I used to think I'd hold out well under torture until I had gastroscopy without anaesthetic. It was like being attacked by the alien facehugger. A rigid metal tube down the esophagus provoking the suffocation reflex (despite airflow to lungs) for 5mins which felt like 5 weeks. I was an absolute mess until they gave me nitrous gas for the colonoscopy, then it was relatively painless intoxication.
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Also you get a sense of the terror inflicted by waterboarding.
I have had several brain surgeries and at some point in the midst of that I got meningitis. The pain that I experienced in the emergency room while they were trying to get me stable enough for transport reached into the deepest recesses of everything I ever thought I was and changed me on a fundamental level that is still incomprehensible. In between the unconsciousness and the involuntary screaming simply because my mouth was open I remember clearly thinking that torture would be easier because there would at least be someone to blame. At some point you'll say anything because you lack the sentience to seed thought.
I've also watched a lot of police interrogations and false confessions are all predicated on not having consulted a lawyer who can warn you about interrogation techniques that are designed for the purpose of fulfilling a predetermined or convenient narrative.
Maybe you won't confess or sell anybody out exactly but you will absolutely say anything a trained interrogator wants given enough time or pain.
In star trek original series dagger of the mind there is a machine that can erase and modify memories. It is kind of a disturbing episode
What are we but a collection of memories? Not much. A body, some desires, occasional suffering and joy.
The memories give context to everything else. Change them, and you change everything.
This is why my chronic illness is so terrifying. It's in my brain. Literal brain damage. It's being treated, but I wake up every day with a low lying terror that I have forgotten something important.
The trouble with tribbles, the revenge!
Unfriendly reminder, and absolutely unfun fact, that torture's entire point is to break a person's will so they'll say and do anything the torturer wants. So, if you can withstand days or just a few seconds is completely irrelevant. Even if you give up right away before the torture even starts, you'd be tortured anyways, because it's not about the cognitive and rational surrender, it's about the visceral subconscious surrender of agency to another's will. Disregarding all rationality.
Indeed. I think I would be trying to escape so hard I'd pull my hand off or something before I'd withstand torture.
They unlock your system and are now one more step away from viewing your entire browsing history.
Good luck gettin anything useful out of my browsing history. Just millions of random queries about anything... an endless stream of consciousness that go nowhere... and porn... so much porn.
Pluck a nostril hair: "Please stop! I have a wife and kids! Take them"
my record is 23 nostril hairs at once!
I used to pull them out instead of using a nose hair trimmer because it was easy and doesn't realy hurt if I do it fast.
Then i learned you can get awful brain poisoning from doing this if you get an infection so i had to let the record stand there about 15 years ago. Best record before that was only 14 so I was quite excited to get 23.
you can get awful brain poisoning from doing this
Say whay now? Sounds like I should stop the practice. I didn't even keep score :(
i do not understand at all why waxing your mustache is fine but plucking your nose hairs is not!
But the tldr is an infection inside your nose can get into your brain somehow and it's way more likely if you pull the hairs out vs trimming them.
Idk it was 15 years ago and i'm no scientist but the evidence available to me at the time was compelling enough that i quit it!
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
see what i'm saying that's fucking compelling!!!
thank you jawa21
It is indeed. Time to get a trimmer I guess
"That dude has a wife and kids! I'll get you their bank account numbers and social security numbers! PLEASE STOP!!!"
I think stubbing your toe hurt so much is because it's pointless - you did to yourself "for free"
If I'm dying for someone I love at least it's not in vain
What if the torturer put you in a dark room with a bunch of steel IKEA furniture and bedfames, (no mattresses) and a heated floor with 2 zones (only 1 is on at a time) so that you would have to either brave the gauntlet of IKEA to keep your feet warm or tell them what they want to hear?
Can you stub your toe to prove you would be able to withstand torture for a loved one?
It isn't pointless then!
Very true, even in a less life/death situation. Example, a piercing hurts much much more than stubbing your toe, but people, myself included, keep coming back for more of them.
You've just proved the point of the post: he easy it is tob imagine yourself doing it for a ooved one