Religious people *are* more generous

[AtomicCEO]

Here, have some torture buddy!

[detlef]

Curious, what is a normal sample size for these kinds of studies?

[nibiyabi]

Shocker, although those mainline protestants actually did pretty well.

Edited May 2, 2009 by nibiyabi

[H8tank]

I don't think loud music and bright lights bother me too much, torture away.

 

Of course, you latte cracker eating lefties can't stand the sight of anything uncomfortable, it is called cowardice. Coward.

[wirehairman]

Curious, what is a normal sample size for these kinds of studies?

 

Why do you always have to be that way? I'm sure the 742 people they surveyed truly and accurately represents the viewpoints of the entire United States.

[Perchoutofwater]

Religious people believe actions have consequences. The believe if you are going to be a terrorist, then you have to accept the consequences and one of those consequences is getting put in a room with bugs and loud music to try to get you to tell us what your buddies are planning.

[Savage Beatings]

Maybe religious people just love their children and their country more and are willing to defend them by any means. Or maybe not.

[AtomicCEO]

Maybe religious people just love their children and their country more and are willing to defend them by any means. Or maybe not.

 

I say that in order to protect children, freedom, and apple pie flag baseball... we need to bludgeon puppies with stones.

 

Sure, there are probably vastly less violent and more effective ways to do it, but what are you, some kind of puss?

[i_am_the_swammi]

Religious people believe actions have consequences. The believe if you are going to be a terrorist, then you have to accept the consequences and one of those consequences is getting put in a room with bugs and loud music to try to get you to tell us what your buddies are planning.

 

Ironically, are terrorists religious people?

[The Holy Roller]

Ironically, are terrorists religious people?

 

They are.

[Perchoutofwater]

Ironically, are terrorists religious people?

 

 

They are.

 

You fight fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone.

[cre8tiff]

You fight fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone.

 

Hmm, "An eye for an eye" sounds very familiar...

[dmarc117]

Hmm, "An eye for an eye" sounds very familiar...

 

im not turning the other cheek!

[WaterMan]

im not turning the other cheek!

 

Jesus did.

[Savage Beatings]

I say that in order to protect children, freedom, and apple pie flag baseball... we need to bludgeon puppies with stones.

 

Sure, there are probably vastly less violent and more effective ways to do it, but what are you, some kind of puss?

 

I knew you were a closet Christian! Come here and give me a hug you big ol' Jesus lovin' torturer you! Let's go heal some lepers with the blood of a hundred kittens.

[The Irish Doggy]

Curious, what is a normal sample size for these kinds of studies?

 

 

It depends on how confident you want to be in your answer, but 750 is OK. Since a sample represents the breakdown of a population, higher sample sizes lead to more accurate predictions. However, due to the way these things are calculated, it is increasingly difficult and expensive to get really specific.

 

For a population of the US - say 300 million - a sample size around 750 means you can be 95% certain the population's numbers are roughly +/- 3.5% of the sample you surveyed. This is assuming, of course, that the survey was not skewed in some way.

 

To become 95% certain that the survey answer is +/- 2% from the population, you need a sample size of 2,400 - a 3X increase in sample size compared to 3.5%.

 

That's why most of the election coverage polls you see have a "margin or error" of +/- 3% to 5%. They are generally considered accurate enough to report and the cost is much less compared to more confident surveys.

Edited May 4, 2009 by The Irish Doggy

[yo mama]

im not turning the other cheek!

So then you're spreading them?

[detlef]

Maybe it's just that religious people like to fixate on the fact the bible predates the Geneva convention?

 

The thing though, is either we torture or we don't but to those who made a point of poo-pooing the notion by talking about loud music as if that's all we do are sort of showing their ass here. However, there's some pretty clear data that illustrates that we've exceeded the threshold of simply blaring Air Supply in an attempt to gather data and, well either some of us want to pretend it didn't happen or they're Americans for personal accountability, right up until we actually have to account for our actions. Like, for instance, conducting ourselves like a nation that feels empowered to tell other nations how to act.

 

I tend to find the "greatest generation ever" bit get thrown around more often by conservatives and that makes sense. The generation that fought in WWII took care of their own business and seemed to embody much of the what is the basis for conservative political beliefs. Well, they also updated the Geneva Convention to say that ours would not be a country that would stoop to such levels as some of the brutality exhibited in torture.

 

To cherry pick those elements that this great generation stood for that only seem convenient seems nothing short of pathetic.

