Easing the proscription against torture in U.S. law

[Scylla]

Spiritus:

You explicitely did not claim to be for legalized torture. You have, however, made arguments based upon the effectiveness of expert torturers, which clearly raises such questions as:
* how did they gain their expertise?
* how do they gain access to our hypothetical (or actual) suspects?
* how do they convince the authorities that the information they are passing along is so reliable as to justify immediate commitment of resources?

Any discussion about whether torture should be used, probably needs some thinking about situations it might be used in as well as when it is likely to be effective and when it is not.

In fact, if you were interested in a torturer, you probably need look no further than an interrogator. They do commit torture, albeit somewhat mild compare to what comes to most people’s mind. A person may be handcuffed into a very uncomfortable chair that that causes them increasing distress the longe they are kept in it. A person is deprived of sleep, uncomfortably prodded in a search, deprived of clothing, made to be uncomfortably hot or cold, and otherwise made to be confused disoriented and in as great a degree of distress as possible.

It all has a psychological effect, and that would be what I presume modern torture techniques would build on. Obviously there is a line drawn between what is an appropriate interrogation technique and what is torture. I would guess that some are arguing that that line be moved a little further over. I don’t think it’s brain surgery.

I’m not in favor of this. I like the system the way it is where people aren’t supposed to be mistreated. In a hypothetical ticking bomb situation though I would be in favor of illegal torture, though. I guess the best way to make sure that torture is never used except in the most extreme and dire of circumstances is to make sure the torturer is going to be penalized for it.

If it’s not worth going to jail for the rest of your life than it’s not worth doing. If it’s important enough that it is worth sacrificing yourself for, than I guess you do it, and pay the price.

As for 100% efficacy in certain situations. Yes, I believe that it would be.

You think some things can be resisted? Very well, but I don’t believe that there’s a man on earth that can simply walk up and hold onto the electric fence around my horse field. It hurts so much, you simply must let go. That’s just grabbing it with your hands, dry hands.

Take my hypothetical and hook that up to somebody’s more sensitive areas after you’ve intimidated them, disoriented them, and generally prepared them with some other psychological techniques. Make it clear that they will remain hooked up to that fence until the padlock is open.

I doubt any man or woman could last for a minute.

Your body is designed with a very strong aversion to severe pain as a survival mechanism. It can’t be overcome by an act of will any more than an act of will can teach you to breathe underwater.

I think that we’re fortunate in this society that most of us never learn just how severe pain can get, and how powerful the aversion to it is. We never find out because the aversion works so well that we never really experience it.

[Spiritus_Mundi]

So you think that:[ul]
[li]Effectiveness of torture depends only on the expertise of the torturer, not on the will, determination, or mental preparation of the victim.[/li][li]Torture is not rocket science. Any reasonably experienced interrogator would be able to make the transition from lawful investigator to irressistable inquisitor simply by “crossing the line”.[/li][li]You, in fact, have an electric fence and sufficient imagination that you believe yourself capable of devising a method of torture which would be 100% effective.[/li][/ul]
I think that you have perhaps an overly simplified view of the ways in which human beings can react to extreme stress and physical pain. It would seem from this site that a CIA manual on torture would also find fault with your proferred technique. Here are a few quotes:[ul]
[li]“The threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain.” [/li][li]The pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist. [/li][li][prolonged dread may cause] the subject may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to arouse him.[/li][/ul]
My point is simple: don’t present as fact the idea that enacting vital and specific information through torture is easily accomplished and 100% guaranteed to achieve a timely successful result. Sure, it makes that side of the consequentialist evaluation seem much “cleaner”, but you appear to have neither direct experience (thank goodness) nor reliable documentation to support that position.

If you want to argue for the use of torture in extreme circumstance, then please do so with all of the ugly uncertainties in place. This is too terrible a decision to be driven by hunches.

[Justhink]

I still don’t buy 100%. I don’t think the process of torture itself has had enough selective pressure to develop techniques (even though GUARDED); which can bypass a human beings potential creativity to move symbols around and keep the data encrypted.
You’re assuming that there is a limit on a persons’ creative ability to ‘flow with the chi’ as might be said; not even taking into account those born into monastaries which learning how to gain command level access to their autonomous neurological systems.

You’re assuming that pain at it’s peak under severe duration cannot be abstracted enough to bypass an actual encounter with it that a person may not have already directly been exposed to.
Of course, peak pain and duration generally constitute a flux which decompiles into chaotic torture; at which point helplessness sets in. For some to cherish this as the equivilent of the world cup-masters chess tourney (as one of the best opponents); and embrace the symbol manipulation with passion as their sole meaning in life; pure creative genius to this degree with the methodology mapped and basic forms mapped (kinda like the Samurai meditations on death, but more secularized); I don’t see how some torturer is going to compete unless the conscious mind itself is bypassed through sheer physiology.

Another aspect of this that bothers me is that the torturer who evenually kills a human through a 10 year process or some such; is effectively ‘infinity squared’ an inferior being to the one they tortured. Which makes the entire endevour as pointless as the old which test of sinking and floating; but with such a severe inversion in the necessity of being for the torturer themselves, that to even issue the test in the first place sets a scenario where they may eventually prove that their very level of awareness of being is necessarily inferior to the person being tortured; but as such cannot ‘resurrect’ them to undo such a severe existential hit. A torturer would literally have to be insane IMO.

-Justhink

[Taboo]

I would hope that we wouldnt resort back to the wild west days of cruel and unusual punishments and tortures incase of innocence or possibly unknowing for sure. I do think that it was be much more efficient to use someones freedom to protect the rights of another. That can be retracted should they find tihs person or person(s) as in tihs case innocent. But I dotn see any reason why their property and cant be threatened and maybe even about 3 more decades added to their sentence for ill cooperation that either could lead to or allready has lead to the death of another citizen.

Taboo

[Taboo]

p.s. basically plea bargain before they get to trial…so to speak