Thirty family members and friends of the MixedInk team recently came together to test our software. It was very exciting to finally see MixedInk in action at this scale after much hard work and internal testing. Watching an interesting discussion take shape and participating in the eventual synergy that emerged over the five-day period was an extremely rewarding experience.

Together the participants addressed the following question: Is the US government ever justified in using torture? Why or why not?

(We chose this topic because we know people feel strongly about it. Having a topic that encourages vigorous discussion makes testing our software and concept easier).

Participants wrote, edited, and recombined responses to the topic throughout the test. With a total of 44 responses and 296 ratings in the end, the group had a vibrant brainstorming session and a fascinating exchange. Through a process of mixing and rating each other’s responses using MixedInk technology, the test participants collaboratively sculpted a collective opinion on the selected topic.

For those who are curious, we’ve pasted the text of the collective response below.

This is a major moment for MixedInk – this test provided definitive proof of our concept. We learned a ton from the test and are now tweaking old features and adding new ones based on the test and on the feedback we received. At this point, we plan to continue testing it with different and bigger groups – let us know if you’d like to help shape MixedInk by getting involved in future tests at testing@mixedink.com. We’d love to get your input!

No to Torture

In the wake of 9/11, we have begun to speak a new language. “Patriotism” means blind devotion to any government policy; to “support the troops” means to never question an interminable war; and “torture” means making the world safe for democracy. (heh, heh, heh). We are living in a world of contradictions and are facilitating it with a language of opposites. It is easier to accept an unwarranted war, corruption, and torture when they are cloaked in words like democracy, strength, and safety. But eventually we will run out of platitudes and be left with nothing but the bare truth of our actions.

Torture has fallen prey to the cover of new speak. By saying we’re protecting our way of life from terrorism, we have become terrorists ourselves and what once was abhorrent to Americans has become acceptable. The question in real speak, though, is what security do we truly gain from the use of torture? Of the multitude of tools in our security arsenal, torture is one that has been shown to fail — people will say anything to get themselves out of the situation. This is particularly true in the case of terrorism, where people are often motivated by martyrdom, and just a bit more courage as a tortured prisoner can earn a handsome payoff in the afterlife. In embracing torture as a society, we therefore lose not only our honor, but also our precious resources as we waste time and money following false leads.

Even if torture were shown to be an effective information-gathering tool, however, it still would not be a sound security policy. When we commit torture against prisoners, we place our own soldiers at great risk as we forego our authority to demand protection for them. Today other countries can easily follow our lead in playing semantic tricks to determine where the Geneva Conventions apply. If that were the case, and our soldiers were being tortured at the hands of another countrys interrogators, be sure that this discussion would need not occur; our collective outrage would be unanimous.

More importantly, we cannot discuss torture without examining what it means to be part of a society that allows it. Many claim that we need to rethink our domestic policies, and even internationally-accepted norms, given the new threats we face. We disagree. In fact, it is only at times when we are scared for our safety that we must recall the importance of our civil liberties. It is during these times that it is easiest to forgo our most important ideals for the illusion of safety and expedient answers to complex challenges.

The American justice system relies upon the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And we have a very high bar for guilt; a jury must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. The implicit understanding is that we, as a society, would prefer to let a guilty person go free than wrongly punish someone who is innocent. We depend upon our right to due process of law to ensure that our government does not overstep its bounds. When we allow torture of someone suspected of a crime (or suspected to be privy to critical information), we corrode this deep foundation of our country by exacting punishment based on mere suspicion. Not only does it undoubtedly lead to the torture of many people with no, or little, connection to terrorist networks, but it also leads to a dangerous temptation to blur the distinctions. And just like that, we begin down a slippery slope of disintegrating civil liberties.

Nearly everyone agrees torture is generally wrong, but there is still a great temptation to allow torture as a last resort in extreme cases. Torture, however, is not an acceptable government policy even in these scenarios. We have seen time and time again that seemingly normal people can do awful things. We saw it during Milgrim’s famous psychology experiments, we witnessed it during the Holocaust, and we stood speechless more recently when we learned of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. If we condone even a single case of torture, how will we then stop it from expanding? Who is to be the judge? Any policy that allowed torture would be subject to abuse. Enforcement is extremely difficult to imagine, given that these prisoners would be punished without the benefit of being tried in court, and an interrogator could always argue there was good reason to believe the prisoner had valuable information.

There is a short list of countries that permit torture, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, and Uzbekistan. It is not a club that the

United States should wish to join. As we seek to remain a world leader, we must remember what it means to be American and the moral authority it could command. We should not throw it all away in exchange for nothing more than a second-rate intelligence tool. It’s time to speak clearly and realize that torture debases not only the victim but also the core of all we, in real talk, hold precious in America.

As is clear from this example, the group of our friends and family that created this lean to the political left. Note that MixedInk is emphatically nonpartisan. Our tool will be available to any group wishing to express itself together regardless of its opinion.