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Comment by entropyneur | Hacker News Reader

On the intellectual level I have absolutely no reason to doubt the scientific evidence or the countless accounts of people who were subjected to solitary imprisonment and describe it as torture and worst thing that ever happened to them. I remember a documentary (probably NatGeo's "America's hardest prisons") episode where a violent and seemingly fearless thug was reduced to a crying baby by 2 weeks of solitary confinement. Yet, for some reason I am completely unable to empathize with it. And it's not for general lack of empathy either - I am quite horrified by pretty much everything else I learn about the experience of prisoners. But even after reading this article I feel like I'd choose solitary over sharing a cell with others. I suspect that points to some peculiarity/defect in my psyche. Does anyone else feel the same way?

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I'm guessing in your case it's either a misunderstanding of what solitary would be like, or a misunderstanding of how bad it would be to share a cell with the average prisoner.

Solitary is not just getting the room to yourself. It's 24 hours a day of total isolation and really nothing at all to do. Your human contact would be limited to having guards slide food trays into your cell and once a day having a guard escort you to and from a slightly larger rec room (and you are alone there also). You would not have access to amenities that other prisoners have, like TV, computers, or possibly even books. I have seen descriptions of some solitary cells that are dark 24/7, and some that remain lit all day. Some people are in solitary for decades. I think staring at the wall all day and not having a meaningful conversation for years on end easily constitutes torture.

I am honestly not trying to sneakily argue for the use of solitary :)

For example, if I was asked right now to vote on it, I'd use my rational judgement to conclude that it's unethical and would vote against. However as soon as I imagine myself in both of these situations, having cellmates feels significantly more frightening even though I'm fully aware that I'd be 5-10 times as likely to kill myself without them.

As others have pointed out, it might be because I have direct experience of conflict but not of isolation. However, I also don't have any direct experience of physical torture and still it scares me more than torture by isolation, so it's probably not that simple.

When I saw the title of the article, "buried alive", I thought to myself: let's not hyperbolize. But after reading your description, I realized that ending up in a permanently dark solitary is in a way worse than getting buried alive - at least, in the latter case, you eventually suffocate or starve to death. In solitary, they use your survival instinct against you. You'll be fed and kept physically healthy, so you can't escape the isolation.

Really, how many people get to stay DECADES in prison? In Brazil the most horrible crimes have a de facto threshold of 6 years in jail.

Generally speaking, those who commit violent felonies are relatively likely to serve sentences like that. So rapists, murders and that sort of thing.

Part of the rationale is that it keeps people who willingly do such things away from society. So it's not simply punitive (and there's very little in the way of rehabilitation), it's more a matter of keeping them away from new victims. A point frequently lost in these conversations.

Yes, that's what I always say too. And it is a strong argument.

But still, in Brasil take 4 years and murderers 6 years in jail.

According to the article, some are spending decades in solitary :(

> Yet, for some reason I am completely unable to empathize with it.

It's simple, if you want to. You just haven't had a comparable experience.

Lock yourself in a room with no contact with the outside world for a month or two. Remove any niceties a prison would not allow. Probably a room with no windows, mirror, or books.

If you aren't willing to do it, explore what you lose in life. Try doing it for a day or even an hour.

Maybe the difficulty in empathizing comes from the difference from anything you consider a normal life.

It's a reasonable assumption, but I don't think that's all there is to it. Prison is generally not a comfortable place (where I live, lack of windows is standard, for instance, even in multi-person cells). And yet, people who experienced solitary are all seem to be putting an emphasis on the lack of human contact. They are not begging for books or windows. I got an impression from the article that it's at least somewhat common to have access to books and even TV, and it's still just as torturous. They are begging to be allowed to spend time with other humans.

> I'd choose solitary over sharing a cell with others

Is it possible that you would regret this after five or ten or more years or almost no contact with another person?

Maybe you're focusing on the physical sharing aspect at the expense of not fully comprehending the more abstract time aspect. Which is totally understandable: I don't know how anyone can realistically imagine what this experience would be like.

> Is it possible that you would regret this after five or ten or more years or almost no contact with another person?

Certainly. In fact this is the only aspect that gets through to my feelings. Weird.

I kinda get where you're coming from. Just to preface this, I agree that the practice of solitary confinement in prison is basically tantamount to torture and should be legally prohibited or severely restricted and regulated. That out of the way...

