Why it matters whether or not torture works

boing
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It doesn’t, because we don’t have a baseline level of effectiveness. And we don’t have curves indicating how long it takes to get a response, etc.

But it remains true that in societies where we have decided that executing people is wrong, the efficacy of executions (either in terms of recidivism or deterrence) is not debated. We don’t execute people because doing so is wrong, not because it is ineffective.

Again, I don’t think this study actually shows that. I mean, per this study, showing people evidence is actually counterproductive, and that to get the quickest results you should just have a chit-chat and not show them what you know and can already prove. Oh, but that’s because maybe you only show recalcitrant prisoners the evidence, and evidence-showing maybe isn’t actually an independent variable… which one could just as plausibly say of torture itself.

And that’s without actually going into the study and seeing what kind of disclosures were made early, what the definition of “early” is, or anything like that. A p[roper experiment on this would be extremely unethical, but would probably be necessary in order to properly understand what is happening.

I’m not going to “urgently” read a 56 page law review article. You could try summarizing things if you think it’s essential reading.

But here’s what I got from a quick look at the conclusions:

Permitting torture in the hypothetical case, in other words, does not answer what one should counsel in the present debate over coercive interrogation techniques in the “war on terrorism.” The hypothetical only highlights the consequentialist balancing of lives in a context cleansed of all other crucial factors. It tells us nothing more than what we already knew – that a tiny risk of catastrophe can swamp all other concerns in a moral judgment. Sensible moral judgment requires a better sociological analysis.
[…]
I submit that one can be a consequentialist and say that torture should be permissible in the hypothetical case, while still holding firm to the view that,nonetheless, torture should be absolutely prohibited, even in the present situation of terrorist threat.

So, your urgently-recommended article goes further than I do, and says that torture should be permissible in a ticking-time bomb situation (I don’t think ti should be, for the moral reasons the author alludes to), but that in practice it should be prohibited for both moral and the real-world practical inability to accurately measure the costs and benefits.

Presumably, so long as we could tighten up on the decision-making process and reduce it to a quantifiable process, objections to torture would disappear, especially since the author concedes that there are some situations where torture does indeed work.

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I’m not defending the culture of torture in the CIA and elsewhere in American information gathering (sic), but the fact that it’s officially come to light belies the comment, “This is the reason to talk about the efficacy of torture: because it shows that the American establishment is riddled with sadism and depravity.”

That sentence sadly implies an agenda beyond any reporting of whether or not torture works. I’m not against agendas, but they shouldn’t masquerade as reportage.

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Because it is inconceivable that they believe that torture works? You know they are lying when they make this claim? You know that they were truly as convinced as you and I of torture’s ineffectiveness when they read the reports?

Pretty effective mind-reading there.

And, of course, in complete contradiction of everything know about human minds work. After all, throughout all of human history, torture has been used because humans thought it was effective. You think a few reports completely convinced conservatives that a few millennia of human “wisdom” was mistaken?

You obviously give them vaster credit for mental flexibility than I. No doubt we’ve also convinced them that global warming is serious problem, evolution is real, and gays are just people. They just keep all that knowledge well concealed.

Thanks, but I’ll judge people by their actions. No need for me to start imagining their motivations to fit my pre-conceptions. It’s a dangerous path, and I dislike it intensely among people whose political leanings mean they should know better.

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Here’s another reason why torture is bad, whether or not it works. It allows North Korea to derail a discussion about their human rights record by pointing out America’s bloody hands …

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They were told. They had the facts. And yes, they were lying, most likely to themselves. You are bending over backwards far too much to apologise for them, sir or madam.

Here’s a little background info: in the US Army’s manual for interrogation from the 1980’s that I still have, they have very simple instructions about torture: don’t. It very dryly explains that torture not only produces worthless intel, but that it lowers the value of all intel gathered by pollution. We knew this then. Those in the field knew this.

But the higher-ups wanted torture irregardless of its actual value, and found those willing to follow orders. It is in the report.

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It may be unethical, impractical and counter-productive but goddamn it’s our moral duty to torture.

