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Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

nature.com

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Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#51

Post by raverbashing »

rdtsc wrote: post #36

Even if it is working, would that make it ok? What about rape? Should it be criminalized? Is that worth a scientific study from nature? Why is torture in a civilized society not considered like rape. Anyone who suggests, does it, debates about its merrits, should be considered a crazy idiot, ostracized and laughed at. But notice how we as a a society are debating its merits. We have already lost so speak. We lost fir…

Saying that something is not debatable is exactly the opposite of living in a democracy

Excluding hate speech, surely

But since you were very fast to call anyone a "crazy idiot" I can see how worried about you are about a "civilised society" instead of your personal opinions

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#52

Post by venomsnake »

nickff wrote: post #48
venomsnake wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a problem with that - even true facts could be deceiving. The only way to verify outside of checking is to continue torturing which defeats the reasons for the person surrendering the information in the first place.

Not necessarily; you could torture someone for something like a key to an encrypted file. This is something difficult to guess, but easy to verify the correctness of. I am not saying that torture is justified in this scenario, but only that it is not true that "to verify outside of checking is to continue torturing which defeats the reasons for the person surrendering the information in the first place".

TrueCrypt plausible deniability. Once I have surrendered the key for the outside container, what do you do?

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#53

Post by jdc »

nickff wrote: post #49
LordKano wrote: post #46

The idea that you cede the moral high ground when you use torture seems to have been forgotten. I don't care if it works. I grew up believing that we were "The Good Guys" and under no circumstance is it ever acceptable for the good guys to torture people. What made the Viet Cong so bad? They tortured people. What made the Japanese so bad? They tortured people. What made the Germans so bad? They tortured people. We sh…

You are very clearly begging the question here; not everyone agrees that use of torture 'cedes moral high ground', or that torture made the Germans, Japanese, or North Vietnamese 'bad'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beg_a_question

It's bad because it increases human suffering, and it's unfair to harm someone who can't fight back.

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#54

Post by harryf »

That torture doesn't work to extract information has been known anecdotally at least since the 2nd world war - read up on Hans Scharf - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff

But tortute does work when your goal is oppressing large populations; instilling fear and control. This is the discussion the US ought to be having... what wa the real policy behind torture?

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#55

Post by XorNot »

SilasX wrote: post #45
XorNot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you literally never do. Stop thinking of Jack Bauer in 24 while you think about this subject.

A civilization-ending meteor will probably never head toward the earth, but your ethical worldmodel should be able to handle this scenario without special exceptions, rather than just try to assure yourself that it can't happen so you don't have to think about it.

A civilization ending meteor has relatively few additional questions to ask. Like are we sure there's a civilization ending meteor? Which as it turns out, actually makes quite a difference in our response to it!

Whereas whatever the hell people want to talk about with 24-esque do-or-die scenario begs dozens if not hundreds of follow up questions, all of which have one thing in common: they've nothing to do with torture as conducted by the US to date, which has taken place over the course of years in a systemic fashion in which no assurances that the people we're torturing are even involved with "the enemy" have been able to be given.

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#56

Post by weland »

nickff wrote: post #49
LordKano wrote: post #46

The idea that you cede the moral high ground when you use torture seems to have been forgotten. I don't care if it works. I grew up believing that we were "The Good Guys" and under no circumstance is it ever acceptable for the good guys to torture people. What made the Viet Cong so bad? They tortured people. What made the Japanese so bad? They tortured people. What made the Germans so bad? They tortured people. We sh…

You are very clearly begging the question here; not everyone agrees that use of torture 'cedes moral high ground', or that torture made the Germans, Japanese, or North Vietnamese 'bad'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beg_a_question

> not everyone agrees that use of torture 'cedes moral high ground'

There probably are a few assholes who don't, but to take it seriously outside the realm of a purely philosophical discussion on formal logic is something that no sane human being should even consider.

I don't care if Germans, Japanese, North Vietnamese or, for that matter, Americans were generally good or bad.

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#57

Post by marklgr »

haberman wrote: post #31
SilasX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You should also raise your guard whenever someone is trying to convince you that reality never presents you with hard choices: "So I never have to weigh my aversion to torture against my aversion to the loss of thousands of lives? Hooray!"

Agreed. My skepticism about a claim is proportional to how much the person arguing it wants it to be true.

Quite often, the person doesn't realize he wants it to be true, so this raises the question: don't you have similar motives unbeknownst to you, and are you skeptical about them too?

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#58

Post by SilasX »

XorNot wrote: post #55
SilasX wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A civilization-ending meteor will probably never head toward the earth, but your ethical worldmodel should be able to handle this scenario without special exceptions, rather than just try to assure yourself that it can't happen so you don't have to think about it.

A civilization ending meteor has relatively few additional questions to ask. Like are we sure there's a civilization ending meteor? Which as it turns out, actually makes quite a difference in our response to it! Whereas whatever the hell people want to talk about with 24-esque do-or-die scenario begs dozens if not hundreds of follow up questions, all of which have one thing in common: they've nothing to do with tortu…

It's reasonable to say "this specific government will use this tool irresponsibly, in ways that hurt people and damage credibility without corresponding upside".

But that's a different argument entirely from "this tool can never work."

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#59

Post by varjag »

XorNot wrote: post #39
rjtobin wrote: post #7

About 4 years ago I went to a talk given by the author of the book, the subject was along the same lines as the book: how torture is ineffective because it damages the subject's ability to recall information. Afterwards someone asked a question that a lot of us had been thinking: that in a lot of situations where torture might be used, the information being asked for is very well known to the subject, so unless serio…

I would argue your audience is failing to understand what torture is. Most people are deathly afraid of any pain. But they're also not agents/operatives/soldiers for their government. They're not at war with an enemy they think worth fighting and killing. So they don't have a particular strong desire to conceal information from anyone who threatens them. This means, in an actual scenario of torture interrogation, you…

> I would argue your audience is failing to understand what torture is. Most people are deathly afraid of any pain. But they're also not agents/operatives/soldiers for their government. They're not at war with an enemy they think worth fighting and killing.

It almost sounds as if you are trying to define away torture for a fringe case where it's guaranteed to be useless. This is a legalistic approach not anymore convincing than attempts to define waterboarding as "not torture".

Torture is used in the armed conflicts depressingly regularly: the corresponding clauses in Geneva Conventions for treatment of POW were added not for purely theoretic reasons. Torture is used by criminals around the world on daily basis. The reason they haven't given up after millenia of practice is that it tends to work in their unsophisticated, easily verifiable cases: getting the combination to a safe or finding where a merchant keeps their money stashed.

Anyway, torture should not be used because it's simply an abhorrent thing to do to a human being. Trying to frame it in terms of performance is damaging to the moral aspect of it, as you descend to the same inhuman cost/benefit mindset as torture proponent.

Re: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

#60

Post by yeukhon »

The basis of torture is on fear and pain. This works on those who are weak and easy to break. But like other commenters said it is hard to tell lying and truth. Sometimes, the person who finally speaks the truth doesn't even know if the information he/she has is even true.
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