Debate: Can torture ever be justified?

[Kanastrous]

Hopefully the advent of practical and reliable FMRI-type imagers designed to detect the signs of lying will render the question moot.

[petesampras]

Moreover, you are a fucking sociopath.

I have said nothing at all supporting the use of torture in this thread. Furthermore, you will see that my first statement in this thread explicitly stated that...

"I don't think that torture can ever be justified. The ends do not justify the means. Even if you are fighting to stop a great evil, you won't achieve a victory by becoming evil yourself."

The discussion I was having was about whether or not information could be obtained through torture. Whether or not one believes this to be true has nothing to do with being a sociopath. You do understand the distinction, or are you too fucking stupid?

I am 100% against the use of torture and you won't find anything in this thread from me suggesting otherwise.

So how about an apology for your utterly baseless accusation?

Fucking asshole.

[Bilbo]

How much does the question "Is torture ever okay" really matter? Seems like the better question would be when interrogating someone what is torture and what is not torture?

Physical harm?
Mental harm?
Emotional harm?

Torture to one person is nothing to another and the opposite will be true. If questioning a Muslim is it torture to not give them a Koran, physically keep them from praying the way their faith requires them to, and only feeding them food that is healthy but against their religion?

How about mental torture? Your questioning someone, thy refuse to talk. You bring in their family and in a very convincing way you fake the murder of their wife and then tell them that their kids are next. You dont really hurt anyone but that would be incredible mental trauma.

[Kanastrous]

Well, when I used to watch Bush yapping on the topic, I'd think I bet you'd have no difficulty identifying stuff as torture, if it were being done to one of your daughters.

[Singular Intellect]

Simple answer: Yes, torture can be justified.

Anything can be justified; you could even justify torture morally if your particular moral system allows for inflicting pain upon others for some arbitrary purpose.

The only pro arguement for torture I'd honestly make is that no one can rationally assert that torture has never achieved desired results (ie: obtaining needed/desired information).

[Elfdart]

Simple answer: Yes, torture can be justified.

Anything can be justified; you could even justify torture morally if your particular moral system allows for inflicting pain upon others for some arbitrary purpose.

The only pro arguement for torture I'd honestly make is that no one can rationally assert that torture has never achieved desired results (ie: obtaining needed/desired information).

You could say the same for Tarot cards.

[Singular Intellect]

Simple answer: Yes, torture can be justified.

Anything can be justified; you could even justify torture morally if your particular moral system allows for inflicting pain upon others for some arbitrary purpose.

The only pro arguement for torture I'd honestly make is that no one can rationally assert that torture has never achieved desired results (ie: obtaining needed/desired information).

You could say the same for Tarot cards.

I don't see the relationship between statistically inevitable and vague Tarot Card 'prediction' compared to empiricially verifiable and specific information.

The common arguements against torture always seem to start with the faulty premise the victim doesn't possess the information desired, which is bullshit.

For example, if I threatened or employed torture to obtain someone's PIN number for their bank card, having priorly observed them physically use it and withdraw money, there's actually a good chance I could obtain that information in short order, depending upon said person's endurance and mentality.

There can be many potential situations where torture, which in itself is subjective, is argueably effective in extracting information.

[Darth Onasi]

There can be many potential situations where torture, which in itself is subjective, is argueably effective in extracting information.

I don't see how. Unless the victim is extremely resilient, they'll inevitably break and tell the torturer what they want to hear - whether it's true or not.
How can torture really be effective when you don't really know if the information you get is accurate?

[Singular Intellect]

There can be many potential situations where torture, which in itself is subjective, is argueably effective in extracting information.

I don't see how. Unless the victim is extremely resilient, they'll inevitably break and tell the torturer what they want to hear - whether it's true or not.

Correct. The problem is you're appealing to the assertion that any information being discovered via torture will more often then not be incorrect or false. On what do you base this conclusion?

For example, how many people do you know would actively lie or falsify information about their bank card PIN number if they are under threat or process of torture?

What if a person is being tortured by being forced to watch someone they love undergo torture? Do you think they're going to hold out on something like a PIN number or the combination on a safe lock? Any sane and loving individual would crack extremely quickly; why would they give a shit about some money or material value when their loved one's safety is at stake?

How can torture really be effective when you don't really know if the information you get is accurate?

