Conceding Nothing
Megan McArdle writes:
I’ve long said that we shouldn’t waste time arguing that torture doesn’t work. For one thing, the evidence for those arguments seems empirically shaky, especially since many people employing them insist on arguing that torture basically never works, rather than that it doesn’t work very often and therefore has a bad cost-benefit ratio. For another, arguing that something doesn’t work isn’t necessarily an argument for not doing it—it could just as easily be an argument for improving our technique. And if advances in brain scanning research let us develop a reliable lie detector, as seems possible in the relatively near future, then torture will work very, very well.If that happens, we’re in a nasty spot. Most people who make this argument do not, in fact, care whether torture works. They would still be every bit as much against it if waterboarding worked perfectly. Yet when they argue about whether torture works, they’re conceding that torture’s effectiveness is relevant to the question of whether or not we should engage in it.
That’s incorrect. All one concedes by arguing about the effectiveness of torture is that people worth persuading believe — mistakenly or not — that utility is a relevant factor. I happen to think that every American who exerts influence on his or her government is a person worth persuading. A mistaken policy like torture is least likely to happen if as large a plurality of citizens as possible think that it’s a bad idea, for whatever reason.
Schwenkler, I’m confused. You’re saying utility shouldn’t be a relevant factor, right?
— Sargent · Apr 22, 11:41 PM · #
I mean Conor. Sorry ‘bout that.
— Sargent · Apr 22, 11:42 PM · #
Conor, I don’t think this objection to her post makes sense. If you’re addressing people who think that torture is effective, then you either need to convince them that that belief is wrong or you need to find other grounds to argue against the practice. Ms. McArdle is suggesting that there’s little empirical proof of torture’s ineffectiveness even now and there quite possibly will be even less so in the future as our brain science advances, which means that torture opponents would be better off pursuing those other lines of argument. You could argue against her premise (i.e. argue that the utility argument can be shown to be invalid even as science advances), but if you accept the premise, I think her conclusion follows naturally.
— kenB · Apr 23, 02:16 AM · #
Conor, you’re on absolutely solid ground in making this point. I think the only remotely sympathetic way to read that part of McArdle’s post is to think that she’s worried about people not laying their cards on the table. There is something sneaky about protesting loud and hard about the efficacy of torture, without admitting that you’re also in the principled anti-torture camp. But once you’re clear about that, you can absolutely use whatever non-deceptive means you like to argue against the practice.
Btw: I’m a relative layman, but my understanding of brain-scanning makes me think that a reliable lie detector is like cities built around Segways. It’s possible in the near future…
— Justin · Apr 23, 03:11 AM · #
I think I’m on board with the general sentiment here.
I’d tweak it a little. I believe all torture debates should begin with the concession – for the sake of argument, because the real point is elsewhere – that torture is effective..
— Steve C · Apr 23, 05:53 AM · #
“ I happen to think that every American who exerts influence on his or her government is a person worth persuading.”
Isn’t this a fool’s errand? A better strategy for dealing with truly heinous groups is to marginalize them.
The group of people who think torture is either a good idea, or who think it’s an open question as to whether it’s a good idea, is rapidly shrinking. They may take their favorite party down with them. Might a better strategy be to ruthlessly attack them, pull the rug out from under them at every opportunity, and generally treat them like cancers that need to be expelled?
Morally repugnant behavior doesn’t deserve your time, and I’m only slightly wrong to claim that the moderates – Peggy Noonan is this week’s best example – are more of a problem than the Lowrys and Hansons and McCarthys.
— Steve C · Apr 23, 06:05 AM · #
Megan’s conclusion is correct: we do not care if torture is efficacious such that we would countenance it if it was. But her premise of her argument is totally wrong: torture is, in fact, inefficacious, and there is plenty of empirical evidence that supports this. For example, here are the thoughts of USArmy Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, speaking at a DoD briefing for the release of Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations:
Q: In looking at those particular tactics and now not being able to use them, does that limit the ability of interrogators to get information that could be very useful? In particular, on one detainee in Guantanamo Bay, those — some of those tactics that are now prohibited were deemed to be very effective in getting to that information.
GEN. KIMMONS: Let me answer the first question. That’s a good question. I think — I am absolutely convinced the answer to your first question is no. No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that.
And moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, under — through the use of abusive techniques would be of questionable credibility. And additionally, it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can’t afford to go there.
Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been — in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized, humane interrogation practices, in clever ways that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of legal, moral and ethical, now as further refined by this field manual. So we don’t need abusive practices in there. Nothing good will come from them.
[Perhaps Megan should instead note not that there is no evidence, but that she does not know what it is.]
— vimothy · Apr 23, 08:36 PM · #