What you need to do is torture their loved ones. That always works in the movies.
Well, you are wading in and making categorical statements that there are better ways so…
Neither am I obviously. That’s what google is for, ehe? You are making a statement. Myself, I know of no non-direct (i.e. torture) methods that would work in an hour at all. Wrong? Fine by me…let’s see some cites then.
By and large I agree…torture isn’t generally the optimal solution for all the reasons you gave…you usually don’t know if the guy you are torturing is actually the guy with the info, the guy you are torturing might not actually know the information or might THINK he knows but be wrong, he might be simply telling you what you want to hear or might be fanatical enough to deliberately give you misinformation, etc etc. And I think you are right that most professional interrogators would agree with this…though I doubt it’s universally acknowledged.
It’s also irrelevant however, in the case of the OP.
Sure it is. There are no interrogation techniques I’m aware of that would have even a slight chance of working in an hour. Given that your choices are to do nothing or try more direct methods. It’s pretty much a binary solution, especially given the scenario set up in the OP (i.e. you know with 100% accuracy that the guy you have is the guy who set up the bomb, you know you only have an hour, etc).
-XT
And your evidence that torture has a better chance of working is ?
It’s useless because it’s unrealistic. You have fallen into the trap by discussion it on those unrealistic terms. The scenario is doing what exactly what it’s intended to do, putting you into a false position where you either have to say that you fanatically are opposed to torture even when it’s pretty demonstrably the only thing that would work in the ridiculous scenario proposed or making you back off to a more reasonable stance that again puts you in the false position of condoning torture.
Like I said, instead of arguing this you should shift the discussion to more reasonable and realistic grounds. YMMV of course.
Then it’s a binary solution…you torture the guy and hope for the best or you do nothing.
Um…you only have an hour by your own scenario. Unless you drive right to where the bomb is you have pretty much a zero chance of finding it by these methods. If you had a week you might be successful in NYC with these (and non-torture) methods…but not given the time constraints you set in the OP. Have you ever driven in NYC?? If you knew where the bomb was it might be hard to drive there directly in an hour…let alone sweep the entire city or trying to track a single terrorists movements, etc etc.
Um…no. If you do nothing then the bomb goes off anyway. If you torture the guy and he gives you the wrong address you haven’t diverted anything…it was going to go off anyway. So, unless you have something that would reasonably increase the probability of finding the bomb you have really lost nothing…while gaining at least a small chance that the guy gives you the right location.
Divert WHAT resources? You only have an hour after all. You couldn’t mobilize a search in only an hour…hell, you probably couldn’t even contact enough police to raid a donut shop in that time frame let alone do a search. So, we are back to do nothing and certainly have the bomb go off or torture the guy with some small probability that you get the right information.
What have you lost by torturing the guy who you know (by your own scenario) to be the one who planted the bomb?
You are basically fucked…but your choices are do nothing and millions die or torture the guy you know is trying to kill them and perhaps get the key information. 0 vs .001. And of course if you did nothing while having the terrorist in custody then I can guarantee you one thing…you will be crucified by the public afterward. Best be in the blast zone if you make that decision…
It’s a false dilemma alright, but not the one you state here. The false dilemma is by letting yourself fall into the trap of engaging in this debate with these parameters at all. Given these parameters though this guy isn’t going to screw up any efforts to find the bomb since it would be impossible to even organize such efforts given these constraints. So, again, zero chance verse some non-zero one.
-XT
That the OP has put a one hour time constraint on the scenario and my understanding is that non-torture methods take days or weeks to be effective. If you have evidence to the contrary I’m all ears. Show me the money…or even give me a plausible and logical scenario where you could have any kind of chance at all to find the bomb given the time constraints.
-XT
You know, that might just work. You tell the terrorist he has one chance to tell you the location. You tell him if he’s lying, then you’ll torture his family until the bomb is found by authorities.
So the terrorist tells you it’s at the train station. If you go there and find out he’s lying, you begin torturing his family. You don’t stop torturing his family until the bomb is found. So spouting off random locations won’t stop the torture. Although it would be morally horrible, I could see it working better than torturing the terrorist.
I think it’d be more effective to get him drunk.
How long would it take to get the guy that drunk? 
Scotch enema!!
-XT
But if you’ve got an hour, you’ve only got one shot to find the bomb.
So the scenario goes like this:
“Achmed, tell us where the bomb is.”
“No.”
“OK, then we’ll torture you.”
“Aieee! The pain! Very well, the bomb is in dumpster on West 37th Street”.
“Thanks, Achmed. Send the bomb squad to West 37th Street! If they leave now, they’ll have 10 minutes to disarm the bomb!”
Sirens blare. The bomb squad arrives at West 37th Street. They look in the dumpster. No bomb.
“But–Achmed said it would be here! We even tortured him and everything!”
Ka-boom, as the bomb explodes on East 58th Street.
The torture would be effective if the torturer can verify whether the victim is lying in a very short time. Scylla’s example of a safe combination is one–the torturer can check a combination in only a few seconds, and resume torture if the combination was a lie.
