Torture Debate: Your Inner UFO Cultist
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There’s a lot of new information suddenly available in the United States’ debate on torture.
Have a lot of people suddenly switched sides? I think we all know the answer: no.
So, does the new information matter? Sad answer: probably not.
Here’s the point: Whatever your view on whether the U.S. government engaged in illegal torture, and whether it would have been justified in doing so if it did, at a theoretical level new data should change people’s opinions. That is, if we were actually rational agents processing the data and making updated judgments within each of our own personal moral frameworks, some people would today be on the opposite side of the fence from where they started.
But, since we are instead (as Scott Adams is fond of saying) “moist robots,” what we actually do with new data is find ways to make it fit with our existing prejudices, opinions, and stated positions.
At the risk of stating as fact something that others will later call opinion or unproven, here are some of the things we appear to have learned in the last week:
* Despite claims to the contrary, torture is capable of yielding high-value intelligence: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
* Nonetheless, the supposedly foiled-by-torture LA Tower plot still doesn’t add up: The chronology doesn’t make sense.
* Waterboarding, which is under any sensible definition torture, was used an almost unspeakable number of times on a small number of detainees: Including 183 times on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. (Not that anyone would be expected to feel sorry for him.)
* The Bush administration was trying to get a specific answer with some of its torture: That there was an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.
* The harshest techniques were authorized from the highest levels of the Bush administration and known to many in Congress: “The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said.
* Terrorist suspects who gave up intelligence under waterboarding also gave up actionable intelligence under less-severe methods: Ali Soufan, an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005: “Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.”
* Despite all these revelations, it remains unknown (and unknowable) whether any intelligence gathered through torture could have been gained through other means.
And so, what’s happened to public opinion on torture in the last week? Pew has the answer: nothing.
But forget the public for a minute. This information is pretty complex, and various facts point in different directions (as to whether torture “worked” or not). What about people dealing with this information in a more sophisticated way: politicians and pundits.
Now, I don’t have any scientific way of making this claim, but I have yet to see a single pundit or politician change his of her position on torture or “enhanced interrogation” based on anything that’s come out since the torture memos.
Isn’t that odd?
Well, not if you know the story of Marian Keech. In the early 1950s, Keech, a Chicago housewife, started receiving mysterious messages from extraterrestrials, telling her that the world would be destroyed by a giant flood on December 21, 1954. However, by having faith in God, she and her 11 followers would be saved by a UFO. As you may recall from history class, the world was, in fact, not destroyed in a giant flood on December 21, 1954. So, what happened to the beliefs of the “Seekers” (as Ketch’s cult called itself)? Well, two members did leave when the prophesy went blatantly unfulfilled. But something strange happened with the rest: Their beliefs were actually strengthened. These people, after all, had made a significant investment in Keech’s being a prophet. Some had quit their jobs, sold their houses, given away their possessions. When 4:45 a.m. rolled around, with no UFO and no flood, Keech said she had a new revelation: God had spared the world because of the Seekers’ faith. Seekers poured into the streets, elated, grabbing passers by and trying to convert them. Soon after, the once-publicity-shy group started sending out press releases seeking to proselytize new believers.
In the torture debate, all those with an entrenched public position are like Seekers — seeking a justification for their pre-determined position. It’s where the phrase “cognitive dissonance” comes from, and it’s on broad display in the torture debate.
You’re against torture? Well, these recent revelations show that torture doesn’t work and that the U.S. government — particularly the Bush administration — hurt America’s reputation in the world for no good reason.
You’re for torture (well, at least you believe it can be justified in certain circumstances)? Well, these recent revelations prove the Bush administration was exceedingly careful with its interrogation techniques, and it managed to extract some very valuable intelligence.
Neither of these positions is particularly open to being swayed by facts. And what facts you’ll even allow into your mind are screened by your “confirmation bias,” which only lets you see things that correspond to your existing view of the world.
Now, none of this is to say a person’s views can’t be swayed by facts. At our most rational — and when aware of our cognitive defects — we’re capable of cool calculation. But it is to say that it’s highly unlikely.
If you’ve seen a high-profile person change his or her mind on torture in response to the facts — in either direction — send it in. We’ll have to create some kind of award. So far, though, I have precisely zero candidates for winners.
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Has anyone ever been in more desperate need of a 2nd picture than khalid shaikh mohammed?
Hilarious.
One thing I’ve wondered about…
If the world knew, unequivocally, that the US would never, ever torture an enemy combatant, how would that affect future conflict?
Would it increase the possibility of enemies surrendering?
That could be to our advantage, but also to our disadvantage as well.
It would be an interesting thought experiment, because as it stands, the vast majority of nations do employ torture regularly, for different reasons, and it is that certain threat of torture which alters how criminals respond when caught. It is also why the US military teaches soldier to resist torture when captured.
In the US, no crook need ever say a thing, and can protect their friends, protect the proceeds of their crime, etc. But in the Middle East, Russia, China… that same sort of result just does not occur. Criminals fess up, and quick.
Mind you, that’s not to say the US should emulate these countries, because that is not the case. But to claim that US methods have more efficacy because they are more humane is more than a stretch.
Sure torture is ineffective as an information gathering tool at the moment of it’s employment, but the sure and imminent threat of torture has been the most effective coercive tool of government since the dawn of human civilization.
Don’t believe me? Just read up on the Assyrians, amongst others, whose empires stood far longer than any modern nation ever has.
As noted on Greg Sargent’s blog (http://tinyurl.com/csgnd7), Dennis Blair did say that bit about the high-value intelligence, but that’s not ALL he said. The context of the remark belies the obvious conclusion from this snippet, which is that torture was indeed sometimes useful. Instead, in context, Blair says that torture may have procured high-value intelligence, but there’s every indication that that intelligence could have been procured in other ways. Further, the negative effects of torture “far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
[...] On: Torture Debate: Your Inner UFO Cultist [...]
See also: The Great Disappointment.
Based on elaborate calculations involving the books of Daniel and Revelations, thousands of Millerites eagerly awaited Jesus’s second coming on October 22, 1844. When the day came and went, the Millerites just tweaked their interpretation a little bit and became the modern-day Seventh-Day Adventists. To this day you can still attend Revelation Seminars throughout the country using basically the same calculations and charts from 1844 to prove that Jesus’ return is just around the corner.
Designbot:
Millerites are definitely a great example. I’m just reading about them now in “When Prophecy Fails,” the book that details the Seekers cult.
Plenty of examples throughout history, though we don’t always have a lot of hard facts about their activities.
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