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Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

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

#91

Post by varjag »

jules wrote: post #83
varjag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conv…

We make cost-benefit analyses all the time. With any military operation the collateral damage has to be weighed against the target. The fact that we freak out over torture yet kill innocent people in collateral damage is completely irrational. On the scale of harm, torture that leaves no physical harm is behind cutting off people's limbs, and that is far behind killing people. Now, torturing innocent people is worse…

Using war to justify torture is like using murder to justify rape.

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

#92

Post by saiya-jin »

My far biggest experience with physical pain was getting big tattoo on the back, 4x4 hour sessions. (got some bones broken, but that's not the same level of pain, and body releases some calming stuff to bloodstream, so really not comparable).

Every of those 4 hours, the experience of lying on my stomach, and having a pizza-cutter running through my back here & there. The most sensitive parts are around the spine (understandable) and on the sides of back (not really sure why). The goal is not to twitch or move much, so some sort of mental self-control is necessary. First +-2 hours were cca OK, but after that, even lower amount of pain, presented with high spikes and almost constantly ate away my willpower.

After each session, I felt like a small baby, able to navigate back home and perform simple mental tasks, but severely worn off, and mentally weak. I understand this is just a glimpse from a distance to real torture, uncontrolled, when you know you can die from it, or end up disabled in most horrible weays for human being.

But it works, to some degree, on some levels. If you want to break somebody, it is one of the ways. The question is, how usable will the individual be after breaking, and your goal (get info, instill fear, or just destroy human being).

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

#93

Post by bluecalm »

bsder wrote: post #87
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…

> 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…

>>if you could verify the crucial piece of information, you wouldn't be torturing him in the first place.

This is not true. There are many things easy to verify but difficult to discover. For example a place the money is kept in a big house.

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

#94

Post by bluecalm »

weland wrote: post #56
nickff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think most sane human beings would consider torture in situations where the information obtained could save many lives (for example during the war).

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

#95

Post by bluecalm »

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…

>>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?

If raping someone could potentially be used to save a lot of lives then we would have that debate. It doesn't though so. Everyone agrees that torture is bad in itself, the problem arise when not applying it would lead to even worse things happening.

If torture works it's immoral to not use it in those situations, that's why there is a debate.

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

#96

Post by reacweb »

varjag wrote: post #81
reacweb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, torture does not work for "getting the combination to a safe or finding where a merchant keeps their money stashed". It is still used because it is a very effective way to frighten the opposition. Torture is often shown on TV, where the good guys force the bad ones to tell the truth. It is completely unrealistic.

> It is completely unrealistic. Back in the 1990s in former USSR bugrlary-torture-murders were daily occurrences. It sure as hell worked, for purposes far more simple than "frightening the opposition". Stuff much too savage for TV shows typically, like soldering iron up one's anus.

Such barbaric methods makes almost no difference for the victims who will probably die. The difference is the effect on population. If the purpose was to get information, I think there are more effective ways: chemistry or hypnosis for example.

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

#97

Post by chroma »

chillacy wrote: post #70
chroma wrote: post #10

I think torture should be illegal and I think the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used at Guantanamo are abhorrent. But I also think there are real-world scenarios in which torture is not only moral, but where it would be immoral not to torture. This sounds absurd, but consider this real-life case given in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]: A woman's car is stolen. Unknown to the thief, her child is slee…

If you're going for utilitarian points then yes, in the story to torture and save the child causes less overall damage. The problem is (as always with utilitarian scenarios like these) that you can only know when to torture or not if you're omniscient. What happens if the guy is innocent? Or what happens if the kid is already dead or the car is too remote to reach in time no matter what you do to the criminal? (In bo…

In this case, the police were all but certain they had the right man. There was video footage of him stealing the car. He had valuables from the car in his pockets. Likewise, the police were pretty sure the baby was still alive. It had only been 20 minutes since the car had been stolen. Based on these likelihoods, they thought beating information out of this man was worthwhile. I can't fault their judgement.

We deal with the same sort of uncertainty when sending people to prison. We accept that at some point, the likelihood of guilt is high enough to warrant imprisonment. Set this threshold too high, many criminals go free. Set this threshold too low, many innocent people go to prison. Because determining guilt or innocence is noisy, you're always going to false positives and false negatives. It's a trade-off; you pick a threshold that does the most good.

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

#98

Post by AlphaGeekZulu »

venomsnake wrote: post #52
nickff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The introduction of plausible deniability in encryption is actually the ultimate nightmare from an ethic perspective:

The torturer, of course, knows about plausible deniability. And of course, technically, plausible deniability is not limited to two levels (outer and inner volume), but can be performed on an arbitrary number of levels. From the torturer perspective, he has to continue to torture forever, because any passphrase revealed might not be the one for the "true" stash of information. In reality, the torturer does not stop at the first possible instance of revelation, but on the last (which will never be in this case).

Plausible deniability actually prevents the torturer from rewarding the victim for the revelation of information by ending his/her pain. Instead, plausible deniability opens the spiral of endless violence.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #89
TheLogothete wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard at all. You need a few google searches and household supplies.

Why would you need a whole terrorist cell and a cell leader uf any fuckwit could do it? Your whole argoment falls apart from whenever direction you look at it.

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by honzzz »

TheLogothete wrote: post #61
jdc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, but let's say a terrorist is captured and you have to put a stop to his operation. His cell will kill a hundred or so people in the next month. You don't torture him and the bomb goes off killing 243 people. A year and a half later you capture another and you have to put a stop to his operation. What do you do?

I believe this scenario is misleading because it does ignore the negative consequences of allowing torture. The way you describe it there seem to be two possible scenarios - 1. forbid torturing the terrorist and let innocent people die or 2. torture the terrorist and save innocent people. I believe this is not what happens in real life. The real decision is either 1. authorities are never allowed to torture anyone and some innocent people whose deaths could be prevented die and 2. authorities are allowed to torture terrorist suspects and they will abuse this power to achieve what they want by torturing people they know are innocent and claiming they were suspects. As someone who grew up in a totalitarian country I am inclined to believe that real 2 does more harm to society than real 1.
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