If no one can be right or wrong about the subject then why are we even talking about if it works?
That is not the correct conclusion to draw. There is right and there is wrong.
But out-arguing the other side doesn't make you right. It doesn't change the facts and you could be wrong even if your argument is stronger than someone else's. But nobody in this thread has even specified their position accurately, which is what I've been trying to slowly work towards. First you have to know what you are arguing about ("If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?", you can argue about it endlessly if you do not define "
sound", so: "Should 'sound' be defined as meaning only acoustic vibrations, or only auditory experience?").
As a result of the media's anti-torture campaign (which isn't necessarily wrong) people seem to have adopted the position that
torture never works, which is plain wrong. It's counter-intuitive and there are plenty of examples in history of torture producing results. A lot of the "proof" against torture is focused around Guantanamo Bay: but in reality, it only proves that the torture used in Guantanamo Bay does not work in Guantanamo Bay, not that torture in general is ineffective. For one, the torture used in GB is very mild -- ethically wrong? Maybe, certainly perhaps, but that is beyond the point, it's still very far from what most people visualize when they hear "torture". Then there are other factors unique to GB and the political situation in USA to consider that do not apply universally.
So my first goal was to see if it was thought that torture never works. Some people seem to think so. So I proposed a scenario where torture would be highly effective to see what the reaction to that would be. I've yet to receive a single rational reply to it, beyond "but how can you
be sure they know the code?!" (if this is REALLY puzzling anyone, say so, and I'll give you a scenario where you would know -- I've not yet done so because I wanted to hear why it was thought it's impossible to know that someone knows something, so as to avoid the other person moving the goalposts after my explanation.)
The question, then, is this: what are people's
real positions? It can't be "torture doesn't work", it does.
However that does not mean it is the most effective form of acquiring information -- it isn't, but sometimes it can be the only one, in which case any information - or even the chance of acquiring information - is better than nothing. Granted, that is debatable, it might be against your ethics to ever torture someone, but I would have to disagree with those ethics. Regardless, the most important aspect of this - and any - argument is to clarify what is actually meant. Are we talking about whether or not torture is ethical, whether it's effective, whether it's the most effective form of acquiring information, whether it's always going to work, whether it's never going to work or if it's effective, then in what scenarios is it effective? And so on. Personally, I started out just wanting to see what the general opinion of the subject was, and after seeing that it wasn't very well defined, attempted to figure out where exactly people stood by proposing the "thought experiment."
And for the record, I do think drugs/mental manipulation are a better option, if available and practical. Less straight-forward to resist and if they don't work, you can always move on to Plan B.
