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Comment by iamabraham | Hacker News Reader

"Anyone that says violence doesn't solve anything has never had their ass kicked"

- My HS best friend's Dad teaching us about dealing with bullies circa 1991

Lotsa dads make the point for me, that kids who do not tend to turn to violence have not experienced it. But it's lost on them -- they usually think not experiencing violence is a weakness.

Not a weakness per se, but rather a lost opportunity for learning how to assert yourself. Violence is the purest form of assertion, and can be extrapolated into nonviolent aspects of life later on.

Being bullied (and fighting back) made me consider the philosophy of violence as a kid, and made me strong. It also taught me to stand my ground and take no shit from anyone, which was true in school, in the workplace, dealing with customer support, you name it.

I do not agree that violence is the purest form of assertion. On what basis did you judge purity, anyway? That seems like the sort of thing a violent person tells themselves in justification of their world view.

That's one hell of a dad quote

"Anyone that says waterboarding doesn't work has never been interrogated by torturers."

Makes as much sense. This kind of dad wisdom is the brand of false "common sense" currently peddled by the Trumps and Putins of this world.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

To say it produces nothing just isn't true.

>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".

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...

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.

That's a lovely strawman you built there.

I'm trying to point out the slippery slope of adults offering this kind of arguments to children. I wouldn't tell it to my kid because I feel it would be the wrong thing to say: "Here's a piece of advice that might work in the schoolyard, but it's wrong in life overall."

Except that it is definitely NOT wrong in life overall.

There is a big difference between saying "violence doesn't solve anything" and saying that "violence solves everything".

There are many situations in which a person needs to defend themselves, and reacting to physical violence with a physical response is the right thing to do. Just because this gets out of hand because some people take it too far doesn't mean that all physical responses are wrong.

I feel violence is wrong overall, and would die to defend that conviction if a situation came to that.

So if one of your closest loved ones were threatened by a violent criminal (in a home invasion, for example), you would actually allow yourself and/or your loved one to die rather than commit an act of violence that eliminated the threat?

I'm not sure if I believe that.

Hypothetically speaking, if a grown man was beating up your own child, you wouldn't do anything to stop him, even at the risk of your child dying?

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