Tyler Cowen has an interesting thought experiment that is very useful in explaining why legalized torture is so bad. He analyzes what you would do if you had information and were being tortured for it. He posits that you want to give the information and you want to minimize the torture, so he tries to analyze how you could convince that you gave up all the information so you could stop being tortured:
I see a few options:
1. Break down immediately, beg for mercy, humiliate yourself, and spill the beans. (If you talk right away, will they torture you anyway? And since no further good information can be offered why should they stop?)
2. Go in acting tough, really tough. At the first sign of serious pain, start crying and switch to strategy #1.
3. Wait until they apply their "best shot" torture, and then talk. They will feel they have done their job and stop.
4. First offer (or make up) compromising information to show your disloyalty to the cause your torturers are fighting. Your confession will then be more credible.
5. Say you don’t know anything, try to fight the torture, but break down when you can’t stand it any more. You can’t fool them, so the best you can do is to actually "go through the wringer." You are stuck in the pooling equilibrium, and trying to deviate only makes you worse off.
Which of these is the most credible signal that you have told all you know? Can you do any better than number five?
This is a tough one, because if you give up your information too quickly the torturers won’t believe that you told them everything and will continue torturing you. But if you don’t tell them quickly enough, you get a lot of torture that you could have avoided.
Now suppose that you don’t actually have any information, because you have been mistakenly picked up. How are you going to convey that to the torturers? You can’t tell them you don’t know anything at the beginning–they won’t believe you and will continue torturing you. You can’t tell them anything useful because you don’t know anything useful. So you are being tortured and you don’t know anything. Is it probable that you will start making stuff up in the hopes that your torturers will think they got something eventually. I suspect it is probable.
So if you are not a terrorist and you get picked up by those who torture, you will probably get tortured even more than many real terrorists because you can’t break and give verifiably useful information.
Conservatives don’t believe in the infallibility of government agencies and all indications are that the intelligence agencies are more fallible than many. So why would we set up a situation where innocents are likely to be tortured more than the guilty, and which is likely to produce vast amounts of faulty information? Doesn’t seem wise. It also doesn’t seem right.
Doesn’t the same apply to being unjustly accused (perhaps being set up)?
Say the police search my home, and “find” some pot, which they themselves put there. All things considered, am I not better off confessing to having that stuff around? If the answer is yes, does that mean the legal system is seriously flawed? Or what is the error in my analogy?
That said, being against torture in principle, “more” and “less” torture makes little difference to me. As I understand it, the possibility that innocents will be tortured and that the information will be of no use (even bad use) is not disputed by those in favour of torture. They’re AFAIK just saying, that all things considered the possible benefits poutweigh the risks. I think they are wrong in that, but realise my moral opposition does not really affect their utilitarian stance.
What I don’t get is how this example is supposed to change their minds.
Torture
Tyler Cowen has an interesting analysis on Marginal Revolution regarding torture. Let us say that you have been captured and threatened with torture. You are, for whatever reason, entirely willing to betray the information you hold. Your primary goal i…
A truly sad day when we have to discuss the best way to get thru US torture?
What the F*** has happenned to this country?
Ain’t you all proud of your country now?
The helpful aspect of this post and Tyler Cowen’s approach is that it encourages readers to put themselves in the prisoner’s place and not the torturer’s. Empathy, recognition of humanity: good things.
Seb, I’m not sure I understand the purpose of this post.
If you’re trying to reach people on this and other blogs who are still pro-torture, I don’t see how role-playing would change their minds. They already know torture is useless for getting information; they already know there are no good reasons for it.
We’ve already established in the numerous other posts on the subject that the pro-torture posters see torture as a legitimate expression of loathing for The Enemy, and as a gratifying exhibition of power. In other words, they like torture for its own sake.
@CaseyL: I am under the impression that such ascribing of motives to those disagreing with you is off limits on this blog.
