4 ms·

I see this "torture doesn't work" claim around sometimes and personally I have a hard time accepting it. If you ask me something I don't want to tell you, I won

by sfn42 2y ago

I see this "torture doesn't work" claim around sometimes and personally I have a hard time accepting it. If you ask me something I don't want to tell you, I won't tell you. But you start tearing out nails (or even threaten to do so) I'll spill all the damn beans I can to make you stop.

Wieldable4640 2y ago
The argument being made is that once people are tearing out nails you’d tell them you’re the Easter bunny if you believe that that’ll make them stop. You’d tell them that you’re guilty even though you are innocent because you’d want the pain to stop. That’s why people say that confessions gained via torture are not reliable.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  "Come on. We already know you're the Easter Bunny, your friend next door already confirmed it. All this can stop immediately, we just need you to admit it and tell us how you did it"
- sfn42 2y ago
  Confessions, sure. But what about location of military bases? Obviously torturing people to make them admit to crimes is just horrible, and sure torture in general is pretty horrible. But if you capture a soldier and want to know where his friends are, what their plans are etc it's probably worth a shot. You can often verify information and ask followup questions etc. I'm not saying it's the moral thing to do, I'm just saying I think it'd have a non-zero success rate. Maybe even a pretty high success rate. And honestly if I was Ukrainian I'm not sure I'd have any moral obligations to torturing some Russians either. As far as I'm concerned when a nation attacks another they forfeit any kind of human rights. If they wanted to stay safe they could have stayed home.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    If you torture the soldier, at best he is providing you the information you can verify and nothing else. At worst he is providing you incomplete/wrong verifiable information. There are only limited studies on this, but consensus of intelligence experts is that it is an ineffective method In contrast, if you convince the subject to give up information voluntarily, it may provide you not only the location of the military base, but also much more valuable information about the base and its content, and information you didn't know to ask for.
rickdeckard 2y ago
Now imagine you have no beans to spill, I don't believe you and you still want to make me stop...
- sfn42 2y ago
  Sure, you have to verify information.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    There are better means to retrieve verifiable information. Both the interrogator and the subject know which information is verifiable and which is not, torture doesn't create a reliable source of information.

by sfn42 2y ago

Wieldable4640 2y ago

The argument being made is that once people are tearing out nails you’d tell them you’re the Easter bunny if you believe that that’ll make them stop. You’d tell them that you’re guilty even though you are innocent because you’d want the pain to stop. That’s why people say that confessions gained via torture are not reliable.

rickdeckard 2y ago
"Come on. We already know you're the Easter Bunny, your friend next door already confirmed it. All this can stop immediately, we just need you to admit it and tell us how you did it"
sfn42 2y ago
Confessions, sure. But what about location of military bases? Obviously torturing people to make them admit to crimes is just horrible, and sure torture in general is pretty horrible. But if you capture a soldier and want to know where his friends are, what their plans are etc it's probably worth a shot. You can often verify information and ask followup questions etc. I'm not saying it's the moral thing to do, I'm just saying I think it'd have a non-zero success rate. Maybe even a pretty high success rate. And honestly if I was Ukrainian I'm not sure I'd have any moral obligations to torturing some Russians either. As far as I'm concerned when a nation attacks another they forfeit any kind of human rights. If they wanted to stay safe they could have stayed home.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  If you torture the soldier, at best he is providing you the information you can verify and nothing else. At worst he is providing you incomplete/wrong verifiable information. There are only limited studies on this, but consensus of intelligence experts is that it is an ineffective method In contrast, if you convince the subject to give up information voluntarily, it may provide you not only the location of the military base, but also much more valuable information about the base and its content, and information you didn't know to ask for.

rickdeckard 2y ago

Now imagine you have no beans to spill, I don't believe you and you still want to make me stop...

sfn42 2y ago
Sure, you have to verify information.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  There are better means to retrieve verifiable information. Both the interrogator and the subject know which information is verifiable and which is not, torture doesn't create a reliable source of information.