Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

sunmaster14 said:
I'm not sure how free a hand they have to do that. The Senate report authors could certainly claim that he is lying though (or at least wrong), if in fact he is.
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An aide to Feinstein said there is more information about Mitchell and Jessen in the full report.

"The executive branch insisted on redactions to information in the executive summary that prevents the committee from describing all of the interactions between people at detention facilities, including by redacting some information about some cable references," the aide said. "Also, the executive branch required the committee to use these two pseudonyms, so we can't verify or refute the identities of people now speaking publicly about the program."
 
Here's what I think is a plausible scenario to demonstrate the efficacy of torture in general:

You're kidnapped by a masked gang of criminals and blindfolded and handcuffed. Your bank ATM card has been taken from you. They take you to and hold you at a location unknown to you. Your captors demand that you give them your PIN (i.e. personal identification number), so that one of their accomplices, who is at an ATM with your card can take money out of your checking account.

They ask you for the PIN, and initially you refuse to give it to them because they could potentially withdraw thousands of dollars from your account, and you can't afford to lose that kind of money. They threaten to break your fingers one at a time until you give them the correct PIN. As soon as you do, they promise to take you to a hospital and dump you off there and leave you and your family alone forever. Every time you give them the wrong PIN, they will do something even worse to you than break a finger, although that remains unspecified.

What do you do? If you give them the PIN, would you concede that torture worked? Why not?
 
sunmaster14 said:
Yes, I acknowledge it, and no I don't ignore it. But I understand option theory, which says that something is always better than nothing. If you get information, you have the option to do nothing with it. To expend zero resources validating it or acting on it. The decision to act on information is completely separate from the decision to get the information. This doesn't address Upchurch's claim, however, that getting information using torture might preclude getting better information in other ways.
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Can I get a link for the bolded?
 
sunmaster14 said:
But I understand option theory, which says that something is always better than nothing. If you get information, you have the option to do nothing with it. To expend zero resources validating it or acting on it. The decision to act on information is completely separate from the decision to get the information.
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Do you have a source?

If I spend $80 million to obtain information that I'm not going to act on, how is that better than not spending $80 million?
 
sunmaster14 said:
What do you do? If you give them the PIN, would you concede that torture worked? Why not?
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Perhaps I've not read the responses of others. I don't think there is any dispute about whether or not torture CAN produce useful information. I don't think that has ever been in dispute.

If the kidnappers must expend resources and put themselves at risk every time they try to access your account wouldn't that be a good reason to resist in the hopes that they might give up or get caught?
 
3point14 said:
Can I get a link for the bolded?
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This goes a little further than is needed. The main point is that the option to do something (without any obligation to do it) always has positive value because even if exercising that option now may be a net loss, there is a possibility in the future of exercising it at a net gain. Of course, many options expire worthless without there ever being a time that exercising it was of net position value. That doesn't mean, however, that the option didn't have positive value when you acquired it.

ETA: Just to give a concrete example, suppose KSM told interrogators that there was a plot to blow up the Brooklyn bridge. The CIA/FBI might decide to take no action because the cost of action exceeded the expected benefit (taking into account the probability the information was false). But perhaps a month later, there is an indication that there really is a threat against the Brooklyn bridge. Now that there is some corroboration, and the two pieces of information together might impel the CIA/FBI to take some action. At that later time, the option to act is considered to be "in-the-money," i.e. exercisable at expected net positive value.
 
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So much evidence that torture doesn't get people to give reliable intelligence and none that it does... But Sunmaster still has faith.
 
RandFan said:
Perhaps I've not read the responses of others. I don't think there is any dispute about whether or not torture CAN produce useful information. I don't think that has ever been in dispute.
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This isn't just an example of CAN. It's pretty much WILL in my book. At least for me, and just about everybody I know. In fact, I think you would have to be pretty demented not to give in and tell the kidnappers your PIN.

If the kidnappers must expend resources and put themselves at risk every time they try to access your account wouldn't that be a good reason to resist in the hopes that they might give up or get caught?
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Not good enough. In any case, this is really just a one-off exercise. You get locked out after 3 erroneous inputs, so if you can hold off long enough to give them 3 bad PINs, then your bank account is safe. I'm not sure you would really have gotten your priorities straight, however.
 
sunmaster14 said:
This goes a little further than is needed. The main point is that the option to do something (without any obligation to do it) always has positive value because even if exercising that option now may be a net loss, there is a possibility in the future of exercising it at a net gain.
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The "option" to purchase a commodity at a future price isn't the same as an option to act or not act on a given piece of information.

I think you are confusing options contract with the classical definition of the word "option".
 
sunmaster14 said:
This isn't just an example of CAN. It's pretty much WILL in my book. At least for me, and just about everybody I know. In fact, I think you would have to be pretty demented not to give in and tell the kidnappers your PIN.



Not good enough. In any case, this is really just a one-off exercise. You get locked out after 3 erroneous inputs, so if you can hold off long enough to give them 3 bad PINs, then your bank account is safe. I'm not sure you would really have gotten your priorities straight, however.
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What are the priorities of jihadists?
 
sunmaster14 said:
This isn't just an example of CAN. It's pretty much WILL in my book. At least for me, and just about everybody I know. In fact, I think you would have to be pretty demented not to give in and tell the kidnappers your PIN.
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Not if I suspect the kidnappers might kill me as soon as I comply.

Not good enough. In any case, this is really just a one-off exercise. You get locked out after 3 erroneous inputs, so if you can hold off long enough to give them 3 bad PINs, then your bank account is safe. I'm not sure you would really have gotten your priorities straight, however.
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My priority is to live.
 
Getting a 4-digit number from someone with a quick way of verifying it is completely different to any of the scenarios the apologists for torture have given.

ETA: I was considering adding what RandFan had said too...
 
jimbob said:
Getting a 4-digit number from someone with a quick way of verifying it is completely different to any of the scenarios the apologists for torture have given.
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They are running out of excuses to believe. I wonder when pascals wager will be used.
 
RandFan said:
Not if I suspect the kidnappers might kill me as soon as I comply.

My priority is to live.
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If your priority is to live, then the right strategy is to comply. If they are planning to kill you anyway, then you lose little by complying and gain nothing by not complying. They are not going to keep you alive just because you refuse to give them the code. They'll torture you, and then give up and kill you. If they are not planning to kill you, then you risk death by not complying because you will frustrate and anger them. So, the compliance strategy does much better in one case, and doesn't do any worse in the other case. It's just like Pascal's Wager.
 
sunmaster14 said:
If your priority is to live, then the right strategy is to comply. If they are planning to kill you anyway, then you lose little by complying and gain nothing by not complying. They are not going to keep you alive just because you refuse to give them the code. They'll torture you, and then give up and kill you. If they are not planning to kill you, then you risk death by not complying because you will frustrate and anger them. So, the compliance strategy does much better in one case, and doesn't do any worse in the other case. It's just like Pascal's Wager.
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Giving them false information means that A.) they must take time to verify the information. B.) they will have to go to the ATM multiple times increasing their risk of being caught.

It's a bad analogy as verifying a pin number isn't the same thing.
 
sunmaster14 said:
If your priority is to live, then the right strategy is to comply. If they are planning to kill you anyway, then you lose little by complying and gain nothing by not complying. They are not going to keep you alive just because you refuse to give them the code. They'll torture you, and then give up and kill you. If they are not planning to kill you, then you risk death by not complying because you will frustrate and anger them. So, the compliance strategy does much better in one case, and doesn't do any worse in the other case. It's just like Pascal's Wager.
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What are the finger breakers doing wrong? As near as I can see by your reasoning they are perfectly justified.
 
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