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Eugine_Nier comments on Open Thread, October 13 - 19, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Coscott 14 October 2013 01:57AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 October 2013 01:19:14AM 1 point [-]

As far as the other example in that battle goes, the author of the comment doesn't even know whether torture was used and seems to think that there are no psychological tricks that you can play to get information in a short amount of time.

From what I heard, most of said psychological tricks relay on the person you're interrogating not knowing that you're not willing to torture them.

Here on Lesswrong we have AI players who get gatekeepers to let the AI go in two hours of text based communication.

Not reliably. This worked on about half the people.

If you accept that's possible in two hours, do you really think that a professional can't get useful information from a prisioner in a few hours without using torture?

Depending on the prisoner. There are certainly many cases of prisoners who don't talk. If the prisoners are say religious fanatics loyal to their cause, this is certainly very hard.

Comment author: drethelin 18 October 2013 02:21:45AM 2 points [-]

getting half your prisoners to capitulate is still pretty damn good.

Comment author: ChristianKl 18 October 2013 02:03:50AM 0 points [-]

From what I heard, most of said psychological tricks relay on the person you're interrogating not knowing that you're not willing to torture them.

Being able to read bodylanguage very well is also a road to information. You can use Barnum statements to give the subject the impression that you have more knowledge than you really have and then they aren't doing anything wrong if they tell you what you know already.

Depending on the prisoner. There are certainly many cases of prisoners who don't talk. If the prisoners are say religious fanatics loyal to their cause, this is certainly very hard.

In the case in the comment the example was an American soldier who probably doesn't count as religious fanatic. The person who wrote it suggested that the fast transfer of information is evidence of there being torture involved.

It was further evidence for my claim that the person who wrote the supposedly insightful comment didn't research this topic well.

I case wasn't that there certain evidence that torture doesn't work but that the person who wrote the comment isn't familiar with the subject matter and as a result the comment doesn't count as insightful.

Not reliably. This worked on about half the people.

Nothing works 100% reliably.

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