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Does torture work?

Started by Josquius, January 26, 2017, 08:22:42 AM

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Does torture usually work?

Yes
7 (25%)
No.
21 (75%)

Total Members Voted: 27

Josquius

Morals aside.

I only told you I'd done it so you'd take the electrodes off my balls?
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garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Eddie Teach

If there's verifiable intel, yes.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

LaCroix


Grey Fox

Yes, you always get someone to blame.
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.

mongers

Yes, this four year program of it, will have all of us screaming for mercy.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Grinning_Colossus

It's effective at extracting confessions, and torturers often gain a good deal of enjoyment from it. It presumably also discourages people from opposing the torturing authority.
Quis futuit ipsos fututores?

DGuller

Realistically speaking, it often does.  Soviet police has been known to use torture extensively, and they solved a large percentage of the cases.  Often more than once.

derspiess

You'll never get an answer out of me.
"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall

Liep

Quote from: DGuller on January 26, 2017, 09:34:06 AM
Realistically speaking, it often does.  Soviet police has been known to use torture extensively, and they solved a large percentage of the cases.  Often more than once.

:D
"Af alle latterlige Ting forekommer det mig at være det allerlatterligste at have travlt" - Kierkegaard

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Berkut

Does it "usually" work?

I don't have any idea how to answer that. It doesn't seem like a "usual" thing.

Can it work? Of course.

Can it also not work? Of course.

I better general question would be something like "Ignoring the moral implications, can torture be an effective means under some circumstances of extracting useful information?"

I think the answer to that question is "Yes".
"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."

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garbon

Quote from: Berkut on January 26, 2017, 10:19:01 AM
I better general question would be something like "Ignoring the moral implications, can torture be an effective means under some circumstances of extracting useful information?"

I think the answer to that question is "Yes".

I mean I guess that's better as it has an answer choice that makes sense (unlike current poll) but a little too akin to Der's silly poll that had only one real answer. :P
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Tamas

Well if you use enough torture SOMEBODY will tell you what you want to hear, that's for sure. I guess that makes it highly efficient.

Berkut

Quote from: Tamas on January 26, 2017, 10:27:51 AM
Well if you use enough torture SOMEBODY will tell you what you want to hear, that's for sure. I guess that makes it highly efficient.

It does if your goal is getting someone to tell you something you want to hear.

If the goal is to actually extract actionable intelligence "what you want to hear" is both not useful, and usually not even known to the person being interrogated.
"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."

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The Minsky Moment

Quote from: Berkut on January 26, 2017, 10:19:01 AM
I better general question would be something like "Ignoring the moral implications, can torture be an effective means under some circumstances of extracting useful information?"

That's a better general question but still not a good one.  It's a very low bar.  Just about any technique can be effective under *some* circumstances, e.g. the broken clock tells the time correctly twice every day.  There are whole categories of game theoretic problems where the optimal strategy is to randomly vary responses, but that doesn't mean that a magic 8-ball or a quarter is a useful decision making tool. 

It's true that torture is likely to yield information - the question is how useful or reliable that information and what cost is to be assigned to the receipt of unreliable information.  If it turns out ex post that you can point to individual instances where the information turned out to be useful, that doesn't mean it makes sense as a technique to use a priori. 
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson