It's even possible to torture someone who's immune to fear?

[Conradine]

I was thinking...

torture is not about pain, it's about fear. Fear of pain, fear of death, of disfigurement / mutilation ecc. It's perfectly possible to torture someone with little to no physical pain ( think about fake executions ).

So, if someone immune to fear is tortured, is that even torture?
All the psychological suffering, trauma and distress are nullified.

And, it's that kind of "torture" really an evil action, or it's akin to "torture" a virtual doll or a videogame character?

[TRH]

I'm not sure, in no small part because I don't know if we can model the psychology of a being without fear. If they still feel pain, then they might be convinced to do things they don't want to because they don't want that pain, and that's probably not a function of "fear," as such, just the rational certainty of something unpleasant.

I am sure torture would be evil regardless.

[Fyraltari]

I think that while psychological torture may rely on fear (or not), physical torture rely on the victim wanting the pain to stop.

You don’t need to feel fear to find the sensation of, for example, having your feet shoved into a furnace deeply unpleasant.

[Synesthesy]

Miko and O-Chul were able not to talk and they were ready to die, so we have at least 2 good examples. And even Xykon and Redcloak seemed to be aware of this.

So the think I say is that the creature immune to fear will rationally choose if they want to endure or not, and they will choose from the very beginning and nothing will change this. Just like Miko did.
Said that, it is still one of the most evil thing you can do to a living being.

[dancrilis]

Depends on what you mean 'immune to fear'.

You can't really torture the typical mindless zombie for instance but you could torture mindless vermin.

Torture is also not really about fear - torture for information might have an element of that, but torture for boredom (pulling the legs of a spider etc) doesn't actually require the spider to fear you.

Seperately just because someone is 'immune to fear' and we extend that past fear effects that doesn't make them immune to regret, shame, grief, a sense of duty etc - they might not crack from fear but they might crack from grief if you are targeting people they care about, or they might know that your aims are bad but that their quest is more important and that they need to hands for it so they might crack from a sense of duty to a wider mission etc.

It is all about knowing your subject.

[King of Nowhere]

i'd think immunity to fear would be a great boost for resisting torture, but it wouldn't make it an automatic success. even if you are not afraid, even if you can't be broken pshycologically, you still would rather not be in pain.

in fact, the single most important thing about resisting torture is your motivation. most people who resisted torture were trying to protect the lives of their loved ones, or they were doing so in the name of a cause they strongly believed in.
in the end, "do you care enough about this thing to endure pain for it?" is much more important than "are you afraid of being in pain, or do you just find the thing inconvenient?"

[KorvinStarmast]

I was thinking..

There are two pretty good books about dealing with torture and abuse that I can recommend.
When Hell Was In Session.

Scars and Stripes
I met the author of that book in person a few times. I got a signed edition of his original release, same book: the original title was Before Honor. His publisher, for whatever reason, decided that it needed a new title, and so it became Scars and Stripes.

There are others (to include anything that Stockdale wrote about it) but getting into the mind set of someone who has faced it may help see that fear may not be the operative issue at hand.
I think both authors would observe that 'immunity to fear' isn't in the cards.

Anyway, those are some "how to resist torture" bits in there but let's get back to the 'game' style issues that are relevant to Order of the Stick-verse situations like the one that O-Chul faced with Redcloak when the latter was certain that O-Chul knew something and tried a wide variety of techniques to force the knowledge out of him (even though we all knew, out of universe, that O-Chul didn't know what Reddie wanted to learn from him). (Strips 0544 through 0547)

Fear effects, like a dragons fear effect or the fear spell, is what immunity to fear would tend to deal with. What Redcloak was trying to do was I think something different. They had figured out that O-Chul was hard to break using 'conventional' coercion techniques, so he was trying to play the lying game that an interrogator in that position will often try: assert the falsehood that somehow, the victim of the torture has power, or a choice, in the next "if you don't do this I'll do that threat."
As O-Chul correctly observes, he is unable to stop Redcloak from killing the Azurites regardless of what answer he gives. The actual power of life and death over those prisoners is only in Redcloak's hands, and he's playing a psychological game in attempting to frame the situation as though O-Chul has agency in that regard.

[Anymage]

Xykon didn't really expect to gather any information from O'Chul, he just inflicted pain for the lulz. It is indeed physically possible.

Physical torture is probably useless for gathering information from someone who's immune to fear. Even if they might rationally think that the information is not worth whatever damage you're going to inflict on them, even if the information is entirely useless, the simple fact that you're trying to inflict pain on them is likely to set them against you. It could be completely mundane like what TV show they watched last night; the fact that you have them on the rack means that they're likely sure that nothing good will come of answering honestly.

