John Oliver discusses torture

[Monketi Ghost]

Forget morality and sleeping at night, would being asked to go torture a bunch of people not scream "I may be having to answer a lot of difficult questions if the political wind changes and this is ever investigated".

Absolutely.
But in such an environment, the person charged with interrogation has usually made oaths of service to country, and has been given a job.
Self serving politicians will certainly use it as a means of getting votes, and they'll also be happy that results were obtained and more terrorist nut jobs are in prisons.
I wouldn't have been able to waterboard KSM but I'm glad others did it.

 

[Ziggurat]

But I thought a lot of the information that came out of the torture turned out to be incorrect.... black Muslim terrorists in Montana was one, wasn't it? The way you describe it, it sounds like it would be fairly reliable.

Do any interrogation technique badly, and you'll probably get a lot of bad information. I cannot assess whether our use of enhanced interrogation techniques was performed with skill or not. Furthermore, getting some bad information (from any technique) is acceptable: we just need to get good information as well, and have a way of confirming the quality of the information afterwards. If it cannot be confirmed, it's not much use even if true.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

I'll assume you meant Clever Hans. But no, I don't think the risk is that big, if you're careful about the kinds of questions you ask (ie, don't ask them to confirm anything).

The other thing is that you're assuming a rather unsophisticated use of torture, but that's not a good assumption. If I was tasked with interrogating someone with torture, I would not ask the unknown questions first. Start out with really simple stuff, stuff that's maybe not even important, which we already know and they may even know that we know (what's your name? Where were you born? etc, etc). But demand the answers anyways, and apply torture if the correct answers aren't given. Then start moving on to more serious stuff, but which we already know the answer to. Stuff which would be valuable to us if we didn't already know it. Again, apply torture if the correct answers are not given. Establish a pattern of getting true answers from them before moving on to questions that we don't know the answer to. And even then, intersperse it with questions that we already know the answer to, and also repeat questions to check for consistency in answers. The point would be to get them in the habit of giving true answers, AND not let them know if a question we're asking is one we don't know the answer to, so they won't know when it's safe to lie.

As soon as you reach the questions you don't know the answers to you don't know when to apply torture to punish a wrong answer anymore. So in order to not give away what you do and do not know, you can't apply torture consistently, or the subject will know you lack information when he's tortured for a correct answer. And if you randomly apply torture in order to hide your own objective, it won't be obvious to the subject that giving the right answers will stop the torture.

 

[shuttlt]

Do any interrogation technique badly, and you'll probably get a lot of bad information.

Maybe that's the issue.

 

[Upchurch]

You have no evidence of that.

Well, sure, if you ignore all the links I've previously posted. Things like:

Rapport-building interrogation is more effective than torture
BPS response to US torture report (namely that last bullet point)
Scientific American: Bad Science and "Folk Psychology" Guided CIA Torture Techniques (has a nice set of links to other studies)

But yeah, all assumptions on my part.

eta: another link, stolen from RandFan: Does Torture Work?

 

[maxpower1227]

Did Scalia really justify torture by citing the TV show 24? Good grief.

 

[Ziggurat]

Well, sure, if you ignore all the links I've previously posted. Things like:

Rapport-building interrogation is more effective than torture
BPS response to US torture report (namely that last bullet point)
Scientific American: Bad Science and "Folk Psychology" Guided CIA Torture Techniques (has a nice set of links to other studies)

But yeah, all assumptions on my part.

Yes, they're all assumptions, on your part or on the part of others. Not a single scientific study on the actual use of torture has been presented. Your game theory study, for example, is based completely on assumptions, and some of them we know to be irrelevant in many cases. For example, it deals with the question of torturing people who may be innocent, and while there is uncertainty about the guilt of some subjects of interrogation, there was no uncertainty about the guilt of KSM.

We do not know with any certainty what the relative efficacy of torture is. That is obviously not an argument for the use of torture (and if you thought I was trying to make that argument, you need to pay better attention), but it does mean that certain arguments (but by no means all) against its use are invalid.

 

[Upchurch]

Did Scalia really justify torture by citing the TV show 24? Good grief.

It looks like he said it on a radio interview rather than in, say, a legal ruling.

 

[Upchurch]

Yes, they're all assumptions, on your part or on the part of others. Not a single scientific study on the actual use of torture has been presented.

Would you like me to find that neurological study on the negative effect of torture on memory recall, essentially altering or destroying the information the torturer is attempting to retreive?

 

[Ziggurat]

As soon as you reach the questions you don't know the answers to you don't know when to apply torture to punish a wrong answer anymore. So in order to not give away what you do and do not know, you can't apply torture consistently, or the subject will know you lack information when he's tortured for a correct answer.