That said, IMO the torture debate is like the one over the Patriot Act in many respects. There are people for whom there is a clear moral line and there are people who would trade some essential liberties for temporary safety. Presumably because their moral line is somewhere else.
What is the point of rational analysis of how one to behave when tortured? People don’t behave rationally when tortured. Hell, I don’t behave rationally when presented with the possibility of procrastinating a chore. I’m sure I wouldn’t behave rationally when presented with the possibility of even temporary relief from torture.
For me the important point is not rational analysis so much as pointing out the Catch-22 nature of a system which allows for torture.
“They already know torture is useless for getting information; they already know there are no good reasons for it.”
I’m not sure this is true at all. Sometimes to get a point through you hae to illustrate that is bad a few different ways for more people to get it.
I can’t behave rationally when discussing torture and its utility, let alone imagine behaving rationally under torture.
I suspect my personality would get me un trouble, however. For example, just before the application of some medieval-looking objects to my person, I might have the chutzpah to suggest gently that the torture guy’s sister has quite a crush on me.
Then when he was done, I would eventually escape, like Papillon, and find the guy and marry his sister, or some variation on that theme.
I’m not sure how I would react to sexually suggestive torture like that reportedly practiced at Guantanamo, but once, in high school, I confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks and to most everyone’s original sins when the cheerleading squad celebrated a touchdown a little too vigorously. They thought I was merely gibbering, like I am now of my own free will.
But that pol in Texas is on to something.
“Now suppose that you don’t actually have any information, because you have been mistakenly picked up. How are you going to convey that to the torturers?”
The good news, from the perspective of the person being tortured, is that this isn’t that difficult. Torturers already have a context, and ask questions about it. So, you can just confess to whatever it is they want you to say. Admit to having signed your name in blood in the devil’s book, admit to having flown from your home in Salem to all the neighboring farms, and killed cattle with your evil eye. IIRC, one of the 2005 releasees from Guantanamo had confessed under torture to training the 9/11 hijackers.
As Lyndie England can tell you, confessions are not all equally valid.
As to why we are engaging in torture, I think there are several reasons. That they are individual sadists, and those who want some kind of personal vengeance for 911 would hardly be surprising. That there are those who’ve been de-sensitized by our culture, and by the admonition to “take the gloves off” is also likely. What I find intriguing is the frequent assertion that Zarqawi (or the like) is doing it as well. I wonder whether people who say this are pure relativists — it’s OK because the other guy is doing it — or whether they are more afraid of being perceived as weak because we won’t go to the full measure the other guy will go to.
This is, in my mind, the cardinal sin of GWB, Rove and the like. I would like people whose hearts and minds we are trying to win to think of us as Tough but Fair. Mr. Rove and his client have spent more time worrying about whether those whose hearts and minds they want to win — they’re thinking about the Middle West more than the Middle East — will think we are Weak and Irresolute.
Strength and Resolution are important, to be sure, but NOT as ends in themselves. However, when you make them ends in themselves — and doing so has real benefits with large segments of the populace — you start down the path where you have to torture people to keep up with the Joneses.
#6. Say, “I’m CIA.”
This thought doodle shines a pretty dim bulb on the question.
It assumes that the torturers will, in fact, be motivated to stop once they feel they have extracted all possible information. Or that extracting information is primarily what motivates torture.
I suspect that these assumption are completely wrong. People who torture are sadists and enjoy it, period. Getting information is secondary. Also, torturers are hardly likely to be motivated by concerns about torturing the innocent.
We don’t seem to have mentioned racial prejudice as a motive for the torturers, but surely it’s a factor, a huge one I’d say.
Also, I think the point of the rational analysis isn’t to suggest behaving rationally when interrogated by torturers, but to suggest to the (supposedly) rational torturers & pro-torturers that their position isn’t rational.
“People who torture are sadists and enjoy it, period. Getting information is secondary. Also, torturers are hardly likely to be motivated by concerns about torturing the innocent.”
