"Torture Doesn't Work"

[Infected Mushroom]

because they won't escape the torture if they tell a lie so it makes more sense for them to tell the truth... they know that you'd come back to torture them again if they try to feed lies, hence there's no incentive to lie when they could tell the truth (they might do it once or twice to spite you if they are really brave but there's a general disincentive against doing so)... when people are tortured, they need to believe that telling the truth will make it stop (they're being conditioned to think that)

Again, it requires you knowing the info beforehand, making the torture pointless. And again, they can tell you the truth and not be believed, or simply not know.

you don't know the information beforehand, you are relying on the torture to narrow down the list of possibilities to something you can work with and verify

for example, if there are 1000 suspects and there's a deadline you can't really work with that, but if you get someone high up and torture them for information it can help narrow down and guide your investigation better

[Petrasylvania]

The problem isn't that people resist and refuse to talk. It's that they will say anything, regardless of whether it's actually true, to make the pain stop and it is then really difficult to sift the accurate info (if there is any) out from the bullshit.

But it works on Game of Thrones!

[Estanglia]

There are limits to what information can be verified. Scenario: The torturer wants to know what I have been doing in the last few days. I tell him I went for some walks down a country lane. I actually read a banned book in the garden. Nobody has seen me, so nobody can verify either as being fact. How will the torturer know if I am lying or telling the truth?

So again, you think that the torturer not only has a window into the torture victim's soul to see if they are lying, but they have an all-seeing eye too(!)

that isn't really the sort of information you want to extract from torture... that's entering the Confessions territory concerning a specific past action

it should instead be used for information that has future ramifications and can be verified

They can lie to trick you. There are things they can do without telling the truth that will lead to the end of the torture, like telling the torturer what they want to hear.

[Estanglia]

Again, it requires you knowing the info beforehand, making the torture pointless. And again, they can tell you the truth and not be believed, or simply not know.

you don't know the information beforehand, you are relying on the torture to narrow down the list of possibilities to something you can work with and verify

for example, if there are 1000 suspects and there's a deadline you can't really work with that, but if you get someone high up and torture them for information it can help narrow down and guide your investigation better

Again, they can lie or not tell you the truth. Its simple really.

[Vistulange]

I'll leave this here, by the way.

"The controversy over EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] resumed when the majority (Democratic) staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) undertook a study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program in 2009. [...] Portions of this study were released in December 2014. The staff report found that the EITs, some of which were seen as being overly brutal, were not effective in obtaining useful intelligence and that the CIA made unjustified claims about their effectiveness in order to keep the program going."¹

Emphasis mine.

---

¹ Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Los Angeles, CA: CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, 2017.

[Kowani]

The problem with verifying a story is that, if you have the means to immediately do so, you'd already be doing it. Otherwise, you're looking at hours, possibly even days, of wasted manpower barking up the wrong tree in a situation where your prisoner is only useful for a limited amount of time, a problem the CIA frequently ran into. It's not a matter of the leads being impossible to track down. It's a matter of the leads needing to be believed first, then needing to be tracked down, the latter part of which takes far more time than Hollywood lets on. During that time, if the victim of torture lied, you're wasting valuable time tracking down a false lead, even more because the lie was something you wanted to believe, while the other side adjusts plans based on that guy with important info who hasn't checked in in a while, or even carried out the attack you were hoping to stop.

you're verifying based on the information that has been extracted

for instance, if there are 130 possible bomb locations... you can get a specific location from the person and then go from there; much more feasible than just sending people to 130 locations assuming you don't have the resources

Or they can send you to a totally random place picked out of a hat and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference until they arrived. Besides, what do you think happens to people being tortured once the torture is done? They don’t just walk away. They’re witnesses to the government breaking human rights laws, so they tend to disappear. Either into prison or the ocean, depending on how despotic the government is.

