Thrawn's Revenge
Off Topic => The Lounge => Topic started by: Pali on January 25, 2017, 10:12:22 PM
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however if it comes down to torturing one to save hundreds, and we have no other options of gathering information, then it sounds reasonable.
It certainly sounds reasonable, but the problem is that few will check to see if the premises are valid, rather than simply the logic being sound. They aren't. First, these sort of ticking time bomb situations simply almost never happen in reality (I'm aware of none); they happen all the time in fiction, which leads to confusion in people's perception. Second, while torture is fantastic at getting people to talk, it is terrible at obtaining reliable intelligence that can then be acted upon (again, something confused by fiction, where most of the time it quickly provides useful info).
With neither premise valid, as a logical argument this fails.
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while it is true that nobody ever says "I tortured a person for information on a soon to happen terrorist attack", I have a feeling that is due to it being considered unethical by the general public. furthermore, I would assume that actions were taken to prevent the attack before it happens, thus making it so that information about said attack is never heard by the general populace, if we are going through logically.
Second, if torture were as unreliable as you said then logically, we would have stopped using it thousands of years ago. instead you will find that almost every civilization has been using it (secretly or otherwise) up to the present day. This logically means that it presents at least somewhat viable information. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don't know much about the nuances of torture (nor do I want to), but I assume that there are ways to discern true and false information.
While I'm fine with debating this, I would prefer that we do so on a different thread.
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I'm going to let you do this Mr.Puerto, because I feel you're better suited to the task. I just don't want him to hate his family. Family is the foundation you can rely on in tough times. If you hate your family, you are left with very little. There is constant yelling and arguments in my family, but I still love them, and I know that I can rely on them whenever I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. My parents raised me with their love and care, much like I'm sure your family raised you greystar. Please don't hate them over a difference of opinion.
Like I said I love all inputs, we both want the same thing, we just have different ways of expressing it.
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You're right. Me and my dad are having a dispute of ethics and government ideology. Parts of my family are so far gone I'm glad I have my dad's last name instead of my mom as it's not emberassing to be related to them, it's shameful for how they operate. My dad may be hard headed and stupid at times but his heart's in the right place. The other parts of my family. Borderline sociopaths. This was a stress based over reaction. The depression was already there but this just worsened it for a night. Thanks for helping me through it guys, really means a lot.
Are we living the same life?! haha my mom's side of the family can be well crazy putting it lightly. I feel like we could have similar situations, so if you ever need advise just send me a PM I'll be willing to help.
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If we continue the torture talk on a different page, I won't be involved since my knowledge of that subject is far from being able to debate people. Let me say this though, the CIA has stated they won't do it again, because its ineffective and a PR disaster, and the best interrogators are always the ones who talk to the person, not just screw with them to no end
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None of our torture of Guantanamo subjects gave us actionable Intel - you can bet that having done so would've been used by the Bush administration as justification for what were already-known policies. We've stopped a good number through normal, reliable means of intelligence gathering: wiretapping, tracking movements and activities, undercover agents, building community relations, etc.
Much of the reason societies stopped using it was that they started realizing how unreliable it was; Stephen Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature recounts a European noble (the name escapes me) who, to test torture's reliability, committed a crime himself and then tortured one of his servants into a confession - this convinced him it was unreliable and he outlawed torture in his territory afterwards. The problem isn't that the torture victim won't tell the truth, because eventually they will - the problem is separating that from everything else they are telling you in their desperation to make it stop.
What you are doing is making a type of argument ad populum - lots of people did it for a long time, so there must be something to it. This is a logical fallacy, as how many people believe something has nothing to do with its truth value. People have spent thousands of years praying for rain, but that doesn't make it work.
You are welcome to not take my word for it and actually research the topic: you will find broad agreement among experts.
