I don’t understand how the ticking time bomb scenario demonstrates a situation in which torture might be acceptable. I don’t understand why some staunchly anti-torture advocates will concede it.
Leaving aside statistical arguments about its improbability, it seems to me that the scenario demonstrates yet another practical problem with torture.
Say you’re a New York city cop, and there’s a nuke set to explode in one hour. You have the terrorist who planted it in front of you, and conveniently, there’s a car battery and a pair of jumper cables in the room.
“Where’s the bomb?”
“Fuck you!”
You hook up the cables to his testicles and give him a few shocks.
“Okay, okay! It’s at Grand Central Station in locker 42!”
What do you do? Do you send the bomb squad to Grand Central? Say you do, and they arrive in 15 minutes, pop open locker 42, and find it empty.
“You lied! Tell me where it is!” More shocks to the testicles.
“Okay, okay! It’s at the Port Authority in the men’s room on the second floor!”
The exact thing that seems to make the scenario justify torture, the time pressure, is exactly what makes torture useless. You’ve got a short clock, the terrorist knows it, and he knows that all he has to do is run it out by lying. You can’t threaten him with torture for lying, since you’re already doing that. You can’t threaten him with death, since you lose the opportunity to get the bomb’s location.
So why do anti-torture crusaders sometimes concede the point? Is there a way to repair the ticking time bomb scenario so that it does actually justify torture?
First, torture can definitely be effective. We may wish it were not, but it certainly can be. Second, I must assume you have never had someone hooking a car clamp up to your genitals, else you would probably not even consider holding out. Or maybe you have balls of steel. Third… why would we have to stop if the bomb went off, eh?
Mostly because the torture ceases to be an information-gathering technique after that point, and falls into the realm of legal punishment for the crime, which requires a few additional steps before implementing it. Though I suppose if we made it legal for any relatively official person to declare themselves judge and jury, then it would all be good (presuming that we’d already dispensed of that ‘cruel and unusual’ thing to enable torture in the first place).
It’s worth becoming the legal equivalent of a totalitarian dictatorship to deter those frequent ticking-bomb scenarios, right?
Can be and will be are two very different things. The only plausible scenario I’ve heard in which torture can be effective is when the interrogators have the ability to check the information, determine if it’s truthful, and return to the torturee with knowledge that he’s lying and threatening more torture for further dishonesty. That takes time, which removes it from the realm of ticking time bombs. And if you’ve got that time, then you’ve presumably got time to use other methods instead of torture.
Who said anything about holding out? The terrorist caves instantly and tells you where the bomb is. The problem for you is that he could be lying, and checking whether or not he’s lying wastes minutes that only get more precious as they pass. Pretty much by definition, in any ticking time bomb scenario, you don’t have the ability to catch him in his lies and threaten further consequences for doing so.
Perhaps you care that your last act on earth was brutalizing someone. Or does this scenario reveal that you think torturing someone for no useful effect is justified if we’re all going to die anyway?
Yup, hansel’s argument is completely devastating to any logical defense of torture, or at least it would be if there was any logical defense of torture. Truth of the matter is, demanding rational justifications from torture advocates is a waste of time, just like milking chickens. There has never been a ‘ticking time bomb scenario’ in the entire history of the human race, nor has there ever been any situation where torture ever produced useful information for anyone. That’s been established in so many threads in the past couple weeks that it’s unclear what smiling bandit hopes to achieve by pretending otherwise.
The only evidence to support this claim is specific cases of true information rather than lies being given. However, by this standard reading goat entrails or throwing darts at a map is also “effective” – those, too, sometimes happen to give answers that turn out to be correct. When there is no means of verifying the answers within the available time frame (which, as the OP notes, is true by definition in a “ticking time bomb” scenario), random “information” from any source is no better than random “information” from any other. (If anything, a statement that could be true or false, coming from someone with a motive to give false information and who knows that there is no time for verification, is less reliable than truly random guesses.)
Under this scenario, if torture were illegal and someone wanted to use it on the terrorist who knew where the bomb was, do you really think that person would be prosecuted if his torture stopped the bomb’s detonation?
It’s the same thing as us having laws against speeding but if you need to rush someone to the emergency room, generally you get a pass. You can have a law and recognize the need to break the law in certain circumstances. I think you need to have the law in the first place, though, to ensure that the action being banned isn’t used willy-nilly.
