Acknowledging that torture is not an efficient form of interrogation

[u/Character_Growth_397]

Torture is often shown as an effective way of interrogation, with writers forgetting one key detail: People lie. AAMOF, it's likely that they will lie and give you untrue information to not be tortured

The Last of Us - Joel has an interrogation map where he'd make two different people point to something on a map. If they both pointed the same thing it meant the info was true. Very often this wasn't the case

Mass Effect 2 - Garrus points out that torture is not effective because victims will lie to make the torture stop

[u/ElNakedo]

Not necessarily because you need to still verify the information. Because you don't know who is lying. It just tells you someone is lying or saying whatever to make the pain stop. So you're still stuck with the same problem.

[u/PogoStick1987 → u/ElNakedo]

yeah but that's the point. Joel skipped most of it because he already knew where to go. But in actuality, you can only verify the information if both separately chose the same location. The point of this method would be to keep going until they give in and stick to the same spot. BOTH of them. It's not free of holes obviously, there's a slim chance they could coincidentally point to the same place, but it's more reliable than conventional torture. Especially to people who are neither soldiers nor trained to withstand torture.

[u/boodabomb → u/ElNakedo]

The information verification comes in the form of the second torture victim who knows that the only way to make the pain stop is to give the correct answer.

[u/ElNakedo → u/boodabomb]

That only helps if they actually know it.

[u/boodabomb → u/ElNakedo]

They do. The information he is requesting is the location of their home.

[u/New_Cockroach_505 → u/boodabomb]

Sure. In this scenario. But it also doesn’t help that Joel doesn’t know what’s true. If both of them lie…. Then what?

[u/boodabomb → u/New_Cockroach_505]

Then he tortures them more and asks again. That’s the point, they can’t lie and get away with it. Their answers have to be the same for the suffering to stop.

[u/New_Cockroach_505 → u/boodabomb]

But what if they don’t give it up? If they’re willing to die? Or they even both give the same fake answer?

[u/HourApprehensive7754 → u/New_Cockroach_505]

They clearly weren't willing to die considering they gave him the right location. 

[u/taeerom → u/boodabomb]

Ok, how does he know that they both didn't point just anywhere and it happened to be the same?

If one of them is lying and the other isn't, you are torturing the person that is telling the truth. This means you are teaching them that telling the truth won't make the pain stop. Which will increase the chance of them just resigning completely, not telling you shit until you kill them accidentally.

If you are torturing someone you think knows something they actually don't, you can never verify that they are telling the truth when they are saying they don't know. If only one of them knows the location, their strategy for avoiding the pain would be to point to some place both have some connection to, regardless of it being the place you are looking for.

[u/ElNakedo → u/boodabomb]

Yeah, that works for Joel in Joels particular scenario. It doesn't work in general though unless you have information about what's true. Otherwise you can just have two people saying what they think you want to hear and being tortured endlessly because they keep saying different things.

[u/boodabomb → u/ElNakedo]

… What is the disagreement here? We’re talking about Joel’s scenario and how it works. We’re talking about a man who wants to find a known location and has two torture victims who know that location. I’m not arguing that this method works for every single scenario. But it certainly isn’t a good example of “Acknowledging Torture being depicted as inefficient.” Because it works extremely well in the story and is theoretically pretty sound.

[u/HourApprehensive7754 → u/ElNakedo]

I don't think Joel cares.

He only cares about locating the settlement and saving Ellie, which he did.