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Now, I never said I condone torture. I also never said that american torture works. However, I will say that the gestapo's torture worked. If you want to hear more read this. https://www.quora.com/Does-torture-work-2
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A single un-cited post on an internet forum isn't much evidence of something working - he doesn't cite any examples of information gleaned through torture, he just says it worked (again: it works in getting people to talk, it doesn't work in terms of providing reliable information - plenty of people ended up being falsely believed to be part of the French resistance and were picked up because their names were given by torture victims). The second answer in your link actually provides citations for its claims that torture is unreliable.
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Continuing my discussion with Pali, after searching the internet for a little bit before realizing that I hadn't done my accounting homework, that was all I could find in terms of non american torture methods. So either other countries leave torture undocumented, or I didn't dig deep enough.
"In other words, there is no way a terrorist can lie to get the techniques to stop. The only way to stop the techniques is to tell the truth. And once terrorists began telling the truth, the techniques stopped and traditional debriefing techniques were employed — leading to an intelligence bonanza from which the Obama administration continues to benefit today." (Marc Thiessen)
This is from the Washington post, which could be considered a reliable source by some standards. This isn't exactly in support of torture, however it does point out something that I didn't think about.
here's a link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/on-waterboarding-lets-stick-to-the-facts/2011/11/15/gIQAHHiiON_blog.html?utm_term=.6b1642b7e7ea
Here's something from an actual historian.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/05/13/how-torture-helped-win-wwii.html
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"In other words, there is no way a terrorist can lie to get the techniques to stop. The only way to stop the techniques is to tell the truth. And once terrorists began telling the truth, the techniques stopped and traditional debriefing techniques were employed — leading to an intelligence bonanza from which the Obama administration continues to benefit today." (Marc Thiessen)
There's no guarantee that telling the truth will stop the torture either because that also relies on the person doing the torturing believing that what they have been told is the truth. And if that truth doesn't line up with that the torturer thinks or wants the truth to be then they'll just keep on going until the victim resorts to lies that does satisfy the torturer.
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It's true that would happen if misinformation was used, but if we assume that the information used in conjunction is reliable, then the torturing tactic is also reliable. In hindsight, if we have misinformation, that means other types of data collection have failed.
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The Post article you cite isn't a news article but an opinion piece, written by Bush's former speechwriter - this is not an unbiased source (nor are Panetta and Hayden, who Thiessen cites). Even if it were, it does not claim that such techniques were used to gain intelligence, but compliance. I've never argued that a torture victim won't usually end up doing what the torturer wanted them to do, but this is hardly the ticking time-bomb style case that you viewed as possibly justified. This is systematic torture across the board in hopes that it will one day provide something useful, not a specific case where time was essential. (Edit: he also specifically cites information gained by torture as useful in killing bin Laden, but as the following article in the NYTimes documents, the Senate Select Committee found that the info was gained from a man named Ghul before he was tortured: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/08/world/does-torture-work-the-cias-claims-and-what-the-committee-found.html - essentially, as this article shows, the CIA under Bush spent years lying about the usefulness of its torture programs).
Roberts claims in the Daily Beast article that the 19 double agents employed by Britain were tortured into doing so. I've not found a single other source to corroborate this claim (notably, he claims no evidence, just that one would be naive to think that they were talked into it). On the contrary, the stories I've found thus far regarding three of them - Juan Pujol Garcia, Roman Czerniawski and Dusko Popov (Google their names, you'll get Wikipedia articles on them) - are all stories of people who quite voluntarily became British spies against the Nazis.
