1. What makes us different from others are exactly the opinions based on perspectives, not the universal truths. I actually find it hard to think of many universal truths that could define us.

2. Opinions based on perspectives could be actually true. E.g. if God exists, than the Pope was right, but that doesn't change the fact that he didn't really know the truth, he just believed, he had an opinion.
Other times, there is simply no truth and it's all about the perspective. E.g. Is the death penalty good?

What I'm trying to say is that our personal truths define our set of values and ultimately our way of living.

We have established that these truths have an emotional and rational part (one or both of them), so they could be changed by:

A. Facts - over time, reality simply proves us we were wrong.

B. People - stronger arguments or a fine ability to manipulate our feelings.

C. Time - long periods of time simply alter our point of view.

In many cases, our opinions are shattered because their strength is proved to be an illusion. We rush into believing that we know the truth, but suddenly facts or other arguments kill all of these instantly.

But what about when:

A. Facts simply cannot prove or disprove our beliefs. E.g. A believer defines God as something that's in all of us and at the same time out of this Universe. Reality simply cannot provide any facts to disprove it.

B. Sometimes the arsenal of "arguments" reaches its limits and capacities. If there are cases when reality cannot disprove one thing, then rational arguments have even smaller chances to succeed. E.g. To stick with religion, I think that all of the possible anti-religious arguments have been said already, and some people have already heard them all, but they simply resisted.
Regarding the manipulation of feelings, I think this has an absolutely huge potential, but only before arguments or reality come into play. I truly believe that the way arguments are exposed is important, but unless some kind of hypnosis is induced, cases in which even universal truths like 1+1=2 could be attacked, only the talent for narrating doesn't have the power to change very rooted beliefs.

C. The time matter is very tricky for me. On one hand, I think that time itself without other elements has nothing to do with beliefs. At the same time, time itself brings with it changes. So can some of our strongest beliefs remain constant throughout eternity?

Yes, I am of the same opinion, just to add something else: opinions and beliefs can be based on obvious truths (eg 1 + 1 = 2) or perspectives (eg democracy vs communism; atheism vs faith).
In the first case, the discussion does not deserve the effort, but in the case of the perspective, things deserve more attention, because they do not have an obvious truth as a fundament.

..time is an abyss ... profound as a thousand nights ... centuries come and go ... to be unable to grow old is terrible ... death is not the worst ... can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities ... — armonie

This is a double-edged sword: you underestimate the power of nostalgia and the power of time to push even harder the defining things into someone/something. Diversity is essential if you want to get rid of boredom, but losing something old could represent an unacceptable trauma.

I admit that it is tempting to believe that long periods of time automatically bring radical changes. However, things tend to become complicated when we think that a deeply rooted faith does not come from the desire to adapt, but because one may really believe in the values ​​of that belief that transcends time. Sometimes reality simply cannot confirm or disprove those beliefs.

Let's take the example of religious faith. Suppose that time really changes you radically. In this case, in several thousands of years the same person goes through all stages from the religious focused until the atheist convinced several times. But when he looks back and observes that in fact his beliefs at one point simply become the number one enemy at another time despite of all arguments and feelings, does he not realize that what he believes in today will certainly change 180 degrees? And then, logically speaking, would not man lose his strong beliefs? After all, what would be their logic? Wouldn't that mean that one reaches a point where they realize that strong beliefs don't make sense and that the only thing that makes sense is just adaptability? Then, if we look at the whole, nothing really defines man in terms of personality, but everything is in context. Introspection will make one realize that their only constant value is biology and that the only thing that relates them to what they were thousands of years before is the birth.

The problem with this result is that precisely the finite life contradicts this vision. Yes, it is true that many character traits are related to adaptability and that they can and will change, but it is just as true that history confirms many cases of beliefs and values ​​that have not changed in spite of the changes of the world.

Ok. Let's take a banal example: one's love for his mother. There are two possibilities here: to love or to hate. Is it a certainty that at one moment in time, he will hate his mother? I don't mean being mad at her, but simply hate her for a century. Is it 100% that there will be a love/hate relationship for an eternity?