Psychological torture? I have a hunch that if O'Chul did know anything about the other gates, threatening the lives of azurite citizens could have made him crack. This requires knowing the target's psychological weak points instead of just inflicting pain in the hopes that they'll say something to make it stop.

[skim172]

Torture isn't about the victim; it's about the torturer. At a fundamental level, the intent is to fulfill a need of the torturer - perhaps power or adrenaline or likely some complicated bundle of deeply-rooted psychological and emotional bits that can't really be easily explained.

Up front, I'll say I don't believe in using torture for any reason. Including to extract information.

Torture in general is about inflicting pain in order to fulfill a need. In some cases, that need may involve having the victim fear you. In that case - no, torture wouldn't really achieve their purpose. But they won't stop the torture, regardless. Torture is fundamentally emotionally and psychologically driven, and it's about the torturer's needs, not the victim. Frustration would only escalate their need.

Broadly, however, a torturer may be looking for something else entirely. They may be seeking to inflict pain - in which case, fear is irrelevant. They may want the sense of holding power over another. Or any number of reasons - rarely is it very clear-cut.

But my main point is that it's entirely about the torturer. The victim is mostly incidental.

Torture to extract information from the victim - or "enhanced interrogation" - it's more complicated, because there are external parties and motivations involved (an interrogator for the state usually doesn't choose who to torture). But I would still say that the torture is mainly about the torturer's psychology. They also have very complex emotions and motivations tied into the act of torture, and I would say they also have needs they are trying to fulfill. At the very least, we can say they need a sense of having fulfilled their responsibility to the state. (Reading psychiatric notes on people who've conducted torture for a state or organization is ... well, interesting, though I wouldn't recommend it.)

And for me, that's a central problem for "enhanced interrogation." Torture does not have an objective end condition. Torture continues until the torturer feels their need is fulfilled. This is an inherently subjective goal. And that poses a challenge when the goal is to obtain information from another person - external to the subjective mind.

For example, let's say someone is being tortured to extract the names of their collaborators. Before the torture has started, they say they give up and blurt out a bunch of names. But the torturer does not stop. Because the torturer cannot accept at face value that the victim isn't lying. Torture victims will provide false information - they will say whatever they think might save them from more pain, whether or not it's true. And the longer the torture continues, the more false information they will give as pain and emotion take over.

So there is no clear "We got it!" success condition. No objective status that can be obviously fulfilled. The torturer is the judge - making a subjective determination of when they feel the right information has been extracted. The torturer will continue the torture until they are satisfied that the information obtained is sufficient - i.e. until their subjective sense of need is fulfilled.

Which is the paradox of "enhanced interrogation". You apply duress to extract information, but because people give false information under duress, you cannot trust that information. So you apply more duress to confirm that information, but now their information is even more unreliable, so you apply more duress - and so on.

The conceit of enhanced interrogation is that you can find an equilibrium - a point where you can apply just enough duress to someone without degrading the quality of the information you can extract. And while that may be possible in individual cases, I would argue that hoping to systematize that to apply across all people is a fantasy.

In reality, outside of Hollywood, information gained via enhanced interrogation is rarely considered reliable on its own. At best, you use it to corroborate information gained by other channels. A stolen document with a list of names is much more reliable than some names a desperate individual screams out in suffering, among many other names.

I personally think that the idea of enhanced interrogation appeals to us because it fits our modern sense of morality. We have this notion that "being bad" is more effective. It's all well being nice and good, but if you want to succeed, you'll have to cheat. Do something morally questionable. It speaks to our concept of good and evil as a balance - a balance with give-and-take. Liam Neeson is a nice upstanding family man - until he needs to rescue his daughter, when he becomes a vigilante badass. Likewise, when you really need that criminal to confess, you might have to knock him around with the cameras off.

Of course, in reality, Liam Neeson would've been immediately killed and/or arrested. And in reality, regular interrogation methods have an incredibly high success rate. You know the famous "good cop, bad cop" routine? Most of the time, it's not even necessary. Put someone in a tiny cell, stressed out, worrying about what's going to happen to them, and then an authoritative friendly-looking person comes along, gives them some coffee, and calmly asks them questions - they'll want to do what that person says. In fact, we have the opposite problem - that people have a tendency to give false confessions. False confessions aren't just crooked cops and lying DAs forcing signatures (not always, at least) - people are very susceptible to saying something isn't true because they think that's what the questioner wants.

People are much less mentally resilient than you might think. So what does torture add? It adds a great deal of uncertainty and unreliability to the information you gain. (And of course, there's the whole "torture is immoral" thing). I would argue it's not worth it.


