Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by XorNot » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:10 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #15

nickff wrote: post #6

My question to anyone who believes this article to be correct is whether they would have found the same sources and type of evidence credible if it had produced the contrary result. If the answer is no, it shows that you should not expect this article to convince any of your intellectual opponents. For the record, I am not sure whether torture works or is morally justified in the circumstances where it has been appli…

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!"

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

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

#42

Post by pakled_engineer » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:13 AM UTC

Admitting anything under torture just invites more torture. The IRA "green book" and despatches from the French/Algerian war confirm how worthless torture is for gathering intelligence. Bribery should be tried instead of barbarism.

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

#43

Post by kaonashi » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:22 AM UTC

Depends on what you mean by 'work'. It's great for eliciting false confessions, less so for actionable intelligence.

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

#44

Post by x5n1 » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:24 AM UTC

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…

Most of the people the US was holding at gitmo and other black sites around the world were simply people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But you never know that for sure. It's unconscionable that random innocents be tortured for they may yield some information. But allowing torture by using extreme cases like your's, in reality it is almost never that cut and dry.

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

#45

Post by SilasX » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:25 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #41

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!"

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.

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

#46

Post by LordKano » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:28 AM UTC

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 should never torture anyone.

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

#47

Post by lrc » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:37 AM UTC

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…

This is the whole point of the movie the Great Escape. The allied prisoners know they won't be tortured since they're in a Luftwaffe camp and not a Gestapo one. After the escape, the ones who are recaptured are handed over to the Gestapo and are executed. Even in a 1963 film set in a Nazi POW camp, it was understood that there were rules. Sic transit.

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

#48

Post by nickff » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:43 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #40

larrysalibra wrote: post #8

Torture isn't conducted to improve the ability of the victim to recall information but as a negotiating tactic. I'll give you what you want: to stop being tortured, if you tell me what I want to know.

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".

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

#49

Post by nickff » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:46 AM UTC

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

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

#50

Post by rjtobin » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 7:49 AM UTC

dror wrote: post #34

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…

Here's the reason that it doesn't work. Imagine that your village has a 1000 people and someone is torturing you to find out "who is your cell leader." At first you are resisting, and so you name random people in the village. After you've named 50 people or more, you break and name the real person. The torturers though don't know that this is the real person, so they'll keep torturing you, and you'll just go through…

What you've said sounds like a reasonable argument why torture doesn't work in that case. My point wasn't that torture does work (I have no idea about that), just that the research outlined by O'Mara doesn't address situations like this (and so the research isn't enough to prove that "torture is ineffective" as is suggested).