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If the burden of proof is on “torture doesn’t work” then this study alone doesn’t say it doesn’t work, it says that another tactic is more effective. If the burden of proof is on “torture does work” then this study doesn’t say that either because we don’t have those baselines to compare against. I think the burden of proof is on “torture does work” because of the broad consensus that it doesn’t.

I find it strange that people need to hunt for a reason by showing people evidence would be counterproductive, as if it is impossible that it just is in many situations - as if humans don’t regularly sit in the face of overwhelming proof that they did X and say, “I did not do X,” then get indignant that no one believes them. A very large number of human civilizations have had to discover for themselves that torture doesn’t work, against their instincts. Are we so sure of our instinct that nailing someone to the wall with evidence is an effective way to get information out of them? I’m sure it’s an effective way to get people to spiral into more and more ludicrous explanations of exactly how they are innocent, which could be great in court, but is it useful in getting people to give you useful intelligence about the organization they are a part of?

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The consensus, such as it may be, is that torture isn’t particularly effective in the wider context of general intelligence gathering. I don’t think there’s proof that it isn’t effective in particularly time-sensitive contexts where bad intel is less harmful and good intel can save lives.

I guess the question is why they would deny it when shown evidence but be five times more likely to admit it when shown no evidence. That is, why they wouldn’t even say “I did not do X” if shown nothing.

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And if those same manuals reported that torture works, you would be in complete agreement, right? After all, it’s right there on paper. You would know torture works, but pretend that it didn’t, just because it’s in a field manual, right?

Come on, let’s get real. Manual vs. priors? And you expect the manual to win?

(By the way, I am not disputing the evidence of sadism among some of the lower ranks. But Cory’s assertion is that the leaders (i.e. Bush, et. al., deliberately chose to endanger Americans by choosing a less effective method of intelligence gathering solely to feed their sadism.))

Apologist?

Why they tortured is utterly immaterial to their crime.

Your insistence on understanding motive makes it clear that motive is important, and this gives credence to the “if torture works, then it’s moral” crowd. Since there’s wide disparity in the belief of the efficacy of torture, your arguments give succor to those who would justify torture, since they can dispute but one part of your premise (which is in some dispute by the populace as a whole) to let their champion of the hook.

Torture is a crime. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it works. It doesn’t matter if it does work. It is a crime. Full stop. Pushing any further only gives torture justifiers more surface in which to plant attacks in the court of public opinion.

And, I have to say, the history of political movements that pretend to know what their opponents are thinking is not a pretty one. In fact, I can’t think of one such movement that embraces the true “evil-ness” of some part of its populace that I would consider suitable for governance. Can you?

So, yes, I am extremely sensitive to exactly this sort of corruption of political groups that I align myself with. It destroys political movements not by preventing them from reaching power (in fact, history is rife with examples of the usefulness of hatred in achieving power), but by insuring that their eventual rulership is far more concerned with punishing the “evil-doers” among the population than it is about improving the lot of all of its populace.

Cory, who I respect about a great many things, offers a poison chalice of hatred to those who are most susceptible. It’s incredibly tempting, but it is ultimately fatal to the greater goal.

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Actually, there is evidence that oftentimes it does more harm than good in a time sensitive context. Battlefield interrogation with torture produced false info, and no cooperation. Good Intel was rarely retrieved and often lost amongst the lies.

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Utterly irrelevant whether torture works or not. Let’s even pretend that we can’t prove it, one way or another.

With respect to “ticking time bombs”, the answer is simple. Treat it like deliberately executing a child.

Space aliens might threaten to kill a million people unless you execute a child. Do we create a hole in the law to take into account the incredibly rare circumstance where someone might think such a murder was justified? Of course not. The aliens appear, and perhaps for the greater good, you kill a child. Should you be charged? Of course. Maybe it saved a million people and your sentence will be commuted. Maybe you saved a million people and you go to jail. Maybe they lied and you executed a child for nothing.

I don’t care if torture works or not. If someone so believes that torture is necessary for national survival, then they can choose to torture and then face the legal consequences.

