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John Oliver discusses torture

Tony Stark

Philosopher
Tony Stark
Joined
Nov 22, 2014
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and how it doesn't work. The reason why is obvious: people being toruted will say anything to end the torture no matter if it is true or not. For example, KSM sent the FBI on some wild goose chase over something he made up to try to get the CIA to stop torturing him. Bottom line, there is no rational reason to torture people. If you are in support of torture you are irrational. And/or a sadist. Speaking of that, Last Week Tonight asked presidential hopefuls if they would uphold President Obama’s executive order banning the use of torture (one of the first things he did as President). None of the Republicans answered in the affirmative and all the Democrats did (I could be slightly mistaken but I'm pretty sure that's what it said).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeF2rzsZSU&app=desktop
 
John McCain says waterboarding is torture, but what does he know. He only had it done to him by the North Vietnamese. We should trust the lawyers' smooth words.
 
I'm still not sure that it doesn't work.
Just not reliably.
People will tell you what they think will stop the torture.
I'm sure that sometimes includes the information the interviewers want to know.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I'm still not sure that it doesn't work.
Just not reliably.
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Well of course. Often the person will tell you the truth. The problem is that you have little way to know if it's the truth or not, so you might continue to torture them until they instead tell you a lie, etc. It's not that it doesn't work. That's an exaggeration we use to discourage its use while avoiding discussing the cases where it does work lest it diminishes the arguments against it. It works sometimes. It's just next to useless, and goes against every modern principle of morality.
 
Belz... said:
Well of course. Often the person will tell you the truth. The problem is that you have little way to know if it's the truth or not, so you might continue to torture them until they instead tell you a lie, etc. It's not that it doesn't work. That's an exaggeration we use to discourage its use while avoiding discussing the cases where it does work lest it diminishes the arguments against it. It works sometimes. It's just next to useless, and goes against every modern principle of morality.
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Idk.
We did this thread last year and iirc (which I often do not), people were arguing vehemently with me that it never works.
 
Torture is extremely effective...as long as you have another, conventional, more reliable, source for the same information, so you can confirm what the torture victim told you. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I've heard this claim.
 
Armitage72 said:
Torture is extremely effective...as long as you have another, conventional, more reliable, source for the same information, so you can confirm what the torture victim told you. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I've heard this claim.
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It makes some sense. If what your prisoner tells you is in line with what you already know, i.e. same names, job descriptions, etc.
 
Armitage72 said:
Torture is extremely effective...as long as you have another, conventional, more reliable, source for the same information, so you can confirm what the torture victim told you. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I've heard this claim.
Click to expand...

Perhaps it has always been a matter of sample size. Torture a thousand people and cross-reference their confessions.
For good measure add a control group to control for non-torture variables.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
Idk.
We did this thread last year and iirc (which I often do not), people were arguing vehemently with me that it never works.
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I'm not sure of the circumstances under which it is useful.

If you have no way of corroborating the information received then it's useless.

If you're using it to corroborate information of doubtful accuracy you already have then there's a real risk that you may end up leading the torture victim to erroneously support that information.

If the information is reliable then you don't need to use torture to corroborate it.

I'd argue that bearing that in mind "it never works"
 
Monketey Ghost said:
Idk.
We did this thread last year and iirc (which I often do not), people were arguing vehemently with me that it never works.
Click to expand...
Presumably torture has to work better than alternative interrogation methods, at least in a somewhat knowable subset of cases, for it to be said to work in any useful sense? Just saying that sometimes people do give out information that is true and correct surely isn't really enough.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I'm still not sure that it doesn't work.
Just not reliably.
Click to expand...


That's pretty much the colloquial definition of "doesn't work". How long do you think a surgeon could remain a surgeon if he or she didn't do their job reliably? Sure, they occasionally save a life, but... well... you know...
 
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shuttlt said:
Presumably torture has to work better than alternative interrogation methods, at least in a somewhat knowable subset of cases, for it to be said to work in any useful sense? Just saying that sometimes people do give out information that is true and correct surely isn't really enough.
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Let's say, works, in the sense that the person will tell you something they'd prefer to keep secret and would do so without the application of torture.
 
Upchurch said:
Nobody was arguing that.
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I wouldn't be shocked to find out that I was arguing it. Not that it's impossible to get accurate information from torture but rather that because torture is so unreliable, you need reliable sources to verify it, which makes torture redundant.
 
The Don said:
I wouldn't be shocked to find out that I was arguing it. Not that it's impossible to get accurate information from torture but rather that because torture is so unreliable, you need reliable sources to verify it, which makes torture redundant.
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Maybe it's like looking something up in Wikipedia.... it gives you a lot of links to explore, but you'd never want to cite it in an essay?
 
Monketey Ghost said:
It makes some sense. If what your prisoner tells you is in line with what you already know, i.e. same names, job descriptions, etc.
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To be fair, the use of that argument that most sticks out in my memory was in a science fiction novel written by an author so right wing that most of the current Republican candidates would probably listen to him and say "Umm...that's a bit much." The statement was prefaced by "Despite what Liberals claim..." and most of his more recent books portray Liberals as over-the-top caricature villains.

This was a series in which Liberal politicians hated the military so much that they were willing to sabotage Earth's defense against a horde of flesh-eating alien invaders just to make the military look bad. At one point, US politicians charged US military commanders with war crimes for killing wounded alien soldiers instead of providing medical aid, "soldiers" that everyone knew were non-sapient tool-using animals directed by a small number of intelligent commanders.
 
The Don said:
I wouldn't be shocked to find out that I was arguing it. Not that it's impossible to get accurate information from torture but rather that because torture is so unreliable, you need reliable sources to verify it, which makes torture redundant.
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That is what people were arguing, more or less.
 
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