It’s funny when the pro-torture crowd says that making it illegal will stop them from doing it ever again.
It’s already illegal.
They’ve been doing it anyway.
No law will ever stop them from torturing.
The best the law can ever do is raise the possibilty of punishment.
Before this threat they quail like little girls?
What a bunch of cowards.
I would love to see your cites. Seriously. Cites that torture is demonstrably more effective than non-torturous interrogation.
I’d be against it even if it were demonstrably more effective, but the ticking time bomb scenario (and all the regular arguments in favor of torture) absolutely rely on it being more effective than the alternative, which is a fact not in evidence.
I’d also point out that in such a scenario, it’s quite likely that the guy you have either isn’t a terrorist, or doesn’t know where the bomb is. So torturing him is guaranteed to get you false information, and waste your vital time chasing lies you forced out of him.
As has been pointed out again and again in these debates; actual, professional interrogators long ago gave up on torture because it’s an inferior technique.
I have kept my peace on this issue, but I really think that people watching 24 should have pause for thought. Interrogation techniques are many fold and casuing physical discomfort is only one and argueably lthe least effective.
Most interrogations or professional interrogations are a mixture of symphaty, threats , hand holding etc. GThe ticking time bomb senario incidentally, is one situation where torture is least effective as the example pointed out in the OP, you don’t yell at the guy “where is the bomb or we’ll fucking fry your balls”. You are elciting information and that information can help you, even indirectly, he might not say the bomb is in xyz place, but give you information which you can use to find it.
I’ll play along…though I don’t really think there is much to be got out of these over the top scenarios to be honest.
Ok…so you have (with 100% certainty) the actual terrorist who planted the bomb, correct? And you have one hour in order to get the information out of him/her? Then you have nothing to lose by trying to torture this person to get the info…you are on such a short time table and the loss of life would be so devastating if the bomb goes off that there doesn’t seem to be many choices here. Would you recommend doing nothing? There simply are no effective techniques short of physical torture that would have even a slim chance of working…so, might as well give it a shot, even if it probably won’t work.
Yeah…and so? What’s the alternative? Do nothing? You have an hour…millions would die if such a bomb went off in New York. If you know FOR SURE that this is the guy responsible why would you hesitate? If you torture the guy and get nothing out of him then what exactly have you lost? If there is even a one chance in a thousand (or even one in a million) that by torturing him you will get the location and be able to prevent the deaths of millions why wouldn’t you go for it? One terrorist vs millions of innocent civilians…yeah, I’d say that’s a fair trade. And I’m ANTI torture by and large. But in this specific case? One chance in a thousand or a million is better than none.
Or do you have some alternative that would have even a slim chance of success in your time frame?
They concede the point because of the way the scenario is constructed. Personally I’d shift the discussion to realistic scenarios where torture would be used and be ineffective. Once you allow the discussion to be shifted to this line there really IS no other choice. It’s torture the guy and home you get something or do nothing and allow millions to die. Any reasonable person is going to pretty much choose even a slim chance to save millions over the known terrorist who set the bomb.
How would I know ? I’m not an interrogation expert. What I DO know is that the actual professionals don’t regard torture as useful. A time constraint isn’t justification for doing something useless; rather the opposite.
I think the ticking time bomb scenario is a really useless justification for torture, demonstrably so, and it frustrates me to watch anti-torture advocates concede it.
Correct.
Presumably there are other efforts to locate the bomb going on as well–say, NEST teams sweeping the city, tracking the terrorist’s movements and such.
Ah, but there’s a penalty associated with being wrong. If the terrorist lies about the location, and you divert resources there, you’re sending them where they shouldn’t be. Torture is not a zero-cost option here, in practical terms. It’s not just a Hail Mary pass.
Because against a 1 in a 1,000 chance he’ll divulge the real location, you have to balance the far more likely probability that he’ll simply lie, costing you precious minutes while you divert resources. In fact, I’d say it’s a virtual certainty that he’ll lie, knowing that there’s no time to check his answers and no real consequences for lying, since you’ll all be dead in an hour anyway.
I’m tempted to say that, in any ticking time bomb situation, you’re basically fucked. The long odds that you’ll be able to torture the location out of him are illusory at best.
It’s a false dilemma. By torturing him, you’re actually giving him the opportunity to screw up your other efforts to find the bomb.
