Jesse Ventura says water boarding is indeed torture

[Belz...]

Thanks for the thought, but I would have to say that this case actually supports my argument.

In this case the torture applied to the gunpowder plot was done after the gunpowder plot was discovered and one of the people involved was caught.

The use of torture did not help the authorities discover the plot in advance.

Why are you all being so narrow in your requirements? Fawkes was caught and then gave up his co-conspirators. Isn't that useful and accurate information?

This is what I was talking about earlier; torture is bad, ergo let's use every excuse to make it look even worse than bad: useless. And when presented with a clear -- albeit admittedly a bit old -- case of useful torture, let's change the requirements so that it doesn't qualify.

Don't you think that this is a bit unfair?

 

[Crossbow]

Um.... that doesn't tell you anything about the efficacy of torture. There's no reason to believe that interrogations of any sort were determinative in the final outcome of the war.

I never tried to claim that any sort of interrogations were deterministic in the final outcome of a war.

Instead, I claimed that torture is a very poor way of collecting data, and the historical record shows this to be the case.

Also not relevant. When you go searching for a specific pre-determined answer by any interrogation technique, you're likely to find it even when it's not true. That's not even peculiar to torture.

Why are you latching on to the worst arguments against it, when there are much better ones?

On the contrary, it is quite relevant.

It goes to show just how much bad information can be produced by torture.

 

[TraneWreck]

Of course it does. That doesn't change the fact that it often works.

Feel free to substantiate that claim. You will notice that there are plenty of articles and studies contradicting that claim.

It provides reliable results some of the time. (I don't know how often)

You don't find that to be a major problem for your argument? Let's say it provides "reliable" results 20% of the time and completely wrong and misleading information 60% of the time. Do you consider that "working"?

Let's say you had a test for HIV that gave the correct result sometimes, maybe 1/5, and false positives at a frequency twice that. Would you call that "working"?

This is central to this discussion.

 

[3point14]

Sure, but now you seem to be assuming, without any evidence, that this is what happened. And you're saying that _my_ information is poor?

I'm saying that all our information is poor about a technically illegal but supported by the king, undocumented piece of torture in a politically charged environment 400 years ago. What I'm saying is that this piece of evidence, such as it is, is not, on it's own, sufficient to convince anyone of the efficacy of torture.

IO'm not the one holding this up as the one and only piece of evidence to support my conclusion - that's you. you now appear to be complaining about the quality of evidence you've supplied?

Because I have the nagging impression that I'll be wasting my time, something I'm not particularily fond of doing. But if it'll make you feel better because you can't bother to do it yourself, I'll look it up when I have more time later today.

As I say, I looked and couldn't find anything.

I shall look forward to your further evidence.

 

[Belz...]

Feel free to substantiate that claim. You will notice that there are plenty of articles and studies contradicting that claim.

This may be because we're using different definitions of "works". As I agreed earlier, it doesn't work very well, but it does extract accurate information from people. How often is a good question, but there's no way to perform an ethical study on this.

You don't find that to be a major problem for your argument?

No. It's a given. If you can't test it, you have to deal with less reliable evidence, but that works both ways.

Let's say it provides "reliable" results 20% of the time and completely wrong and misleading information 60% of the time. Do you consider that "working"?

Yes. As long as my car starts, it works, even if it often doesn't start and I have to try several times before it does.

Let's say you had a test for HIV that gave the correct result sometimes, maybe 1/5, and false positives at a frequency twice that. Would you call that "working"?

Yes. It wouldn't be reliable, mind you, just like torture.

 

[Belz...]

you now appear to be complaining about the quality of evidence you've supplied?

That's a very uncharitable and dare I say borderline dishonest reading of my post. You're the one complaining about my example, not I.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Not carefully enough, it seems.

So noted! Thanks for the info.

 

[3point14]

That's a very uncharitable and dare I say borderline dishonest reading of my post. You're the one complaining about my example, not I.

A fair point. I withdraw the comment and apologise. I should be in less haste to respond.

I still, in the absence of further evidence, reject your hypothesis.

 

[TraneWreck]

Why are you all being so narrow in your requirements? Fawkes was caught and then gave up his co-conspirators. Isn't that useful and accurate information?

This is such a circular claim. What information did they have about the co-conspirators that wasn't obtained through torture and confessions? You're relying on a story obtained through torture to validate the effectiveness of torture.

The historical use of torture has been to extract false confessions. The only countries that engage in systematized torture do it for that reason.

Let's look at how they caught the conspirators:

Anonymous letter hints at the plot. Searches are started.

