Interesting Links for 17-12-2014

[andrewducker]

• The good horror movies of 2014
  (tags: movies horror recommendation )
• The supposed dilemma over torture doesn't exist
  (tags: torture )
• Skeptics, deniers, and contrarians: The climate science label game
  (tags: science globalwarming )
• Etsy is now selling pills that make you poop glitter. (Merry Christmas!)
  (tags: faeces awesome funny )
• Idiot fans try

Comments

[steer]

(2) is far too strong an argument because it only really takes one case to break it. The CIA's William Francis Buckley might be one such case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Francis_Buckley
(Tortured for over a year in the Lebanon before his death, supposedly a number of agents disappeared or were killed shortly afterwards -- the details are pretty gruesome but I can't find clarification about the disappeared agents, so that remains "alleged").

That's what I mean by "torture does not work" being "fragile" as an argument. It may later come out that at least one CIA interrogation in this set on at least one occasion led to a plot (or potential plot) being stopped. In fact I'd put the likeliness as medium-high (simply because they did so much interrogation, a stopped calendar is right once a year). At that point argument (2) is gone and you have to go "oh, OK, it worked that once... but you know it's really rare."

If you want to persuade the pragmatist your "even if it works in the immediate sense" argument is a better one. Or "other techniques are comparably successful without the political fallout" or any of a panoply of other reasons we might argue against torture without making a blanket statement which is eminently disprovable and it may be, for people who are senior in intelligence agencies, has already been disproved.

[andrewducker]

You can always fall back from an absolutel form of (2) to "Torture works extremely badly, and produces incorrect information more often than it produces useful data, and as an investment of time/energy is of very low value".

(But yes, I prefer my approach too)

[naath]

I think to say something "works" it has to work more often than "once, ever".

If you want to act on the torture evidence you need to be convinced that such evidence is mostly right.

If such evidence is ofter/usually a pack of lies made up to make you stop hitting them then you might as well have used a random system for picking names (or whatever other details it is you are allegedly extracting).

So, sure, sometimes you get names and go kill a bunch of CIA people. But sometimes you get names and go kill a bunch of totally innocent (of CIA involvement) people and spend lots of resources and piss people off with you *to no good end* (assuming "fewer CIA people" is a "good end").

[steer]

I think to say something "works" it has to work more often than "once, ever".

That's because your mindframe is that of someone who thinks torture is abhorrent and shouldn't happen (as is mine). If your mindframe is someone who is OK with it then they will think "OK, it worked then, will it work now." So "works once" is probably good enough for that person. It's certainly good enough for them to dismiss someone saying "torture never works" as wrong. And, of course, one thing in that report was that the CIA was lying about effectiveness. If you're that way minded then, of course, you believe it does work because people have told you it does work and you've likely spoken to people who've told you it does work and that the report in question is a pack of lies.

So for someone in a position of power to be able to say "torture works" they need to be able to point to one reasonably convincing example (right wing politicians pick their own favourite -- often they are lies), allude to private conversations and say they'd love to be able to say more but it's all confidential.

If such evidence is ofter/usually a pack of lies made up to make you stop hitting them then you might as well have used a random system for picking names

You don't really have to convince me about the badness of torture... I've said from the start that I'm 100% against it.

[naath]

But to know that it even *actually worked* that once you'd have to find some confirmation that those dudes were CIA dudes.

Obviously if some liar has told you "sure they were" then maybe you believe that (or rather, maybe some people would believe that)

The point about the pack of lies is not because "torture is awful" (it is) but because that is one of the ways torture *doesn't work*. Sure, if the torturee just stays silent (or swallows a cyanide pill, or whatever) then that's a really *obvious* failure of your torture - but when you get what looks like an answer, that doesn't mean you *got* an answer.

It's like if you have a "diagnostic test" that says that *everyone* has breast cancer, well, sure - you diagnosed some breast cancer (some people have it) but it didn't WORK because of all those people you said have breast cancer when they don't.

[steer]

Have a look at what I say in the other thread about the situation of getting what looks like an answer...