[wiegie]

It depends on how confident you want to be in your answer, but 750 is OK. Since a sample represents the breakdown of a population, higher sample sizes lead to more accurate predictions. However, due to the way these things are calculated, it is increasingly difficult and expensive to get really specific.

 

For a population of the US - say 300 million - a sample size around 750 means you can be 95% certain the population's numbers are roughly +/- 3.5% of the sample you surveyed. This is assuming, of course, that the survey was not skewed in some way.

 

To become 95% certain that the survey answer is +/- 2% from the population, you need a sample size of 2,400 - a 3X increase in sample size compared to 3.5%.

 

That's why most of the election coverage polls you see have a "margin or error" of +/- 3% to 5%. They are generally considered accurate enough to report and the cost is much less compared to more confident surveys.

It's not clear to me though that they have enough observations to determine if the groups are statistically significantly different from each-other (or whether it is just random error that is driving the results).

[Ursa Majoris]

It's not clear to me though that they have enough observations to determine if the groups are statistically significantly different from each-other (or whether it is just random error that is driving the results).

That's what I was thinking too. I was wondering how you could get sufficient cross-section of age, class, wealth, geography, urban / rural, gender, race, career type and all the other myriad diversities to say "this is a realistic sample".

 

That said, the polls aren't usually off by more than they claim.

[The Irish Doggy]

It's not clear to me though that they have enough observations to determine if the groups are statistically significantly different from each-other (or whether it is just random error that is driving the results).

 

 

true

[AtomicCEO]

Details on what interrogators actually got from techniques like waterboarding are sketchy. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said that the first man the U.S. waterboarded, an al-Qaida operative named Abu Zubaydah, was unhelpful until the rough stuff began.

 

The FBI remembers it differently. The bureau says it took just two weeks for Zubaydah to provide information on Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, without the use of aggressive tactics. Rohan Guaratna agrees. He's an al-Qaida expert who has worked with both the CIA and the FBI and is very familiar with Zubaydah's case.

 

"Abu Zabaydah told the name of KSM before the enhanced techniques were used," says Guaratna.

 

The CIA took over Zubaydah's interrogation a short time later. And while he provided some more intelligence after he was waterboarded, it is impossible to know if he might have done so anyway.

 

Consider another case, the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He was waterboarded six times a day for a month. He provided information, but he certainly didn't do so quickly.

 

"What I get most out of the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohamed is that any approach — I don't care what it is — if you have to do it 183 times, it is not working," says Matthew Alexander. He was the military interrogator in charge of the team that ended up finding al-Qaida's No. 1 man in Iraq, without resorting to torture.

 

"When they did use the waterboard on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, what they were getting each time was the absolute minimum he could get away with," he says. "And that's what you get when you use torture — you get the absolute minimum amount of information."

 

Hoffman underscores the point: Despite waterboarding, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed didn't give up key information that he must have known at the time of his questioning. Experts say he most likely knew about the planning of the 2005 train bombing in Madrid, but he didn't talk. He had to be aware of al-Qaida sleeper cells in Britain and Europe, and he didn't reveal anything about those, either.

 

This isn't the only source on the FBI side of the story with Zubaydah. Everyone involved remembers that the FBI had established a rapport with him and got Khalid's name, and was making more progress when the CIA came in and kicked them out to start waterboarding him 6 times a day.

 

The people telling you that waterboarding was the most effective technique as documented in secret stuff you can't see are the same people who told you that Iraq had WMDs, and that Saddam was involved in 9/11... and the same people that bought the lies the first time are swallowing it up again without a question.

 

I seriously suspect that even if it was definitively proven that torture was less effective than regular interrogation techniques, that people would support waterboarding only because they like the concept of these people being hurt. The larger picture is that we get better information without this satisfying punishment of them, but people don't care.

 

Whoops, link

Edited May 5, 2009 by AtomicCEO

[The Irish Doggy]

This isn't the only source on the FBI side of the story with Zubaydah. Everyone involved remembers that the FBI had established a rapport with him and got Khalid's name, and was making more progress when the CIA came in and kicked them out to start waterboarding him 3 times a day.

 

The people telling you that waterboarding was the most effective technique as documented in secret stuff you can't see are the same people who told you that Iraq had WMDs, and that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and the same people that bought the lies the first time are swallowing it up without a question.

 

Indeed

[The Holy Roller]

Torture is just more....fun...manly.