(on the other hand, the inability to condition yourself seems relevant here. It seems like the brain might be not be controlling for whether something is reasonable, but only for whether something is produced by yourself. So maybe exercise counts because it’s under your control, but waterboarding doesn’t count because it isn’t. I wonder if anyone has ever tried letting someone waterboard themselves and giving them the on-off switch for the waterboarding device. Was Hitchens’ experience close enough to this to count? Why would this be different from letting someone hold their breath, which doesn’t produce the same level of panic?)
Hypothesis: the difference is in the failure mode.
If you hold your breath, you can always choose (assuming you are not underwater or in some other environment that prevents proper breathing) to stop holding your breath and save yourself from suffocating. If you are being waterboarded by friendly demonstrators, you can say the safe word and save yourself from “drowning”. These may seem the same, but are not. In both cases the longer you hold the weaker you get—the way that weakening affects your ability to stop the ordeal is very different.
The longer you hold your breath the harder it gets to keep holding your breath—until at some point you are no longer able to hold your breath and are forced to breath. Even if you can keep holding your breath past that point—you are just going to pass out, and then you’ll just switch to autopilot and breath automatically. Unless you suffer from Ondine’s curse, failure will not kill you.
With waterboarding, if you become too weak to properly signal the “torturers” to stop—they won’t stop. Sure, in Hitchens’ case they noticed that he passed out and stopped it. Because they are professionals. But this is probably too high level for your subconsciousness and your body to rely on—as far as they care, failure can mean death. Holding as long as you can is no longer a safe option—so your body will try to scream at you to stop it as soon as possible.
Hypothesis: the difference is in the failure mode.
If you hold your breath, you can always choose (assuming you are not underwater or in some other environment that prevents proper breathing) to stop holding your breath and save yourself from suffocating. If you are being waterboarded by friendly demonstrators, you can say the safe word and save yourself from “drowning”. These may seem the same, but are not. In both cases the longer you hold the weaker you get—the way that weakening affects your ability to stop the ordeal is very different.
The longer you hold your breath the harder it gets to keep holding your breath—until at some point you are no longer able to hold your breath and are forced to breath. Even if you can keep holding your breath past that point—you are just going to pass out, and then you’ll just switch to autopilot and breath automatically. Unless you suffer from Ondine’s curse, failure will not kill you.
With waterboarding, if you become too weak to properly signal the “torturers” to stop—they won’t stop. Sure, in Hitchens’ case they noticed that he passed out and stopped it. Because they are professionals. But this is probably too high level for your subconsciousness and your body to rely on—as far as they care, failure can mean death. Holding as long as you can is no longer a safe option—so your body will try to scream at you to stop it as soon as possible.