Torture and the Ticking Bomb
Mar. 18th, 2009 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaDrove the car today for guitar lessons tonight. On the way to work, I listened to a discussion on the radio about torture. One of the callers brought in the tired old trope: But say you know there's a nuclear bomb planted in New York and it's going to go off in an hour and you know this guy knows where it is. Isn't torture justified then?
The guy on the radio hemmed and hawed around just saying 'NO', saying that torture wasn't proven to get information and such a scenario had never happened, but his answers were all sort of wishy washy. It wouldn't convince me if I were a redneck with the IQ lower than the measurement of my waistband.
You know what does convince me though? Just thinking about the situation from the view of the one being tortured. Now... Perhaps my perspective on the situation is a bit clearer than that of the average person because I've had many hours of oral surgery, and three-hour sessions of electrolisys (which definitely qualifies as torture) but really, anyone who's ever stood in line at the DMV or had a crappy day at work where they just wanted to go home can probably understand this..
In the head of the one being tortured, here's how things go: In 1 hour, I WIN. I only have to withstand whatever they do for 1hr.. 60 minutes. About .300 breaths, a few thousand heartbeats. Then you'd start playing games with yourself: Actually, I only have to hang on for half an hour because by the time they get to the location and get a bomb crew in there, it's going to eat most of that time. Plus they'll torture me a bit more to make 'sure' I gave them the right spot and not a wild goose chase. (This is a lie to yourself and you'll fix it later of course, but for the moment, you've mentally halved your torture time) You tell yourself that they made a clock that deliberately runs slow to make you think time is passing more slowly. You analyze each new piece of pain, feeling it out, comparing it against the next piece of pain, start thinking about which hurts more and how little it really hurt and what areas hurt most and how to turn off thinking about them. You probably only have 5 minutes left, you keep telling yourself. Anyone can survive anything for 5 minutes.
And that, right there, is exactly why torture DOES NOT WORK on anyone who's committed to what they're doing. I didn't want to have a partial denture and a lisp for the rest of my life so I simply endured the hours of oral surgery and the painful recoveries. I wanted to get rid of unpleasant hair, so I tolerated the biting, stinging, burning pain of needles being driven into my flesh and current run through them over and over and over again. I got beat up by bullies as a kid. One holding me, the other beating me, and I withstood it and *laughed out of sheer spite. I don't think any of those reasons are nearly as strong as the certainty of religious nutters. To them, torture's probably a complete joke.
So. I hope that this finally defuses the stupid 'ticking bomb' argument. It's stupid and I'm sick of seeing it.
*laughed: I have a nervous laugh, and being in a situation like that triggered it. So I wasn't laughing at how puny the other kids were, but the laugh did really freak them out and they stopped hitting me and sort of avoided me afterwards. And yet, at the same time, the laugh was at how puny they were. The nervous laugh.. Part of what was going on in my head was along the lines of, "Ow! Gee. This is what life is? This is stupid. What is wrong with these people anyhow? Why don't they like me?" So in some sense, I was laughing at how puny they were.
The guy on the radio hemmed and hawed around just saying 'NO', saying that torture wasn't proven to get information and such a scenario had never happened, but his answers were all sort of wishy washy. It wouldn't convince me if I were a redneck with the IQ lower than the measurement of my waistband.
You know what does convince me though? Just thinking about the situation from the view of the one being tortured. Now... Perhaps my perspective on the situation is a bit clearer than that of the average person because I've had many hours of oral surgery, and three-hour sessions of electrolisys (which definitely qualifies as torture) but really, anyone who's ever stood in line at the DMV or had a crappy day at work where they just wanted to go home can probably understand this..
In the head of the one being tortured, here's how things go: In 1 hour, I WIN. I only have to withstand whatever they do for 1hr.. 60 minutes. About .300 breaths, a few thousand heartbeats. Then you'd start playing games with yourself: Actually, I only have to hang on for half an hour because by the time they get to the location and get a bomb crew in there, it's going to eat most of that time. Plus they'll torture me a bit more to make 'sure' I gave them the right spot and not a wild goose chase. (This is a lie to yourself and you'll fix it later of course, but for the moment, you've mentally halved your torture time) You tell yourself that they made a clock that deliberately runs slow to make you think time is passing more slowly. You analyze each new piece of pain, feeling it out, comparing it against the next piece of pain, start thinking about which hurts more and how little it really hurt and what areas hurt most and how to turn off thinking about them. You probably only have 5 minutes left, you keep telling yourself. Anyone can survive anything for 5 minutes.
And that, right there, is exactly why torture DOES NOT WORK on anyone who's committed to what they're doing. I didn't want to have a partial denture and a lisp for the rest of my life so I simply endured the hours of oral surgery and the painful recoveries. I wanted to get rid of unpleasant hair, so I tolerated the biting, stinging, burning pain of needles being driven into my flesh and current run through them over and over and over again. I got beat up by bullies as a kid. One holding me, the other beating me, and I withstood it and *laughed out of sheer spite. I don't think any of those reasons are nearly as strong as the certainty of religious nutters. To them, torture's probably a complete joke.
So. I hope that this finally defuses the stupid 'ticking bomb' argument. It's stupid and I'm sick of seeing it.
*laughed: I have a nervous laugh, and being in a situation like that triggered it. So I wasn't laughing at how puny the other kids were, but the laugh did really freak them out and they stopped hitting me and sort of avoided me afterwards. And yet, at the same time, the laugh was at how puny they were. The nervous laugh.. Part of what was going on in my head was along the lines of, "Ow! Gee. This is what life is? This is stupid. What is wrong with these people anyhow? Why don't they like me?" So in some sense, I was laughing at how puny they were.
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Date: 2009-03-18 06:19 pm (UTC)So I guess what I'm saying is that you've made a successful argument against a bad and overused example, rather than one against torture generally, although I'm inclined to agree that as a method of successful interrogation it's questionable at best.
Um, not that I know anything about the subject...