And this, children, is why we have a rule: “The voices in your head do not count as ‘sources’.”
No, I’m not. Lots of programmers know multiple programming languages on top of Visual Basic. A subset of these programmers strongly believe that Visual Basic is the best of them all. They’re evidently clueless, because VB is a piece of shit this close to being actively Evil. Yet they believe otherwise. Why or how they reached this conclusion, I have no clue. But does it mean we can infer that VB is in fact an efficient programming language ?
Similarly, the field of interrogation and intelligence gathering isn’t restricted to arranging someone’s fingers in new and interesting angles. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it constitutes the crudest, most unrefined form of it. From which the other techniques may well stem, or whence they originated if you will, sure. But then, the originating point of the heavy machine gun is the bow and arrow, does it mean the bow and arrow is an efficient mean to kill people from afar, compared to the HMG ?
My contention is that expert torture proponents (the existence of which you *still *have to prove) simply don’t know better. Intuitively, they deduce that if a person isn’t being forthcoming with her information, applying testicular torque will make her so. Countless would-be interrogators have made the same intuitive deduction over the course of human history, then revised it when empirical results proved contrarian. Sometimes it took them centuries to correlate wrong results with a need for a different technique. Sometimes they decided to work with wrong results. Sometimes they wanted wrong results.
But every civilization eventually evolved away from torture, and frowned on those who didn’t. What makes American-brand torture so special ?
Because if he didn’t try the torture approach, he couldn’t know that his worked better.
I don’t recall saying that any specific person was doing it wrong. I said that it makes sense that it would not be effective if done wrong.
It’s apparently widely practiced by the security forces of third world and communist countries. It’s reasonable to assume that these agencies has as one of their primary goals the extraction of information.
I would assume that a lot of actual torturers are sadists. But their bosses who order but don’t do the torturing are probably motivated by a desire for information, which is their job.
Rather, in most cases, never tried it to begin with, and/or have other objections to it.
I bet if you look through the files of the KGB you’ll find that someone already has. It’s not the type of thing that gets published by Random House.
Kobal2,
I accept your anology to Visual Basic.
I don’t think it has been proven that “VB is a piece of shit this close to being actively Evil” by means of your assertion, in the face of other programmers who disagree.
After I read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, I remember thinking the author is exaggerating. The barbaric techniques Klein describes couldn’t possibly be connected to the U.S. or used today. Of course, I was wrong. I later watched an Independent Lens documentary detailing firsthand accounts of the electric shock and other torture methods used under Pinochet. And now I have read the Bush torture memos. It’s all true, and it scares me and causes an emotional response.
Klein details torture experiments paid for by the CIA and conducted by Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron of McGill University. What interested the CIA were methods that cause the prisoner to be more susceptible to information not more forthcoming with information. In other words, the CIA was interested in brainwashing. The techniques were adopted officially by the CIA in the KUBARKmethod and encouraged by the CIA for use by dictatorial regimes in South America.
My drawn out point is this: If the Bush administration used torture to conjure evidence, regardless of truth, that Iraq was connected to the 9-11 terrorists, it is clear why these barbaric methods were used. It really had little to do with intelligence. I think these methods were used by the Bush administration to manufacture evidence. Certainly, the CIA’s official adoption of torture as a method of mind control rather than a means to extract information suggests a lack of evidence to support torture’s efficacy for anything other than mind control and terrorizing a population.
Any information the Bush administration extracted from torture will have to be suspect because there is no way of knowing if it is real or manufactured.
There is no comment on what he, personally, had or had not tried when doing interrogations.
We do know he was pressured to torture people and resisted knowing his non-torture methods produced better information than if he did torture.
Apparently his superiors had enough faith in his abilities to not override his decision or replace him with someone who would torture. So, others in command had confidence in this guy.
If he knew his methods were better than opting for torture, as a professional opinion, he presumably had good reason to hold those opinions. Whether from personal experience or training at the hands of others who had that experience or some combination of the two.
Is your assertion is that this guy pulled his opinion of what interrogation methods worked and what didn’t out of his ass. That he has no rational basis for his opinion? If so what evidence do you have that this might be the case?
Given that his superiors chose to back off and let him do his job his way I am betting he knew his stuff…however he knew it. If he was a fuck-up he doubtless would have been replaced and not advanced through the ranks as he did. Also willing to bet he knows a metric shitload more about interrogation techniques and what does and does not work than you do (than me too for that matter but I am willing to concede to his expertise in this area).
Why is it reasonable? Because, and we come round to circularity, you believe torture to be effective in gathering information.
On the other hand, the evidence suggests it isn’t. The rational response to this is not to say “it must be because people do it” but instead to say “maybe people do it for reasons other than information gathering.”
Pinochet didn’t torture “leftists” to get them to give him information. He did it because that is what happens to leftists. I think you are implying far too noble an objective on the part of the sort of thugs that do and order this sort of thing.
And you ignore what I went on to say - that even if gaining information is a desire, and I have no doubt at times it is, there are other equally effective (or more efffective) methods. That the torturers don’t solely use these seems to be in your mind proof that torture works better. To me it is proof that they are looking for something more than just information.
The brutal torture of Resistance members by the Gestapo I am sure provided limited information. But I don’t for the first second think it was the primary objective, nor that the information could not have been achieved in other ways. It also probably led to many resistors committing suicide rather than being captured, thus reducing the possibility of extracting information. But those are the side effects that you seem to be constantly attempting to exclude from analysis.
Good. Because while it was meant tongue-in-cheek, it’s an appropriate comparison for two reasons :
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Anything VB can do, another language can do better. This is hard fact. VB is notorious for being very inefficient in terms of allocating resources and not giving the user enough control over low level stuff. While to a point this is true of any programming language that isn’t machine code or a soldering iron, VB is at the far end of that scale - because it was never *designed *to be efficient. It was designed to be as intuitive as possible.
