coaltide | And another one!

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2023

And another one!

I see my nemesis getting a fic that I love
And I'm like, "Fuck you"
I guess my 10k letter wasn't enough
I'm like, "Fuck you and fuck morbane, too"
Said, "If I was a long commenter, they woulda gamed for me"
Ha, now ain't that some shit?
(Ain't that some shit?)
And although there's pain in my chest
I still comment it's the best
And runs to coal to shout "Fuck you"

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Assignment Deadline: Monday 18 December
Main Collection Opens: Monday 25 December
Madness Opens: Tuesday 26 December
Author Reveals: Monday 1 January

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If you grab a random person off the street and start hurting them until they give you their ATM PIN, most of the time, with most people, you will get the correct number fast. Most people, most of the time, put higher stakes in their own lack of immediate pain than in not revealing information. In such scenarios, torture is absolutely effective. Ineffectiveness is a poor argument against torture and effectiveness is a poor argument for torture because either way it is *torture*.

It is bad because it's torture yes. It's also unreliable by every study that's been conducted so it is morally repugnant AND ineffective. It's both.

I know this isn't what either of you meant, but I'm deeply amused by the idea that a bunch of researchers grabbed random people of the street and tried to torture them for their banking details in the name of science.

man if you asked me what coal would be wanking about this year i would not have guessed “the effectiveness of torture”

lol you appear to be claiming torture is effective only under conditions where people wouldn't bother with actual torture, which is itself an argument for the ineffectiveness of torture!

I agree with you about the problems with torture! In real life the argument against torture is that torture is bad and you shouldn't do it. (However, being ineffective is certainly not a bad argument to also have in your pocket when talking to people who don't think that's sufficient.)

There are, however, many things I read about in stories that are never OK in real life (for example: murder.) If you write a story about an evil person torturing someone because they want them to repeat lies for propaganda reasons and because you want to show they're evil, that is a good use of torture in a story. However, many stories that use torture show the good guys doing it, with the excuse that it's effective at getting accurate information quickly. This is bad and lazy storytelling, and also helps convince people like you that torture does work, and people less principled than you that maybe there's justification for it in the real world. This is why I don't like it in stories.

I am, however, interested that you're so sure that hurting someone until they give you their ATM number will work. Have you tried it? Based on both extensive research I've done when writing stories with torture in them, and my general experience with humans, I am willing to bet that in fact they will say "Ow that hurts! What the fuck is wrong with you," come to the reasonable conclusion that you're a crazy person who just likes having an excuse to hurt people and it doesn't matter what they say, and then spend a lot of time begging you to stop hurting them until they become incoherent. The reason that you're convinced it will work is that we have this persistent cultural narrative that pain is some kind of truth serum. It isn't, but it's a very useful narrative for the kind of people who like torture.

(However, if you point a knife at them and say "give me your ATM number and nobody gets hurt", it's reasonably likely to work, because nobody has gotten hurt yet, and they have a chance of stopping that from happening. Once you've actually stabbed them though, the threat loses a great deal of its usefulness. And someone who won't give you their ATM at just the threat is almost certainly going to be even more stubborn once the pain starts.)

You know most banks have a limit of 300-500 bucks a day on ATM withdrawals? Like why would you bother torturing anyone for their ATM pin?

This is making me laugh, thank you coalie.

Like… just threaten them, come on. (Source: happened to me. They fully did not need to progress to actual torture.)

I'm sorry someone did that to you, coalie :(

So in your totally evidence-based scenario, if someone is off the wall enough to actually torture someone over something low stakes, they might decide giving up low stakes information is worth it.

I kind of doubt you have a lot of data in ATM related torture, but you do know that torture tends to be used in much higher stakes situations where the victim is highly motivated not to give up information? And that it is really bloody ineffective?

I mean I might be wrong and there is an epidemic of people being tortured for their pins, but I doubt it.

Torture can be used to elicit false confessions in cases when the victim just wants it to stop so they can hurry along their execution, for instance. But as a way of gathering information, it sucks, and that *is* evidence based.

I don't really follow their logic because I think CYRT is trying to say "you think torture is ineffective because you only use it in high stakes situations where it's ineffective", but nobody uses torture in low stakes situations because e.g threats and bribery work, and "other methods work better" is just "torture is ineffective" in different words. Maybe they are just mad that the objection to torture is not on moral grounds? But someone who is happy to torture isn't going to go "oh, wait, it's immoral? Best not then".

I think it depends on what you mean by “torture”, because formal interrogation of people highpy motivated to conceal information is definitely not the only scenario where things that count as torture show up in fiction.

In a standard noir scene, the anti-hero detective grabs the busboy of the building by the collar and demands to know what room the suspect is in and then, when the hapless busboy tries to say he’s not allowed to give out that information, punches him in the face and asks again; the terrified kid gives him the room number. That’s torture, and it’s plausible when it “works” because it’s being used against someone who hasn’t steeeled themselves to lie, and is just reacting to violence by obeying in order to make the violence stop. (It’s also probably not the only way for the anti-hero to get this information—but the torturer isn’t acting perfectly rationally either; it’s a way of showing a violent world where violence is used to get compliance).

It's mildly plausible that it might work, but even in that scenario, it's not particularly likely, because once the beating starts, the hapless busboy is going to be motivated to give you a location whether he knows the right answer or not, assuming he even understands the question when he's just been punched in the face, and in real life you as the puncher have no way of knowing for sure whether it's right or whether he knows the answer; adding the punches actually increases the odds of getting a false answer, because you've increased the motivation to lie if they don't know. So you're likely to end up running to the wine cellar only to find nobody there, and now you've got zero chance of ever getting correct info from the busboy, because he's also hiding. Or you're stuck dragging the busboy along with you so you can keep punching him whenever you're upset. Violence gets compliance; compliance isn't truth.

So sure, you're in charge of the story, so you get to decide that the busboy does in fact know the answer and did tell your antihero the correct one. Or you can show that your hero did the groundwork to know for a fact that the busboy does have the correct info and isn't prepared or motivated to lie - but at that point it's hard to sell them as the sort of person who'd punch first.

And if you want to show that your hero is violent and not very good at his job, it's plausible to make them punch-happy. But if you want to establish that, it's just as realistic that he will punch the busboy, and the terrified busboy will make something up to make him stop the beating, and he ends up on a wild goose chase, and that makes a better scene and character note anyway. Unless you also have a goal of establishing that torture works to get information, or you're being lazy about your plot, there's no reason to have it work.

(torture doesn't work to get information.)

This comment gets funnier every time I check coal and see it again

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