Sorry, went off on a tangent there. TLDR - I think torture is bad?

[Conradine]

Torture does not have an objective end condition. Torture continues until the torturer feels their need is fulfilled. This is an inherently subjective goal.

"Give me the password of your Facebook account. As soon I have access to the profile, I stop the beating."

I would say the whole point is if the torturer can, or cannot, verify the answers he's provided and how much time it takes to verify them.

[Kittenwolf]

Yes. You obviously can still torture someone who is immune to fear.
Some kinds of things might not work anymore, but immunity to fear doesn't make you immune to pain for example.
It might mean that you can more rationally decide whether not giving up what they want from you is worth the price, and it does make you immune to *intimidation*, but it definitely doesn't make you immune to torture.

[Malloon]

It's a good question. I think yes. Someone using torture in the sense of getting someone to do something by inflicting pain can find fear very useful, since it's an additional motivating factor on top of not liking to feel pain itself. But since in those moments where the torture is paused (and there is no pain) there is nothing directly motivating the victim to act (since they neither feel pain, nor do they fear it), you more or less have to be actively torturing them with the promise of relief the moment you get what you want in order to motivate them.

That is, unless you classify not wanting to feel further pain while being tortured as the same thing as not wanting to feel pain in the future while not being tortured... I mean, in both cases it's being motivated by future events. I think we can reasonable equate those two emotions.

In that case, I don't think I'd classify the "not wanting to feel pain (in the future)" emotion as "fear of pain". Taking myself as an example, I'm not generally afraid of pain (though I'm sure an expert could make me). I once had a prolonged wisdom tooth removal in which the painkillers ran out that I had the option of pausing and coming back to, and I decided to just get it over with. I didn't want to feel the pain, but I didn't feel scared either. If I have the option (because there's no point) I'd always decide to skip pain, but not out of fear. It's more of a general dislike.

So, in conclusion, yes. An individual who isn't afraid of pain can still dislike the idea of it being in their present or future, so it can be used, insofar torture can be "useful" at all, of course.

Up front, I'll say I don't believe in using torture for any reason. Including to extract information.

I don't believe it was necessary to say this, but with topics like this it certainly can't do any harm to occasionally ground ourselves morally while speaking in hypotheticals. Ditto for me.

Torture isn't about the victim; it's about the torturer. At a fundamental level, the intent is to fulfill a need of the torturer - perhaps power or adrenaline or likely some complicated bundle of deeply-rooted psychological and emotional bits that can't really be easily explained.

Torture in general is about inflicting pain in order to fulfill a need. In some cases, that need may involve having the victim fear you. In that case - no, torture wouldn't really achieve their purpose. But they won't stop the torture, regardless. Torture is fundamentally emotionally and psychologically driven, and it's about the torturer's needs, not the victim. Frustration would only escalate their need.

Broadly, however, a torturer may be looking for something else entirely. They may be seeking to inflict pain - in which case, fear is irrelevant. They may want the sense of holding power over another. Or any number of reasons - rarely is it very clear-cut.

But my main point is that it's entirely about the torturer. The victim is mostly incidental.

Eh. In the sense that every action is motivated at some level by an emotion, sure, but I disagree there needs to be a direct (surface) reason for someone to engage in it. Something is generally wrong with a torturer, yes, but that can just as easily be a lack of something holding them back (such as a conviction that their actions are moral, or a simple lack of empathy) as it can be a sick drive to torture. Society and culture can create atrocities just as easily, and in my opinion, more easily, as faulty wiring (either through nature or (a lack of) nurture).

Torture to extract information from the victim - or "enhanced interrogation" - it's more complicated, because there are external parties and motivations involved (an interrogator for the state usually doesn't choose who to torture). But I would still say that the torture is mainly about the torturer's psychology. They also have very complex emotions and motivations tied into the act of torture, and I would say they also have needs they are trying to fulfill. At the very least, we can say they need a sense of having fulfilled their responsibility to the state. (Reading psychiatric notes on people who've conducted torture for a state or organization is ... well, interesting, though I wouldn't recommend it.)

While not necessary in order to torture, yeah, a person doing so for a living willingly raises justified implications.

And for me, that's a central problem for "enhanced interrogation." Torture does not have an objective end condition. Torture continues until the torturer feels their need is fulfilled. This is an inherently subjective goal. And that poses a challenge when the goal is to obtain information from another person - external to the subjective mind.

Personally it was always the crimes against humanity that put me off it, but you know, I get where you're coming from. I kid, I kid.

