Is torture truly effective?

The odds for torture being uneffective are very low.

One funny fact : nearly every people refuting torture's effectiveness are often against torture, so their opinion may be strongly biased (you can't publicly endorse torture unless you want to risk your life and your family's).

Even people against torture consent that it works to an extent :
...that yields unreliable results...
...may damage subsequent collection efforts...
...and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear...
It shows us that torture can be effective, even to a detractor's point of view.

And, it is used all around the world. Do you really think that something that doesn't work would be used on such a large scale ? oO

If i tortured my neighboor to know where he stored his bread, it would be really effective. Effective by the sense : producing the intended or expected result. If i wanted the location of the safe in their house, it would too.
Until your captive hasn't lost it's sanity, he'll try to choose the best choice for him and those who are precious to him. Now, we all know our choices can be illogical : if my captive is truely in love with the bread stored in his house, he won't give me the info even when undergoing torture.

But, on the majority of occasions, imo torture leads to good results. It may be the fastest and simplest way to get hidden information. Plus, if your victim has a weak will, he will give the info in a minute.

To those who say its ineffective: Is there scientific evidence for this stance? For example many studies done on the subject(a few isn't enough)?

Oh really? Let me address this question to you and the poster above me.

Name 1 case in the history of humanity where the torture of an individual or group of individuals has directly brought about the end of a war.

It's a dead end question because there isn't an answer. Never in the history of human warfare has there been a documented case where the torture of people has done anything more than give a tactical edge in any upcoming battle but has never once swung a decisive battle in the favour of one side or the other solely based on the outcome of torture.

Spies, drunks, and traitors have done more to swing battles and wars towards victories than torture ever has.

So as for the effectiveness of torture and the scientific proof. The proof is in the pudding or in this case any history book ever written.

Biggest fallacy ever written. *bows* Who ever said that torture needs to end a war ? Probabilities for torture to bring a war to an end are very low, since your captive would need to hold such critical pieces of information that it would end the war.



This proves my point. No one ever said torture was an elixir to our seven deadly sins, the fact that it can give tactical advantage vouches that torture can work, that's only what is sought when using torture, and that is why it is effective.

As i said, no one would ride a broken bike again and again, all over the world, even when they have billions of dollars at their disposal. Darwin would say that torture works because of natural selection : so old and still used by highly intelligent men, it must bring some advantage somewhere.

If torture isn't supposed to be used to end a war, then why bother torturing people. If it has no purpose to an objective than there is no reason to torture people.

Your own statement is the fallacy. If you capture someone why even bother torturing them for information is you know the information won't make a single difference. Doesn't that just prove barbarity and not intelligence.

And like I said since you seem to be quoting me out of context. I said that more has been done by drunk people, traitors and spies than all the cases of torture combined. The tactical edge I spoke of is almost irrelevant.

There are only 2 things done during a war, acts committed to end the war as soon as possible, and acts committed for the sole purpose of pleasure and barbarity.

Torture is not the first.

Well torture is effective. Is it as effective as other forms of interrogation? Torture is based of the principles of using one of the strongest emotions against us, fear. The idea is to get as close to the line as possible to make you fear for you life. Most people would rather give up information than die. Although there are moral and ethical questions behind if torture is really okay. If it the best way to get information is up for debate. In WW2 there was a Nazi interrogator by the name of Hanns Scharff. Even though the Nazis are notorious for doing terrible things during the time Hanns Scharff was a little different. Instead of torturing people he would treat them with kindness and hospitality. He was also known for taking people on long walks through parks and not asking about any information that he wanted to know. He would wait for them to reveal bits and pieces on their own. He was known as the "Master Interrogator". He was able to crack everyone that was given to him. The fact that he did it completely peaceful changed the way we look interrogation today was very important. It should raise the question because it was such a successful way of interrogation what is the need for torture? I personally believe that torture is wrong and is something the society as a whole should not accept. There are better ways of interrogation and because we have better options that aren't violent we should take them.

Your question is actually the fallacy of a red herring. The amount of times torture has gained benefit in comparison to spies and traitors is not the question. The amount of times has little correlation to the comparison of torture vs other methods. The mere fact that capturing key enemies is much more difficult and rare than having spies places a bias to this comparison.

If a man has been captured and holds no information, I believe there would be no disagreement that he should not be tortured. It would hold no benefit and would be simply cruel. If, for example, a key engineer of enemy submarines was captured, we could torture out information to a major weakness that could be exploited and end wars quickly, thus saving many soldier lives. This is of course a hypothetical situation, and we can argue the ethics of this method, but the effectiveness cannot be ignored GIVEN that such a key person can be captured.

Now, there are quite a few strong arguments for the use of spies or other methods to end wars. What some fail to see is that torture is simply another method of obtaining information. It may be cruel, but it has just the same objective value as placing spies in enemy camps. Any one piece of information may be wrong, and in a major, complex and delicate thing such as war, we need every piece of information we can get to verify other information. Even if we have spies and "traitors" to help us end the war, the use of torture is still an effective means of gaining more information. Do note I used the word effective, not justified. That is another discussion altogether (that I already wrote 40+ pages on for my dissertation)

Overall (tl;dr) this is a very simple question for a very complex subject. Effective in gaining information? Yes. Effective correct/useful information? Maybe. Justified? Arguable, but usually no in hindsight.

I wish I had enough of an opinion to join in the conversation but this is exactly the kind of thing I usually choose to ignore... I can't stand the thought, it sickens me... I honestly forgot we as humans still do this sort of thing.

I don't care how effective it is at forcing people to say what you want, it's just wrong!

I don't think anyone is going to argue against that, haha.

Yeah torture doesn't work. The practice goes back to times when people used to blame military failures on not sacrificing enough cows (compared to a poor led or equipped army) so there wasn't very much hypothesis testing going on regarding it for thousands of years. It still sticks around because it intuitively makes sense to force someone to tell you something and the alternative (treating horrible enemies that might know stuff you need to end a conflict with respect and dignity they don't afford to you) feels weird and stupid.

However, not only does torture result in people saying any old shit to get you stop torturing them (giving you a ton of fake information to sort out from anything that might be true) but if you then release them they go back into the wild with stories of "Those people we're fighting are fucking titanic assholes who torture people. We really should be fighting them to the last man because holy shit they are evil bastards." and that's really really really REALLY counterproductive. If you've got someone high up in the enemy organization who has already done as much as he can for the cause then torture won't produce externalities beyond losing you the moral high ground but if you're regularly torturing random schmucks who are just fighting for food or whatever then you're making them hardcore enemies for no reason.

And I remember reading (though not where so that's why I'm putting it at the end) that doing the exact opposite of torture is the way to go to get fast and reliable information. Specifically because so many people in something like the Taliban are just bandwagoning to get an income and don't really give a shit about jihad giving them some food and respect is more likely to elicit a real response than waterboarding them into oblivion. I also remember reading a US general responding to this notion by saying it was politically untenable to treat enemy combatants better than his own soldiers even if it would save lives and speed up wars to do so.

Edit:

Funnily enough, the first thing I did before writing my post was check to see if John Oliver did exactly this and then two days later it came to be :P

Torture doesn't work as well as most believe. It has been proven to be unreliable, interrogation works well enough to be used on important matters. Although memory is a funny thing, every time you remember something, you change it, and under stress to please someone, not just people say whatever you want to hear, but their actual memories change. The whole process is unreliable because humans are not machines, they are animals affected deeply by survival adaptations.

There are actually psychologists that want people to be no longer called to the witness stand, instead statements only, that witnesses are too heavily affected by cross examination, and the memory of things that happened months ago are often very changed.