Alright. Let's not call it identity, but "things that define you". I believe that there are some characteristics that become very rooted in one's life and I am not sure if time will only make them deeper or destroy them.

So the identity of one itself is just a form of adapting yourself to the context.

Let's assume that person didn't learn how to live forever, let's say that somehow science or magic (really not important) made humans eternal and this process would be irreversible.
So you think one would have all of the possible types of character during an eternity, from a great wise philosopher to a rapist, from a man who would sacrifice everything for liberal values to a pure dictator?

Aren't opinions polished by life experiences and the more polished they get, the stronger and harder to change they become?
Eg.: Alex and David are friends and they criticize politicians for being corrupt. David decides to become a politician and starts to be corrupt. Alex meets him and asks how could such an anti-corruption fighter became corrupt? Alex answers that he was dumb and naive when he was younger and that life is just about taking care of yourself. After few years, David is charged for corruption and sent to prison. There he realises how fool he was and how wrong he was being corrupt.
In the end, he goes back to politics but this time with the desire to be fair.
Well... he basically went through all kind of stages, from an anti-corruption activist to a corrupt himself and then a straight man again.
Will all these variations make his next opinion stronger or he will become more confused?

Regarding faith, one of the main targets of communists in the Pitesti experiment was to make their victims lose faith in God. The result was actually the opposite, many of them becoming monks after they were released and most of them saying that they started to have a far stronger faith during the torture, and that faith helped them went trough the whole re-education process.
So convincing through torture may actually have a very surprising outcome.

What???? It has nothing to do with what I wrote. Where have I argued that something is not real torture? (for exmaple) Of course what that ruler when through was real torture. The issue, as I understood it, was whether one could ALWAYS or some people could ALWAYS hold out under ANY torture.

If for some reason you have gotten the impression I think that being killing in a burning hot metal chair is not torture, I failed to be clear. Of course that's torture. Of course he resisted if it was a he.

I thought I made it clear when I said I would likely have been broken by that torture. IOW that's me saying it is torture and that he managed to resist where I thought I might not be able to. That's me being open and honest about my own sense that I am not someone who is great at resisting. I am 100% sure that there are many people much, much better than me, and also that some people can be trained to be better, even me. None of that contradicts anything I have been saying.

When I say it's a poor torture, I meant as an example of a torture form demonstrating that there are people who can withstand any torture. You have been asserting that people can or probably can resist any torture. You gave an example of a torture, presumably to show how well people can resist and I pointed out that this is not a very effective type of torture compared to long term ones that include psychic driving. — Coben

Dude, I never said that. Relax...

I didn't talk only about one-day torture, I have mentioned the Pitesti experiment several times. It lasted 2 years and the torture was virtually non-stop and it came all kinds of forms. It is considered unique in its effects on oneself. Mao copied it in Pekin prison but with a far lower degree of brutality.
If there was "proper" torture in this world, than the "Securitate" and the communist regime would be artists. Even in these circumstances, some people resisted.

I would love to debate more with you, I really do believe you have strong arguments.

Flawless reply!

Ok, hopefully, torture will disappear because I think it's the ugliest thing that exists.
For me free will represents one's capacity to oppose his/her primary needs in order to achieve a goal that is not physically active. I don't care about the freedom itself, this is an abstract notion anyway. If my sacrifice it's not the result of a direct physical cause (and this is not very hard to demonstrate), then there's no determinism. Some of our decisions are simply caused by our "free" choice to act according to or against our ideals, ideals which are also probably determined. Determinism = physical chain and if you can act against it, then you're not 100% determined. Therefore we have a degree of autonomy and we hold responsibility for some of our actions. Causality does not automatically imply determinism. Big Bang is the initial cause of everything, but not even determinists state that because there was Big Bang, therefore everything is determined.
If you had a supercomputer knowing all my past and body reactions, it would still be incapable of knowing if I will choose to eat or hold on to my diet at one moment, because it will only be capable to measure the "hunger" signals, because only those will be active.
Your mistake is that you consider that HAVING A CAUSE = BEING DETERMINED. Some physical causes transform into reasons and they act differently. Even if what I call mind is caused by some physical events, it doesn't mean it's also physical. There's also information and in some cases, information gets a degree of autonomy from the physical world. Of course it is influenced, but not always determined.
I can't demonstrate that, but I am sure in few decades the technology will be able to show if we're only physical reactions or not.

PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY

1. I am sure with proper training you could get over a rape. If you throw away the symbolic part of masculinity and other alpha-male silly things, you'll realise it is just a matter of physical contact. There were many guys raped who didn't break. There were men who ate feces and they got used to and did it just like a routine. It wasn't pleasant, but with exercise and a deep understanding of the situation, you'll get over it.

2. The noise part - If a torturer rewinds a cassette with the same phrase over and over again, you can simply get used to it and become immune. Proper training could solve this one too, there are people who live in sleep in terrible noises, many of them being repetitive. In fact, these people get so used to them and it becomes hard to re-accommodate to a normal environment.

3. Simply making someone lose his/her mind - this was actually a problem for torturers in Pitesti. They actually stop torturing those who went crazy and treated them. Only after they re-became normal they re-started torture. If you want to deal with a schizophrenic and convince them of something... good luck!

4. In my opinion, with proper training and mental strength, one could resist any psychological torture. So the last frontier remains the physical pain.

I respect your decision to stop writing, even if I consider you took this decision because you hadn't read my things properly and you simply jumped to some conclusions. This debate with you has really helped me to find some answers. Maybe the most interesting part is that I was overall in line with your opinion, but now I am 50/50. Maybe torture can be withstood after all.

To answer your last question: the fact that there are causes (and I agree they are there all the time) behind my values, this doesn't mean I will act according to my values.

Thank you!

I had a hunch before, but now I am sure you haven't read my posts carefully.

1. I stated repeatedly, even in my last post that EVERYTHING WE DO IS BASED ON DESIRES. I have also mentioned that EVERY desire has a CAUSE. So why are you still arguing that?
I am not saying I have demonstrated something, I just said is obvious that when some desires get in conflict with the others and it is NOT the physical or chemical world that ultimately decides in some cases. Therefore, those situations are not deterministic. Determinism is not just scary, is also stupid and it becomes dangerous when people actually take it seriously. I am smart enough to realise that it is just one of those things that look smart and "TOTB" at the beginning, but that eventually gets sillier and sillier once you go through it.
For the last time: if you were to monitor one's body with high-tech devices (like Liebet experiment) and all his physical signals indicate he will eat because of hunger but eventually he won't, than you've just debunked determinism. There's no relevance in what initially caused his desire to oppose the deterministic world of chemicals. Maybe he just wanted to contradict determinism haha. Why do you think in Liebet's experiment they won't let you try "fight against" the machine? Because you can actually do it and invalidate their silly experiment.

2. I noticed every time I give examples of people who resisted torture, you just say torture was sloppy. It is like saying "...this contradicts my view, but my view is 100% right, therefore it must have been something wrong with the torture". But let's think otherwise: what if the victims of the Canadian experiment were just weak? After all, Pitesti experiment was far more brutal and crueler and it lasted long enough, yet, it failed in some cases. Trust me, the "Securitate" weren't sloppy.

"Pitesti experiment was the most terrible act of barbarism in the contemporary world." Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel prize winner

"The best" is something relative. 99.000 (Camp Nou) > 81.000 (Bernabeu), it's a fact, it's fundamentally different.

