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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

Right, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation.

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If it takes you more than 83 separate instances of waterboarding somebody to decide that they don't have useful information to share with you, then waterboarding is not an efficient way to get reliable information.

If waterboarding is not an efficient way to get reliable information, then I'd be very curious to hear about what definition of "work" you're using where waterboarding might satisfy, but fail in this particular instance.

For all the times it didn't work, how many times did it work for others? One person, with no information, doesn't mean anything.

"Here are eight cases cited in the report where the C.I.A. made the case that its tactics thwarted plots and led to the capture of terrorists, and how the committee's report undercut those accounts."

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/08/world/does-tor...

Full report:

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/senate-inte...

Torture is illegal under the Eight Amendment. The Supreme Court has affirmed this multiple times.

If we're going to go against legal precedent as well as international convention, the burden of proof for torture's effectiveness is on torture advocates. The evidence provided does not stand up to scrutiny.

Your question is poorly formed because the basis of my comment was asking how you defined "work" in the context of waterboarding. You didn't provide any sort of definition, you just said "Well, maybe it worked for other people".

But if it doesn't work reliably, for whatever "work" means, then it doesn't matter if it's successful sometimes and unsuccessful other times because if you don't have a way to distinguish the success from the failure, it's impossible to measure.

That's why I asked you to clarify what you mean when you say it might "work".

well, either it means they were just gratuitously torturing him for fun, or it means they can't tell whether they were getting any useful information or if he had any to give

neither option suggests the technique is useful

it's also about as immoral as you can get

> Right, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation.

I think this case make it obvious that it's impossible to tell if the person you're torturing has the information you're looking for and is withholding it, or simply doesn't have the information. That's a textbook definition of "ineffective".

What's the alternative? I'm generally curious as to what would be considered more effective.

The alternative is to operate within the law and international convention.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess [1].

Also: Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation [2]

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Torture-Doesnt-Work-Interrogation/...

From the sound of it, "do nothing" would be no less effective, and a bit cheaper.

Have you quantified the times when it has been effective though?

If you can't tell the difference between when its effective and when its ineffective, then the technique is worthless.

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