Define 'effective'. I doubt you will find many people who will hold out via torture any significant amount of time over, say, the location of their vehicle keys.

I think the primary arguement on the issue stems from the premise on whether or not the person being tortured actually possesses the information being sought by the interrogators in the first place, and whether they know this or not.

If the interrogators know an individual possesses specific information they desire, then by your own admission they will crack sooner or later. Therefore in that light it is rather effective, if detestable.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't see how. Unless the victim is extremely resilient, they'll inevitably break and tell the torturer what they want to hear - whether it's true or not.
How can torture really be effective when you don't really know if the information you get is accurate?

As I pointed out on the first page, you can ask the same thing about any form of intelligence. Everything from ultra sophisticated reconnaissance satellites to an observer on the ground with binoculars and ears can and are fooled by deliberate deception. This is why you must always use multiple sources and rate the value of each one. This is also why intelligence gathering gets expensive, really fast, and is never 100% reliable no matter what. I mean fuck… the US fought and won in WW2 without even knowing how many fleet carriers Japan had for sure.

One tortured person is worthless, but what if you tortured ten different suspects, six of them give a similar story, and the other four give completely conflicting stories? Do you throw out all that information and let them go because you can’t be sure, or do you start trying to apply other information to the story of the six, while torturing the other four even more to see if you can crack them further? It’s the latter that a system bent on using torture is going to do. Maybe those four will crack for real, maybe they were actually innocent. Who cares? Certainly not someone using these tactics in the first place. The danger of leading the victim to the conclusion you want can be reduced by using proper question sets. Obvisouly toture as a blind fishing expedition isn’t going to work… no interrogation of any form will work if you don’t know what your doing.

Now torture will never be that great, you’ll never get the quality of information out of a person broken by torture that you will out of someone cooperating.. But if they wouldn’t have cooperated at all, well Mr. Torturer hasn’t lost out as long as he doesn’t assign value to morality.

[K. A. Pital]

I'd ask another question.

Imagine a person who tortured or murdered hundreds of people. As a punishment, he gets say life imprisonment or death sentence in another nation. Is it morally right or wrong to subject this person to intentional torture for some period?

Yes, his suffering will be increased, but he inflicted enormously greater amount of suffering on others.

Is torturing an SS-man justified? Why not? Not for information gain; just to cause him to suffer. As punishment. That's a more interesting question than the "torture for information".

[Siege]

Is torturing an SS-man justified? Why not? Not for information gain; just to cause him to suffer. As punishment. That's a more interesting question than the "torture for information".

Making the SS-man suffer needlessly won't undo any of the terrible things he's done, so what's the point? Causing more people to suffer unnecessarily, even when those people are horrible monsters, strikes me as a pointless waste of time. And besides, "they tortured us, that's bad, so we torture them, which is allowed" doesn't strike me as the greatest piece of sensible reasoning. Just dispose of the SS-man -by imprisonment or execution- and be done with it. There's no need to indulge in unduly gruesome punishments just to be vindictive.

[K. A. Pital]

Making the SS-man suffer needlessly won't undo any of the terrible things he's done, so what's the point?

In that case, what is the point of stricter regime in prisons? What is the value of punishment to society? You imply punishment has no direct value; I agree, but it does have consequence value. Like, for example, horrible torture of a person might make a point for all other people not to do the same bad things he did. Verily, isn't that one of the points of death penalty? Why not stretch it a bit further?

[Ryan Thunder]

Making the SS-man suffer needlessly won't undo any of the terrible things he's done, so what's the point?

In that case, what is the point of stricter regime in prisons? What is the value of punishment to society? You imply punishment has no direct value; I agree, but it does have consequence value. Like, for example, horrible torture of a person might make a point for all other people not to do the same bad things he did. Verily, isn't that one of the points of death penalty? Why not stretch it a bit further?

Because the point of prison is to remove persons from society, not necessarily to punish them.

Causing them to suffer without purpose probably wouldn't work as a deterrent, anyways. Fuck, killing people doesn't seem to work as a deterrent.

You just have to accept that people are generally either A: entirely without conscience, B: mind-bogglingly stupid, or C: both, and will commit crimes no matter what you do to them to give them the idea that what they're doing is wrong.