First search, they catch Fawkes with firewood. Fawkes mentions the name of a known Catholic agitator, Percy. Second search catches Fawkes in the act. Now they know both Fawkes and Percy are involved, no torture.

Fawkes is interrogated, gives up nothing. They learn his name from a letter addressed to him that was on his person.

The next day, the servants of Rookwood are interrogated. Rookwood was chosen because of his relationship to Catholic agitators, Fawkes had still revealed nothing. Those servants gave the authorities the names of many of the other conspirators: Catesby, Rookwood, Keyes, Wintour, John and Christopher Wright, and Grant.

The rest of the conspirators are fleeing and begging friends and family to help them raise an army. They get denied as people don't want to participate in treason, meaning there are literally dozens and dozens of people who are now witnesses to this specific group of people essentially confessing to participation in a plot, the news of which is now spread far and wide.

Most of them are captured by a company of 200 troops who followed their path - which was known not from torturing Fawkes, but because the morons were publicizing their presence as they went.

THEN they start torturing people. Only Fawkes had been tortured before they were all captured, and Fawkes had no idea where they were.

Now, notice how the torture worked: they had a bunch of information from a ton of witnesses, so when they said, "Were you part of the conspiracy, we have proof that you were with so and so..." The tortured party, just admitting to whatever they needed to, was simply agreeing to information obtained by other means.

In fact, it's all the information obtained from the torturing - the extended networks of the conspiracy - that is the LEAST useful information in the gunpowder plot. The confessions were suspicious, with different handwriting between the narrative and signature.

What value did the torture add? From the state's perspective it allowed them to drastically expand the conspiracy so they could break the back of the Catholics. This is what torture is great for, but what evidence validates the stories that were told under torture?

 

[The Greater Fool]

I believe I understand and agree with what Argumemnon is saying:

Torture can and has elicited truth from victims, therefore it has "worked".

It is also established that quite often victims will say anything to get the torture to stop. I'm unsure of the rate of such lies, but it is sufficient to make unverified information received under torture dubious [and therefore not actionable] at best.

Until this thread, I wasn't really aware of the belief that 100% of torture yields 100% lies. It seems rather obvious that almost nothing about human nature is 100%. I've read a bit about torture, and even sources stridently opposed to torture don't make the claim that torture yields 100% lies.

If even only 99.9% of information extracted through torture are lies, then Argumemnon is correct: Torture has and will work some amount of the time. Still doesn't make it useful. I am very sure that the actual % of lies is far, far short of 100%.

While torture can "work" on occasion, it is not generally useful, and it is morally repugnant.

 

[TraneWreck]

Yes. It wouldn't be reliable, mind you, just like torture.

Any process that generates results that must be confirmed with a better process seems wholly unnecessary.

Interrogation often gives clues to start an investigation. Both torture and more humane means yield information that must later be confirmed. Humane interrogation yields more accurate information with far fewer red herrings. Torture almost only produces red herrings unless you know the answers to the questions before you ask them.

 

[TraneWreck]

While torture can "work" on occasion, it is not generally useful, and it is morally repugnant.

It seems to me that this is the essence of the disagreement: different notions of what "works" means with regard to interrogation.

 

[pgwenthold]

How much of the time?

Yep, this is an important statistics issue.

If it gives 100% reliable information but only 50% of the time, how good is it? Since there is a 50/50 chance of your information being correct?

That makes it about as valuable as being only 50% correct.

Of course, we don't know the actual numbers.

 

[Ziggurat]

It is also established that quite often victims will say anything to get the torture to stop. I'm unsure of the rate of such lies, but it is sufficient to make unverified information received under torture dubious [and therefore not actionable] at best.

All information obtained from interrogation of an enemy, regardless of the interrogation method, is potentially a lie. Torture isn't fundamentally different from other methods in this respect.

While torture can "work" on occasion, it is not generally useful, and it is morally repugnant.

The relevant question isn't whether it's generally useful, but whether it's specifically useful, and whether that usefulness in those specific cases outweighs its moral repugnance and other associated costs.

One of the arguments against torture I have yet to see made, but should be if people are serious (and many here aren't), is that there's no good way to train people in the effective use of torture. Not that it can't in principle be done, but the costs of doing so are prohibitive.

 

[Belz...]

A fair point. I withdraw the comment and apologise. I should be in less haste to respond.

I still, in the absence of further evidence, reject your hypothesis.

I'll try to provide you with more data later today, as I said earlier.

 

[pgwenthold]

I believe I understand and agree with what Argumemnon is saying:

Torture can and has elicited truth from victims, therefore it has "worked".

