Torture: does it work?

[CrazyCracka420]

Torture works for inflicting pain on individuals and creating psychological fear in their comrades.  It also creates enemies as well, and puts your own people in potentially more harmful situations if they are captured.

As far as gathering useful information, does torture work?  Maybe, maybe not.  Someone may tell you everything they know, but they are going to say whatever they can to get the torture to stop, so you really can't be sure if it was truthful or not. 

[Clockworkkiller]

i agree with torture as a forum of extreme (very extreme) form of punishment,
Example: serial killer just stabbed 12 pregnant women and let them bleed to death, then multilated their bodies
in a case like that? fuck yea, make the bastard scream and cry like a bitch, he doesnt deserve a quick death penalty, or life in a prison.

but for anything else other than a situation similar to that above? hell no.

[EponiCo]

However, if there is a way to (almost) immediately verify the information, does torture work then? If you have, say, a safe in the same room as the person you're torturing and you know they know the code, and you can try the code immediately. Is torture effective in that scenario and similar scenarios, where you can verify the information and then continue the torture if you were lied to?

If you are talking from a purely self serving perspective than it's fairly likely to work. Or when it doesn't the cost isn't too high.
But unless you are doing the torturing yourself you have to be pretty sure you can trust the torturer. Because it's probably quite likely someone with no objection to torture has no objection to cross you and say the guy said he didn't know until the very end and making off with the money.
If you are talking from the standpoint of police, you are also risking to be lied to. If they tortured someone without results, they'd have a large incentive to cover that up. A confession is easy to get and the subject has been isolated anyway. Ignoring the part about some random guy just being picked up from the street and fucked forever which is exactly what police should prevent it might also mean the case is closed and the true criminal/terrorist is free to plan his next crime.

[Xant]

The question was never about whether torture is acceptable or not, but if it works or not, which most people seem to be missing.

[Jarold]

It would make me talk, but I don't know anything useful so it would be ineffective. So your simple soldier/person would probably know as much as the person interrogating. It only might work on very high value people.

[Christo]

[Lars]

However, if there is a way to (almost) immediately verify the information, does torture work then? If you have, say, a safe in the same room as the person you're torturing and you know they know the code, and you can try the code immediately. Is torture effective in that scenario and similar scenarios, where you can verify the information and then continue the torture if you were lied to?

If you are sure that  the person/people you plan to torture got the information/s you are looking for( or the safe's code in this case), i think it would work, on condition that the tortured person/people is/ are convinced (or hope) that the torture stops when they realease the correct information.
If they suspect/are sure that the torture will continue, even after they tell  the info you are looking for, they would probably keep lying, maybe even the weaker minded people/with  low tolerance to pain would keep telling false infos.

Why would torture work *in this case? Torture would work, because i think (almost) everyone has a breaking point, soon or later  he/she/they will tell you what they know *assuming that you are sure they know the safe's code or the info/s you are looking for. 

[zagibu]

Irrelevant. Assume the premise is true. Think of it as a thought experiment.

Although, even if we were to treat it as a real scenario, I don't see how your question is relevant. Are you suggesting that it would be impossible to know the person has the code? I can think of millions of ways to be reasonably sure, about as sure as you can be of anything. More importantly, would it matter if you knew about them knowing since you can instantly verify their answers?

Of course, you can exclude it from a thought experiment, but it is the most important question in a real scenario. Because even if they know it, they will tell you they don't at first. And even if they don't know it, they will tell you they do later. How will you decide which is true, and how long will you try to extract the real code? It's impossible.

[Xant]

Of course, you can exclude it from a thought experiment, but it is the most important question in a real scenario. Because even if they know it, they will tell you they don't at first. And even if they don't know it, they will tell you they do later. How will you decide which is true, and how long will you try to extract the real code? It's impossible.

It's entirely possible for you to know beforehand that they know the code. And you would not have to decide which is true. Everyone has a breaking point. You would torture the person who you think knows the code until you were reasonably sure they weren't holding out on you anymore. Sure, sucks to be them if they never really did know the code, but it would still get results, although not quite with the same accuracy as if you were sure they knew the code. But it wouldn't be that much less reliable, either: you just have to continue the torture past what would reasonably be someone's breaking point.

[Rumblood]

Drugs are more effective manipulators of the human psyche.

[Kalam]

Drugs are more effective manipulators of the human psyche.

This. I believe mental torture- such as controlling a person's circadian rhythm and psychological games are more effective than torture when it comes to gleaning information. These take time, though, and from my understanding, the rule of thumb in war is two to three days before the information is considered useless. I would not expect the average soldier to have anything important in the way of information except standard tactics, procedure, and cultural insight. You can get the latter, which I believe might be more important in the long term, from pop culture and friendly relationships and I'm sure most enemies would figure out how you operate in a year if it's uniform- in the case of developed militaries, this is always the case, is it not?

I can tell you it takes at least five years to change the tactics of a large, modern military.

[Sir_Hans]

Drugs are more effective manipulators of the human psyche.

This is very true.

Let me go on an off-topic tangent.

People dosed from this drug have been known to willingly empty bank accounts or help a perpetrator rob the victims own home... Seems like a complete loss of self control and reasoning...
What I've always wondered, is what happens if you dose someone with this drug then give them a handgun and tell them to kill someone? And if it actually would work in that kind of scenario... How many assassinations/terrorist-type events have been attempted or perpetuated by the use of this drug on unsuspecting victims? Kind of scary to think about.

[zagibu]

It's entirely possible for you to know beforehand that they know the code. And you would not have to decide which is true. Everyone has a breaking point. You would torture the person who you think knows the code until you were reasonably sure they weren't holding out on you anymore. Sure, sucks to be them if they never really did know the code, but it would still get results, although not quite with the same accuracy as if you were sure they knew the code. But it wouldn't be that much less reliable, either: you just have to continue the torture past what would reasonably be someone's breaking point.

That is exactly the problem. What is a person's breaking point? How can you ever be sure they are not holding back anymore?

And no, you can't ever know for sure if a person knows something you don't.

[Xant]

That is exactly the problem. What is a person's breaking point? How can you ever be sure they are not holding back anymore?

And no, you can't ever know for sure if a person knows something you don't.

That is not a problem. If you torture someone for two years in the most horrible ways imaginable, you can be pretty damn sure they're not holding back a code to a safe from you.

And yes you can. Obviously. Why couldn't you? That's akin to saying "the sky is green!"

[Rumblood]

And yes you can. Obviously. Why couldn't you? That's akin to saying "the sky is green!"

Really? Well I KNOW that you know the secret to cold fusion and if you don't tell us RIGHT NOW we are going to start breaking every bone in your body until you tell us what it is!