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> Torture works. No, it doesn't. All available research shows that torture is one of the worst ways to get information. The best way to get information is to
by adekok 12y ago
> Torture works.
No, it doesn't. All available research shows that torture is one of the worst ways to get information.
The best way to get information is to befriend the person being interviewed. Put them in an open room. Wide windows. Light colors. Talk to them. Treat them like people.
The comments from the American WWII interrogators are telling. The one I recall was "I got more out of the germans over a pool game than the guys in Guantanomo bay did waterboarding people"
Torturing people isn't just unethical. It's that it doesn't work.
Yet despite everyone knowing that for decades, the US still spent enormous effort at torture. Killing people. Raping people.
Why? My best guess is a mideaeval sense if justice. KILL THE BASTARDS. RAPE THEIR WOMEN. BURN THEIR VILLAGES.
Modern society is a thin layer over an animal instinct.
- shpx 12y agoWorked on this guy didnt it?
- striking 12y agoThat's horrible. I can still understand people having unethical opinions about torture, but making light of an innocent man being tortured? I'm all for "edgy jokes," but this is just vitriolic. I think this is the worst thing I've read on HN. (By the way, if you had exposed an email, I would have asked you about this in private. I don't mean to embarrass you in a public forum. Perhaps you weren't thinking.)
- DanBC 12y ago> I think this is the worst thing I've read on HN. Wait what? Do you have "showdead" turned on? Plenty of stuff like this gets posted every week.
- striking 12y agoI do. Some of it is obvious trolling, and some of it is ranty nonsense. But torture of the innocent is where I draw the line. It struck a nerve with me.
- shpx 12y agoIt was a cynical remark. I did not intend that reaction, I hold no opinions on torture. As an aside, what I said was factually accurate (it's in the article - he gave them the information they wanted), yet people think it was wrong for me to say it. I don't think I'll ever understand that.
- deciplex 12y agoDid it? Even if you get actionable information from torture - a very big 'if' mind you - you're also going to get a bunch of specious bullshit that you'll waste time following up. If you arrive at the truth at all, which again is not likely, it will have been after being misled. You will be, by any objective measure, dumber for doing torture, even if you eventually arrive at the truth. I try to act in such a way that I am made more intelligent, and I believe that governments probably should too (in particular the parts of government that we refer to as motherfucking intelligence agencies). But, to each, his own.
- sitkack 12y agoI know you are pissed. Have a squeezy huge.