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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'

#81

Post by DoreenMichele »

gitweb wrote: post #77
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

If you use the search function at the bottom of the page and look for "dang shadow ban" you can come up with multiple comments by the moderator talking about HN policies, such as this one that I have quoted in part:

We do tell people that we're banning them, and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - but only once the account has an established history. We treat new accounts differently, for reasons I've explained before. I'll try to dig that up... Edit: here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994

It's a bimodal distribution in that we treat these disjoint groups very differently. With established accounts, we warn them before banning, usually several times, and then tell them we're banning them and why. With new accounts, we don't say we're banning because the population of banned-new-accounts is overwhelmingly spammers and trolls, often serial trolls who have been banned many times and know perfectly well what they're doing.

Link to the entire comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672

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

#82

Post by bryanrasmussen »

seppin wrote: post #35
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help thinking China hacking America is part of the NSA profile, and I don't think the CIA is needed to tell anyone that China is pushing out it's maritime borders or threatening U.S allies that's more like what reading the news is for. I suppose there could be a need for analysis of these events, but the analysis doesn't really seem to be part of the reason why people sometimes think the CIA should be abolish…

My point was a simple one, spying will always occur. If people are arguing it should be the exclusive purview of autocrats, and that would somehow improve the state of the world, I would disagree.

The arguments for closing the CIA that I am familiar with all revolve around a narrative that it is a non-democratic organization, and that from its predecessors the OSS to the modern day it has been structured so as to help fascistic, autocratic governments gain and hold power.

I've never encountered an argument that it should be closed because spying isn't nice.

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

#83

Post by rorykoehler »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #68
rorykoehler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own personal experience is that opinions on topics are geographical cargo cults. Upvoted by Europeans in the morning and downvoted by Americans in the afternoon or vice versa.

And my personal experience is that some percentage of my comments are downvoted immediately and then upvoted to neutral -- as was the case here. I imagine if you interviewed all 5 million visitors you would get about 5 million different experiences. (That's not to dismiss your experience at all.)

We could be experiencing the same phenomenon

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

#84

Post by DoreenMichele »

rorykoehler wrote: post #83
DoreenMichele wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my personal experience is that some percentage of my comments are downvoted immediately and then upvoted to neutral -- as was the case here. I imagine if you interviewed all 5 million visitors you would get about 5 million different experiences. (That's not to dismiss your experience at all.)

We could be experiencing the same phenomenon

I have also noticed that probably Europe and the US vote somewhat differently on at least some of my comments. But I think that's a separate pattern from the tendency for some of my comments to be immediately downvoted and then voted back to neutral.

It tends to be certain kinds of comments and unlike almost everything else about HN, I am usually not surprised by that pattern because I tend to expect it for certain topics or certain types of observations that I sometimes make.

I have a really poor ability to predict which comments of mine will do really well.

I have a really poor ability to predict which articles I submit will do really well.

I have a reasonably good ability to predict which comments will be promptly downvoted and then get corrective upvotes.

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

#85

Post by ginko »

rorykoehler wrote: post #64
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My own personal experience is that opinions on topics are geographical cargo cults. Upvoted by Europeans in the morning and downvoted by Americans in the afternoon or vice versa.

Or you know, maybe Europeans and Americans just have different cultures and values.

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

#86

Post by krageon »

ginko wrote: post #85
rorykoehler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own personal experience is that opinions on topics are geographical cargo cults. Upvoted by Europeans in the morning and downvoted by Americans in the afternoon or vice versa.

Or you know, maybe Europeans and Americans just have different cultures and values.

If I'm not mistaken their core point is that cultures and values are basically brainwashing.

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

#87

Post by mattmanser »

gitweb wrote: post #77
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

I have showdead turned on so see shadow banned comments.

What you're claiming is wrong and misleading. It's rare and almost always justified.

For the times it isn't, which I haven't seen for a few years, I've emailed those people where they've shown an email.

They usually say thanks, that other people have also emailed them and they'll contact the mod team.

i.e. there are plenty of long-term members of this site that keep an eye on shadow bans and we generally thintk it's working as intended.

I checked one out a couple of days ago, and literally 4 comments earlier dang had warned them that if they kept it up with the short, low-quality comments they'd probably end up shadow-banned.

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

#88

Post by krageon »

seppin wrote: post #34
colonelanguz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A protection racket implies the "threat" is fake or choreographed. Actually it doesn't

You're right: "Through the credible threat of violence, the racketeers deter people from swindling, robbing, injuring, sabotaging or otherwise harming their clients." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket It implies that the protector has the absolute ability to control if an attack occurs or not. So if the CIA had a little more budget, they would have stopped 9/11. Because they had the ability to, they jus…

Part of a protection racket is staging attacks when you think you're not going to get paid (or you're not getting paid yet). You could just as easily make a case along those lines, but both cases would be disingenuous because real life is complicated. Just because it's a protection racket doesn't mean that it needs to at all times 100% conform to a sentence that you found on wikipedia.

As in a real life protection racket, there will always be events that occur in spite of the protection offered. The core of a racket is to respond with disproportionate violence. For example, sending your army to harass the entire country that some of your attackers were part of. Drone strikes on schools that are known to be full of children. There are more salient examples to be found, but I think we don't need them.

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

#89

Post by jonathanstrange »

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…

That's complete and utter conspiracy nonsense because control implicates intentions, but the media - and especially social media - are not directed by a uniform actor with intentions.

What you're insinuating to be mind control are normal social mechanisms that have always been in place and have nothing to do with the media. They are primarily exerted upon you by your peers (close friends, family, colleagues), and not by the media. Whether these social control mechanisms are good or bad depends on the how closed these groups are and what view/policies they have. For example, if you're surrounded by religious fanatics, then that's likely going to be bad for you.

What you refer to is actually an "alt right" meme that was invented to discredit free thinking (free thinking requires people to be well-informed) and push an authoritarian and communitarian agenda in which people are more controlled than in a free society. It's a fascist agenda that only works if you successfully discredit media first, since otherwise nobody will buy the "alternative facts" nonsense they're trying to sell.

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

#90

Post by spdionis »

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…

Honestly, I wish dang just immediately force-collapsed these upvote/downvote speculation threads.
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