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The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

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Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#71

Post by kortilla »

kungito wrote: post #59
forgingahead wrote: post #56

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encounte…

HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the o…

The silent majority is pretty fucking stupid as a whole. It’s hard to have an informed populous when they are allowed to censor the stories that make their emotions feel bad. It’s like allowing grade schoolers to vote on what they eat for lunch every day.

As a reddit user, this is what you’re dealing with. The non-college educated majority has control over the following things:

- what politics you see - what comments you see - what science you see - what news you see

It’s going to take a while, but one of the emerging lessons of this era is that democracy for information spreading is a pretty terrible idea. Ted the conspiracy enthusiast/barista maybe shouldn’t have the same voting power on a comment thread about orbital dynamics as an astrophysicist.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#72

Post by AndrewBissell »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #61

I don't think most people understand the company, even company insiders. (learn the origins of compartmentalization for some good reading) I think looking at the history and origins of it and it's key founding and early members offer the greatest insights into the structure learned mostly from MI6 when it was the OSS formed by a bunch of Wall Street banker-lawyer types who were pioneering the international law moveme…

"The Devil's Chessboard" and "The Mighty Wurlitzer" are the two books I'm most familiar with on this topic, but I'd be curious to hear any specific recommendations you have as well.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#73

Post by kortilla »

3131s wrote: post #60
meowface wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't.

They did, together with their buddy Bandar bin Sultan. Why exactly do you think they didn't bother going after the person who funded the hijackers directly, and actively hid this information in the 9/11 "28 pages" for years and years?

But that’s lame even for a conspiracy. Step 1 if it was a conspiracy would have been certainly to go after the funders because they were loose ends.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#74

Post by refurb »

I can’t remember the name of the book anymore, but a chemist from the US Army published a book on his work on psychoactive chemical weapons, namely BZ.

What was most interesting to me was that volunteering to be a test subject was regarded as a cushy assignment. Basically given psychoactive drugs and then be observed. BZ has a very lo half-life so the test subjects were often delirious for days at a time.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#75

Post by captainmuon »

forgingahead wrote: post #56

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encounte…

> just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc.

I wish this was true. I actually feel that racism, sexism, reactionary thought is on the rise. If it seems that liberal ideas are becoming dominant in the public space, it is actually because 1) liberals are starting to feel with their back against the wall, and are reacting in the field where they have the most power, the discursive sphere. And 2) people are finally finding the courage to speak out again about issues that have been plaguing us for centuries (see MeToo and Black Lives Matter).

And to put on a tinfoil hat and risk being downvoted: I don't buy the "social media is manipulating us poor people" narrative. That is a spin encouraged by the traditional media who see their share of the cake being endangered. They are used to be, well, "media", mediating between the public sphere and the people. With social media connecting people directly, they have a kind of existential crisis.

What actually is happening is that social media amplifies and brings out what people are actually thinking, and in many cases that is a cesspool of hate and conspiracy theory - all across the political spectrum. We didn't see it before because traditional "media" chose what to amplify and what not, and kept a lid on it.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#76

Post by n4r9 »

closeparen wrote: post #70
sirtaj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. In our day to day lives, I use this as a basic character test of both individuals and societies. People fail this inductive-thinking test - "If everyone did what I am about to do, would I like to live in the society that would result?" - all the time. Signs of failure range from lack of civic sense (litter, rash driving etc) all th…

If everyone went into software engineering, we would all starve to death. There are very few things that society could survive “everyone” doing - a diversity and balance of complementary behaviors are important.

It makes more sense as a rule applied to moral judgements c.f. Immanuel Kant's Universalisability.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#77

Post by gitweb »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #63
forgingahead wrote: post #56

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encounte…

Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). Corrective upvotes are a tradition on HN. If you aren't being an asshole, some people will upvote you back to neutral if they think you are being downvoted for the wrong reasons. You just have to have a…

Let's not forget about the good old shadow ban that HN uses when you get downvoted, even if you have a legitimate comment. You'd get shadow banned today for comments like the Earth is round if people don't agree with it or find it controversial to say it. Where they still let you comment, and make you think others can see it but if you sign out or view the discussion from a different IP your comments aren't even there.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#78

Post by OneGuy123 »

forgingahead wrote: post #56

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encounte…

This is why 4chan is great: no accounts, no up or downvotes.

You will find all kind of people there, each topic will be explored from 300 different perspectives.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#79

Post by OneGuy123 »

kortilla wrote: post #71
kungito wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the o…

The silent majority is pretty fucking stupid as a whole. It’s hard to have an informed populous when they are allowed to censor the stories that make their emotions feel bad. It’s like allowing grade schoolers to vote on what they eat for lunch every day. As a reddit user, this is what you’re dealing with. The non-college educated majority has control over the following things: - what politics you see - what comments…

> The non-college educated majority...

Ironicaly the college educated way overrate themself on how objectively they see the world and think they know better than the rest, but they fail to see the forest for the tree just as often as non-college educated.

College does not give you the ability to see objectivity, it just increases knowledge across a specific field.

See: reproductability crisis.

Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'

#80

Post by sirtaj »

closeparen wrote: post #70
sirtaj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other people. In our day to day lives, I use this as a basic character test of both individuals and societies. People fail this inductive-thinking test - "If everyone did what I am about to do, would I like to live in the society that would result?" - all the time. Signs of failure range from lack of civic sense (litter, rash driving etc) all th…

If everyone went into software engineering, we would all starve to death. There are very few things that society could survive “everyone” doing - a diversity and balance of complementary behaviors are important.

Sure, but there are plenty that apply. Driving sensibly, not littering and behaving properly in a queue are such basic examples that going as far as "everyone becoming a software engineer" seems a little disingenuous.
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