That's only if the subject is still resistant. The whole point of asking lots of questions BEFORE that point is to get them into a compliant state. If you've asked them, say, 10 questions in a row where they're giving the truthful answer right away, without having to use torture, then you give them an 11th question which you don't know the answer to, how will the subject know that this is the question they can safely lie to you about? They won't, if you've been smart about the questions you pick. So at that point, chances are that they'll tell the truth the 11th time as well, because they've already given up resisting.

 

[Ziggurat]

Would you like me to find that neurological study on the negative effect of torture on memory recall, essentially altering or destroying the information the torturer is attempting to retreive?

Sure, if you've got any studies which measure this effect at the time of interrogation.

I suspect you do not have any such studies. I suspect no such studies have been performed. I think you know why.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Ha. I just posted a link to a thread where I not only did that (both science and logic), but where you responded so we know you saw it six months ago.

Yeah, but it's like pulling fingernails to get people to remember anything that happened that long ago.

Do any interrogation technique badly, and you'll probably get a lot of bad information. I cannot assess whether our use of enhanced interrogation techniques was performed with skill or not.

"If it works, it works; if it don't work, it works, you just didn't do it right."

 

[sunmaster14]

Did Scalia really justify torture by citing the TV show 24? Good grief.

No, of course he didn't. The reference is to remarks he made in a panel discussion on terrorism, torture and the law, in response to somebody else raising the issue of Jack Bauer. In context, his remarks were perfectly reasonable. The point of course was that anybody with a normal sense of morality would forgive the torture of one person, particularly a demonstrably evil person, to save thousands of innocent lives. The actions of a fictional character provide a point of reference that anybody who has seen the show can understand.

 

[shuttlt]

That's only if the subject is still resistant. The whole point of asking lots of questions BEFORE that point is to get them into a compliant state. If you've asked them, say, 10 questions in a row where they're giving the truthful answer right away, without having to use torture, then you give them an 11th question which you don't know the answer to, how will the subject know that this is the question they can safely lie to you about? They won't, if you've been smart about the questions you pick. So at that point, chances are that they'll tell the truth the 11th time as well, because they've already given up resisting.

Is that actually how it was done in the cases under discussion? It sounds like you would have to have a lot of information in order to ask questions that you know the answer to, unless they are trivial, at a ratio of 11:1.

 

[Upchurch]

This reminds me of creationists who say we can't know about the Big Bang because it cannot be directly observed.

Okay, so, we can't trust people with experience with interrogation. We can't trust scientists who have studied torture and it's effects. We can't trust the Senate report.

Who would be a valid authority, then? And lacking a valid authority, why use it?

 

[Ziggurat]

Is that actually how it was done in the cases under discussion?

No idea. I wouldn't be surprised, but these kinds of details are not public.

It sounds like you would have to have a lot of information in order to ask questions that you know the answer to, unless they are trivial, at a ratio of 11:1.

You don't need to keep that ratio long term. Again, establish a pattern of compliance. Once they've begun to comply (and the torture stops), they're less likely to go back. You can shift the ratio over time.

 

[Ziggurat]

Okay, so, we can't trust people with experience with interrogation.

Do these people have extensive experience using torture?

We can't trust scientists who have studied torture and it's effects.

Who are these scientists you speak of? The only one I recall you mentioning is the game theorist, who didn't study torture but only a specific mathematical model of it, and that model is laden with untested assumptions.

We can't trust the Senate report.

Well, duh!

Who would be a valid authority, then?

Someone who had practice in its use, as well as the use of other techniques. I don't think those people are talking.

And lacking a valid authority, why use it?

I never said we should use it.

 

[Upchurch]

Who are these scientists you speak of?

Really?

Well, sure, if you ignore all the links I've previously posted. Things like:

Rapport-building interrogation is more effective than torture
BPS response to US torture report (namely that last bullet point)
Scientific American: Bad Science and "Folk Psychology" Guided CIA Torture Techniques (has a nice set of links to other studies)

But yeah, all assumptions on my part.

eta: another link, stolen from RandFan: Does Torture Work?

Scientific American? Totally biased, amirite?

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Really?

​

Scientific American? Totally biased, amirite?

Well, it's based in reality, which we've seen has a strong anti-torture slant.

The point is, torture works. We may not have any evidence of it ever working, and every study ever done to see if it works has come back negative, but c'mon, you have to admit that it totally works. And it worked on 24. Which, I think you'll agree, it worked well.

Torture: It Works On The TV.

 

[Ziggurat]

Really?

Yes, really. Name them. Name the studies they've done which prove what you claim.