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The people who like VB like it because it’s the first language they learn, and it’s simple and intuitive to use. Rather than taking the time to further their knowledge of languages, architecture or figuring out the reasons *why *VB is Evil, they work with it as long as it doesn’t blow up in their face. And for most code monkeys, it never does, because modern technological specs allow for utterly inefficient resource management, for the most part. Why optimize one’s program, when sloppy works ? But when it doesn’t, or when they want to do something VB cannot, or can only do badly, they reluctantly move forward. I suggest Python or ADA myself. They’re the Mozart to VB’s Britney Spears.
As above, so below. Way, way below, in windowless cellars.
One of the links was meant for this NYT article. Unfortunately, I think you have to pay for archives, but Google Honduras and CIA torture for information.
Another logical fallacy. Your (unsubstantiated) assumption is that it is effective if done right, so any evidence of it being ineffective leads you to the conclusion that it was simply done wrong.
There is no room in your hermetically sealed world for the possibility that torture is ineffective even if done “correctly”, or that one can conform to the most outlandishly rigorous standards as you’ve set up (as “reasonably achievable” as you allege that they are) and still come up with something less than convincing as proof that it’s a viable model of interrogation.
All of your answers are simply riddled with suppositions that are pure conjecture on your part. Your last post alone: “It’s apparently…”, “It’s reasonable to assume…”, “I would assume…”, “…are probably…”, “I bet…”. It’s laughable that while others in this thread have actually provided studies and reports and expert testimony, you continue to discount them based solely on your “gut”. :rolleyes:
<Colbert>
Well, there *are *more nerve endings in your gut than in your head. It’s true. Look it up.
</Colbert>
There’s a world of difference between opiates and psychedelics.
And psychedelics have a really far ranging effect, depending on the dosage, the setting, and the individual, that goes way beyond visual hallucinations. I think they have enormous potential applications in psychology, including “truth drugs.”
Sir, once again, you slander my ancestors. I imagine that your ancestors ran around in the woods all pict out in woad. That does not make it true. There were no witches. Further, in the later devil-worshiping daycare popular delusion, there were no devil-worshippers that ate babies.
Why would you assume torture is used to extract information? Why not assume torture is used as a form of social control? The evidence suggests torture has been used to terrorize and manufacture evidence–you know, those false confessions and public rejections of an ideology.
He gave his best assessment based on what he understood of the interrogation process. His is a valid opinion and one informed by general knowledge of the interrogation process. But it’s not nearly the only opinion, and others who also understand the process obviously disagree, including people with actual experience torturing.
For my part I think what you’re saying is circular.
You think torture is ineffective at getting information, so you conclude that everyone who used it must have had some other motivation.
So I guess it’s a draw, and we’ll have to leave it at that.
This is wholly circular. Whether there are “other equally effective (or more efffective) methods” is exactly the question we are debating. You are proving your conclusion from itself.
What are you talking about? What evidence?
The CIA and the US Army did extensive studies with psychedelics and psychotropic drugs as “truth serums”, “bottled courage”, and brainwashing in the 'Fifties and 'Sixties, and came to the essential conclusion that information and behavior modification resulting from the use of pscyhotropic drugs was at best unreliable and often completely ungrounded. See the MK-ULTRA and MK-SEARCH programs revealed (in fragmentary form) during the Rockefeller Commission investigation and the Church Committee hearings. Similar research done by the Soviets and released after the fall of the USSR revealed identical conclusions.
Give someone enough LSD and they’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the threat of Giant Bug-Eyed Bunny Rabbits from the Seventh Dimension. That don’t ****in’ make it so.
Stranger
Every single cite that people have given you showing the ineffectiveness of torture in this thread doesn’t count? You have given in return nothing, other than the assertion that it must work, because why else would people want to do it.
I’ve called you on that multiple times, providing multiple reasons why people might want to torture that has nothing to do with its efficacy at information gathering. I’ve even taken a soft position, that it might be effective at gathering information, but no more so than other methods. And your response:
Nothing. Not a shred of evidence. Just “it is reasonable to assume.” Not a single attempt to counter the repeated cites put to you as to how torture is ineffective. You assume it is effective because otherwise why would people do it. It couldn’t possible be that they do it for other reasons, because it is reasonable for you to assume they do it to get information.
Put up or shut up time. And I don’t think you have anything more than 8 high in that hand.
I don’t want to speak for Argent Towers, but you do know there is evidence of false information obtained through torture, and interestingly enough, it was information the Bush administration used to justify invading Iraq. On the other hand, there is no evidence to support torture as an effective means to extract information.
Posts 15, 27, 39, and 47 all provide links to either expert testimony, scientific conclusions, or historical evidence that demonstrate the ineffectiveness (or significantly compromised conclusions) of torture, but all you can do is pick nits at the edges without coming to terms with the fact that they still represent four more citations than you’ve been able to produce–heck, even your OP has a cite that “looks to be reputable” but which you dismiss out of hand because it doesn’t give you something as unilaterally conclusive as you would prefer.
What this amounts to is that you are terrified of holding yourself to the same standard you’re expecting the rest of us to comply with. We may provide citations (anecdotal, expert, or otherwise), but it’s not our problem if you think they’re inadequate–this is Great Debates, and it’s your obligation to prevent something comparable and equally compelling as counterpoint beyond your personal doubts, baseless suppositions and threadbare arguments. Anything less is transparently evasive and intellectually dishonest.
ISTM that we are going round in circles here and I don’t have anything to add re the issue of evidence. (I don’t think the recent posts on the subject have added anything new.)
Not so.
My position in the OP and beyond is not that it can be proved that torture works. Again, to quote the OP