There are some intelligent and respectable people in the IC (and elsewhere) who insist that torture works b/c they’ve seen its results. Let me emphasize: THIS IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT TORTURE WORKS.
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That’s because there’s no way to test the counterfactual of what information could have been gotten w/o torture, and no way to tell empirically whether torture produces better results than non-torture. This allows ppl to use anecdotal evidence, but that’s not good enough ...
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So that means we turn to what we know about human psychology, and what we know is that humans don’t respond to fear/pain/stress the way the theory behind torture says they do.
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The theory is that we have pieces of info stored in our brains, that we determine not to share them, that pain/fear/stress breaks down our will, and then the stored info spills out over the weakened barrier.
But that’s not how either memory/knowledge or stress work.
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But that’s not how either memory/knowledge or stress work.
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Stress and fear generally confuse the mind and create a desire to do/say anything to get the treatment to stop, whichusually means telling the torturer what the victim thinks he wants to hear, regardless of accuracy.
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This is why torture is so effective at producing propaganda confessions, and only occasionally good at producing real info, and makes it nearly impossible to tell the difference.
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WHICH gets us to the fact that deliberately inflicting fear/pain/damage on a living being is a despicable thing to do.
And it doesn’t work.
The unspoken thing here is that most ppl who advocate for the use of torture do so bc they’re angry and want to hurt someone.
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And it doesn’t work.
The unspoken thing here is that most ppl who advocate for the use of torture do so bc they’re angry and want to hurt someone.
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The argument that it’s necessary/effective is nearly always a veneer covering a fairly atavistic desire to hurt/punish someone you think has done something bad. Of course, this is fairly contradictory if you’re trying to find out whether someone actually did something bad.
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I’m pointing out that it doesn’t work for those who think immoral things can be justified to save innocents.
Torture won’t save innocents.
Certain things should not be done, no matter how “beneficial” the outcome. There’s even less justification when there’s no benefit at all.
Torture won’t save innocents.
Certain things should not be done, no matter how “beneficial” the outcome. There’s even less justification when there’s no benefit at all.
