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

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

#121

Post by AntiImperialist » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:22 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #113

AntiImperialist wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but the problem is that I may be wrong... but I'll never hear why or be able to have reasonable discussion with anyone because your brainwashing prevents you from remaining calm and explaining.

So, people who disagree with you, can never calmly explain their position? You also expect this state of affairs to never change. That must be frustrating.

So, people who disagree with you, can never calmly explain their position?

Not never, but it often seems very difficult for certain people. I get emotionally charged reactions, both online and IRL.

You also expect this state of affairs to never change.

What do you mean? I think these things can change. The brainwashing is usually kept in by evoking a traumatic response. If the trauma is healed, the brainwashing doesn't stick around.

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

#122

Post by gitweb » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #87

gitweb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you are trying to do here is justify the practice and misrepresent the truth about what is actually happening. How is what I said wrong and misleading? Most people aren't going to associate an email address with an account because like other users here we've seen the mods consistently biased in how they enforce their policies. Why not just notify them when they login, or disable the reply feature altogether instead of wasting their time thinking they are posting?

You also use the word troll but I've seen people get shadowbanned that weren't trolls, but people in the thread simply didn't like their comments because they were advocating for open source solutions or for sharing negative criticism about a company based on their real-life experiences.

I'm sure there are legitimate cases to ban users, but shadow-banning is just poor ethics. Just ban people if you don't want users that may go against the typical pro-corporate yes man type agenda rather than mislead and say that they are trolls, when apparently (based on my experience) your definition of troll is someone who doesn't go along with the topics general opinion even if they have legitimate reasons not to.

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

#123

Post by gitweb » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:38 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #81

gitweb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 different…

So what is a new account? Let's say that they've posted hundreds of times, or the account is over 30 days or 90 days old? You're telling me you still don't shadowban if they go below a certain threshold and that you don't rate limit to maybe one or two responses in a 2 hour period. Also, how do you contact them specifically? What if someone has proof of not being contacted. Are you going to retract your statement?

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

#124

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

AntiImperialist wrote: post #103

andruby wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some westerners don't identify strongly with a specific country. I am one of those. We might consider the "good" of "all" people above the good of our country. When that is your mindset, voting for policies that favor your own country, your own well-being can in fact feel wrong, if it is at the cost of other people's well-being.

Greater good is often used as a reason to grab power from individuals, whether it is by foreign nations, corporations or even other national government. I am not talking about that. Groups exist for a reason. The biggest reason is that other groups exist. You can either be attacked by those or join them or create your own. Your group can be a political one, which in some cases may end up having their own nation state…

That's quite an unusual view. It's not at all hard to find evidence of pro-nationalist propaganda because it's ubiquitous.

Anti-nationalist views are much rarer and much less common in virtually all media. In the US you're going to have a hard time finding progressives who explicitly want to destroy America. They may disagree with American policy in a number of areas, but that's a long way from wanting to get rid of the country and its traditions.

Likewise elsewhere. It's probably weakest in the EU because the EU isn't a country so much as a work in progress - and it doesn't even have its own sports teams.

Personally I've never heard of the Open Society Foundation, although it sounds as if I'd agree with their views.

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

#125

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #101

AntiImperialist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note: one of the funniest things as a non-westerner to me is that a majority of westerners are convinced that when they vote, if they vote for policies that favor their own country, their own well-being, it is wrong. Here's a hint for those who are struggling: if you're convinced that you should vote against yourself, you've been brainwashed by your enemies. To those who are feeling anger after reading m…

Westerners claim that the vote for selfless do good things, but usually the practical consequences of what they want benefits them personally. For example they will go to organic shop to 'save the planet' and 'be fair to third world countries', but those shops also exclude the poor and the minorities due to their pricing and thus let them keep their closed communities, while the universalist political message works a…

Quite a few of those Westerners will also volunteer for food banks and work as political activists trying to make food banks unnecessary. (For example.)

So I'm not convinced your point is correct.

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

#126

Post by toomanybeersies » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

sirtaj wrote: post #57

Nbox9 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sometimes do bad things, and aren’t held accountable. Sometimes, these unaccountable things are secret. Some secrets will remain secrets. The secretes that will become public knowledge are my worrisome. It’s common to do bad things and be unaccountable for them — from your own actions or the actions you take on behalf of the group. Society is best when people think about how their worst actions effect other pe…

> 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…

Or as the bible so aptly put it:

> Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

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

#127

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #115

jonathanstrange wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Not from the systems perspective, it doesn't. It requires a set point, an ability to measure deviation from that set point, and an ability to influence a factor that can reduce said deviation. It's not a conspiracy theory to observe t…

We could do with different words for these. You're right that from the perspective of both electronics engineers and sociologists there are all sorts of "control systems" that affect behaviour. It's the great achievement of Weberist "modern" societies to take control away from individual chains of authority (feudalism) and into impersonal systems (bureaucracy, police, capitalism). But the individual lived experience of being controlled can still be oppressive.

We swing backwards and forwards between trying to hold individuals accountable for system-caused behaviour vs trying to change "the system" which is both huge and thwarted by individual actions.

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

#128

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

txmachinery wrote: post #114

jonathanstrange wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"The media" and "social media" may not be controlled by a single actor, but it's common knowledge that large enough chunks of both can be and often are. For example, the conspiracy theory that Russia rigged the 2016 election for Trump is based on this premise. There is also a widely-accepted partisan divide between the encumbent news sources on the left, and Fox and newer so-called "fringe" or "alt" news sources on t…

> both sides are behaving in uniform ways exactly typical of unified, single-actor control, respective to each.

If you're alleging single-actor control you need to have some idea of who that single actor allegedly is.

A lot of this stuff is simply .. more chaotic. That goes for the question of Russian involvement. Reducing it to a single yes/no binary doesn't help; it's almost certainly not true that Putin has been personally, directly issuing orders to Trump, but there definitely have been a lot of Trump associates who also associated with Russians, in some cases took money from them, lied to Federal investigators about it, and as a result were jailed or at least indicted.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cases-fac...

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

#129

Post by macdust » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #100

macdust wrote: post #95

Why is this a legitimate topic on a forum that forbids trafficking in what are labelled "conspiracy theories." The net effect of allowing a discussion of this sort is to restrict discussion to the few fragments of the record of MKULTRA that were allowed to survive. Mr. Kinzer's book does not hint at how horrible, extensive, successful, or powerful the program was, nor does it show any cognizance of actual techniques…

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say. Most of the records were destroyed and we're trying to piece together the evidence. What is the "truth" that we are "not allowed" to bring up?

My reply would be deemed conspiracy theory, though it would contain no theory, only testimony.

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

#130

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

AntiImperialist wrote: post #103

andruby wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some westerners don't identify strongly with a specific country. I am one of those. We might consider the "good" of "all" people above the good of our country. When that is your mindset, voting for policies that favor your own country, your own well-being can in fact feel wrong, if it is at the cost of other people's well-being.

Greater good is often used as a reason to grab power from individuals, whether it is by foreign nations, corporations or even other national government. I am not talking about that. Groups exist for a reason. The biggest reason is that other groups exist. You can either be attacked by those or join them or create your own. Your group can be a political one, which in some cases may end up having their own nation state…

A set of relatively uncontroversial statements about Westphalian nation-states ... and then a dig at the OSF. Why does this always come down to people having a go at George Soros?

Is it by any chance because he backed the Western side in Ukraine?