Pluck a nostril hair: "Please stop! I have a wife and kids! Take them"
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts
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"That dude has a wife and kids! I'll get you their bank account numbers and social security numbers! PLEASE STOP!!!"
You jest, but a person in the grips of torture will give up anyone, and anything to make it stop, their wife and kids included.
Unfriendly reminder, and absolutely unfun fact, that torture's entire point is to break a person's will so they'll say and do anything the torturer wants. So, if you can withstand days or just a few seconds is completely irrelevant. Even if you give up right away before the torture even starts, you'd be tortured anyways, because it's not about the cognitive and rational surrender, it's about the visceral subconscious surrender of agency to another's will. Disregarding all rationality.
In the book The Blade Itself, Glotka is getting ready to torture someone who is clearly a patsy. The guy screams "I don't know anything! I swear!", to which Glotka responds, "I know, yet the questions must still be asked".
I have had several brain surgeries and at some point in the midst of that I got meningitis. The pain that I experienced in the emergency room while they were trying to get me stable enough for transport reached into the deepest recesses of everything I ever thought I was and changed me on a fundamental level that is still incomprehensible. In between the unconsciousness and the involuntary screaming simply because my mouth was open I remember clearly thinking that torture would be easier because there would at least be someone to blame. At some point you'll say anything because you lack the sentience to seed thought.
I've also watched a lot of police interrogations and false confessions are all predicated on not having consulted a lawyer who can warn you about interrogation techniques that are designed for the purpose of fulfilling a predetermined or convenient narrative.
Maybe you won't confess or sell anybody out exactly but you will absolutely say anything a trained interrogator wants given enough time or pain.
There are zero people on this website who can withstand actual torture, myself included. There are few people in the entire history of humanity who can withstand it, and they're exceptional people, 9 million times more bad ass than the average Lemming.
If you ever find yourself in a position where you are going to be tortured, just tell them everything and hope they take that information and kill you. It's unlikely. They'll probably still torture you to be sure they got everything, and the truth, and whatever else their motivations are, but that's your one hope. Otherwise, I'm so sorry. Finding yourself restrained in the hands of an actual monster is a nightmare.
I disagree and think this is just perpetuates the mistaken belief that torture actually provides results.
"Everything we know from psychology, physiology, neuroscience, and psychiatry about behaviour and the brain under extreme stress, pain, sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold suggests that torture as a method for information extraction does not work — it may produce information, but that information is not reliable. There are also numerous first-hand reports of torture survivors that make the point amply: an individual subjected to torture will say anything to make it stop."
You're right that it doesn't provide reliable information because the person being tortured will say absolutely anything to make it stop. But, I'm not clear on what you're disagreeing with, because I don't think anything you said contradicts anything I said.
Torture and money will give you a ton of information but not reliable information.
Because in the first case the person will say anything to make you stop and in the second case the person will say anything to make you continue.
Many years ago I read an article by an Iranian gentleman that basically highlighted that torture doesn't get the answers required, it harms both the sufferer and the person inflicting pain on a deep level. This also brings to mind the prevalence of torture in the early series of "24"... a problem later addressed by the producers when they actively avoided depiction of torture. In the early Obama presidency there was a lot of (over due) contrition over the use of enhanced interrogation at Guantanamo bay. Arguements for the use of torture were often given in the context of a "ticking time bomb" or equivalent scenario that needed to be stopped in a given time limit, despite such incidents not having a real life precedent.
Agree completely. And the fact should be obvious if you think about it for two seconds.
I remember almost walking out of that movie Zero Dark Thirty. A major blockbuster based on the premise that torture works. One example among many. Apparently there are a ton of people who want this myth to be true.
"We can hurt the bad people until they tell us what we need to know to be safe."
It's nonsense, but it can feel true.
What you need is psychological warfare. Just ask the CIA
Is this what you think about before bed? Damn that's dark.
Kinda... I've been re-reading The First Law series.
I'm reading Le Carre's "The Spy who came in from the Cold." The protagonist briefly reflects on torture and his own inability to resist it. The antagonist later says something to the effect of, 'We believe you think you've told us everything, but we want to make sure we get what your subconscious isn't telling us.' A creepy thought about the perspective of a torturer. Admittedly, this book was written by an ex-spy in the sixties, and the mindset about torture has shifted. Just found it interesting and maybe relevant
I think stubbing your toe hurt so much is because it's pointless - you did to yourself "for free"
If I'm dying for someone I love at least it's not in vain
You've just proved the point of the post: he easy it is tob imagine yourself doing it for a ooved one
Very true, even in a less life/death situation. Example, a piercing hurts much much more than stubbing your toe, but people, myself included, keep coming back for more of them.
What if the torturer put you in a dark room with a bunch of steel IKEA furniture and bedfames, (no mattresses) and a heated floor with 2 zones (only 1 is on at a time) so that you would have to either brave the gauntlet of IKEA to keep your feet warm or tell them what they want to hear?
Can you stub your toe to prove you would be able to withstand torture for a loved one?
It isn't pointless then!
I used to think I'd hold out well under torture until I had gastroscopy without anaesthetic. It was like being attacked by the alien facehugger. A rigid metal tube down the esophagus provoking the suffocation reflex (despite airflow to lungs) for 5mins which felt like 5 weeks. I was an absolute mess until they gave me nitrous gas for the colonoscopy, then it was relatively painless intoxication.
Also you get a sense of the terror inflicted by waterboarding.
They unlock your system and are now one more step away from viewing your entire browsing history.
Good luck gettin anything useful out of my browsing history. Just millions of random queries about anything... an endless stream of consciousness that go nowhere... and porn... so much porn.
In star trek original series dagger of the mind there is a machine that can erase and modify memories. It is kind of a disturbing episode
What are we but a collection of memories? Not much. A body, some desires, occasional suffering and joy.
The memories give context to everything else. Change them, and you change everything.
This is why my chronic illness is so terrifying. It's in my brain. Literal brain damage. It's being treated, but I wake up every day with a low lying terror that I have forgotten something important.
The trouble with tribbles, the revenge!
Indeed. I think I would be trying to escape so hard I'd pull my hand off or something before I'd withstand torture.