Psychology – Page 16 – a sibilant intake of breath

Soufan on the ineffectiveness of torture

After [redacted by the CIA] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.

This is why the EIT [Enhanced Interrogation Technique] proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.

Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioural science, and [redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.

Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop”.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. 423

Open thread: novel activist tactics

One criticism of the climate activist movement is that it continues to rely on tactics which were either never effective or which have lost effectiveness as opponents of decarbonization have learned to counter them.

This is a central part of the thesis in Micah White’s book The End of Protest, in which he argues in particular that big marches have lost their ability to help.

It’s worth devoting a thread to any new activist tactics. For instance, there is this recent show of solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in British Columbia: Convoys of pipeline protesters slow traffic on Ontario’s busiest highway.

twitter’s an addictive land of trolls

I have written before about the cognitive and emotional (and insomniac) downsides of checking the news too often. It seems worth re-emphasizing how twitter is a worst-case scenario in this regard, at least for people more interested in developments in matters of public interest than developments in the lives of friends and acquaintances, where facebook is untouchable.

With twitter it’s possible to use any internet-connected device to get an endless stream of updates and — crucially — little decisions for as long as you want at any time of day. It’s an exercise perfectly crafted to short-circuit longer term planning, even at the scale of turning off your phone to get a night’s rest before a busy day tomorrow. Every tweet presents the cognitive task of interpreting the content; determining whether it contains any factual, ethical, or political claims; and then evaluating that content in light of what the user believes and what, if anything, they are trying to accomplish through engagement online. Even for fairly passive users, every tweet involves the decision of whether to publicly ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ it, forcing your brain to engage decision-making circuitry more often and immediately than when reading a news article or book. Of course the real addictive prompts come from the social features: the notifications that someone has ‘liked’ or responded to your tweet. That engages all the emotional machinery which we use to socialize with others, maintain or alter our beliefs about the world, and protect out own self-esteem. It also embodies the slot machine logic of unpredictable and variable responses to the same action, ranging from someone amazing expressing agreement or saying something clever in response to your message to the depredations of the most hateful trolls.

Twitter often exposes me to content which I subsequently wish I could unsee, including particularly blockheaded claims and arguments which tend to re-emerge with a sense of frustration and anger in the shower the next day. The platform isn’t entirely without virtues — it can provide useful or at least engaging up-to-the-minute information and analysis on ongoing events, it allows users to engage directly with people who would otherwise be inaccessible, and perhaps it does sometimes direct people to good quality information they wouldn’t otherwise see. At the same time, it’s the venue for the least pleasant interactions in my life and it’s a repository of almost limitless idiocy and unkindness.

I have resolved for now to “cut off the time wasters quickly. They can’t be won over and whatever value there is in publicly refuting their arguments doesn’t justify the time and stress commitment”. There’s really no alternative strategy possible, since the platform is so full of people who (a) aren’t debating in good faith (b) can never be convinced or won over and (c) only get nastier with repeated interaction. They can take decades of meticulously collected, analyzed, and reviewed scientist and ‘refute‘ it with a silly accusation about the scientist or the person referencing them, a conspiracy theory, or an disreputable source which is nonetheless equally accessible online. Maybe very early on engaging with them helps draw some of the undecideds who are silently observing toward well-supported beliefs, but that almost certainly ceases to be true once your back and forth with that person has become one of your top ten present-moment sources of annoyance and irritability.

Blair King’s weak political reasoning

Blair King has added another post to our back and forth discussion about climate change politics: Let’s face it hypocrisy matters in the pipeline and climate change debates.

He’s still discussing his claim that people who advocate for decarbonization while still relying on fossil fuels are hypocrites:

There is no denying that an activist who claims that we should not use fossil fuels while wearing a gortex jacket and driving a car to the protest is indeed a hypocrite.

He’s still wrong, because he still fails to grasp how the call for decarbonization is about changing how things are now done. It’s a pretty basic point. If it were already possible to live without fossil fuels, the kind of global transformation that I and other activists are calling for would have already happened and not be necessary. Saying that you’re a hypocrite to be stuck in a bad system while calling for a better one is a bit like saying that we need to keep being dependent on fossil fuels because that’s the bad situation we’re already in (see: previously).

Dr. King argues that his position is valid because in public opinion surveys other people agree that people who use fossil fuels are less credible in calling for their phaseout. That’s the nature of fallacies: they are superficially or emotionally convincing. People have an intuitive sense that an anvil should fall faster than a feather on the airless surface of the Moon, but it just isn’t so.

He argues:

Climate change and pipelines represent global issues that require global solutions. Because they are such big issues a lot of activists claim that their personal efforts won’t make a difference and that any change will need to be implemented by governments and businesses. This response is a cop-out. In essence, these activists are off-loading the responsibility to show leadership and instead demanding that government force a change in behaviour on the population.