"Or in a sense, myself. I would only fight torturers and try not to reveal something because of my desire to fight them/protect something I care about etc. Desires motivate."
Yes. Your resist torture for something palpable, like protecting your family, or for something less palpable, like an ideal or simply because you hate your enemy. Why would you do this or not? I have no idea, I just know that some went through the torture and pain until the end.
There was this Romanian ruler killed by Austro-Hungarians. He was put in a steel armchair that was slowly heated with fire, they put a hot steel crown on his head and torture him in any possible way until he died because of the hot chair. History says he didn't even make a whimper. I don't know if that's true or not, but he definitely didn't talk and he defied his torturers until the end. And that was a super-brutal end. His friends were asked to drink his blood in order to escape torture, but they had refused so they were tortured and impaled. They suffered atrocious pain for days. I am not arguing this is a thing of desires, absolutely everything we do has to do with desires. But as I've previously said, there are different types of actions, and the capacity to act against your instinctual and unconscious brain, when you against all the physical signals that could be monitored in your brain, when all your chemistry orders you to do something but you're taking the opposite path, well, for me that's free will.

I do believe most of the elements that make us who we are are deterministic. Moreover, I believe the things that free will acts on are actually determined. For example, the desire of losing weight isn't a matter of free will, it is determined by socio-biological factors. Most of those people who kill women with stones can't be morally blamed for that because they really think killing a woman in this way is a divine duty, therefore a good thing. Can you blame someone doing what they think is right or for having a different system of values? But in the case of Hitler, I personally believe he knew he was wrong even by his own moral standards, but he simply went through with it.
I don't believe free will is good or bad and I don't believe instincts are good or bad. I think free will is like technology: it represents a part of evolution and it was originally meant to improve lives, but use it in the wrong way and it will be much worse than not having it.

I remembered something even more interesting. I am a fan of Real Madrid football/soccer(US) team. Their rivals are FC Barcelona. Well, when I was a child I had a friend who was Barcelona's fan. He told me that Nou Camp (Barca's stadium) had a bigger attendance capacity than Bernabeu (Real's stadium). I just couldn't agree. I searched everywhere I could, but all sources indicated to me he was right. But I would still argue with him and I would bring up all sorts of lies just to contradict him. The truth is that inside I was convinced I was wrong.
I think one of the mysteries of this topic represents a sort of emotional attachment to our beliefs that sometimes makes us irrational.

"in philosophy, generally, and for me, I find hunger as part of my mind, my experiencing of myself, part of the feelings and thoughts I have,. " I can only agree mind is also part of the brain. But hunger is not the same as wanting to lose weight. In the deterministic view, they are both the same and when they meet each other is something like this:
Feeling of hunger vs Feeling of losing weight, moment of time t -> hunger chemicals vs losing weight chemicals, if, at the moment t, hunger chemicals > losing weight chemicals -> you'll eat and your conscious brain/mind will only witness. For me this is bollocks. My opinion is the following:
When you're starving, there's no damn chemical that makes you feel NOT to eat. Your unconscious brain produces chemicals that only mean "EAT! EAT! EAT!...". There's no part of your unconscious instinctive mind that says "Nooo, starving is beautiful!", it's simply not there. Yes, there is a part embodied in your unconscious mind that wants to lose weight, but in times of hunger, they are not active, they produce an infim quantity of chemicals compared to hunger. So now what I call mind comes into action. The mind is not about chemicals or instincts, it's about information. That information influences the unconscious brain and it makes it stay away from food. This is a two-way process and this is why all determinists state that consciousness is there only to witness, nothing more. For me it sounds so silly especially when it comes from people who play the role of rational fatalistic. This is the Achile's heel of the deterministic view. You stated hunger is part of your mind as well. Yes, I agree it is a part of you and I agree it becomes a part of your mind at the informational level. Yes, wanting to lose weight could be the same. But when you're hungry, you don't feel the need to lose weight, you just feel the need to eat. This is where what I call mind comes into play, it prioritizes and it has the capacity to fight against deterministic reactions of your brain and body.
I also agree that "me" is more than mind. I am also my brain and my hands. They act as a whole. I am not sure if we have a fundamentally different opinion on this one, I think I am calling mind what you're calling the frontal lobe.

"...eating like a wolf" - my bad, I used it as a metaphor for "eating a lot/digging in", not eating uncooked. I was trying to say that even if there's a desire to lose weight, and that desire is also part of your unconsciousness or instinct, it cannot act in times of hunger without the "what I call mind" part of the brain.

