CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques • Hacker News Board

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#21

Post by Loughla » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

This is a good moral question, and really is going to come down to personal belief.

I absolutely do not believe governments should be able to torture someone, for any reason, regardless of the consequences. It has less to do with the suffering of a single person, and more with the constant and consistent scope creep that enters every government program coupled with the ability for any and all governments to be full of faceless, and therefore blameless, bureaucrats.

Torture to save 1 million people today becomes torture to save 10 people tomorrow. If no one can be held accountable, then it becomes torture to stop a robbery instead of genocide.

If you let your morals slip once, you are an immoral society. Like it or lump it.

Edit to clarify: I am 100% anti-torture in any situation. I didn't think that needed clarification?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#22

Post by sdoering » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

In the end, what you are asking comes down to some form of the "Trolley Problem" [0]. The critique towards the Trolley Problem can be directed towards your (very) hypothetical scenario as well:

> In a 2014 paper published in the Social and Personality Psychology Compass, researchers criticized the use of the trolley problem, arguing, among other things, that the scenario it presents is too extreme and unconnected to real-life moral situations to be useful or educational.

I can't say, how I would react in a given situation. I don't know, if I could torture/kill one (or a few) for the survival (or a better chance of survival) of a larger group. Because in the end one would have to ask were to draw the line. From a strictly utilitarian point of view killing one person to secure the survival of two others is a net positive outcome. But it feels morally more than wrong.

Where to draw the line. 1 against 50? Against 1000?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#23

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

> “Ammar fabricated the information he provided when undergoing EITs,” it said. “He later admitted to his interrogators/debriefers that he was terrified and lied to get agency officers to stop the measures … Ammar also explained that he was afraid to tell a lie and was afraid to tell the truth because he did not know how either would be received.”

Which is pretty much all you need to know about torture.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#24

Post by mrtksn » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

No not really. Dirty bombs and people motivated to detonate one don't spontaneously appear in New York or anywhere. It always has a prelude, some kind of injustice(perceived or real) by you towards a community(drone strike school children bus kind of stuff) that you fail to exterminate and they come back to you.

Fixing terrorism by more surveillance, torture, less rights might delay the detonation of a dirty bomb but since the core issue remains nothing is solved.

Besides, there are very effective techniques against information extraction through torture, like dividing organisations into cells.

IMHO, if it comes to torture 1 person to save 1M+ people there's likely to be another person who you will fail to catch and that person will take down the 1M+. I don't believe that the scenario of torturing 1 person and saving 1M+ exists beyond games and movies.

After years of torture, dronning and gunning people, the US left Afghanistan and people were falling from the skies when trying to run away. Did you miss that? Why do you think that torture can be an effective tool?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#25

Post by shapefrog » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #21

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

This is a good moral question, and really is going to come down to personal belief. I absolutely do not believe governments should be able to torture someone, for any reason, regardless of the consequences. It has less to do with the suffering of a single person, and more with the constant and consistent scope creep that enters every government program coupled with the ability for any and all governments to be full o…

Is it not already a moral slip to allow those 1 million people to die in a fireball to save the 1 person from torture?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#26

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

Absolute certainty that the victim has the information you want is a pretty high bar to clear. Philosophical thought experiments notwithstanding, some things are best regarded as deontologically forbidden in practice, no matter how consequentialist one leans otherwise.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#27

Post by defen » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

Do we have any evidence that torture actually works? That the person being tortured will tell accurate information?

Basically do we have any examples of this sort of situation, where there was an imminent threat to life and people were saved due to torture?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#28

Post by catchclose8919 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

...maybe "information extraction" and "torture" are not exactly the same thing? Extracting valid information from hardened bad guys would probably work better by using other means than physical pain (eg. threaten wiping out their family or close ones, drugs + yes-no questions under and MRI brain activity scanner etc. etc.), pain and brutality applied to people already crazy and quasi-suicidal to begin with would only give you a mix of nonsense, lies and irrelevant infos that you'll not be able to separate well and fast enough to figure out how to prevent that bomb from going.

I mean, you're probably not torturing average-Joe working-in-an-office with 2.5 kids and a white fence house :)

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#29

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

A typical scenario for this question, but not a good one. There's no reason for torture to work on this person, you have no timely way of verifying what they're saying, and you're going to hurt/kill them whether or not they give you the answer. They're just going to lie to you.

What you have to do is credibly threaten to torture or kill their family members and loved ones, to rape their children. This works. Are you a bad enough dude to rationalize that?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#30

Post by gregshap » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

Even if morally acceptable, the torture should still be highly illegal. Like any citizen, the interrogator can make their own moral analysis of whether the crime and their own punishment are worth it. Anyone allowing or covering up the torture is equally guilty. If a firefighter can give their life to save one other, the interrogator can choose to give theirs.