Here is a book written by the Intelligence Science Board on interrogation techniques and their efficacy: https://fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
As it notes, part of what makes coming to an absolute conclusion here tricky is that we don't have a lot of good science on the subject, since we don't torture people in lab experiments anymore. Still, there remain ways to test techniques somewhat indirectly, such as the following example from the book above:
"Under conditions that simulate an intelligence interrogation, indirect strategies for eliciting information (i.e., acquiring information through interaction by means other than asking for it directly) may be more effective than direct, high- pressure techniques. In one of the few open-source studies on the effectiveness of military “resistance training,” 58 cadets at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy were subjected to a simulated prisoner-of-war exercise. Some had received a pre-training experiential exercise in resisting interrogation, others were given only a pre-training lecture. Perhaps of greatest interest is that the use of indirect interrogation techniques significantly reduced the amount of “prisoner” communication confined to name, rank, military number, and date of birth (from 24% to 0% in the lecture group and from 61% to 5% in the experiential pre- training group). More importantly, the indirect strategy (as opposed to a direct one) also increased the percentage of compromising statements revealed by the "prisoners” from 22% to 37% in the lecture group and from 0% to 15% in the experiential pre-training group (Laberg, Eid, Johnsen, Eriksen, and Zachariassen, 2000)."
In short, indirect, non-coercive methods were more effective at getting accurate information.
Edit: it is also worth noting that there are significant downsides to using torture, not the least of which is diminishing our national image around the world. The way we treated detainees at Gitmo has been used as a recruitment tool by anti-American groups in the Middle East, adding to our number of enemies. To use torture is to abandon the moral high ground in a conflict.
Edit 2: if other types of data collection have failed, torture is not going to provide the useful bit of missing Intel. Everything gained through torture is going to need corroboration from more reliable means of Intel gathering, and if those means are already available to be used in a situation, then the torture becomes redundant rather than necessary.
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my goodness..... a whole debate on the effectiveness of torture? may i ask why? i just avoid using torture period
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Edit: it is also worth noting that there are significant downsides to using torture, not the least of which is diminishing our national image around the world. The way we treated detainees at Gitmo has been used as a recruitment tool by anti-American groups in the Middle East, adding to our number of enemies. To use torture is to abandon the moral high ground in a conflict.
Before I begin, I'm going to remind you, I never said I agreed with torture or that we should do it.
Second, I never said "ticking time bomb", I said "torture 1 to save hundreds". The attack we are trying to stop could be in early preparation years from now, which then means that conditioning the subject is a viable option.
https://fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
I really like this source and may use it for future school projects.
my goodness..... a whole debate on the effectiveness of torture? may i ask why? i just avoid using torture period
I would be very worried if you tortured people revan.
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Second, I never said "ticking time bomb", I said "torture 1 to save hundreds". The attack we are trying to stop could be in early preparation years from now, which then means that conditioning the subject is a viable option.
Fair point, yet for conditioning over time torture remains less effective than indirect means of inducing cooperation. In the end, the Intel needs to be useful whether you are getting it for ten minutes or ten years from now, and anything gained from a subject that is telling you what it thinks you want to hear is going to be unreliable. Open, honest cooperation is far more valuable.
I really like this source and may use it for future school projects.
Happy to be of service. :) For the record, I recognized from the start that you were arguing Devil's Advocate-style, so at no point have I thought you were personally advocating torture.
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Fair point, yet for conditioning over time torture remains less effective than indirect means of inducing cooperation. In the end, the Intel needs to be useful whether you are getting it for ten minutes or ten years from now, and anything gained from a subject that is telling you what it thinks you want to hear is going to be unreliable. Open, honest cooperation is far more valuable.
I feel that "open, honest cooperation" can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to come across for some subjects. I could be wrong of course, as I didn't fully read the pdf which could have some viable contradictions to this.
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I feel that "open, honest cooperation" can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to come across for some subjects. I could be wrong of course, as I didn't fully read the pdf which could have some viable contradictions to this.
Oh, it certainly can be. Sometimes a subject is simply going to largely be a dead-end as far as extracting useful information goes. This doesn't make torture into a reliable alternative method of inducing cooperation, however. Sometimes we are just stuck not having good information to work with and have to accept that.
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the process of getting a dead-end subject to talk through torture sounds far more reasonable than being nice to him.
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the process of getting a dead-end subject to talk through torture sounds far more reasonable than being nice to him.