"I'm sure they will think otherwise."
I do not necessarily agree. There are times when they truly think the salaries back then were higher. If you show them today's salary > 1989's salary, then I am sure they get it. It's pure logic, it's a fact. If they still argue, it means they just don't accept the defeat for the moment, or they are simply deluding.
"What matters in a discussion is not "true objectivity," whatever that means, but the depth to which beliefs are rooted and the rhetorical capacity to make arguments that sound fine." I do and I don't agree. Yes, you are right, rhetoric is damn important. I used to fight against Americans arguing that Romania has better living standards than USA. I remember I used to bring up DPRK type arguments when criticizing USA (poverty, inequality, racism, trailer parks, ghettos, etc), in other words truths. My opponents did the same, they brought up truths. In the end, it was a "my truth" is more important than yours, everything became relative. But I do not agree with the final purpose: convincing. At the end of the day, I knew I wasn't right and inside me, I knew I was just cheating. A good rhetoric is not the same with the truth. And this also answers your last question.

I agree they are all desires, but there are many types of desires different from each other in their nature. Even if they are all initially created by biological/genetical and environmental/cultural factors, they act differently. Eg: hunger is a biological desire and it acts through biology, while the desire to lose weight appears from a combination of biology and culture, but it can only act through mind. Cut the power of mind to act against hunger and you'll eat like a wolf.

Of course, boasting wasn't the central part of my "rapist" analogy. I am perfectly aware that the main objective is more important for both the torturer (to make a person speak) and the rapist (to have sex). I was saying that it may be wrongly perceived in this way by some people. As we both agree, it is simply a matter of force, not will.

"In those final moments they will want to agree with the voice that offers water or sleep. They will want the pain to stop, they will want to say X is good and even believe it when they did not believe it before."
Again, this is a battle of desires. Of course they will want the pain to stop, and I think this is a desire that occurs in the first moments of torture (biological desire). At the same time, they want to remain loyal to their ideals (desire of mind). These two will get in conflict and you're saying that in the end, mind will be nothing more than something that just observe what the body decides, or, in other words, you're stating that even if free will exists, it has a limited energy in comparison to the body. To make another analogy, the victim despises her rapist, but still has an orgasm produced by her body.

The people I argue with are not concerned with communism, they actually consider the pre-Ceausescu period very dark and so do I, it was much worse than what came after 1965. They just praise Ceausescu and the period when he ruled Romania and they have this feeling that our country was really strong back then. What I am saying is that this is not an ideological battle, but a living standards one. Moreover, people usually have the idea that salaries, exports or GDP were actually higher back then, which is simply false. The fact that I truly consider myself more objective doesn't mean it's not true. On top of that, studies show that 80% of those who are nostalgic for that era wouldn't return to that period if they had the possibility to. So I truly and objectively believe I am more objective than they are.

"Those are just fancy desires. I desire to be good to others and not just myself. I desire to achieve such and such a goal because of X. It's just more desires. Desires are not just about food and sex, etc." Just because they have a cause doesn't make them fantasies. Sacrifice your body for what you consider a greater cause is as real as hunger. Moreover, the nature of wishes, desires, etc differs. Hunger is different from wanting to lose weight. If the body asks for food and you don't eat, it doesn't happen because of another stronger instinctual impulse that oppose the former. It is a conscious act based on a desire that has no biological effect in the moment of hunger. But that's a free will debate and it's not my desire to debate it.

"Except they are alive and will contradict their previous belief. So, it's not like that."
You are right, I gave a wrong example. It is more like a rapist violating his victim and saying "now she wants me".

"They might want to in the abstract, but if they are honest and know themselves and have decent introspection, they will know that they will not want this at a certain point."
Nobody wants to be tortured from the beginning, but I think you wanted to say that after a fair introspection, they will realise that they will eventually be incapable of resisting. That's very different from wanting.

