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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 ver

by reacweb 11y ago

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.

varjag 11y ago
> 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.
- reacweb 11y ago
  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.
  - strlen 11y ago
    The purpose of information, however, is money. Which adds more data to this: if you're in early 1990s former USSR and you want to steal a great deal of money, there were far less brutal ways to do so... Here's how one fellow made $10bn (no home invasions and soldering irons required...): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company)
- strlen 11y ago
  Ah, "racketeer" (written as "PAKETEP" in Cyrillics, iirc -- a borrowed word from English, but used to mean an individual extorting someone vs. organized extortion of a business) with a soldering iron or a clothes iron... the reason my parents for the longest time told me 1) never tell others we have a home computer 2) the model of our home computer was a "Sinclair" (it was actually a 386, but they were afraid I'd blab about having a computer in the first place... of course I blabbed about having a Sinclair, to someone who first volunteered information about having an actual Sinclair, leaving him confused as to why our Sinclair ran MS DOS and why I programmed it in Turbo Pascal...). The general big fear was being burgled and tortured for money you were presumed to have had but actually didn't. I suspect this was the intent of the burglars: most any rational person would prefer to give up their money rather than being tortured with a soldering iron -- and these were heavy soldering irons used for repairing 220v home circuits (culture shock coming to the US: people didn't fix simple things like an outlet/switch failing to work, but I digress...) -- but the stories of those who didn't have money but were tortured and murdered anyway, made those who had the money (and might decide to volunteer only a portion of it) realize that the threats weren't kidding. However, that's not the full story. I really do wonder how much the soldering iron added over simply barging into a home, demanding the money. I suspect there is also huge element of, as Orwell said in 1984, torture for the sake of torture itself (sadistic personalities amongst the criminals, rather than pure rational calculation as means to making money). Re, TV: the soldering iron thing _did_ make it into some Russian/late Soviet movie I watched back in the 90s, not in a graphical scene, but the threat: the militisia agent -- it was stilled called that back then -- was refusing to take the reported threat seriously and was simply cracking jokes about it.... A graphical scene (albeit comedic) with a clothes iron did make into one the more famous movies of that era, ironically as something that happens in US (ah, projection!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Is_Good_on_Deribasovskaya,_It_Rains_Again_on_Brighton_Beach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Is_Good_on_Deribasovsk... ) That said, growing up in former USSR (Belarus, specifically), I was also surrounded by plenty of stories of partisans (anti-Nazi resistance fighters) saying nothing when questioned by the Gestapo, as well as tactics the partisans used: assume anyone can be captured or be a traitor, make any one piece of information useless by itself, and so forth. This couldn't be propaganda, as the French resistance stories I was exposed to in the US were also quite similar. I suspect resistance to giving useful information under torture when 1) one has a lot more at stake than money 2) the organization one is a part of has a choice about how to distribute the information.

by reacweb 11y ago

varjag 11y ago

> 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.

reacweb 11y ago
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.
- strlen 11y ago
  The purpose of information, however, is money. Which adds more data to this: if you're in early 1990s former USSR and you want to steal a great deal of money, there were far less brutal ways to do so... Here's how one fellow made $10bn (no home invasions and soldering irons required...): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company)
strlen 11y ago
Ah, "racketeer" (written as "PAKETEP" in Cyrillics, iirc -- a borrowed word from English, but used to mean an individual extorting someone vs. organized extortion of a business) with a soldering iron or a clothes iron... the reason my parents for the longest time told me 1) never tell others we have a home computer 2) the model of our home computer was a "Sinclair" (it was actually a 386, but they were afraid I'd blab about having a computer in the first place... of course I blabbed about having a Sinclair, to someone who first volunteered information about having an actual Sinclair, leaving him confused as to why our Sinclair ran MS DOS and why I programmed it in Turbo Pascal...). The general big fear was being burgled and tortured for money you were presumed to have had but actually didn't. I suspect this was the intent of the burglars: most any rational person would prefer to give up their money rather than being tortured with a soldering iron -- and these were heavy soldering irons used for repairing 220v home circuits (culture shock coming to the US: people didn't fix simple things like an outlet/switch failing to work, but I digress...) -- but the stories of those who didn't have money but were tortured and murdered anyway, made those who had the money (and might decide to volunteer only a portion of it) realize that the threats weren't kidding. However, that's not the full story. I really do wonder how much the soldering iron added over simply barging into a home, demanding the money. I suspect there is also huge element of, as Orwell said in 1984, torture for the sake of torture itself (sadistic personalities amongst the criminals, rather than pure rational calculation as means to making money). Re, TV: the soldering iron thing _did_ make it into some Russian/late Soviet movie I watched back in the 90s, not in a graphical scene, but the threat: the militisia agent -- it was stilled called that back then -- was refusing to take the reported threat seriously and was simply cracking jokes about it.... A graphical scene (albeit comedic) with a clothes iron did make into one the more famous movies of that era, ironically as something that happens in US (ah, projection!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Is_Good_on_Deribasovskaya,_It_Rains_Again_on_Brighton_Beach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Is_Good_on_Deribasovsk... ) That said, growing up in former USSR (Belarus, specifically), I was also surrounded by plenty of stories of partisans (anti-Nazi resistance fighters) saying nothing when questioned by the Gestapo, as well as tactics the partisans used: assume anyone can be captured or be a traitor, make any one piece of information useless by itself, and so forth. This couldn't be propaganda, as the French resistance stories I was exposed to in the US were also quite similar. I suspect resistance to giving useful information under torture when 1) one has a lot more at stake than money 2) the organization one is a part of has a choice about how to distribute the information.