shecky
Master Poster
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fishbob
Seasonally Disaffected
Oh, since he is obviously an a$$hole, that would make it OK. Yep, you could feel damn good about torturing this guy since he is an a$$hole. Of course you still are no more likely to get useful information, so what does that make you?
If it makes me an a$$hole then so be it. I'm just not sure that I would be no more likely to get useful information. What makes you so sure?
fishbob
Seasonally Disaffected
That is not what I meant. Let me rephrase.
Does his being "possitively giddy with anticipation for the explosion" make it any more likely that you might get useful information? No, it just makes him an a$$hole. And it mixes frustration or vengeance with your attempt to obtain information.
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Ah, sorry. Since this is a cartoonish, well makes that 24ish scenario, I was just providing an adequate villain. Someone with no scrupules and no remorse, unlikely to respond to Earthborn's approach.
fishbob
Seasonally Disaffected
No, I apologize. What I originally posted very poorly made the point I wanted to make, and it very strongly made a point I did not intend.
No worries. This is just a message board, nothing to get offended over.
As we have learned from 9-11, there are people who don't care if they die.
Torturing will only make them martyrs, which is what they want in the first place.
And, as already mentioned, torture doesn't provide the right answers. Think about it: You're a fanatic terrorist, who doesn't care about killing a lot of people, and you know you will die anyway.
After you are tortured a bit, you give out false information. You save time. Then, you give out other false information. Saving time again.
Torture doesn't work.
Torturing will only make them martyrs, which is what they want in the first place.
And, as already mentioned, torture doesn't provide the right answers. Think about it: You're a fanatic terrorist, who doesn't care about killing a lot of people, and you know you will die anyway.
After you are tortured a bit, you give out false information. You save time. Then, you give out other false information. Saving time again.
Torture doesn't work.
What makes you so sure torture doesn't work? Mind you, I don't know if it works or not, I'm just curious.
If you change the "very rare unusual times" into "a hypothetical scenario that won't ever happen in real life", then yes, you can easily imagine scenarios where I would support torture.
As for constructing a realistic scenario that might really happen and where I would agree with torture, well, it may be the case that someone might be able to do it but I have never seen one.
Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
Let's change the hypothetical to answer that question.
We know that a nuclear bomb has come into the country. But we don't know which city it is in, much less knowing exactly where it is in that city.
We have intercepted a diskette of the organization that has planted a bomb that goes off within 48 hours. The diskette contains a coded message that includes the exact location of the bomb. A million people might die in the explosion
Suppose I am an expert codebreaker and I have been trying to break the code. I have tried every algorithm I know to break the code, but hour after hour the message is still unknown. What I have been trying clearly isn't working. With only 2 hours left, would I consider formatting the disk, throwing it in fire or rubbing its surface with a big magnet?
Just as with the terrorist, it is a choice between methods that I know to be working, and methods that I know to be damaging. So you're asking me whether I would reconsider my strategy of using methods that work and instead use methods that could destroy the very information I am trying to find.
Are you nuts? With a million lives at stake? No, of course I wouldn't.
I don't see why such a person would not respond to my approach. My approach does not require that person to have scrupules or remorse. All it requires is that the negotiator tries to find out what sort of incentive the villian will likely respond to, and the negotiator trying to convince the villian that it is in his own best interest to tell the correct location.
The problem is that there is not a whole lot of evidence that it does. And since behavioural experiments on humans must first pass ethics commities, any good evidence on the effectiveness of torture will be hard to come by.
But if we try to use what we do know about human behaviour, it appears pretty unlikely that torture is a good method of extracting accurate information. Torturers try to 'break' a person. If that person is not yet broken, the information he provides is not reliable because he could simply lie. You cannot trust that information. After a person is broken, he is not likely to lie deliberately. But by then, his mind is indeed broken: he may no longer be coherent or the information he gives may be disturbed. You still cannot trust it.
As far as I know there is no evidence that there is state of mind where someone can no longer lie but still has a mind sound enough to reliably give correct and coherent answers to questions. If there is such a state of mind, I don't see how a torturer can determine whether someone is in that state. Add to that the fact that a tortured person only has an incentive to please his torturer, not to provide accurate data, and I think it is pretty obvious that torture cannot be relied upon.
That does not mean torture never results in information that turns out to be correct, just that it is unreliable. When the lives of a million people are at stake, you want reliable information.
I don't see how you can equate torture with burning, formatting or degaussing a disk, especially considering what you say in the rest of your post. Neither of the three options you give in your hypothetical have the slightest chance -not even by accident- of producing any information, much less accurate information.
