> 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.
>Why do they insist on saying 'enhanced interrogation technique' instead of torture?
Because there is an 'unenhanced interrogation technique' that is almost but not quite torture.
Never forget that beneath the violation of human rights is a desire to destroy. Calling something 'enhanced' is just another way of saying 'we forked you'.
> 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.
Its not intuitive, its what the entities most responsible for gathering intelligence from captured enemies across much of the world have concluded based on experience (some parts of the US intelligence community, though not all, conveniently backed off that conclusion at about the same time that the previous administration began adopting "enhanced interrogation methods"), that torture is generally inferior to the best available alternatives for gathering actionable intelligence, though its a great way to get people to tell you want they want to hear.
> If it does not work, why do we still do it?
I suspect that the main reasons are:
1) It fits the need to feel that something is being done to bad people that people in the position to inflict may feel, and as a short-term salve over feelings of impotence in the face of danger, and
2) Its very good for getting people to tell you what you want to hear, which, if you have superiors who want information to justify a preconceived course of action (or if you have a preconceived interpretation of events you want to sell to your superiors), is very useful.
> Just as in my example of a surgical intervention after a traffic accident, this is no guarantee of 100% success
No, with torture there is no scenario, given everything I've seen on the issue including from experts in interrogation, in which you can conclude that torture is more likely than other techniques which you will have the capacity to perform if you have the capacity (e.g., control of the target, access to trained interrogators) to perform torture.
Its not that torture lacks a guarantee of success, it is that there is no way to identify (and, thus, limit) torture to any set of circumstances where torture is even most likely to be the most effective approach.
And, therefore, any policy which ever chooses torture will be suboptimally effective in preventing the harms it seeks to prevent.
That's the problem with torture, even within the framework of a relatively myopic utilitarianism.
And torture gets worse from the perspective of a more holistic utilitarianism, once you consider the effects of actually performing torture on the broader society and, including on those who actually perform it.
> 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.
> 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.
> Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable?
Sure it is. But if torture was limited to only cases as clear as the one you propose, it would be virtually non-existent.
For such rare, extreme cases, it's better to keep it illegal, and hope an interrogator will risk jail to save the million people (and possibly be freed by jury nullification), than (effectively) legalizing it, and have its use creep to anyone merely suspected of terrorism (as defined by, from the point of view of the torture victims, an invading force), by an organization unaccountable even to citizens of its own country.
> 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.
> I was simply saying that I find the "common knowledge" that torture doesn't work, to be unlikely
Torture works exceptionally well at getting people to say whatever they think will satisfy the torturer in the short term. Which is actually why it's bad at getting actionable intelligence, but very good at getting confessions.
> It just seems very convenient that things we find morally wrong end up also being bad for other reasons
It's not really “for other reasons”, the morally repugnant thing about torture (the infliction of severe suffering) is why it doesn't work to get actionable intelligence.
> That sounds like motivated reasoning, not actual truth seeking
Entities for which torture would be acceptable even if morally repugnant (including military and Intelligence agencies who practiced it in the belief that it was effective) are foremost among those that have studied it and found it ineffective for gathering actionable ibtelkigence, compared to means which do not involve torture.
> I think there are situations where it is morally justified, and that it would probably work.
You are free to provide evidence supporting your conclusions about it's effectiveness; but without it you seem to just be providing what you'd like to be true, not what you rationally and justifiably believe to be true. And, conveniently, it seems to align with your moral preference...
> Even if it was effective, it is still a terrible idea that should never be entertained by a supposedly modern/advanced society.
Are you sure about that? Torture is ineffective: the intelligence you get is very likely to either confirm (incorrect) biases you already have, and failing that to lead you to new and incorrect wrong conclusions. Even if the fate of the world depended on it, resorting to torture is - at best - a gamble with very long odds. Aside from the ethical concerns, the main issue with torture from an intelligence perspective is that it usually makes the problem worse. It makes you stupider, not smarter (assuming you are actually doing torture to obtain real, actionable intelligence).
But what if it were effective? What if doing torture on a single individual was provably likely to make you 10% more effective at your job, and your job at the moment happens to involve trying to save a million lives? Don't get me wrong, I fucking hated 24 for the way it glamorized torture - it would be disgusting for doing that even if torture were effective. But if torture were effective it seems like you could build some utilitarian calculus around when to use it, and that sometimes it would be a good idea to do it.
> Also, there is the situation of "the ticking bomb" where an appropriate intervention to get information could save lives.
The idea that you know for a fact that a ticking bomb exists and know for a fact that a particular target has information about it which could save lives, but don't know enough to act without information from that subject and don't have a more reliable way of extracting information from the target than torture is implausible on a whole number of levels.
> 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.
> 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.
> One could make a hypothetical argument that if a known terrorist planted a bomb that would kill thousands of innocent people and the terrorist was caught before the bomb exploded it might be considered "for the greater good" to use extreme measures to find out where the bomb is and how to disarm it.
Which is a fun scenario to contemplate for entertainment, but decades of research and a fair amount of rather upsetting empirical evidence shows that torture does not actually work.
All those stories where torture is used to get information? Just stories.
Jack Bauer? A fictional character.
If you want to get information out of otherwise-hostile people, you need to make a connection with them. You need them to trust you.
Torture is only good at establishing dominance and breaking people's spirit. People will tell you anything they think you want to hear to stop torture, regardless of whether it's true.
> So what is the ethically correct choice?
Easy. Don't torture people. It has no positive uses.
> I don't want to get into a debate about enhanced interrogation
The words 'enhanced interrogation' leave me with a bad taste. Either it's interrogation or it is torture, let's keep it simple that way you won't have to debate where the line lies, you stay well away from that line to avoid doubt.
> So, if torture would have prevented 9/11 should we have done the torture or should we have let 9/11 happen?
The problem with these kind of "if torture would prevent..." scenarios is that there is generally no way of every being in a situation where you know that torture would prevent the harm that is hypothesized to justify it. (And, I've yet to see anything indicating that, even in the case where you somehow know that there is an imminent harm and know that a particular person has information that would allow you to prevent it, that there is any basis on which one could ever reasonably conclude that torture would be the most effective method of extracting accurate information.)
Even leaving aside the moral argument that torture is never acceptable whatever the benefits, none of the torture that has ever been done, no concrete policy allowing torture that has ever been adopted or proposed, and no approach to torture that is even conceivable given the information that appears to be available would ever be able to limit torture to situations where the kind of "if torture would prevent <specified class of harms>" scenarios that are frequently cited to justify it.
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 even excluding 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.
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