If you weren’t willing to sacrifice your own life to torture, then the situation wasn’t serious enough to warrant torture.

[tl;dr] Torture is a crime and must remain so, regardless of its efficacy, regardless of the number of lives that might be saved. However, just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it cannot occur in extremis. Someone who truly believes that torture is the only way to stop the ticking time bomb can always choose to do so, and then spend the next 20 years in prison. If it’s not worth 20 years of someone’s life, then it’s not worth doing at all.

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Look, it’s quite simple: since the question of whether it works or not is the only –the only – argument in favour of torture, then it leaves proponents without a leg to stand on. Your lengthy replies only put this into stark relief.

You keep seeing it all too binary, as if saying torture works would be an argument for using it. It isn’t. It is the fig leaf that a heartless, petty man like Dick Cheney uses.

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I understand, but in a world were we can’t even put creationism to bed, do you think it’s even possible to definitively win the “torture doesn’t work” debate? All you’ve got on your side is facts, and that’s second fiddle to culture and third to instinct.

Remember, this is the court of public opinion, and persuading 75% of the people that torture is a criminal offense is, I believe, an order of magnitude easier than persuading 75% of the people that torture never works.

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Well, that’s the thing: up until 2001, torture was unquestionably evil. It was something the Germans, the Japanese, the North Vietnamese did. Rambo didn’t torture, he was an avenging victim of torture in Hollywood. The only way people were able to be convinced that torture was a necessary evil was because they were told it was effective, both by Rumsfeld and his cronies, and also by super-patriot Jack Bauer.

The thing is, we have mountains of evidence that it isn’t effective, that it is even worse than not interrogating at all. The ironic part is that the German Wehrmacht learned this, the French learned this in Algeria, and even the North Vietnamese eventually learned this in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

So yes, let’s kick this leg out from under the “enhanced interrogation” proponents. It’s not an either/or, it’s an either/and, exposing the lie others use to justify sadism.

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The British “didn’t torture” IRA suspects, which is one justification that the US used for “not torturing”:

In 1976, the European Commission of Human Rights ruled that the five techniques amounted to “torture”. It was then referred to the European Court of Human Rights. In 1978 it ruled that the techniques were “inhuman and degrading” and breached the European Convention on Human Rights, but did not amount to “torture”. In 2014, after new information was uncovered, the Irish Government asked the European Court of Human Rights to review its judgement and acknowledge the five techniques as torture.

The Court’s ruling, that the five techniques did not amount to torture, was later cited by the United States and Israel to justify their own interrogation methods, which included the five techniques. British agents also taught the five techniques to the forces of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

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If the question is whether or not it works, then the question needs to be expanded to - whether the value gained worth the costs.

One cost is a result of having the rest of the world knowing we torture. And they will find out. And they will make it more difficult to achieve our national aims.

Another cost is having the rest of our country know we torture - our government, or civilians, our soldiers, and our intelligence agents.

And a big cost is how being a nation that condones torture, we change. We already have a Religious Right that has visible leadership that behave contrary to the way Jesus Christ behaved. What happens when we get corrupted to Dick Cheney levels? What possible result is worth that cost?

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I’ve repeatedly said this, and repeatedly said that questioning whether torture works is merely indulging in a sideshow to the real issue of whether we think torture is wrong.

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USA =/= world

I live in a civilized country where every politician uttering such nonsense as creationism or climate change denial would be laughed out of his office.

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FFabian, I have yet to find a country that doesn’t have culturally important myths that are supported by a substantial portion of the population. The facts is that because the USA is so important, it gets the lion’s share of the attention, so we focus on it, and its myths are given great play, as they affect decisions that affect everyone else.

However, as a Canadian, I am well aware of Canadian myths. It’s just that Canada matters so much less to the world, so our destructive myths are just that much less newsworthy.

Moreover, I find the smug self-congratulatory tone of your reply (a tone of which Canadians are particularly prone to, although usually fairly quietly) to be particularly self-destructive as that attitude actively hinders the ability to see the destructive myths within one’s own culture.

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