nbachris2788

In case you don't know, the "Ticking Time Bomb Theory", or TTBT for short, is the idea that torture should be used in extreme scenarios where a terrorist attack is only hours away and the mastermind behind it has been captured. Proponents believe that in such a case, torture should be allowed in order to prevent the imminent attack.

Never mind that this is a theory that seems to regard "24" as a documentary, but let's think logically for a minute here. Everybody knows that information gained from torture is even more worthless than internet gossip. Let's suppose you're a captured mastermind behind an attack on U.S. soil that is about to happen in a day. You're waterboarded, and after a few seconds, you give up and tell them (falsely) that there are planes headed towards the Sears Tower. How much time do you think is going to pass between your moment of "confession" and the moment the authorities realize that you're lying? Enough to get those torturers off your back and allow the real attack to succeed?

The problem with torture is that it creates an incentive to talk, not talk truthfully. There's no way for the torturers to know if anything the confessor's saying is true, and in a time-compressed scenario such as the one set up in the TTBT, there is even more incentive for the tortured party to say anything that will cause enough of a delay for the attack to succeed.