Torture

[Blind groper]

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php? ... 0674743908

We are all aware that torture is unethical in the extreme. But it turns out that it does not work, either, when used to gather information.

Historically, torture has been used to elicit confessions, and for this it works extraordinarily well. If you torture someone enough, he or she will confess to anything!

However, there are several major problems with using torture for getting information.
1. The amount of information you get is paltry.
2. It is swamped in vast quantities of garbage. Technically, the signal to noise ratio is miniscule.

One problem is that torture changes the person being tortured, making him or her unable to communicate coherently. With pain, panic, unconsciousness, and even long term brain damage being a result of torture, any reports the victim delivers cannot be trusted.

It is also true that the torturer himself acts in such a way as to force error. They frequently increase levels of torture when they think the victim is lying, but the torturer cannot judge truth from lies, and ends up acting irrationally and erratically.

Though this book is new, the basic facts of the ineffectiveness of torture is old hat, and widely known. So why the hell have government 'servants' practiced torture to gather intelligence?

[Hermit]

On rare occasions a person whois being tortured has been known to divulge the identity of a co-conspirator or some other useful information, but basically the motivation to torture is based on wishful thinking.

[cronus]

Torture sends a message to other 'wrongdoers' that they are messing with the wrong crowd. Kill someone in battle seems fair - more battle then? Cut a foot off and put it on display outside the high castle walls and you spread fear. No one is gonna put a foot wrong whilst your tyranny endures.

[JimC]

Regimes based on fear work for a while, then collapse from within.

We need someone to invent a real truth serum, and/or lie detector...

Professor Snape, please contact the CIA...

[cronus]

Regimes based on fear work for a while, then collapse from within.

We need someone to invent a real truth serum, and/or lie detector...

Professor Snape, please contact the CIA...

In time it should be possible to decode memories by reading molecular structures in the brain. Especially with quantum computers gearing for take-off capable of doing the heavy slog computations. In thirty years it might be possible to 'scan and read' everything stored away in your noggin?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141711.htm

[Hermit]

Torture sends a message to other 'wrongdoers' that they are messing with the wrong crowd. Kill someone in battle seems fair - more battle then? Cut a foot off and put it on display outside the high castle walls and you spread fear. No one is gonna put a foot wrong whilst your tyranny endures.

More wishful thinking.

[cronus]

Torture sends a message to other 'wrongdoers' that they are messing with the wrong crowd. Kill someone in battle seems fair - more battle then? Cut a foot off and put it on display outside the high castle walls and you spread fear. No one is gonna put a foot wrong whilst your tyranny endures.

More wishful thinking.

You injure the most people with your merciful spirit Hermit. Better some cruelty to send a message to a desired quarter than a image of weakness, by over clemency, sending a message of weakness - making attacks more likely. Albeit with torture the rumour and infrequent usage of maximises both my clemency and the peoples safety. It is your obvious joy to appear cleaner than clean over the good of the people.

[Blind groper]

Scumple

That 'logic' has been used throughout history and has never worked. When one side uses torture, it just increases the level of hatred the other side feels for them, and makes for increased hostility.

[cronus]

Scumple

That 'logic' has been used throughout history and has never worked. When one side uses torture, it just increases the level of hatred the other side feels for them, and makes for increased hostility.

It doesn't work if over-used that I'll grant. If you have read your history you'll know cruelty was endemic before the industrial revolution - where economy required ordered behaviours from workers. You will be aware that for vast tracts of human history cruelty was the stabilising norm, ensuring the security of all. In the post industrial phase we are now entering a return to natural human behaviour in these regards is inevitable. You either make usage of it, with your innate if under-used Machiavellian intelligence, or stay in denial until atrocities overwhelm your delicate 20th C. sensibilities....

[rainbow]

[mistermack]

Torture is like the death penalty. It would be ok, if there was no danger of innocent people being tortured.

It would actually be all right, so long as it's only me who decides whether someone should be tortured.
But as soon as someone else gets involved in the decision, there's a danger of innocent people getting tortured.

The person who decides ought to have to sign a form, agreeing to undergo exactly the same torture, if the suspect turns out to be innocent. I'd love to see the war dodger George Bush on a water board squealing his cowardly head off.

[Hermit]

Albeit with torture the rumour and infrequent usage of maximises both my clemency and the peoples safety.

You need to convince the WWII partisans and today's suicide bombers of that.

[cronus]

Albeit with torture the rumour and infrequent usage of maximises both my clemency and the peoples safety.

You need to convince the WWII partisans and today's suicide bombers of that.

Extended torture might be beneficial to society at large in some small minority of cases - hey, but not lets go there?

[Blind groper]

Scumple

In years gone by cruelty was indeed the norm. Guess what? Cruelty induces cruelty. When one group introduces cruelty, others follow. The same with torture. When one group uses and rationalises torture, others follow.

We know that fathers who abuse their sons leads to a result in which their sons grow up abusive. This is a universal reality. If cruelty is used by some, it is used by others. It is necessary to break this cycle by the more 'civilised' amongst us refusing to use it.

[Rum]

The likes of Crumple don't like to admit it but the world has in many respects become a much kinder place where empathy and humanity are much more the norm. Not everywhere, but in a lot of places.