In doing so, he continues to misunderstand the nature of large-scale political change. He’s buying into an atomized liberal capitalist notion that what matters most is individual consumer choice and then when all those little actions get added up they should produce the kind of change people want in aggregate. This totally misses how people aren’t free to choose the global-scale systems that underlie their lives. You can’t opt out of the global energy system. The only way to change it is through politics, and particularly through the kind of efforts activists are making to discourage fossil fuel use, discourage new fossil fuel projects, and encourage the emergence of climate-safe forms of energy.

He very misleadingly claims:

If the activists are successful in implementing their preferred policies then every citizen will be affected and the hardest hit will be the poorest among us.

This misses how decarbonization has the potential to vastly decrease inequalities in energy access and lifestyles around the world, as we move from an extractivist system where fossil fuels are extracted where they are abundant to produce goods and energy to serve people where they are rich to one where people everywhere are increasingly able to produce and use similar amounts of energy generated in ways that don’t harm the climate. The need to address extreme poverty globally is why only a contraction and convergence based approach to decarbonization is politically plausible: everyone needs to cut fossil fuel use, but at the same time there must be more equality between the richest and poorest. Furthermore, Dr. King misses how the people most vulnerable to climate change are those with the fewest resources, making a global deal where we trade some fossil-fuel driven affluence for more equality and planetary stability still more appealing for them.

Another odd thing about Dr. King is that he keeps asserting the superiority of his expertise as a scientist, while the subjects he is actually commenting on are essentially politics and ethics. He has no special claim to expertise in those fields, and the quality of his arguments suggests that his self-assessment of his level of proficiency is faulty.

There’s probably not much point in continuing to engage with him. The broad strategy of climate change deniers and delayers is just to maintain the false sense that what we ought to do remains unknown. It’s straight from Frank Luntz’s infamous memo and the tobacco industry’s “doubt is our product“. Wrap that up with a few legitimate claims about why the transition to decarbonization is hard (which decarbonization activists nearly all accept, aside from a few techno-cornucopians) and you can produce what appears superficially to be a meaningful critique of climate change activism, but which is really resentment intermixed with excuses to preserve the status quo, with no credible proposal for addressing the planetary crisis we have created.

Knowledge and interrogation tradecraft

While I was in the United States, I received an urgent call from [assistant U.S. attorney David] Kelley. “Ali, you need to get to Yemen right away,” he said. “We’ve finally signed the agreement with the Yemenis allowing us to interrogate [Jamal al-] Badawi, but there’s no one who can interrogate him.”

“What about Bob and George?” I asked, “They’re both first-class interrogators and are capable of handling the interrogation.”

“They can’t,” Kelley replied. “The Yemenis gave their own interrogation reports to our team, and Bob, George, and everyone else read it.” I understood the problem: a person reading the existing interrogation report would not know how the Yemenis had conducted their sessions—whether they had used reliable methods or had obtained information by torturing the detainee, for example. But the information would be in their minds, affecting their questions and their judgment, and thus any information gained would be potentially tainted and unreliable. It’s a risk we were not prepared to take, as it could jeopardize the prosecutions. “You’re the only team member who hasn’t read the report,” Kelley added.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll leave as soon as possible.”

“Whatever you do,” he added, “don’t read anything about Badawi from the Yemenis before you interrogate him.”

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. 222

Control in an interrogation

An interrogation is a mind game in which you have to use your wits and knowledge of the detainee to convince or steer him to cooperate, and essential to this is to show that you are in control. If a suspect thinks that you lack knowledge of what he’s talking about or sees that you are flustered, enraged, or pressed for time—these would be signs that he was winning and shouldn’t cooperate. We kept the fake smiles plastered on our faces and let Abu Jandal speak.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. xvi

Aimen Dean on “How to win”

As Labib al-Nahhas, a senior and moderate voice within the Syrian Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, put it: ‘The Islamic State’s extremist ideology can be defeated only through a home-grown Sunni alternative — with the term “moderate” defined not by CIA handlers but by Syrians themselves.

Moderate imams — whether in the community or visiting prisons — are not going to impress young men already halfway to jihad. Islamic academics and theologians cannot alone formulate counter-messaging against al-Qaeda and ISIS. They don’t understand what makes these groups tick.

To make an impact, to chip away at the certainty which binds such groups, requires us to recruit respected Salafi fundamentalists, men whose ideological outlook is close to that of the terror groups but who eschew their violence. Men who have already travelled that route and then seen a better way can be precious allies. They can help detect and disrupt radicalization; they can help rehabilitate those either tempted by or convicted or conspiracies. But they have to be credible, and their work can only flourish in a society where tolerance and diversity are championed. A rise in hate crimes; a resurgence of the far right on both sides of the Atlantic; a sense that police don’t afford equal protection to all; discrimination in the workplace — these are just a few of the factors that will undercut any efforts to counter radicalization. There’s a great danger that in Europe, maybe even in the United States, too, Islamist and right-wing extremists will feed off each other in a vicious cycle.