For example, let's say someone is being tortured to extract the names of their collaborators. Before the torture has started, they say they give up and blurt out a bunch of names. But the torturer does not stop. Because the torturer cannot accept at face value that the victim isn't lying. Torture victims will provide false information - they will say whatever they think might save them from more pain, whether or not it's true. And the longer the torture continues, the more false information they will give as pain and emotion take over.

So there is no clear "We got it!" success condition. No objective status that can be obviously fulfilled. The torturer is the judge - making a subjective determination of when they feel the right information has been extracted. The torturer will continue the torture until they are satisfied that the information obtained is sufficient - i.e. until their subjective sense of need is fulfilled.

Which is the paradox of "enhanced interrogation". You apply duress to extract information, but because people give false information under duress, you cannot trust that information. So you apply more duress to confirm that information, but now their information is even more unreliable, so you apply more duress - and so on.

The conceit of enhanced interrogation is that you can find an equilibrium - a point where you can apply just enough duress to someone without degrading the quality of the information you can extract. And while that may be possible in individual cases, I would argue that hoping to systematize that to apply across all people is a fantasy.

Quite. The only way torture ever works, if you can call it that, is if you have a reliable method of quickly verifying the information. The example of a password for a computer has already been given. Well, the other way it "works" if you need to get a confession from someone to legally execute them. For anything related to law enforcement, friendly (if stern) interrogation works far, far better, though that can also be abused to generate false confessions.

In reality, outside of Hollywood, information gained via enhanced interrogation is rarely considered reliable on its own. At best, you use it to corroborate information gained by other channels. A stolen document with a list of names is much more reliable than some names a desperate individual screams out in suffering, among many other names.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has an extreme distaste for how the film industry likes to rely on torture as an easy plot device. I would love to see a film or a series where the "heroes" get information through torture, and are then led on a complete wild goose chase.

I personally think that the idea of enhanced interrogation appeals to us because it fits our modern sense of morality. We have this notion that "being bad" is more effective. It's all well being nice and good, but if you want to succeed, you'll have to cheat. Do something morally questionable. It speaks to our concept of good and evil as a balance - a balance with give-and-take. Liam Neeson is a nice upstanding family man - until he needs to rescue his daughter, when he becomes a vigilante badass. Likewise, when you really need that criminal to confess, you might have to knock him around with the cameras off.

I'm not sure it has much to do with a modern sense of morality, especially when looking how torture was used and condoned historically. With those film examples I think it comes down much more to the idea of paying evil unto evil being oh so satisfying - we like revenge, and these guys, ha, they've darn well earned it. You know.

Of course, in reality, Liam Neeson would've been immediately killed and/or arrested. And in reality, regular interrogation methods have an incredibly high success rate. You know the famous "good cop, bad cop" routine? Most of the time, it's not even necessary. Put someone in a tiny cell, stressed out, worrying about what's going to happen to them, and then an authoritative friendly-looking person comes along, gives them some coffee, and calmly asks them questions - they'll want to do what that person says. In fact, we have the opposite problem - that people have a tendency to give false confessions. False confessions aren't just crooked cops and lying DAs forcing signatures (not always, at least) - people are very susceptible to saying something isn't true because they think that's what the questioner wants.

People are much less mentally resilient than you might think. So what does torture add? It adds a great deal of uncertainty and unreliability to the information you gain. (And of course, there's the whole "torture is immoral" thing). I would argue it's not worth it.

I'm commenting as I go, so I won't go back and update my thoughts, but I'm glad you brought this up too. I'd just add is that the method often used is the person being confronted is told they've gotten themselves into quite a bit of trouble, but the interviewer can help get them out of it. They can help themselves - by cooperating. Sometimes this is even true.

Sorry, went off on a tangent there. TLDR - I think torture is bad?

What, really? How lame are you?


Now perhaps to lighten the mood: How awesome is O'Chull, right? Can't wait to see what happened to him. I doubt he'll be out of the story for long.

[Lange]

Now I'm just imagining a paladin who keeps telling himself during the torture that he'll spill the beans next time to stop the pain - then the torture stops, the torturer comes in to ask questions - and the paladin has no reason to talk any more. The current pain is gone, and the future pain doesn't scare him. So he refuses to talk, the torture resumes, rinse and repeat.
But I guess you could get around that by devising a torture method that allows him to speak during the torture.
You could also conceive of a paladin who holds through the torture by
-keeping a mantra that it will stop momentarily
-having no fear that it won't (even though that is the most likely outcome)

[dps]

There are torture methods that don't involve either fear or pain, but rather on confusing or disorienting the victim. For example, sleep deprivation--after enough time with no sleep, your brain stops working properly. A skilled torturer might be able to convince a person who has been deprived of sleep that the torturer is his mother, or best friend, or commanding officer, and that he should tell him everything.