"I have made some very dangerous spontaneous choices that put me at great risk to help others. But none of this is like being tortured over a long time to where you barely know yourself and people can start putting shit in. It's not about having ideals and priorities. It's what one needs to be whole."
Spontaneous things are different from going into a dangerous business after long introspection. There are people who do stuff knowing all the possible consequences if this is right or wrong is a matter of perspective. It's hard to judge. I really tend to agree with you, but history showed us many cases of people who simply didn't give a damn about remaining a whole. And I don't know if that happened because of sloppy torture.

"I wouldn't want to act against all desires. More or less by definition." Free will represents exactly the power to act against these desires when they're against your targets, principles or ideals.
I understand your point of view and I actually tend to agree with you that under such terrible pressure there's a point from where the organism takes control over mind in the process of decision. But this is not convincing, this is simply forcing. It's like killing someone and say " now he doesn't believe in God anymore".

But just think for a moment... what if we're both wrong and the mind has the last word to say in the term of decision making? It's probably not true, but let's assume that for the sake of the argument.
"But in the end it isn't bigger than that. I want to take care of me. That's a big priority. I don't want to sacrifice myself.for ideals. "
Not you, some people would, there are plenty of examples out there. They just don't give a damn about themselves in the biological sense when it comes to ideals. So assuming the mind will always decide, are you sure every human being, regardless of their personality, would rape, torture and burn their family alive if a torturer persuaded them to do so?

"More realistically, persuasive arguments tend to act over time by slowly wearing down confidence and giving rise to reflection and examination, until finally intellectual furniture gets spontaneously rearranged in the hush and dead of night."
Interesting view. So you're saying that insisting is a key element. I would also add that the way you expose your arguments matters as well. I do believe this works in many cases, but again, repeating the same thing again and again even in many ways doesn't convince me it's a 100% success rate. Eg: I don't believe repeating to that Buddhist monk over and over again that Buddhism is false would ever succeed. I think he'd rather set himself on fire for being so annoyed by the situation.

I just couldn't agree more with everything you said.
1. Yes, our beliefs have to be tested constantly, no matter how strong they are - arguments or reality itself may confirm or invalidate them. I think the reality is the best point of reference, but what can you do when you mix it with the internal subjectivism?
Eg: When I'm arguing with people who state Romania under Ceausescu was better, I bring objective arguments on the table, like salaries, inflation, freedom of speech and all the other elements that are universally defined as "living standards". But at the end of the day, these are just conventions. My opponent could say "I liked it more back then, we all had a job and we all knew that tomorrow we'd go to work, and that was a sense of security. Moreover, the music was better, people were more inclined to real art unlike modern pop culture, and foreign countries use to respect us, not like today when they call us gypsies." So who am I to judge that some numbers are more important than the human state? If tomorrow I lost my job and suffered a trauma because of it, I would probably change my view on the before '89 life in Romania, who knows.
At the same time, if my argument against nostalgics is referring strictly to the living standards conventions, then, in my opinion, I win simply because I am stating objective figures, so I am attaching myself to an objective truth. The only way I could change my mind is to find out I live in a sort of Matrix world where everything is forged, but this is not even an argument for the pro-Ceausescu folks.
2. Regarding your second post: yes, I do believe the ingrained beliefs are strongly connected and integrated into our daily life and our personality, but once the sources of these beliefs are changed, then beliefs themselves are likely to change too. Eg: one believes in a deity who will always protect him from cancer no matter what. One day he gets cancer and suffers, therefore his belief is likely to disappear as well because reality gets in contradiction with the foundation of his faith.
But I also believe certain faiths/beliefs have a deeper layer and they are to be found the abstract part of nature and their fundaments are not concrete, therefore it's very tricky to destroy them.
Eg: one believes in a deity that created the Universe/Multiverse and life, but doesn't intervene or interact in any way, therefore the argument of evidence does not matter because by definition this God doesn't want to be found in this way. The same person believes in this God because he simply cannot conceive life or conscience without an abstract part of nature. He had encountered all the deterministic and materialistic known arguments before, but these arguments couldn't convince him, and there were plenty of real flaws in the materialistic vision. So how could this guy be convinced he's wrong? Only if one day he draws the conclusion life is just a bunch of atoms. How could this happen if all the existing arguments haven't convinced him so far? It's a mystery :)

