DT, while I oppose the use of torture on both ethical and practical grounds, I think you’re wrong when you say that the odds are good that the torturer will get “complete lies.” Here’s why.
First – and please correct me if I’m wrong – I’m assuming that you’re talking about statements of verifiable fact external to the mental state of the torture victim. In other words, the answers to questions like “Who are the other members of your cell?” as opposed to “Do you accept execrate Christ?” If that is correct, I think that a person under severe pain, who knows the answer to the question, is more likely than not to tell the truth when asked. I have suffered severe pain, and I would not have been able to extemporaneously compose falsehoods unless I simply had no other way to make the pain stop.
If I am being tortured by a man who says, “I’ll stop if ando only if you give me your ATM code so I can loot your account” then I’ll likely blurt out “1234” as fast as possible, because giving him that information is the most likely way to stop the beating. On the off chance I am thinking rationally (not necessarily the case while in severe pain), then I will think, “Well, lying does me no good; he’ll just come back and beat me again.” Now, if the question were “What is Fred Smith’s ATM code?” – a question I do not know the answer to – then in extreme pain I’ll blurt out something just to make the pain stop; and in the off chance I’m thinking rationally, my reasoning will be akin to “Yes, he’s going to beat me again when he discovers I’m pulling numbers from thin air, but at least I’ve bought myself a brief pause in the testicle-slicing business.”
Torture is not bad policy because it’s ineffective in getting truthful answers from persons who possess the desired information. It’s bad policy because it’s unreliable. Since virtually everyone breaks, but only a select and probably small number of persons have the information desired, any intelligence gleaned through torture has to be verified by other means, and thus you are only creating false leads.
First, the odds are good that you are the wrong person and they are asking the wrong questions*; you can’t tell them the truth when you don’t know it. Nor does telling them the truth stop the torture when it isn’t the “truth” they want to hear. And I understand that you may well not remember the truth and will just make up something, anything to stop the pain; extreme trauma is very bad for the memory, both for blanking it out and distorting it. Ever forget or misremember something because you were under stress? Same thing, but obviously far more extreme.
Given that they are using such a bad method of interrogation, they will be operating on bad data; and given that they are using such an unethical method, they probably don’t care about the truth in the first place.
Is that what we were appraising? Hell, I’ve got tons of character, strength, and courage - I’d still give in instantly if tortured. I’m not sure if this poll is appraising what you think it’s appraising, Skald.
My friend, I meant no insult by what I said. I just really think it is totally impossible to even come close to knowing how anyone would react under torture. Let’s hope we never have to find out.
I once essentially renounced my religion to make a wandering crowd magician leave me alone, so I already knew it doesn’t take much.
And the other night, I accidentally – I don’t know the verb for it, but the classic bamboo shoots under the fingernails – tortured myself while washing the dishes when I somehow managed to wedge the bristles of a scrub brush under my nails while scouring a pot. It lasted about 8 seconds, and I was ready to give names.
I wonder how long a well-trained Buddhist monk could take it.
Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc famously torched himself in 1963 in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by the Diem regime. He just sat there, still and quiet, until there was nothing left of him but a charcoal briquette.
Another monk from his monestary, Thich Nhat Hanh, has since become famous by his popular writings about Buddhism. In one of his books (sorry, forget which), he writes that Thich Quang Duc planned this far ahead of time, and meditated on it for weeks beforehand to prepare himself.
This seems to show that sufficient self-discipline is possible.
It depend on how much pain you’ve been in during your life. I’ve broken fingers, been extensively tattooed, sprained and dislocated joints, and had any number of cuts, bruises, and impacts. I endured them all rather stoically and have a pretty high threshold, so I voted for I might break eventually but it’s gonna take many sessions.
Like Acid Lamp I have a high threshold for pain. I’ve set and splinted my own broken bones (not perfectly, but I’ve done it), had minor surgery performed with nothing for pain or to numb the area being operated on, had wooden splinters shoved under my nails as a kid, and once endured 48 hours of non-stop, agonizing pain before seeing a doctor about it. Plus my brain is wired wrong, so I sometimes feel pain as pleasure, so that would help.
I’d eventually break. It’d take several sessions, but I’d break.
I have never been tortured, that is my disclaimer. However, I have spoken to a great number of people that have received some specialized training along the lines of preparing yourself and also how to instruct on these courses and the biggest takeaway is…everyone breaks.
Everyone. It just comes down to trying to hold it off long enough that the information you have is no longer useful (usually about 24 hours, if you have something really gucci).
Me? I would do my best to hold on to that point…I have certainly felt pain. The harder part is the mental awareness that someone is hurting you on purpose.
Can’t really say on this one, just because I don’t really have the experience of truly serious pain. Not only that, but I can’t really mentally extrapolate from the pain I have experienced to the sort of pain you’d experience from, say, the thumbscrews or wire jacket. (To say nothing of the truly horrible tortures that are more suited to execution than extraction of information–scaphism, for example. shudder) My perhaps unimaginative brain can’t process it; I can’t visualize something a bazillion times worse than a really bad cut.
I’d like to know, kinda, but I don’t think I’m going to volunteer for a vacation at a black site (or even SEAR training) to find out.
ETA: I mean I’d like to know whether I’d be able to resist the torture. Not that I’d like a hands-on demonstration of selected torture devices just for shits and giggles.
Okay, then. I have called off the attack hamsters.
Have you ever experienced serious pain? Like, say, from kidney stones or broken bones? I contend that persons who have may have a better understanding of their reaction to such events than persons who have not.
I answered “after the second or third session”, but that isn’t exactly what I wanted to pick.
I didn’t want to put “a single session”, because I think that I have some experience with pain and I wouldn’t break before the first session. And of course I don’t know how I would respond to actual torture, but I think/hope I would resist during the first session because I just wouldn’t believe them if they said they would let me go if I break. I wouldn’t believe them - I’d be sure they’re going to kill me anyways so I might as well resist.
But to be honest, if I managed to not break during the first session I’d probably break before the second or during it. I think it would be easier to resist psychologically at first during the first session. But after that one’s over, you know what the torture is like. Waiting for the second session to start and knowing exactly what it would be like would probably break me.
However, it also matters how you define “break”. I know that IRL research has shown that torture is an unreliable method of getting information. I’d probably tell them whatever they think they want to hear, but I’d try to throw a bunch of lies in their to protect my family as long as possible, and who knows but maybe in my delirium they might not be able to get any useful info out of me anyways.