It sounds so, which is why people do it, but it isn't actually the case. Torture, in the end, is likely to produce one of two results: either you break the subject's resistance to the point where they will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, or it strengthens their resistance and they dig in, accepting the pain until it kills them. The latter is clearly useless, and while you are likely to get the truth somewhere in the former, it is going to be mixed in with tons of useless or incorrect information, all of which you'll then have to spend time and effort attempting to verify through other means - means which themselves are sufficient, making the torture unnecessary at best and a waste of time and resources as you chase false leads at worst.
It is worth keeping in mind that most terrorists don't think of themselves as evil - they think of us as evil, which is why their acts against us are justified. When you capture one and torture him, you are reinforcing that viewpoint. When you instead treat him well, spend time talking with him about yourself and types of experiences you and he share, you instead are showing him that you are human too, that maybe you aren't as evil as he'd been taught, and that maybe what he was doing wasn't as justified as he thought it was.
Consider Hitler's miscalculation in the Battle of Britain - he thought that bombing English cities would devastate the citizenry's willingness to fight. Instead, it made them even more dedicated to the war. Hurting someone is not a reliable way to gain their cooperation.
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I concede
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Don't think if it as conceding - think of it as being relieved that, even on purely pragmatic grounds, torture isn't something we ever need to do. That's a good thing. :) This was also my reaction upon learning more about it, as I used to have a similar view (horrible but potentially necessary) myself.
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good thing you are not in the empire, you would get thrown out for your arguments, or just that statement alone. but, as part of the PA and the NR, i agree
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the process of getting a dead-end subject to talk through torture sounds far more reasonable than being nice to him.
Not to beat a dead horse, but this kind of thinking can apply in a few places beyond just torture, and it's easy to fall into. I think it's a variation of the fallacy of the undistributed middle:
ie:
We need to do something,
We are doing something,
Therefore we are doing the right thing
Which, logically, does not follow. It's sort of the same thing as if you're waiting for someone to get out of surgery. You may feel the need to do something, (you need the information) and running in to do the surgery yourself (torturing for information) would easily be the most hands-on and extreme thing you can do, but it doesn't mean it's an effective way to handle it. The surgery as performed by the doctors (cooperative information gathering) may not always work, but that does not make the alternative option any more valid.
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good thing you are not in the empire, you would get thrown out for your arguments, or just that statement alone. but, as part of the PA and the NR, i agree
In fairness, as far as I can recall, Imperial interrogations that were actually done for the sake of information gathering usually relied on drugs, not torture. Vader drugs Leia on the Death Star, Kirtan Loor used interrogation drugs that killed Gil Bastra, Horn was drugged while at Lusankya, etc. Torture was only used when goals beyond information were the purpose - Vader tortured Han so Luke would sense his pain, Isard and Zsinj used it as part of their brainwashing techniques, and so on.
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Torture has it's uses. Obviously it's not a first go to, but at the end of the day you have to decide what is more important, information a known killer and hostile has that could save lives or end his group or being 'civilized'
Bribery, deals and incentives can all come into play too.
The issue with torture is that you can actually achieve an opposite effect, people telling you what you WANT to hear even if it isn't true just to get you to stop. Fear and pain are powerful motivators but they have limits.
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"Torture has its uses."
Intelligence experts disagree.
Edit: Keep in mind that being "civilized" has benefits beyond the ethical, and beyond torture's lack of reliability. Use of torture degrades our image across the world, which both hinders intelligence gathering by poisoning community and diplomatic relations and increases the number of enemies willing to attempt to strike at us in the first place. Holding the moral high ground has real, pragmatic value in international affairs.
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If you don't care about your national image (north Korea for instance), you could just spread rumors that you torture people and it could help suppress the population. for a country that interacts in positive ways with other first world countries, this probably isn't the bet option.
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If you don't care about your national image (north Korea for instance), you could just spread rumors that you torture people and it could help suppress the population.
Tarkin Doctrine right there.
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Every country cares about its national image, North Korea included - they're just trying to present a different kind of image. NK is like a little dog that barks and growls a lot to make itself seem badass.