Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen has an illuminating post today, entitled Grisly game theory: can you avoid torture? In it, he poses several strategies one might use to minimize their exposure to torture when taken into custody by an entity (like the US government) that intends to torture them. I don’t know if he’s trying to make a point, but my takeaway is that if someone intends to torture you, there’s no way to avoid it, even by spilling your guts. And if you’re innocent, you are, of course, completely screwed. This is why torture is illegal in most countries that don’t have non-authoritarian governments.

Update: Eric Umansky reports on an alternate means of avoiding torture.