Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The visceral reaction of most people against torture is an induced one; it's not something built into our DNA. Throughout history, torture has risen and fallen in social esteem; and has often been used in an official capacity. With that kind of track record, the only way to stop torture is to indoctrinate children against it, yet there is a whole genre of popular entertainment that revels in graphic onscreen torture using the most vile and reprehensible methods; and torture triggers the brain's pleasure centers of sadists, masochists & psychopaths; all small but significant percentages of any population.

This obsession with torture is evolutionarily ambiguous unless the cognitive component explains it: people will consciously choose to torture if the circumstances demanded it. Only an over-civilized and self-deluded people can deny the viability of torture: if the time came, and two men were in a room: one who knew where the bomb was and the other with a pair of pliers, we'd know where that bomb was soon enough; and regardless of society's penalties, the pliers-guy would selflessly choose go to prison in order to provide the life-saving information: it's torture excused by altruism.