture methods and so they keep upping the ante.
Eventually you will reach a breaking point where you can't go on, and you will start making up stories and saying anything just to get them to stop.
And that's why torture doesn't work, because you can't trust the information that you gain from it.
You're confused. The question is whether torture works. Many people in this thread and elsewhere have claimed that it never does because they wish it were true. I have not seen anyone even claim that torture can be resisted, let alone provide evidence of this claim. Please provide a link. What people argue is that you can't trust the information produced by torture, but this misses the obvious set of cases where trust is not required.
Please note: I am not arguing for the use of torture! You're right that in many cases the victim will not have the sought information. That doesn't mean torture doesn't work.
> Playing the devil's advocate for a moment- suppose you had some information about 9/11 one week before, would you torture your informant to get the precise date and location ? one person's rights in exchange for thousands.
Torture literally does not work and the scenarios where it could conceivably work never materialize.
Even at the most basic level; torture doesn't work to reveal the truth, so any "information" that you gained is worthless until confirmed by another reliable channel, and if you can do that - well you might as well could have just used that reliable channel in the first place. It's also worth pointing out that even if someone knows something, they are not going to tell you just because you torture them. Famously the US tortured an actual terrorist for months on end using these methods and the man told his torturers exactly only those things he knew they already knew.
That’s a myth, if you’re looking for objective verifiable facts you can get some useful information.
Also, if you have enough statistical data on torture methods, you can have a probability that a person doesn’t know something based on how long they’ve been actively tortured.
> The effectiveness of torture is besides the point.
Except it's not. Those that are willing to turn to torture don't have a moral issue with it, it would not be just another tool if they did. The effectiveness of the tool is an argument people like that are interested in. In just the same way as those that do have moral issues with torture don't care if it was very effective, your arguments need to be tailored to the audience. Given a varied audience, you hit all the points.
Torture doesn't work for extracting information, it's effectiveness is basically useless. That is, if you are torturing to get information in the first place.
No, it doesn't. All available research shows that torture is one of the worst ways to get information.
The best way to get information is to befriend the person being interviewed. Put them in an open room. Wide windows. Light colors. Talk to them. Treat them like people.
The comments from the American WWII interrogators are telling. The one I recall was "I got more out of the germans over a pool game than the guys in Guantanomo bay did waterboarding people"
Torturing people isn't just unethical. It's that it doesn't work.
Yet despite everyone knowing that for decades, the US still spent enormous effort at torture. Killing people. Raping people.
Why? My best guess is a mideaeval sense if justice. KILL THE BASTARDS. RAPE THEIR WOMEN. BURN THEIR VILLAGES.
Modern society is a thin layer over an animal instinct.
> Sometimes the subject does have the sought-after information, and the interrogator knows the subject has it, and people will die if that information is not extracted.
And even then, it is not the most effective method of extracting it.
> Another inconvenient fact is sometimes it does work
Sometimes it might, but there is no set of observable circumstances from which it can be concluded that torture will be expected to work better than other methods, so it is never a reasonable choice evenexcluding any negative moral considerations (or negative impact of more indirect effects of adopting such methods as policy) applicable to the method.
> and is an alternative to actual harm.
"Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for methods that involve actual harm, not an alternative to them.
> Sometimes the subject does have the sought-after information
As far as I know this has never been the case in the history of the use of torture in US interrogations. Before you make statements in favor of torture, you should probably have a specific case in mind or it's just being gratuitously in favor of torture.
When people say it doesn't "work" they don't mean that the victims don't "cave", they mean that the information the torturer gets isn't useful because as you say the victim will tell the torturer anything they want to hear. Also in movies usually the purpose of torture is to make the victim divulge something we already know they know, like where they hid the treasure we saw them steal in an earlier scene. In real life we don't know if the victim knows anything in the first place - they may be guilty or they may be totally innocent.
Yes, if you torture the right people you will get useful information. People who are tortured will give up the information they have at some point.
The problem is that we often torture people who have no information, and so they tell us what we think we want to hear.
reply