Guest Post by Scott Adams
If I ever get captured and threatened with torture it will take about five seconds for me to give up every secret I have. That’s because I know I would break eventually, so why put up with unnecessary torture?
I assume the same is true for the lightly-trained ISIS fighters. Some are just teenagers. Once the bravery-inducing drugs in their system wear off, I have to assume that at least some of them – if not most – would become quite flexible under the threat of torture, not to mention the torture itself.
But won’t they lie?
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Well, in many cases the secrets they reveal under torture can be easily checked. If they tell you ISIS has a munitions storage area somewhere, you can go check it out. If they tell you there are ISIS troops massing somewhere, you can fly a drone over and take a look.
And if you learn that the prisoner lied? More torture, I assume, and probably worse than the first time. So lying about things that can be verified is a bad strategy for a captive.
Some things can’t be verified. But sometimes you have two prisoners. See if their stories match up. That would help.
My point is that common sense, combined with everything you know about human beings, tells you that torture works, at least in some cases. It would work on me. It would work on you. It would certainly work on under-trained ISIS prisoners.
So why do the experts say torture doesn’t work?
The answer can be found in the Persuasion Filter. Torture is persuasion, but so is the way you talk about it. If you promote me to the rank of General, put me on television, and ask me if torture works, do you know what I’ll say?
I’ll say it doesn’t work.
I’ll say I can get more cooperation by being nice. I will look you in the eye and lie my ass off. Because that’s my job.
As a military General, my job is to keep my troops safe. So I will lie about the effectiveness of torture for several reasons:
1) An enemy might someday capture my troops. I don’t want the enemy to think torture is a practical option.
2) I don’t want the enemy to know their captured soldiers will be giving up their secrets to my side in under five seconds.
3) I don’t want to tarnish the brand of the United States or the military by associating it with torture.
4) I don’t want to go to jail. Torture is illegal.
So the ideal approach for an “expert” on torture is to say in public that it never works while finding ways to skirt the law and use it anyway when needed. Waterboarding, for example, was an attempt to stay legal while still “torturing.”
Keep in mind that for every “expert” on television that says torture never works, there are lots of “experts” around the world using the method every day. I doubt they would use if it it NEVER worked. After all, they are the experts.
This brings us to President Trump. He says with surprising candor that he believes torture works but will follow the recommendation of his generals who say it doesn’t.
Interpretation: Torture works. The generals know it. We’ll find a way to do it if necessary to keep the country safe. You don’t want to know the details.
We like to believe that experts are more credible than non-experts. And President Trump is no expert on torture. But keep in mind that President Trump is a Master Persuader who can detect bullshit faster than normal people.
You might even call him an expert at detecting bullshit.
When President Trump presents something as fact, the odds are high that it is hyperbole or just persuasion. You don’t want to assume his facts are literally true, although they are usually emotionally or directionally true.
But if President Trump – The Master Persuader – tells you someone else’s facts are bullshit, you can usually take that to the bank. The man knows bullshit when he sees it. And with his skillset he can also smell it coming from miles away.
On an unrelated topic, when you see President Trump disagreeing with the experts on climate change, you assume he has no credibility. He’s not an expert in the field. But he does know bullshit when he sees it. And I think he believes the prediction models are unlikely to be accurate. (As do I.) The prediction models are not science, per se. They are persuasion disguised as science via the process of conflation and association. And Trump knows persuasion.
Trump could be completely wrong about climate change. So could I. But when the Master Persuader calls bullshit on something, be cautious about betting against him.
Whenever Trump does something that leaves me scratching my head, I just wait for Scott Adams to explain it and suddenly Trump’s actions make sense.
In a similar fashion to Keegan-Michael Key’s role as Obama’s anger translator, Scott Adams is Trump’s persuasion translator.
When you see a temperature monitoring station at the University of Arizona in a parking lot then you know it is a con game. Poor algorithm and data that is massaged in multiple ways…..especially in a Tucson parking lot where the air temps are 100 degrees plus in the summer…..
Hey musket! The big moment of epiphany for me about the fraud of global warming was when I found out that less than 10% of the surface stations in the US were even reasonably well sited. The other 90% or so are almost all in places where they will read warmer than they should. http://www.surfacestations.org/ When that info came out, I assumed that the “climatologists” would demand more accurate data. Instead, they just said, “Oh, no problem! We’ll take care of the bad data by just adjusting it some more.”
Science — REAL science! — does not work that way. Scams might work that way, but not science.
I speak as an American and we as a nation should not torture in any manor . Sanitizing the term or description as enhanced interrogation , water boarding And sleep deprivation is torment and any person willing to excuse mistreatment of enemy combatants once they have surrendered is not an American in the deepest sense of the title !
