Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[--Pete]

Hi,

Right, and as the person who made the claim that someone could resist the torture it is on him to prove his case.

Yes. But given that the Red Cross does not, AFAIK, teach classes at the local Y in torture survival, it might just be hard to find anyone who has had such training *and* is free to speak of it. OTOH, there may just not be anyone like that at all.

As it stands every reported case that has tried to prove what he states has shown the opposite. Anecdote or not, enough of them added together effect the probability of finding an alternate proof.

Not really. The a priory probability of finding someone capable of withstanding torture for a long time is very small (if not zero). Picking people pretty much at random and finding out they are not torture resistant does not add anything to the equation. It is like debating if there is a case of smallpox out there. We know that smallpox has been effectively eradicated. So, we assign a very small number to the probability of a case being found. We do that not from sampling, but from exterior information. Then, if we do sample, we are not surprised, nor do we adjust our estimate, if we find no cases. That is what we predicted. Only if our sample size gets large enough to cast doubt on our original prediction (in the case of smallpox, that would be nearly 100% sampling) or if we get a positive test do we adjust our probabilities. Or, at least, that's my interpretation of the gospel according to Saint Bayes ;)

--Pete