As noted above, I don’t disagree that there are sadists, but I think your comment is unfairly overbroad, in the context. People are following orders, what they perceive to be orders, customs, and what they perceive to be customs. An important part of military training is replacing one’s individual will with that of the collective. I suspect that a great many of the people involved in torture are not sadists, but are de-sensitized people doing their jobs.
OT: You’re a lawyer, right dm? I’d like to send you an email offline. Is the address valid? Mine is, if you want to respond offline.
Since we are talking about torture, how about the bombshell of the judge not accepting England’s guilty plea? This points to the fact that examining torture as an individual’s decision is not really clarifying in this instance, because it appears that the system conspired to make it happen.
A transcript of an interview with Erik Saar just hit my inbox. This excerpt strikes me as relevant:
AMY GOODMAN: Erik Saar, was the words Geneva Conventions ever used at Guantanamo?
ERIK SAAR: One time, ma’am, I can say, when we were talked to regarding the Geneva Conventions, and there was a meeting that I describe where our leaders of the intelligence group explained to us that the Geneva Convention does not apply at Guantanamo Bay. And they gave us reasons as to why they rationalized that it did not, and that now the detainees, we should understand — of course, we knew this beforehand, but this was in a meeting where they were explaining to us the reasons why — we should understand that these individuals were enemy combatants and to be treated as detainees. And one of the frustrations regarding that is someone who interacted with and had friends who were interrogators, is that the essence of their training, ma’am, when they go through school, is that you were taught a couple of things about the Geneva Convention. First of all, all your training is under the umbrella of the Geneva Convention, and you are told that you never violate the Geneva Conventions as an interrogator, because – for two reasons: Number one, it’s illegal; and number two, they’re taught that it’s ineffective. And if you need to use tactics outside of the scope of the Geneva Conventions, you are going to get bad intelligence anyway. But somehow, no one quite understood how it was determined that now those rules don’t need to apply. Plus there’s limited, if no training, for how these new rules should be implemented in the interrogation booth, and what is the rationale for why previously, I was taught as an interrogator or one of my colleagues was taught, that these techniques wouldn’t work, but now we’re saying that maybe they will?
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever have fights with other soldiers there over your feelings about what was happening?
ERIK SAAR: No, ma’am, I didn’t. And to be honest with you, the conclusions that I drew was really a process for me. I mean, there were things that frustrated me along the way that I saw, but it’s not as though during week three of my time at Guantanamo Bay I came to the conclusion that, wow, this is a terrible place and we should never be doing this, because there was also that internal battle of me saying, look, maybe — I was saying to myself, maybe this is what’s necessary in the war on terrorism. Maybe these are the steps that we need to take to protect ourselves. And it wasn’t until the end of my time there that I really reached the conclusions that I drew that it’s not necessary, and the techniques are ineffective, and it’s not in keeping with who we are.
Giblets delved into this issue too:
http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/would-you-could-you-in-box-theres-bomb.html
Conservatives don’t believe in the infallibility of government agencies
maybe not all government agencies, but there is strong evidence that they believe, during wartime, a Republican president and the US military are as close as you can get to infallible, and that any criticism of either is as close to treason as you can get without being arrested.
Conservatives don’t believe in the infallibility of government agencies and all indications are that the intelligence agencies are more fallible than many.
OT a bit , but while that’s technically true, it needs to be heavily qualified. Conservatives have a strong tendency to trust government agencies whose employees wear uniforms and are armed. They admire other agencies less.
Though the BATF doesn’t get a lot of conservative respect or admiration.
Bruce,
True. An oversight on my part.
“A Useful Way To Think About Torture”
Must we think about it at all? It seems sad we have to.
I found this really upsetting, more so than the most graphic descriptions I’ve retyped.
I think the reason is: I can’t imagine the actual pain, I have no idea what it feels like. But the sick feeling that something awful is coming and you are utterly powerless to stop it or even lessen it–for some reason that I can manage.
There is a response here.