Here is my problem with your approach. You assume the cartoon villain could be reasoned with. I'll give you an example, people here tried to reason with Kumar for almost 2 years and we did not make a dent in his belief system. Not when he was told what he was doing was illogical, or against evidence, or prejudicial to his own health. Nothing worked. I'm just tryng to imagine the terrorist equivalent of the typical homeopath: somebody impervious to logic or reason. I don't see how you can convince somebody whose entire life goal has become to destroy one city that giving you the information is to his advantage.
This is why I would not simply dismiss torture out of hand. I simply have no reliable information either way as to its effectiveness. All I know is that if I was being tortured at first I might try to play hero and give false info, but pretty damn quick I'd tell the interrogator whatever I though he wanted to hear, up to and including whatever secret information I had (I guess I wouldn't make a good spy or terrorist).
I am not a great believer in the effectiveness of torture. I doubt any reliable information can be gathered. But in the extreme case described here, where I believe the point is to either try torture or accept the loss of a city, I would risk it. In the real world, I would not try torture, first because I don't trust authorities to know if they are interrogating the person who actually has the info needed; and second because in any real life scenario other choices will exist.
Hmm, I like a chalenge. It's the summer of 1941 and the Red Army is stagering under the assault of the Wehrmacht. The Russians do however manage to capture a ranking German general with knowledge of Operation Barbarossa. The Nazis already regard the Russian as "Undermenchen" and treat their prisoners like animals, so there's no hope that they'll treat your prisoners nicely even if you do. So do you 1) Do nothing thereby further endangering not only Russia, but the entire civilized world, or 2) Torture him in order to obtain information about troop placements, axis of attack etc.
ETA: Of course you could argue that the Soviets were in fact only marginally nicer than the Nazis (if at all), but that's not the central issue.
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Interesting scenario you picked there, especially considering the history betwen the Fins and the Soviets. Particularly during WWII.
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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I am not convinced that torture will help in the original scenario. You torture him for a few hours and he says Chicago. Do you then evacuate Chicago? If you keep torturing him for the specific location and he says, "no, it really is New York." Do you stop evacuating Chicago and start evacuating New York City?
As for torture in general I am against it for both moral and practical reasons. As I said in the other thread in many circumstances tricking the person into giving you information is more reliable than torturing the person.
I will, however, admit that a small part of me fears that the character from A Few Good Men is right:
Col. Jessep: Son, we live a world that has walls and these walls have to be guarded by men with guns.* Whose gonna do it?* You?* I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.* You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines.* You have that luxury.* You have the luxury of not knowing what I know - that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives.* And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.* You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about in parties, you want me on that wall.* You need me on that wall.* We use words like honor, code, loyalty.* We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.* You use them as a punchline.* I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.* I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way.* Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post- either way I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to.
As for torture in general I am against it for both moral and practical reasons. As I said in the other thread in many circumstances tricking the person into giving you information is more reliable than torturing the person.
I will, however, admit that a small part of me fears that the character from A Few Good Men is right:
Col. Jessep: Son, we live a world that has walls and these walls have to be guarded by men with guns.* Whose gonna do it?* You?* I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.* You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines.* You have that luxury.* You have the luxury of not knowing what I know - that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives.* And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.* You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about in parties, you want me on that wall.* You need me on that wall.* We use words like honor, code, loyalty.* We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.* You use them as a punchline.* I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.* I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way.* Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post- either way I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to.
As I said the nastiness of the Soviets isn't the central issue, plus I forgot LW was Finnish. Anyways I'm not convinced that it would have been in Finlands long term interests for the Nazis to have won. I picked the invasion of the Soviet Union, because it's generally considered the turning point of the war, but we could imagine a similar scenario with the German invasion of France in 1939. If the Allies had been able to get their hands on the German plan they might have repelled the invasion which could potentially have ended the war years before and saved many millions of poeple. We could use that scenario instead.
Something like that yes [ETA: meaning you evacuate and keept torturing him, untill he gives a specific location and you've verified it], and then you hope that at some point he breaks down and tells the truth. The chance might not be 100%, but I suspect torture has a better chance to break a man within a short time span than saying "pretty please", "would you like some tea?", and "is there anything else we can do for you?" as Earthborn sugests. Such subtler methods might (or might not) be effective if you have more time, but if I was an American soldier who had information Al'Qaida wanted I don't think I'd just give it to me because they asked nicely, and I see no reason to think a terrorist would be more cooperative.
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Since everybody's taking liberties with changing the original scenario-----how about this one.
You personally have the terrorist in your custody. He's given you the name of the city----but not the location of the bomb.
The city named is where your family lives.
Would you be willing to torture another individual--(who's admitted his plans for mass murder) to save your own wife & children?
No, you'd have to push the guy until you got something verifiable in a short amount of time, like the exact location of the bomb.
I wonder if getting someone drunk actually works or only in spy comedies.
Oh, I only mentioned it cause of LW's Finnishness. I figured he might respond "well I hope they don't torture the German, so that we can beat them this trime around!"
