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This is a popular fallacy for supporting torture, but there are a couple things wrong with it. Firstly, the most likely outcome of torture is false information

This is a popular fallacy for supporting torture, but there are a couple things wrong with it. Firstly, the most likely outcome of torture is false information and multiple sources from the CIA to the FBI and various levels of rank[1] have said that one of the most problematic issues with torture based intel is the extreme amount of time it takes to verify anything because most of it is made up. So in a ticking time bomb scenario, torturing someone you think has information may make you FEEL better, but it is a waste of time (which, by default, is in short supply). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly amongst this crowd, the logic doesn't work. Statistically speaking, ticking time bomb situations do not actually occur in real life and basing institutionalized acceptance of torture on a fantasy what if scenario is intellectual fraud. Georgetown law's David Luban has an excellent 2005 essay "Liberalism Torture and the Ticking Bomb"[2] that takes a deep dive into the psychology behind this argument as well as the real-world applications. It's linked further down in these comments by @elipsey[3]. [1] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-torture-work-well-as-an-interrogation-technique http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-tortur... [2] http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729

yen223 13y ago
To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. For the sake of argument: if it turns out that slicing off a man's left hand will always yield 100% verifiable information, should we still be doing it? My answer to that is still going to be no. The effectiveness of torture is besides the point.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. I, on the other hand, favor it because it sidesteps the moral issue and presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those who would advocate for torture in the first place. The fact that torture is wasteful even if you ignore any moral considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the population would accept that moral principle.
- mhurron 13y ago
  > The effectiveness of torture is besides the point. Except it's not. Those that are willing to turn to torture don't have a moral issue with it, it would not be just another tool if they did. The effectiveness of the tool is an argument people like that are interested in. In just the same way as those that do have moral issues with torture don't care if it was very effective, your arguments need to be tailored to the audience. Given a varied audience, you hit all the points. Torture doesn't work for extracting information, it's effectiveness is basically useless. That is, if you are torturing to get information in the first place.
- bostonpete 13y ago
  If torture were effective, it would allow the debate to be framed as a tradeoff. If slicing off the man's left hand would allow you to save X lives with 100% certainty, pretty much everyone has a value of X for which they would justify the action -- for most people that value would be quite low. The problem with these tradeoffs is that there's no clear cut moral high ground on which choice is correct -- it's a murky area. So it's a much more compelling argument if you can make the case that the tradeoff doesn't exist at all b/c torture is ineffective.
varjag 13y ago
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/torturecardozo.pdf http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/torturecardozo.pdf "He asked them where the bomb was. The terrorists-highly dedicated and steeled to resist interrogation-remained silent. [He] asked the question again, advising them that if they did not tell him what he wanted to know, he would kill them. They were unmoved. So [he] took his pistol from his gun belt, pointed it at the forehead of one of them, and shot him dead. The other two, he said, talked immediately; the bomb, which had been placed in a crowded railway station and set to explode during the evening rush hour, was found and defused, and countless lives were saved."
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Interestingly, I can find no evidence that this ever occurred outside of the little anecdote in the aforementioned paper, which cites a January 2002 article in The Atlantic. The article again, is purely anecdotal. The interrogator's name of "Thomas" is just an alias, ostensibly used for "safety reasons".
  - varjag 13y ago
    Well, Luban essay cites newspaper sources as well, it's not a problem per se.
tzs 13y ago
Note that much of the information you cite is old, from technologically backwards times. E.g., the CIA's 1963 interrogation manual: Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove. A story told by the interrogatee that took a few days to check out then quite possibly could be checked out in a few minutes now, because of our vastly better computer, database, and communications technology. I think there is a chance there may be a window where torture works reasonably well. You start out where it doesn't work well, for the reason given in the 1963 CIA manual. Then, as technology gets better, so that you have the databases and data mining applications and communications technology to check out the interrogatee's story in close to real time, torture becomes effective. Later, as the technology gets even better, and the databases get bigger (ironically, partly due to things like the NSA surveillance), you reach a point where the interrogations are pointless because you aren't getting anything from the interrogatee that you couldn't have gotten quicker with clever queries to the databases you already have.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > Then, as technology gets better, so that you have the databases and data mining applications and communications technology to check out the interrogatee's story in close to real time, torture becomes effective. This assumes that being able to prove the torture victims story quicker increases the chance of getting a truthful admission. For starters that presumes that the torture victim knows what you want, which is not a given. Secondly it presumes that the torture victim will give up the information if only you can keep the pressure up long enough. If it was "that simple" a solution to the problem in the CIA manual would be to simply recommend to continue the torture regardless of admissions, until one of them is proven true, while insisting to the victim that you believe he is lying.