You said something very important: "... we don't live within many of our convictions.". This is a key element in my opinion: we think that we are strongly attached to one idea and that we would never give up on that idea, but the reality is that the fundaments of our beliefs are weak and untested, so they are just an illusion.
In my opinion, truly identifying with something is when that thing is embodied in our senses, both rational and emotional, when it had been tested in all known ways, understood and it became part of our understanding, like knowing 1+1 = 2. I know there are things like faith or personal views that are fundamentally different from 1+1 = 2 because they also contain lots of relative and subjective things, but sometimes the emotional attachment is even stronger than the rational side.

I think mind/consciousness + unconscious = brain. I also think free will is the capacity of the conscious brain (mind) to act against all instincts, desires (physical/biological/deterministic desires). If free will does not exist, this discussion is a non-starter. It's all about a physical state of the brain, nothing more. But if free will does exist, then there's a fight between the unconscious brain who says "please make it stop!" and the mind who says "this thing is bigger than life, pain, mental state and everything else, so I will not give up!". There are two ways:
1. The torturer physically shatters the mind, so even if the mind decides to resist it cannot do so, because the unconscious is in control - your view.
2. No matter how hard it is, the mind has the last word, so theoretically it has an unlimited room of maneuver. If sticking to the principles is the most important thing in the world, the number 1 priority for the victim, with an unlimited power of decision, can that person resist unlimited pain?

"I do think we can do to minds something that parallels using force on bodies." - We almost agree on that. Why almost? I do agree that if you shatter the mind and personality, then you could make one rape and kill his own family. But this is a physical limit. That's not free will, because it's not the mind acting, it's the brain
What I'm saying is that indeed, in most cases people give up long before the mind is shattered. But in some cases, incredible people just won't give up until it's simply physically impossible to oppose. But when that happens, it is NOT the mind that takes the decision, but the reptilian brain.

"It's also got a kind of, to me, magical Arnold Swartzenegger macho fantasy in it." - no, to my mind those who resist for a good cause are pure heroes, nothing macho.

"The little conscious thinky thingie in the forebrain would be noticing the decision the bulk of its unconscious made for it." - that's NOT free will.

"My main point is that there is a kind of blaming the victim in saying that 'really' they could have held out and they 'chose' to give in, they were not forced." - this is still a debate on the Pitesti experiment matter. Victims were transformed into aggressors by torture, and there's still this tendency of blaming the "new aggressors". I myself DO NOT agree with this. Even if they acted freely, you couldn't put the blame on them, "Bring my mother here, I want to kill her for giving me birth!" this is what one of the prisoners shouted after few weeks in Pitesti. Put the blame on him for breaking? Never!

"I assume we're talking on essential beliefs of a person's original project or basic ideology. These beliefs are not usually based on rational logic but on psychology and a complex mix of desires, fears and rationalizations. This is valid for fanatics but also for moderate people. The Cartesian rational man is a myth.
Reasons only convince someone who wants to be convinced."

I do not agree. I consider myself rational when, for example, I say communist Romania was far worse than nowadays Romania: the wages were lower, the purchasing power was lower, there were no products, there was no electricity for most of the day, no hot water for more than 2 hours/day, GDP/capita was lower, the freedom of speech was totally nonexistent, people had to wait for a few years just to get the car that they had already paid for, and that was just a low-quality car, etc. All these things are not subjective things, they're facts. Yes, there were few things (maybe 5-10%) better than in present. But overall, what we call living standards, they are far higher now. The reason many people in my country say Romania was better under Ceausescu it's because they are nostalgic, ignorant or they simply have this reflex of complaining, and all these are subjective views.
Was life more interesting back then? Maybe, I have no idea, but one could convince me it was, but no one could convince me that living standards were higher.

"The USSR did not fall because of the moral superiority of the arguments for democracy, but because the communist leaders realized that they could make more money from capitalism."
USSR broke because its economy collapsed.

