Torture works. In many circumstances the unreliable information provided by torture is the best you can get. It is, of course, very unethical to today's standards, especially when done to innocent citizens.
But the reason it is increasingly becoming unethical today, is because we are getting better at acquiring information through other means, like better monitoring technology and wiretapping laws.
No, it doesn't. All available research shows that torture is one of the worst ways to get information.
The best way to get information is to befriend the person being interviewed. Put them in an open room. Wide windows. Light colors. Talk to them. Treat them like people.
The comments from the American WWII interrogators are telling. The one I recall was "I got more out of the germans over a pool game than the guys in Guantanomo bay did waterboarding people"
Torturing people isn't just unethical. It's that it doesn't work.
Yet despite everyone knowing that for decades, the US still spent enormous effort at torture. Killing people. Raping people.
Why? My best guess is a mideaeval sense if justice. KILL THE BASTARDS. RAPE THEIR WOMEN. BURN THEIR VILLAGES.
Modern society is a thin layer over an animal instinct.
That's horrible. I can still understand people having unethical opinions about torture, but making light of an innocent man being tortured? I'm all for "edgy jokes," but this is just vitriolic.
I think this is the worst thing I've read on HN.
(By the way, if you had exposed an email, I would have asked you about this in private. I don't mean to embarrass you in a public forum. Perhaps you weren't thinking.)
It was a cynical remark. I did not intend that reaction, I hold no opinions on torture.
As an aside, what I said was factually accurate (it's in the article - he gave them the information they wanted), yet people think it was wrong for me to say it. I don't think I'll ever understand that.
I do. Some of it is obvious trolling, and some of it is ranty nonsense. But torture of the innocent is where I draw the line. It struck a nerve with me.
Did it? Even if you get actionable information from torture - a very big 'if' mind you - you're also going to get a bunch of specious bullshit that you'll waste time following up. If you arrive at the truth at all, which again is not likely, it will have been after being misled. You will be, by any objective measure, dumber for doing torture, even if you eventually arrive at the truth.
I try to act in such a way that I am made more intelligent, and I believe that governments probably should too (in particular the parts of government that we refer to as motherfucking intelligence agencies). But, to each, his own.
The well-known fact that torture doesn't work is covered in so many places that I find it very unlikely that someone could be truly ignorant of these facts.
Regardless, the utility of torture isn't relevant.
We don't torture in modern societies because we're not ignorant tribal warlords. You don't torture people for the same reasons you don't use nuclear weapons, VX gas, or some sort of weaponized virus: they are cruel, have nasty side-effects, and escalate the conflict.
Also... failure to understand this basic concept implies some sort of inability to empathize properly; in such cases, it may be a good idea to seek the advice of a trained mental-health professional.
> In many circumstances the unreliable information provided by torture is the best you can get.
This seems equivalent to saying 'it is better to have ten wrong hypotheses than none'. Do you see the error?
Even if one of the hypotheses you arrive at after torture ends up giving you enough to go on, to eventually acquire more information by other means and arrive at the truth, it could have happened any of the following ways:
* The subject simply guessed, and happened to be right.
* The subject gave you information you already knew, but hadn't followed up yet. This information was passed to the subject during the torture, either deliberately or through unconscious bias.
* The subject had some actionable information, and torture compelled him to give it to you.
For the most part you, as the torturer, will have no way of knowing which of these it happened to be. In the first two cases, you are dumber after the torture session than before it. In the third case, you are smarter after the torture session, but not as smart as you could have been.
If it was the first case, you would have been better off guessing at a hypotheses yourself and following that up, than soliciting the subject via torture to provide you several hypotheses of his own. You, as the torturer, are not yourself being tortured, and are probably in a clearer state of mind and better able to guess an hypotheses that might be useful.
If it's the second, the subject is only giving you information you already knew, but he's also giving you a bunch of specious information that you're going to waste time following up. You're worse off than before you tortured the subject.
For the third, congratulations! You have successfully extracted some true information from a subject via the method of torture. You won't know for sure at the time, of course, so you'll have to go to extra lengths to be sure of the information, and you're still likely to have acquired some specious information in addition to the truth. So you'll still waste time following up those leads like in case 2. But you did achieve some small victory. Since in the case where the subject does actually know something you want, there are also provably more reliable ways of getting it than torture, you have still created extra work for yourself, but you'll still be able to put on your report that torture 'worked'. You also endangered the lives of fellow citizens abroad, and reduced your government negotiating leverage against other nations and individuals somewhat, but if you don't care about any of that shit, then you can call this a win and go have a beer. You've earned it.
But the reason it is increasingly becoming unethical today, is because we are getting better at acquiring information through other means, like better monitoring technology and wiretapping laws.
Now THAT, is some food for thought.