yen223 13y ago

To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. For the sake of argument: if it turns out that slicing off a man's left hand will always yield 100% verifiable information, should we still be doing it? My answer to that is still going to be no. The effectiveness of torture is besides the point.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue. I, on the other hand, favor it because it sidesteps the moral issue and presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those who would advocate for torture in the first place. The fact that torture is wasteful even if you ignore any moral considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the population would accept that moral principle.
mhurron 13y ago
> The effectiveness of torture is besides the point. Except it's not. Those that are willing to turn to torture don't have a moral issue with it, it would not be just another tool if they did. The effectiveness of the tool is an argument people like that are interested in. In just the same way as those that do have moral issues with torture don't care if it was very effective, your arguments need to be tailored to the audience. Given a varied audience, you hit all the points. Torture doesn't work for extracting information, it's effectiveness is basically useless. That is, if you are torturing to get information in the first place.
bostonpete 13y ago
If torture were effective, it would allow the debate to be framed as a tradeoff. If slicing off the man's left hand would allow you to save X lives with 100% certainty, pretty much everyone has a value of X for which they would justify the action -- for most people that value would be quite low. The problem with these tradeoffs is that there's no clear cut moral high ground on which choice is correct -- it's a murky area. So it's a much more compelling argument if you can make the case that the tradeoff doesn't exist at all b/c torture is ineffective.

varjag 13y ago

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/torturecardozo.pdf http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/torturecardozo.pdf "He asked them where the bomb was. The terrorists-highly dedicated and steeled to resist interrogation-remained silent. [He] asked the question again, advising them that if they did not tell him what he wanted to know, he would kill them. They were unmoved. So [he] took his pistol from his gun belt, pointed it at the forehead of one of them, and shot him dead. The other two, he said, talked immediately; the bomb, which had been placed in a crowded railway station and set to explode during the evening rush hour, was found and defused, and countless lives were saved."

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Interestingly, I can find no evidence that this ever occurred outside of the little anecdote in the aforementioned paper, which cites a January 2002 article in The Atlantic. The article again, is purely anecdotal. The interrogator's name of "Thomas" is just an alias, ostensibly used for "safety reasons".
- varjag 13y ago
  Well, Luban essay cites newspaper sources as well, it's not a problem per se.

tzs 13y ago

Note that much of the information you cite is old, from technologically backwards times. E.g., the CIA's 1963 interrogation manual: Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove. A story told by the interrogatee that took a few days to check out then quite possibly could be checked out in a few minutes now, because of our vastly better computer, database, and communications technology. I think there is a chance there may be a window where torture works reasonably well. You start out where it doesn't work well, for the reason given in the 1963 CIA manual. Then, as technology gets better, so that you have the databases and data mining applications and communications technology to check out the interrogatee's story in close to real time, torture becomes effective. Later, as the technology gets even better, and the databases get bigger (ironically, partly due to things like the NSA surveillance), you reach a point where the interrogations are pointless because you aren't getting anything from the interrogatee that you couldn't have gotten quicker with clever queries to the databases you already have.

vidarh 13y ago
> Then, as technology gets better, so that you have the databases and data mining applications and communications technology to check out the interrogatee's story in close to real time, torture becomes effective. This assumes that being able to prove the torture victims story quicker increases the chance of getting a truthful admission. For starters that presumes that the torture victim knows what you want, which is not a given. Secondly it presumes that the torture victim will give up the information if only you can keep the pressure up long enough. If it was "that simple" a solution to the problem in the CIA manual would be to simply recommend to continue the torture regardless of admissions, until one of them is proven true, while insisting to the victim that you believe he is lying.