[Infected Mushroom]

that isn't really the sort of information you want to extract from torture... that's entering the Confessions territory concerning a specific past action

it should instead be used for information that has future ramifications and can be verified

They can lie to trick you. There are things they can do without telling the truth that will lead to the end of the torture, like telling the torturer what they want to hear.

they can lie to you and they can trick you (just like how they can refuse to talk, at least for a while)... but there's no incentive to do so because doing either will just result in continuous further torture further down the road, and its something they'd be conditioned to want to avoid at all costs.

so if they have the information, they are definitely going to give it... the alternative is either refusing to talk or lying... both which will result in further torture

they've been told that telling the truth will put a stop to the torture and past a certain point they need to believe it and will act on that belief because its the only hope they have left

[The New California Republic]

that isn't really the sort of information you want to extract from torture... that's entering the Confessions territory concerning a specific past action

it should instead be used for information that has future ramifications and can be verified

OK. I'll play this game. The torturer wants to know where my meeting with a contact will be on a certain day. I tell the torturer that the meeting will be on the bench at the entrance to the local park. The actual meeting place is out of town, in a cafe. How will the torturer know that I am telling the truth?

That has future ramifications and can be verified eventually by the person being at the meeting place or not. What say you?

[Washington Resistance Army]

They can lie to trick you. There are things they can do without telling the truth that will lead to the end of the torture, like telling the torturer what they want to hear.

they can lie to you and they can trick you (just like how they can refuse to talk, at least for a while)... but there's no incentive to do so because doing either will just result in continuous further torture further down the road, and its something they'd be conditioned to want to avoid at all costs.

so if they have the information, they are definitely going to give it... the alternative is either refusing to talk or lying... both which will result in further torture

they've been told that telling the truth will put a stop to the torture and past a certain point they need to believe it and will act on that belief because its the only hope they have left

Or, as is almost always the case, the person being tortured doesn't actually know anything worthwhile and can't tell you anything.

[Infected Mushroom]

you don't know the information beforehand, you are relying on the torture to narrow down the list of possibilities to something you can work with and verify

for example, if there are 1000 suspects and there's a deadline you can't really work with that, but if you get someone high up and torture them for information it can help narrow down and guide your investigation better

Again, they can lie or not tell you the truth. Its simple really.

they have no incentive to do so where they have real information... because they know that doing so will result in further torture right?

what you're saying is that people who touch fire.... may choose to continue touching the fire indefinitely

[Infected Mushroom]

they can lie to you and they can trick you (just like how they can refuse to talk, at least for a while)... but there's no incentive to do so because doing either will just result in continuous further torture further down the road, and its something they'd be conditioned to want to avoid at all costs.

so if they have the information, they are definitely going to give it... the alternative is either refusing to talk or lying... both which will result in further torture

they've been told that telling the truth will put a stop to the torture and past a certain point they need to believe it and will act on that belief because its the only hope they have left

Or, as is almost always the case, the person being tortured doesn't actually know anything worthwhile and can't tell you anything.

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

[Washington Resistance Army]

Or, as is almost always the case, the person being tortured doesn't actually know anything worthwhile and can't tell you anything.

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

Which will only result in more torture because they're not telling the truth. Good fucking job Kefka.

[Estanglia]

They can lie to trick you. There are things they can do without telling the truth that will lead to the end of the torture, like telling the torturer what they want to hear.

they can lie to you and they can trick you (just like how they can refuse to talk, at least for a while)... but there's no incentive to do so because doing either will just result in continuous further torture further down the road, and its something they'd be conditioned to want to avoid at all costs.

so if they have the information, they are definitely going to give it... the alternative is either refusing to talk or lying... both which will result in further torture

they've been told that telling the truth will put a stop to the torture and past a certain point they need to believe it and will act on that belief because its the only hope they have left

How can you verify their information? Its a simple question. And even if they want to tell you the truth, why should they trust you? for all thy now, they could be executed once they have told you their info.

[The New California Republic]

Or, as is almost always the case, the person being tortured doesn't actually know anything worthwhile and can't tell you anything.

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

And there we have it. You just admitted that torture is basically ineffective.

