Ticking time bombs, terrorists, torture, and a twist

[The Man With The Golden Gun]

Try saying that one five times fast.

Anyway, I'm sure by now everyone here's familiar with the usual ticking time bomb scenario. If you aren't, here's the tl;dr version: There's a terrorist being interrogated about the location of bomb, but only the terrorist knows where the bomb is. The bomb has a timer on it, and it'll be going off in, let's say, an hour. The interrogator must decide whether or not to torture the terrorist to find out where the bomb is. There's a lot of ethical, practical, and other things to consider with this scenario.

And that's what I'm asking you Dopers to do. You've got a decision to make, and time is running out. Except there's a twist.

This time, you're the terrorist, not the interrogator. You aren't the one who might be doing the torturing, you're the only who might be getting tortured.

So you've got an hour to decide what to tell the interrogator, whether it's true, false, or nothing at all. And even worse, if he does decide to torture you if what you do doesn't satisfy him, you have to figure out what you'll do next. And while the interrogator doesn't know what you'll do, you don't know what he'll do.

Clock's a'ticking.

[YogSosoth]

Can I tell him where the bomb is, re-examine my life, and fully cooperate with the authorities?

[The Man With The Golden Gun]

Originally Posted by YogSosoth

Can I tell him where the bomb is, re-examine my life, and fully cooperate with the authorities?

Certainly, if you can convince your friendly interrogator that you're telling the truth about where the bomb is. You are telling the truth, but he doesn't have any way of knowing that and considering you're still a terrorist in the hot seat, if you do tell him the truth, he's not going to be inclined to believe you immediately, if at all.

And if you do convince him, make sure you do it in less than an hour. Otherwise, you're still up a universally-known creek without a paddle.

[AClockworkMelon]

Well presumably he'll be able to verify that I'm telling the truth when they discover the bomb. I guess he could torture me in the meantime, but in that case it doesn't really matter what I do, I'm gonna get tortured anyway. I don't really understand this thread. What can you do at all? Apparently whatever you tell him he's going to torture the fuck out of you. I mean you say "And if you do convince him, make sure you do it in less than an hour." So you're asking if that's what I'd do? Uh, sure, I'd do that.

[Trinopus]

Lie convincingly...

For instance, I might say, "Disarming the bomb requires a thirty digit code. If you torture me, my thoughts will be so scrambled, I could not conceivably remember the sequence of digits. I can only barely remember them when I'm able to sit quietly with a piece of paper in front of me. So *you* have to decide: is torture going to work, or not?"

Also, once under torture, I'd try as hard as I could to blurt out contradictory information. "Ah! North forty-second street! Ow! No, South Figueroa! Oh, God, no, Rosecrans Street! ***! Chesterfield Drive! Aiee! Lombard Street!"