For me it might come down to the details of solitary confinement. From the sounds of it, I probably wouldn't want to be in the kind of solitary confinement that's imposed in prison. But if I had access to books (say, public library loans by mail), I too, emotionally, have a preference for solitary, even though I rationally think the evidence suggests I would be driven insane.

It's rather unsettling TBH. Are you a particularly introverted person (in the Myers-Briggs sense of the word)?

> Are you a particularly introverted person (in the Myers-Briggs sense of the word)?

I am introverted, but not to an outstanding degree.

After a bit of reflection I am coming to the conclusion that it all rather has to do with my unhealthy level of aversion to conflict. I feel sick even when seeing it in movies, sometimes to the point of having to pause. And I am also under the (likely false and irrational) impression that conflict is what the daily life in prison all about.

Whenever I start to think that solitary confinement might not be so bad, I remind myself that everyone in solitary can always have someone like Tyler Durden for their cellmate.

The isolation cell is a crucible for whatever crazy you may already have inside of you, and when they finally release you, it has been purified and sharpened.

That strikes me as an incredibly dangerous thing to gamble with. You may be turning a person with sociopathic tendencies into a stone-cold serial killer. Or you may be turning a slightly neurotic person into a helpless, useless wreck. Or you may be turning a slightly self-destructive person into a suicide. Do you really want to completely remove someone's societal feedback for extended periods of time, and then see how their compensation strategies work when they are expected to reintegrate with civilization? Solitary has literally trained a person to function only inside a tiny box with no one else in it. What would you expect to happen afterward?

I don't want this to sound snide, but have you read the whole article? Inmates are literally driven insane by solitary confinement, driven to self harm and suicide.

It's not like you just get a cell for yourself as you would wish for in, say, a hospital; you are actually completely alone for months on end, with hardly any recreational activities, maybe none at all. That's much worse than having to cope with a celly who might be a bit unpleasant.

I did read the entire article and that's exactly my point. Despite my rational mind being fully on board with the fact that solitary is a hundred times worse my feelings remain skewed in the other direction. So much that they would override rational judgement if given an opportunity. This is quite an uncomfortable feeling for someone who considers himself a rational person and I'd like to investigate it.

I have actually read an article similar to this one about horrors of sharing a prison cell with someone else. Think about years of sharing a small windowless bathroom 23 hours a day with someone who is crazy, violent, and stronger than you. Oh yeah, and he's doing life for killing a bunch of people because he simply didn't like them, or couldn't control his rage.

Absolutely. I am sociable enough, but given the choice, I'll take solitude any day.

I would tend to agree with both comments but I think it's because we don't know what we're talking about.

We all have experienced being in a closed space with people we don't know or like, but we usually have never experienced complete isolation for extended periods of time.

I need lots of time alone, but being absolutely alone for two weeks and having zero interaction with anyone or even an animal or a plant? That's something else entirely.

That could be. I am even pondering a self-experiment where I'd spend some time in complete isolation. But I don't think I have the guts to do it without an option to abort at any moment. And the very presence of such option would probably make the experience very different to that of a prisoner.

I have sailed across the Atlantic, alone, in a small (9.3m) yacht. 29 days alone with nothing much to see except what is close by (the sea, is.. unchanging, but ever changing). The solitude did not bother me though others have said it would bother them, but then I was more or less in control of my destiny. I had no option to abort (technically, I guess I could have called a ship on the radio and claimed an emergency). My food and water ration was limited but under my own control. I did speak to other vessels on the radio now and again (every few days) which may be comparable to shouting down the toilet at your neighbours.

I don't think it would be in any way similar to being in solitary confinement in a prison.

I don't really know if I would manage OK in solitary or not. On the face of it, it sounds like nothing much.. but there are a whole lot of other things relating to the environment and the people who end up there that would be relevant and which just don't apply to me.

Also, being in nature is a deep and positive experience, so it might compensate for loneliness.

Personally, I don't find loneliness a serious problem and I think that is behind a lot of folks idea that solitary confinement wouldn't really be a problem. On my voyage, I was marking the chart with my daily position and could see the distance to destination getting smaller, which gives me a measure of control, of marking the difference between the days.

Those in solitary are just waiting - even if they end up getting out after a month, they have no way of knowing that will happen. Well, in Europe perhaps they do since largely there are finite limits - and where those limits are exceeded, I would hope the treatment is not as the folk in the article claimed they had been treated. Even for Breivik we can treat him humanely even if we cannot let him out.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Neither you, my friend.

How do you know?

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