It is also established that quite often victims will say anything to get the torture to stop. I'm unsure of the rate of such lies, but it is sufficient to make unverified information received under torture dubious [and therefore not actionable] at best.

Until this thread, I wasn't really aware of the belief that 100% of torture yields 100% lies. It seems rather obvious that almost nothing about human nature is 100%. I've read a bit about torture, and even sources stridently opposed to torture don't make the claim that torture yields 100% lies.

If even only 99.9% of information extracted through torture are lies, then Argumemnon is correct: Torture has and will work some amount of the time. Still doesn't make it useful. I am very sure that the actual % of lies is far, far short of 100%.

While torture can "work" on occasion, it is not generally useful, and it is morally repugnant.

But doesn't this beg the question of what it means to "work"?

If you get information through torture, but you don't know if it is true or not, and in order to determine whether it is true or not, you have to confirm it through a different means.

But if you have the ability to confirm it through a different means, can you really say that you got the information through torture?

Meanwhile, how many false leads have you wasted time on ....

 

[Belz...]

This is such a circular claim.

In what way is it circular?

 

[Ziggurat]

But doesn't this beg the question of what it means to "work"?

If you get information through torture, but you don't know if it is true or not, and in order to determine whether it is true or not, you have to confirm it through a different means.

But if you have the ability to confirm it through a different means, can you really say that you got the information through torture?

You don't know if any information obtained by any interrogation method is true until you confirm it by other means. And for a lot of information, confirming it by other means is much, much easier than discovering it by other means.

 

[The Greater Fool]

It seems to me that this is the essence of the disagreement: different notions of what "works" means with regard to interrogation.

But doesn't this beg the question of what it means to "work"?

Yes, I think folks are arguing different meanings of "work".

If work = extracting truth, yes truth is often/sometimes extracted.

if work = extracting truth as actionable information, yes actionable information may sometimes be extracted.

if work = extracting truth as actionable information that cannot be extracted in other non-torture ways, yes this just by the volume of victims this must happen at least occasionally.

if work = extracting truth as actionable information that cannot be extracted in other non-torture ways AND the torturer knows all this at the time, then no I'd say torture doesn't "work".

If you get information through torture, but you don't know if it is true or not, and in order to determine whether it is true or not, you have to confirm it through a different means.

But if you have the ability to confirm it through a different means, can you really say that you got the information through torture?

Meanwhile, how many false leads have you wasted time on ....

Right. I like my longer-winded version, though.

All information obtained from interrogation of an enemy, regardless of the interrogation method, is potentially a lie. Torture isn't fundamentally different from other methods in this respect.

Obviously, anyone can lie at any time. Does that even need to be said?

However, most definitely NO, torture *IS* fundamentally different. If you are asking me questions, I can choose to stay silent, or honestly say "I don't know." Under torture, that choice is less realistic. A new lie is extracted.

This is something often ignored, innocent people are also being tortured.

The relevant question isn't whether it's generally useful, but whether it's specifically useful, and whether that usefulness in those specific cases outweighs its moral repugnance and other associated costs.

I disagree. The moral repugnance will not be outweighed by the useless information torture will extract. It's useless because it's likely a lie, likely unverifiable, which makes it definately not actionable.

It's possible one could create an unrealistic hypothetical situation where the real repugnance is outweighed by hypothetical lives saved, but unrealistic hypotheticals are not the stuff real torture should be based on.

One of the arguments against torture I have yet to see made, but should be if people are serious (and many here aren't), is that there's no good way to train people in the effective use of torture. Not that it can't in principle be done, but the costs of doing so are prohibitive.

You haven't seen it because it's a morally bankrupt argument. "The morally repugnant torture doesn't work because we aren't willing better train people to perform the morally repugnant torture."

We don't throw money at better torture because torture is morally repugnant.

 

[TraneWreck]

In what way is it circular?

You're saying: "Look, Fawkes was tortured and gave true, valuable information."

How do you know it's the true and valuable? Because you compare it to a story gathered from the torture of his co-conspirators.

It's no coincidence that all the stories of the tortured people in the gunpowder plot line up. They would have been tortured until they did. Any contradictory information would have resulted in more torture. The only new information from the various tortured people was the implication of more people in the plot. This is something torture is really great at.

As I pointed out, a great deal of the plot was known prior to anyone being tortured, meaning the torturees were confronted with that info. That's not an example of useful information being obtained through torture. It is, however, a great example of how torture is mostly used: to force someone to tell the story the torturers want to hear.