Dean, Aimen with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. Nine Lives: My time as the West’s top spy inside al-Qaeda. 2018. p. 398

Jihadism from frustration with politics

Sadly, many Muslims would subscribe to this perspective [of Islam in conflict with the rest of the world] rather than acknowledge the crisis within Islam. They think the conflicts ravaging their lands stem from a Western conspiracy to steal their natural resources. So perfidious is that conspiracy that many Muslims even blame terror attacks in the West, from 9/11 to the November 2015 gun rampage in Paris, on the CIA and Mossad. They interpret these attacks as wicked plots to put Western boots on the ground and drones in the air across the Middle East.

This persecution complex is the outgrowth of a sense of hopelessness among millions who see their lives are bereft of opportunity and their social environments as stacked against them. They think politics is useless and, unable to change the system, they set out to smash it. Muslin states are home to a proliferation of non-state actors because the state is held in contempt, is corrupt and frequently oppressive. Jihadism has become the Muslim version of anarchy — on steroids.

Dean, Aimen with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank. Nine Lives: My time as the West’s top spy inside al-Qaeda. 2018. p. 382–3

Utilitarianism and photography

Despite being looked down upon for it by more sophisticated philosophers, I see a lot of value in the utilitarian idea that the right course of action can often be discerned by considering what will produce the greatest good and the least harm among the most people. It’s not a philosophy that answers all ethical questions by itself, but I think it’s healthy to try to focus on the actual life experiences of those involved rather than purely on abstract principles or one’s own preferences and judgment.

My appreciation for utilitarianism is revealed in how I do my photography. If it’s possible to create value for someone, even if it isn’t me and even if I won’t be paid for it, I will nearly always choose to do so when allowed. That’s why my photos are released on Flickr under a Creative Commons license: to empower people to get good quality files and put them to a wide range of non-commercial uses without the need for payment or permission (my usage guide explains how). It’s also why when I am doing a commercial photoshoot I think about what will be valuable and useful to the subjects and others, as well as the client paying me. When taking institutional headshots, for instance, I try to get a variety of shots in different postures and with different backgrounds, even if the client only needs a single consistent look. I then send the collections to the subjects for their own use. It takes more effort from me and probably leads to uncredited use, but it adds to the total amount of value arising from my photographic work. The same goes for sharing photos of events like conferences, rallies, and protests.

I’m somewhat skeptical about the idea of ownership generally, or at least I think people need to remain mindful about how artificial it is. Whether it’s physical or intellectual property, ownership isn’t a fundamental property of the universe, ethics, or human society (though that view is probably most justified with regard to your own physical body). Rather it’s a set of protections states choose to provide, either because it’s consistent with their governing philosophy, because that’s what citizens want or are used to, because they are pressured by other states, or because they think it’s economically efficient or growth-promoting. In my photography I think of myself as a lot like the New Horizons space probe during the one short high-speed flyby of Pluto which was the main justification for the mission. I’m at a particular place and time with instruments that can record what is happening around me. By putting in the effort to document those things effectively (and beautifully if possible) and sharing the data widely I have the potential to be considered a good observer who didn’t squander the opportunities afforded to them. That’s why I especially object when clients want complete control over the pictures I take for them when those pictures (a) don’t reveal anything that’s unproblematic to make public and (b) have some value for other people. Needlessly cutting down the scope of who gets access destroys much of the value that could arise from the photography, and thus much of my motivation and feeling of accomplishment for undertaking it.

The just world assumption

The popular aphorism ‘charity begins at home’ brings both sets of beliefs to the fore in a lucid way. Taken together, these beliefs work to diminish empathy on the part of the population by stressing the existence of deep and non-contingent differences between wealthy citizens and those living in other parts of the world. They also provide support for the ‘just world assumption’ in international life. According to research from experimental psychology, people have a natural propensity to believe that the world is a just place: one in which virtue is rewarded and in which innocent people do not suffer. When events in the world confound this expectation, and action cannot be taken to address this state of affairs, a common response is to blame the victim for his or her misfortune. In the case of extreme poverty, this propensity sometimes leads people to assert that those living in this condition are lazy, immoral or corrupt. Both moral nationalism and the idea of charity reinforce this impression by giving support to the notion that the material order corresponds to a wider moral hierarchy – one in which those who are worthy succeed, and in which those who are not depend upon the charity or goodwill of others.

Gabriel, Iason. On Affluence and Poverty: Morality, Motivation and Practice in a Global Age. (DPhil thesis) 2013 p. 162