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By 98% success rate I assume you mean for the "guilty ones." But how many others were tortured in the same way that had no relevant information to give, becaus
by mtgx 9y ago
By 98% success rate I assume you mean for the "guilty ones."
But how many others were tortured in the same way that had no relevant information to give, because they were innocent?
The issue with torture is not that it doesn't work on the guilty ones. I'm sure it does on the vast majority of them. The issue is you will torture 9 out of 10 in order to finally land upon the 1 out of 10 that is guilty.
- civilian 9y agoI can't find a citation, but I remember the tour guide saying it was 98% for _anyone_ who entered the Stasi during it's last decade of operation. (They had gotten good at extracting confessions.) Yeah, people would confess even if they were innocent, because of the conditions or because of threats to their family.
- dragonwriter 9y agoTorture is extremely good at getting confessions to whatever the torturer suggests (or even can be remotely inferred to be suggesting); that's closely related to the problems with using it to get reliable information compared to other interrogation methods. Being actually guilty of anything is completely beside the point.