[lordofFNORD]

Even if you can, in the abstract, find a situation where torture is justified, the heuristic of "torture is never justified" is useful. We are fallible creatures, likely to jump to conclusions and assume our situation is special, and inclined to hurt our "enemies" even if it is unneeded. Therefore, I say that even if one THINKS torture is justified in a given situation, it's still probably not.

How can torture really be effective when you don't really know if the information you get is accurate?

Some information is easy to verify, but difficult to determine. A textbook example would be "rubber hose cryptanalysis"; the villain has the ciphertext, but not the key. The victim is tortured until they reveal the key. There is no effective way to lie, as any false answer would be rapidly revealed, when the ciphertext decrypts to gibberish.

[Sea Skimmer]

Is torturing an SS-man justified? Why not? Not for information gain; just to cause him to suffer. As punishment. That's a more interesting question than the "torture for information".

If you say torture is okay, well then go ahead and torture the SS man, but then why would you even care what he did in the first place since its okay? So you can’t rationally justify torture as revenge punishment because it makes you no different. People like that should just be executed on the same grounds we have for shooting a rabid dog.

Course.. I also advocate forced labor in very remote areas as punishment, and that might be construed as low grade torture by some, but I don’t think so because the hardship serves a valid purpose.

[Shroom Man 777]

Does chemical coercion, the use of mind-altering (and potentially brain damaging) truth serums qualify as a type of torture? How effective is the stuff, anyway? A drunk person can say anything, but how about a person that's had a cocktail?

[Ted C]

While many people is opposed to torture, I was wondering, can Torture ever be justifed in any context?

Is the need to gather infomation so great, that you have a good reason to torture someone? This is an open debate, which means people can define when Torture can be justified, and when it can't.

Although you are free to oppose torture in any context.

I haven't read anyone else's responses to this, but here's my 2 cents worth...

If you are so sure that someone actually has the information, and you are so sure that forcing it out of them will save many lives, then you should also be prepared to accept the consequences of using that force. You have to accept the fact that you will go to prison for your actions, so it had better be that important. If the information you obtain can be shown to actually save some lives (like producing the actual location of a bomb, for example), then the court may be inclined to show leniency, but it shouldn't allow you to escape all punishment.

Torture needs to be illegal... period... with consequences for using it no matter how important you think it is.

[Rye]

I haven't read anyone else's responses to this, but here's my 2 cents worth...

If you are so sure that someone actually has the information, and you are so sure that forcing it out of them will save many lives, then you should also be prepared to accept the consequences of using that force. You have to accept the fact that you will go to prison for your actions, so it had better be that important. If the information you obtain can be shown to actually save some lives (like producing the actual location of a bomb, for example), then the court may be inclined to show leniency, but it shouldn't allow you to escape all punishment.

Torture needs to be illegal... period... with consequences for using it no matter how important you think it is.

This is almost exactly what I was going to post. There also need to be a clear, sanctioned line of command and responsibility in such actions. All torture must be recorded and used against the person in a court of law. If you are prepared to torture someone else for the greater good, then you must understand that it's self-sacrifice too.

[Elfdart]

Torture is like rape- it can only be justified in situations so ludicrously contrived that if they exist, it is a good bet someone set them up for psychological testing. Or because they are the villian from Saw. And in those cases, going along would simply encourage them to try more experiments.

Torture IS a form of rape. You are violating the body of another human being against his or her will.

The claim torture has no value is just false, and its too bad, since if we really knew it didn’t work a fair bit less of it might go on.

You're assuming that torture is done to obtain information, when it is in fact done to provide a sexual thrill to sadists. As Orwell said "The purpose of torture is torture."

Another thing: just because large numbers of people think something gives them accurate information doesn't make it so. People spent thousands of years stargazing, chanting, smoking dope, and making sacrifices to the gods and examining the leftovers to gain critical information. I'm sure someone could find a few instances where one or more of these things "worked". For example, as Alexander Cockburn pointed out, examining the entrails of a sheep might give you clues about the health of your flocks if the entrails appeared to be in bad shape. But the other 99.9% of these methods produced nothing but nonsense, hot air and dead animals. The overwhelming majority of people tortured produce nothing of value, except a perverted thrill for the torturers.

[Sea Skimmer]

You're assuming that torture is done to obtain information, when it is in fact done to provide a sexual thrill to sadists. As Orwell said "The purpose of torture is torture."