But the ticking time bomb won’t work that way. How many times can you check whether the victim is lying before the bomb goes off? If that number is very small, then the victim only has to lie a couple of times and each lie stops the torture.
Or you could front-load it, by getting the address, sending the team to check, but continue to torture the victim anyway. But what does that get you? The victim gives you an address, but you discount it because he’s probably lying, so you torture him for another address, but you discount that one because he’s probably lying again, so you torture him more. If the victim can’t stop the torture by telling you the truth, they have no reason not to lie. They can even tell you the truth, but it won’t do them any good, because you’ll torture them anyway. And since you don’t have the resources to check every random address the torture victim screams out, the bomb explodes.
You *still *need to demonstrate that torture would work in the time allotted to make this argument work.
Now you’re introducing constraints into the scenario that weren’t there in the first place. Presumably something has gone on before this–otherwise you wouldn’t have the terrorist in your custody and a car battery ready. Unless you’re a hero rogue cop who likes to play by his own rules, it’s a safe assumption that the police are aware of the situation and are doing something about it.
You keep mentioning the small probability that torture will work, but this is confusing a logical possibility with a real possibility. You have as likely a tiny chance that appealing to his humanity, to think of all the babies who will be killed, will weaken his resolve and cause him to reveal the location of the bomb. You have as likely a tiny chance that threatening to find and kill his family will scare him into revealing the location.
An infinite number of tiny chances are available. Him breaking completely under torture is merely one of them.
Those police who are already out searching the city already have a tiny but nonzero chance of finding it. By accepting the terrorist’s lies, you send them somewhere they shouldn’t be looking.
Thus my attempt to demonstrate that there’s no point in conceding the ticking time bomb scenario in order to appear somehow reasonable and not just a flat “No, never torture” radical of some sort. Ticking time bombs always get brought up as the extreme circumstance in which torture might be useful. I’d like to challenge it head on instead of trying to dodge.
Or he views the torture of his family as proof that what he’s doing to the Great Satan is just and holy, and his resolve is strengthened.
There’s a name for the fallacy of assigning equal probabilities to logical outcomes, but I can’t remember what it is.
Since you said “show me the money”, how about showing HIM the money ? Offer a bribe. Is it likely to work ? No - but it’s more likely to work than torture. After all, in the case of bribery he has an actual incentive for honesty.
You ( accurately ) talk about people falling into the trap of taking such an unlikely scenario seriously; but you have fallen into another trap, the trap of assuming that torture is actually a practical solution to this contrived dilemma.
And such a demonstration would have to take into account that the OP demonstrates that it can easily be sabotaged by the terrorist themself - and they have no incentive at all not to sabotage it in a ticking bomb scenario.
Does nobody else watch cop shows?
Just like any other interrogation, you start out by asking the subject questions you already know the answers to. Once he knows that you know some of the story, it vastly reduces his incentive to lie about any of it.
In the real world, interrogators usually have some parts of the puzzle already, and they are questioning a subject in order to fill in a few more pieces. A skillful interrogator mixes in questions he already knows the answer to (or thinks he does); in point of fact, a skillful interrogator does not allow the subject to know the true aim of the interrogation.
Who was your contact?
Bob.
No, you’re lying. (ZZZZAP)
Bob was my contact!
No, he wasn’t. (ZZZAP)
Okay, I admit … it was Larry.
You’re still lying. (ZZZZAP)
Okay, okay … stop … it was Charlie.
Very good. Now you’re being honest. Where did you leave messages for him?
In the phonebooth.
You’re lying again. (ZZZZAP) Do you want to keep going?
Okay … stop … It was under the mailbox.
Good. Thank you for being truthful. Next question …
At this point it’s a better than nothing scenario. Any non-torture techniques to get an unwilling person to talk take longer than an hour. Thusly, the situation leaves you with zero choice. Either you try something that will definitely take too long and let the bomb go off, or you torture which has a low probability of success but still a higher one than nothing at all. In this situation, all you have left are hail mary passes.
Bribery is unlikely to work unless the person you’ve captured is a naive Bond villain who believes that you will allow him to leave with the money when you’ve already captured him. Not to mention that it isn’t really all that easy to get a suitcase full of cash on a moments notice.
And Der Trihs, settle down. Xtisme has already repeatedly pointed out the ridiculousness of the scenario. No need to start hopping up on your high horse.
And in the real world, the interrogation rapidly goes into fantasy land because the victim is telling the torturer what he wants to hear. That, again, is exactly why the actual professionals DON’T DO IT.
And what makes you think it has a worse chance to work than torture ? Torture is mainly good at making people lie, not make them tell the truth.
But if it comes to that, why not try consulting chicken entrails? How low a probability of success is too low? What’s the probability of success of One-Hour Torture?
I find this hard to believe - harder to believe than that torture will work when the victim knows he only needs to hold out for an hour. If I was the torture victim, I’d scream while you had the electricity on, and when you turned it off to ask the questions I’d just laugh, because I knew you were screwed and I knew that I’d turned you into barbaric amoral monsters as a side bonus to my plan to blow up the city.
Convince me there isn’t a “truth serum” (Jack Daniels?) that has a better chance of eliciting a more helpful response than screams and laughter.