[jdmichal]

Except that the argument has never been about the effectiveness of waterboarding or torture in general. The argument there it is that torture is a wrong thing to do, no matter the method.

In this case, violence is being perpetrated, and the proper authorities to moderate it are either unable or unwilling. As pointed out in mikeash's excellent comment [0], there is an advocacy of "violence abstinence" being delivered to the victims. This abstinence is what the comment your responding to is addressing.

And yes, violence is a wrong thing to do, just like torture. But if violence is being done and there's no authority to moderate it, then abstinence is not necessarily a good answer to the victim.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12498743

EDIT: I stand corrected on the effectiveness of waterboarding. I just removed the portion, since it was irrelevant to my point anyway.

[pavlov]

Politifact recently evaluated a former CIA officer's claim that "waterboarding works" and found it false:

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2016/may/24/tod...

"While many top officials defended the CIA’s use of waterboarding in the past, there is no irrefutable evidence the practice provides results. Experts said there are few historical accounts of success, and even those are suspect. Meanwhile, there’s scientific proof that a technique like waterboarding would affect brain function enough to make any prisoner’s statements unreliable. They may say anything to make the waterboarding stop, and could actually be physically unable to provide any cogent intelligence.

"Wilcox didn’t provide concrete proof and experts say virtually none exists. We rate the statement False."

[LanceH]

The thing about torture, and more generally interrogation, is that you're not just asking "what are the secret codes." You should be asking a lot of questions that you know the answers to. You also shouldn't be revealing to the subject that you know these answers. These questions are what help you identify when answers change from false to true.

Contrary to the movies, you don't tell them what you know about them so that they'll know when to lie.

[pavlov]

Sounds great -- and the evidence says it doesn't work.

It's a comforting fantasy that we can round up the bad guys, put them in a box and rough them up in clever ways until they reveal their evil plans. In the real world, building more Guantanamo Bays isn't going to solve any of the problems facing us. The net benefit of torture centers is negative.

[LanceH]

I definitely wasn't advocating for torture. It should be flatly rejected.

To say it produces nothing just isn't true.

[aninhumer]

>To say it produces nothing just isn't true.

How do you know? Do you actually have any evidence that torture works?

pavlov provided a source above explaining that there is no evidence that torture is effective. Your response seems to just be "well they must just not be doing it right".

[jdmichal]

Thanks for the information and the link. I edited my response appropriately.

As an aside, I see a lot of parallels between this particular statement and the recent discussions on plea deals:

"They may say anything to make the waterboarding stop, and could actually be physically unable to provide any cogent intelligence."

Obviously the physical issues (probably) don't apply, but the use of oversized charges could be seen as a mental torture technique when phrased that way...

[aninhumer]

There absolutely is lots of argument about the effectiveness of torture, and indeed my impression based on what I've read is that it's almost entirely ineffective.