You got a means of proving thats always the case? No of course you don't, because its not true. Mostly yeah. But its pointless to talk about that given the thread topic, I don’t think anyone’s going to try to justify it for that reason.

The overwhelming majority of people tortured produce nothing of value, except a perverted thrill for the torturers.

Ah, well I see you retreat from your previous statement anyway. Sure most torture is done for no reason at all, but when it is done for intelligence gathering it can and does work. Not well, not often, but its just false to claim its useless.

[Elfdart]

You're assuming that torture is done to obtain information, when it is in fact done to provide a sexual thrill to sadists. As Orwell said "The purpose of torture is torture."

You got a means of proving thats always the case? No of course you don't, because its not true. Mostly yeah. But its pointless to talk about that given the thread topic, I don’t think anyone’s going to try to justify it for that reason.

If someone is presented with several different ways of getting information from a suspect, but they scorn the ones that work in favor of torture, a method about as effective as a seance, what do you think is the reason they do it? I'm sure a small percentage of pedophiles think that what they're doing is good for the country or their religion. It doesn't change the fact that they are depraved individuals who get sexually aroused by harming others.

The overwhelming majority of people tortured produce nothing of value, except a perverted thrill for the torturers.

Ah, well I see you retreat from your previous statement anyway. Sure most torture is done for no reason at all, but when it is done for intelligence gathering it can and does work. Not well, not often, but its just false to claim its useless.

So you concede my point then.

[Twoyboy]

If someone is presented with several different ways of getting information from a suspect, but they scorn the ones that work in favor of torture, a method about as effective as a seance, what do you think is the reason they do it?

And you don't think it's at all possible that they're just wrong about the effectiveness of their method, or they have tried and failed with all the other methods and this is a last ditch attempt? You seem to be making an awfully big assumption there.

[Elfdart]

The only risky assumption on my part is the idea that people aren't that stupid and really do know better. Witch trials, the Inquisition, Stalin's show trials and numerous other well known cases of people confessing to the most bizarre and outlandish things under torture or threat of torture would have been covered to some degree in the history, psychology or sociology classes of just about any person with a primary and/or secondary education.

In other words a person would have to be unbelievably stupid to be ignorant of any of those cases, or the person would have to be stupid enough to believe that old grannies really did fornicate with the Devil in order to acquire the powers of black magic. Or that Stalin's five-year plans failed because of a plot by Capitalist Pigs and Trotsky. Or that the Black Death was caused by heretics, Jews and crypto-Jews being left unburned.

You'd have to be dumber still to think that as opposed to the crazed nonsense tortured out of people back then (the overwhelming majority of whom did nothing wrong), the crazed nonsense tortured out of people by the US today is any better. Or in some ridiculous hypothetical situation -the kind that people can imagine to "justify" anything (rape, pedophilia, etc).

[Twoyboy]

The only risky assumption on my part is the idea that people aren't that stupid and really do know better. Witch trials, the Inquisition, Stalin's show trials and numerous other well known cases of people confessing to the most bizarre and outlandish things under torture or threat of torture would have been covered to some degree in the history, psychology or sociology classes of just about any person with a primary and/or secondary education.

In other words a person would have to be unbelievably stupid to be ignorant of any of those cases, or the person would have to be stupid enough to believe that old grannies really did fornicate with the Devil in order to acquire the powers of black magic. Or that Stalin's five-year plans failed because of a plot by Capitalist Pigs and Trotsky. Or that the Black Death was caused by heretics, Jews and crypto-Jews being left unburned.

You'd have to be dumber still to think that as opposed to the crazed nonsense tortured out of people back then (the overwhelming majority of whom did nothing wrong), the crazed nonsense tortured out of people by the US today is any better. Or in some ridiculous hypothetical situation -the kind that people can imagine to "justify" anything (rape, pedophilia, etc).

I don't think you'd have to be completely ignorant of those at all to come to the conclusion that torture can work and thus apply it. Most people would just shrug it off with "Yes, but our methods are much improved, we can do it properly". I think you give people in general way to much credit to think that if they know their history they can draw present conclusions from it.

Don't get me wrong, I think that many, if not most, people who approve and carry out torture are sickos who enjoy it. And I believe it takes insane hypothetical situations to try to justify it. But I don't believe all the acts of torture carried out in the world have been due to someone's gratification. There would be many well meaning people who deluded themselves into thinking it was the "right" thing to do.