the technique costs more than 5 dollars though unless you have the "drug him" drugs sitting around already.

yeah you need at least $20 for the drugs, plus gas and wages for the driver to go pick them up. this doesn't even touch on depreciation / capital cost of the vehicle itself! also, what's the prevailing rent for an interrogation facility these days?

The alt text on that comic also says "I would be hard-pressed to find that wrench for $5" ;)

So can a $0 rock (or stick)

Rocks ain't free. Finding and picking up a rock usually requires at least half a minute, so if one takes an hourly wage to be $24 that makes the cost of obtaining a rock equal to... about 20 cents.

But there are two further considerations:

(1) The cost of the rock drops precipitously with your ability to pay. No matter what value you compute for the rock, you will find that the actual cost of a rock never rises above "negligible" for anyone who isn't severely handicapped, regardless of ability to pay.

(2) If you anticipate needing a rock in the future, you probably don't have to dedicate any time to finding one. You can just pick one up whenever it happens to be convenient.

It does not, Randall is just parroting a popular misconception that torture works. In reality you will not believe that a sadistic person beating you up is gonna stop after you say a password, and the more are you beaten and drugged the less likely you are to say that password, and criminals, police, intelligence and other thugs know it, they just use torture because they like it.

I think you are confused.

The _operational_ problem with torture is that the subject tends to tell you whatever unverifiable information they thing you want to hear. it is in this context that torture doesn't "work." the information is unreliable and thus low value.

For immediately verifiable information, such as a password, torture most assuredly does work and it is foolishness to pretend otherwise.

No that's not it, Randall is gesturing at utility theory -- the password is to something indifferent, so the person would decide that's it's not worth being beaten over (with the wrench) over. He's implying that the stuff being protected isn't that important.

This is not an informed perspective.

Bring his kids in. He'll talk. Downvotes for unpleasant reality.

Whether he will "talk" is independent of whether torture works. With sufficient torture, I would tell you anything you want to hear. Want to know where the diamonds are? Sure, I can make up a dozen locations if it means those pliers stay away from me, even if I have no idea what diamonds you are talking about. Torture will always get answers. What it can't get is truth, or any way to distinguish truth from pleas.

And that is even independent of torture being inherently immoral.

This is assuming that the torturers are dumb (not true in the case of nation states) and that the information is not verifiable. This is not always the case. And the argument is that torture can and does work not that it always works. In the context of a password that I know you know and we can type in right now to make it stop, this will be effective.If you don't think the torture will ever stop and just want a 'fuck you' then you may keep quite. When your kids/family are brought in the 'fuck you' mentality goes out the window. Torture works, but it's like war. You have to go all in. This isn't a pro torture argument necessarily. But saying torture never works is dishonest and tanamount to saying I would keep all my secrets while being tutored to death, which I know I wouldn't.