Back to the rational matter: being irrational doesn't necessarily mean you will eventually change your view. For example, some people still believe in ghosts, and some of them are actually very into science. I myself have an engineer friend who is very smart and he thinks magic or ghosts are real things. I simply see nothing that could convince him otherwise. How can he "realize" ghosts are not true?

Again, shattering the personality by force is different from auto-destruction with free will. It's similar to killing somebody, the only difference being that you don't kill them physically, you just kill their personality. In this case, I agree with you: if you can't simply resist due to biological limits, then you will eventually be transformed.
But if under torture one says "I could theoretically resist, but I am just sick and tired of this pain and misery, so I'm gonna give up.", then this is totally different.

If you're trying to convince someone that 1+1=55 you will eventually convince him, it's just a matter of time.
Example: you're trying to convince me that Communism is better than Democracy and you provide me with certain arguments. You can't convince me at first, but during time, providing me the same arguments in different ways, you will eventually convince me. I think this can work for certain things, but definitely not in all cases.

In my last post, I've stated that there are several cases when beliefs cannot be changed with the power of arguments. But what about "stick to your own principles" when it comes to really challenging situations.

So let's assume John has a very strong belief that implies a certain behavior, let's call it X. Now let's say Ben is trying to make Ben break his principles (eg. eat a rat by his own will, which is considered blasphemy and John would be automatically rejected by his god according to his belief). So X = never eat a rat.

Case 1: X is important but less important than life itself -> Ben puts a loaded gun to John's head = John eats the rat because his life is more important.

Case 2: X > life -> John will die but he won't break his principles.

Case 3: X> life; then Ben decides to torture John. John is very strong, but he doesn't want to get crazy or lose one of his important organs or senses. In this case, John will probably endure a lot of pain, but he will eventually break due to sleep deprivation and the threat of losing his eyes, minds or to remain paralyzed.

Case 4 (the ultimate John): X > life, senses, mental sanity, existence itself. This is simply the most important thing to him, he identifies himself with his principles. In this case, there's only one option for Ben: to induce unlimited pain. Now let's assume John is immortal and he doesn't get crazy no matter what. But Ben has the possibility to increase the level of pain all the time. The question is: will John be able to resist unlimited pain and stick to his principles?

It's rather a matter of perspectives than probabilities: personally, Science is a catalyst for my faith, as for others it represents the opposite. But my personal opinion is not important, what's important is that unless a totally new perspective appears, my faith cannot be changed, at least not by any existing arguments.

I think I have found something: it is wrong to look at this from the limited and unlimited power for a belief point of view, but rather from the existence of certain degrees point of view. Allow me to exemplify:
Case 1: I strongly believe that a large part of Modern Science is wrong. But if I were to be exposed to more information and empirical evidence, I could change my mind. But this is also because I haven't been exposed to a high degree of information regarding all the theories and I am not a scientist myself. New information and experiences could change my view.

Case 2: I believe in God and I think no one could convince me not to believe. And I believe this because I don't believe in God because my parents taught me so. I went through a long process of thinking, I listened to the pros and cons, and I finally got to the conclusion that God exists. So I've been exposed to the information so far. The only thing that could theoretically make me change my mind would be something very original, a totally new argument against the existence of God. The issue here is that everything that could be said about this topic has already been said in my opinion.

So at the end of the day it is not because I have an infinite belief in God, but because the number of arguments against faith is finite and I think I've heard them all in a form or another, nothing could make me an atheist.

But what's still very intriguing to me is the matter of sticking to the principles under the harshest times, and it's inevitable not to mention again the sensitive topic brought up here by Coben - torture. Good news is that I have found something for that too. But that remains to be said in another post.

But the "loss of self" implies the fact that it is not you, the one who strongly believe in something, the one who freely chooses to change himself under the pressure of pain and torture. No, what you're saying is that the torturer has the power to reduce you at the level of a life being with no principles who acts under instincts - no free will.

I don't know if you should, but you could.

Doesn't the fact that many who resisted for so long eventually broke represent a tricky temptation to believe that eventually anyone would break under continuous torture?