[Infected Mushroom]

that isn't really the sort of information you want to extract from torture... that's entering the Confessions territory concerning a specific past action

it should instead be used for information that has future ramifications and can be verified

OK. I'll play this game. The torturer wants to know where my meeting with a contact will be on a certain day. I tell the torturer that the meeting will be on the bench at the entrance to the local park. The actual meeting place is out of town, in a cafe. How will the torturer know that I am telling the truth?

That has future ramifications and can be verified eventually by the person being at the meeting place or not. What say you?

I don't think that's realistic since if you say that... you KNOW that you will be tortured past the "certain day" when it turns out to be a falsehood, so you really have no self-interest in doing that

[Estanglia]

Or, as is almost always the case, the person being tortured doesn't actually know anything worthwhile and can't tell you anything.

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

EXACTLY. This is what we're saying, and you didn't seem to accept it.

[Infected Mushroom]

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

And there we have it. You just admitted that torture is basically ineffective.

if you read the OP, its a given that people can't give information they don't have; but if they do have information, they are going to give it (perhaps with some other falsehoods but it will definitely be thrown out along with it)

[Infected Mushroom]

in that case they would resort to making things up to try and make it stop

EXACTLY. This is what we're saying, and you didn't seem to accept it.

its in the OP dude

[Estanglia]

And there we have it. You just admitted that torture is basically ineffective.

if you read the OP, its a given that people can't give information they don't have; but if they do have information, they are going to give it (perhaps with some other falsehoods but it will definitely be thrown out along with it)

How do you know that? Seriously, I've asked many times and your answer can be boiled down to "they will".

[Salandriagado]

In order to verify the evidence, you need to know what it is, making the torture pointless. We've constantly pointed that out.

you find out what it is based on information you extract from the interrogation

then you verify as a form of confirmation

Again: you torture somebody. He gives you 200 different answers to your question. How do you verify which one (if any) is true, and why didn't you just do that first and skip the torture?

[San Lumen]

And there we have it. You just admitted that torture is basically ineffective.

if you read the OP, its a given that people can't give information they don't have; but if they do have information, they are going to give it (perhaps with some other falsehoods but it will definitely be thrown out along with it)

Torture is still wrong and unethical. If a interrogator cannot get information without restoring to physical harm they have no business doing the job

[Infected Mushroom]

if you read the OP, its a given that people can't give information they don't have; but if they do have information, they are going to give it (perhaps with some other falsehoods but it will definitely be thrown out along with it)

How do you know that? Seriously, I've asked many times and your answer can be boiled down to "they will".

because they want to make the torture permanently stop and telling the truth is their only hope for that to happen (anything else will just result in further torture) right?

[The New California Republic]

OK. I'll play this game. The torturer wants to know where my meeting with a contact will be on a certain day. I tell the torturer that the meeting will be on the bench at the entrance to the local park. The actual meeting place is out of town, in a cafe. How will the torturer know that I am telling the truth?

That has future ramifications and can be verified eventually by the person being at the meeting place or not. What say you?

I don't think that's realistic since if you say that... you KNOW that you will be tortured past the "certain day" when it turns out to be a falsehood, so you really have no self-interest in doing that

Lol, just answer the question, instead of fallaciously dismissing it as unrealistic.

Also, I don't need "self-interest", it is irrelevant in this scenario, I don't want my contact to be caught so I am willing to lie to protect them. So answer the question please.

[Sovaal]

Only one way to find out.

Show up to my storage unit. No need to bring anything, I’ll provide everything.


Now fucking seriously, frankly it doesn’t fucking matter if it fucking goddam works or not. It’s a goddam shitty thing to do to people and frankly anyone who partakes in it ndoesnt need to be executed, but pit down as the rabid dog they are. Ramsay Bolton is not a man that should be a fucking role model.

[Estanglia]

EXACTLY. This is what we're saying, and you didn't seem to accept it.

its in the OP dude

I know. But up until know, you've seemed certain that the person tortured: a) has info
b) will give it over eventually
and c) won't lie or at least the true information can be verified.
and in that post, you've appeared to accept c) is wrong.