When we capture enemy combatants on the field of battle regardless of where when what or why as long as they do not pose a threat they are to be treated humanly with dignity and respect and given food medical care as needed ! The ability to supply this in a combat zone can pose hardships that endanger other fellow Americans ! The judgement as to what should be done is up to the people on seen , they may have to kill them ! I never attempt to second guess what my fellow Americans do under the pressures of a combat situation ! Once the prisoners are in a secured safe area , questioning should be a standard good fair cooperation renders a more comfortable existance and noncooperation may find Mr hard ass chained to the floor with a bucket for a toilet but never should we condone torture regardless of what the enemy may have done before surrender . For our enemy that has committed inhuman acts Nuremberg is waiting !
Torture isn’t just inflicting physical pain. That is what doesn’t work because people will say anything to stop the agony. It also leaves marks that almost require you to kill the victim if the ’cause’ goes south. OTOH being left in restraints in an uncomfortable position can cause the victim to panic and do anything to gain relief. They say CIA Beirut station chief was kept in coffin sized box for months and was left a drooling madman before Hezbollah finally and mercifully executed him.
Hey Boat Guy! Yes, 100%! I seem to remember that General George Washington’s first general order to his troops was that there was to be no torture allowed. He was smart.
Once you allow torture, all liberty is thrown out the door. Even if you claim that torture will only be done to national enemies, that will make no difference. Why? Because once you allow torture, anyone — ANYONE! — can be convicted of any crime you can think of. “Yeah, sure, he claimed he was not an enemy combatant when we captured him, but when we tortured him he admitted that he was an enemy!” “I guess we need to execute this guy for treason. He told us he was the military advisor to Emperor Hirohito and planned the Pearl Harbor attack.” “How do we know that this man is Stalin’s grand daughter? He confessed that he was!”
Once you allow torture, there is no resistance against anything the state demands. No resistance whatsoever.
Everyone from the Mafia to the drug cartels, from Assad to the IRA, from Mexico’s security forces to most ME countries believes it works.
Maybe there is a reason for their belief in it.
FWIW, I knew an IRA guy once, long time ago. and he told me about battery powered drills replacing bullets for knee capping disloyal members and snitches because they were more easily available than guns and cheaper as well. Seems to me that would be rather effective, especially after the first knee.
But, alas, we’ve become a kinder gentler nation since our first Bush and only use such soft techniques as pouring a bucket of water on someone’s face or keeping him awake at night.
Hey Anonymous! I didn’t think it was right to down-vote you without showing my face, but no. The issue is not even whether torture works. Maybe it does work when you have a guilty person, maybe not. The issue is that torture is a complete violation of the principles this country was founded on, and changes a person from a human being endowed with natural creator given rights, into a broken machine which will do anything, say anything.
Torture belongs with cultures that behead infidels and cut out a little girl’s clitoris, not with a nation based on the ideas of Washington, Jefferson, Paine and Franklin.
McCain being an example of that?
It is true that McCain gave anti-american speeches while a prisoner. Whether he was tortured or not is a matter of debate. Some say he was tortured, some say he was simply rewarded with an apartment and a woman. Personally I don’t know where the truth lies about his experiences in Vietnam.
What torques my jaws about McCain is his unflagging efforts to stop investigations into (and possible repatriation of) US POWs left behind in SE Asia. Yeah, he is a RINO, but it is his work against POWs that would keep me from ever shaking his hand.
When the US military changed its code of honor for POWs it recognized that every man has his breaking point and that torture works. The final proof is everyone employs it in one form or another. The dhimmirats use it whenever Schummer speaks.
I despise Schumer. Funny thing is, I heard him speak some years ago (he was on some steps and was asked a question by someone – reporter?):
His response (don’t remember his words) was that the voters were stupid and would believe whatever he said.
It seems to me that virtually all the career politicians look upon the regular citizens as footstools to be bled dry of finances via taxes.
Kokoda,
How many times has Schumer been elected/re elected to his House & now Senate seat?
Doesn’t that prove what he said about the stupidity of the voters?
This was my favorite
Thank you for remembering that – along with the “East Anglia emails”, we should take every statement about AGW / “climate change” / environmental “activism” as a lie until proven truthful.
What we have here is a lot of assumptions backed up by more assumptions and a dearth of facts.
There are two kinds of torture, physical and psychological. I believe that studies show that psychological torture is ever bit, if not more effective than physical torture. Then there is the point that no ones likes to address; if we think it is okay to torture, what do we say to our enemies when they torture our children. Where is that moral high ground anyway? Damn!
Adams addressed this point and agreed with it, as do I, but I am under no illusions about what most enemies of the US will do with our children given the opportunity. Moral high ground only elevates you so far.
@Boat Guy
I agree that this nation should not torture in any manor. Torture is best carried out in a non-descript shack.
Dang it, beat me to it.
Subjecting an enemy combatant to an endless loop of Al Gore’s global warming speeches will cause him to break in no time.
Adams is dead on correct in this case- the claim that torture never works is bullshit of the highest order. I think anyone with an IQ over 105 probably knows torture works if done properly- it really does only take a small amount of self-awareness to realize this. Adams is also correct about why people in the position of having to decide when and when not to use it lie about it, and I am OK with that, too.
‘Enhanced Interrogation’ should have been treated as a state secret.
But now it’s been revealed and all our enemies know about it.
Which means now we have to do it for real.