Waterboarding the Brain: The Neural Effects of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques | Hacker News Reader

Waterboarding the Brain: The Neural Effects of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

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6 pointssergeant34 comments

While it should be enough, torture is not just a bad idea because its inhuman, or that the information supplied under torture often is false. Torture is bad from a military standpoint, as has been explored by books like "The art of war" and other works from that time-period until now. If the enemy know that surrender means torture, they will fight until the very last man with all the effort of desperate people.

Sun Tzu warns thus: "Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard."

There is confirmation of this principle: In virtually every war, there are persistent rumors about how the other side is ruthless and will torture and kill all enemies captured alive, regardless whether it is actually true or not. These rumors have the effect of creating the situation which Sun Tzu describes.

Too bad the author used "EIT" instead of "torture".

I understand why you write this, but in fact I think the opposite is true: If the author had written "torture", many who believe in the value of "EITs" would simply have dismissed the article as more anti-EIT screeching, etc.

In fact, the author is, IMHO, attempting to make reasoned points about what EITs are intended to do and what they actually do. In other words, can we demonstrate scientifically that they work?

If the answer is yes, then we revert quickly to the moral and ethical question, illuminated in some ways by the related question of the degree of harm caused by EITs.

But if the answer is no, if we can demonstrate scientifically that EITs are garbage, then perhaps we can abandon them.

(The suggestion in the article is that the answer seems likely to be no because of the known impacts of sleep deprivation and stress on memory recall.)

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