Sorry fam, I can buy you maybe 5 minutes. Make 'em count.
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.
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.
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.
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.
