Help me find a recent blog post about torture

October 29, 2007 11:54 AM

I remember reading a blog post recently (probably 2 weeks ago, a month at the most) where the author said allowing torture is a bad idea because most people are personally opposed to torturing and would be unwilling to participate, so the only people willing to do the torturing are sadists who get pleasure out of torturing people. Therefore, you get a lot of punitive sadistic torture of little actual strategic value. Anyone remember reading this recently?

I'm pretty sure it was one of the big name liberal blogs that I saw it on (Yglesias, Drum, TPM, Ezra Klein, etc...) but I could be mistaken. I use Google Desktop and have tried search of any of the relevant terms, but couldn't find it. There may have also been the Nietzsche quote about the abyss, but I'm not sure about this.

I'm trying to find it because of a recent discussion with a friend about hazing and the blog post about torture made an argument I was interested in showing him.

posted by davidstandaford to computers & internet (12 comments total)

I read something similar today.
posted by googly at 12:00 PM on October 29, 2007

Googly: Not what I was looking for, but a good article. The thing I remember reading was only 3 or 4 paragraphs, and made the simple and narrow point, that only sadists will actually be willing to torture, hence if you decide to torture the people carrying it out will be motivated by their sadism.
posted by davidstandaford at 12:15 PM on October 29, 2007

Your description reminded me of this post from The Slactivist, featuring such quotes as

Which leaves only one reliable group of people who can be counted on to perform this duty: Those who enjoy it. These people -- the sociopaths, the sadists, those who find cruelty sexually gratifying -- must be deputized, empowered and rewarded for their work.

but the timing doesn't match your description, since that entry's from October 2006. Good reading, though.
posted by leahwrenn at 12:37 PM on October 29, 2007

I haven't read the article, but I'm reminded of some material from an introductory psychology course. If I remember right, a study showed that it was no trouble at all getting people to administer painful electric shocks to others when directed to do so by an authority figure. This author of this idea doesn't sound too well informed.
posted by jon1270 at 12:41 PM on October 29, 2007

I haven't read the blog you mention either, but I too immediately thought of the Milgram Experiment.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 12:53 PM on October 29, 2007

You are probably thinking of this WaPo blog post from Tom Ricks that republished an e-mail exchange by four ex-military guys from two weeks ago, or someone's take on it.
posted by dhartung at 1:13 PM on October 29, 2007

Is it this blogpost by Yglesias? Excerpt:

So, consequently, once you adopt routine torture as a matter of policy you're soon enough going to find that your torturers -- not the Bushes and Cheneys and Yoos but the people who actually need to get their hands dirty -- are going to be people inclined toward sadism. Normal people aren't going to want to be professional torturers, and the ranks of professional torturers are going to be filled with people who like torturing.

posted by ethorson at 1:46 PM on October 29, 2007

Thanks ethorson. I thought it was Yglesias and I had searched his site, but I only read the first couple sentences of that post and didn't realize it was the one I was looking for. Yay metafilter!
posted by davidstandaford at 3:09 PM on October 29, 2007

It seems to be a rather weak argument. One could also claim that the ranks of soldiers would be filled with people who like killing.
posted by JackFlash at 3:38 PM on October 29, 2007

I think it's a strong argument, there was a good article called Torture's Long Shadow that explains even Russia has had to prohibit torture several times through it's history because over and over it had led to a degradation of intelligence. To quote "When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists." I like the argument as it's a practical "real world" example of the problems in condoning torture.
posted by bobo123 at 10:07 PM on October 29, 2007

I think everyone seems to be ignoring Milgram's experiment wherein which it was found that performing torture was very easy for most people if they were under the direction of an authority figure.
posted by ptm at 12:17 AM on October 30, 2007

That opinion has been proven false repeatedly. It's an example of the Fundamental Attribution Error. You should reference Zimbardo and Milgram
posted by doppleradar at 7:08 AM on October 30, 2007