Earlier quoted context omitted.
>HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. I have seen many comments down voted and flagged dead that were eloquently stated and/or just an opinion.
> The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. It often looks like there is no other explanation than mere dislike or disagreement, which is unfair and calls for improvement. My policy: never downvote any post, and on the contrary, upvote posts that are contrary to my views but have merit and thus are worthy of consideration. I wish there were better ways to hi…
The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
131–140 of 184 posts
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#132Gottlieb 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…
Another poster has already brought media conglomerates like Murdoch, Sinclair or Axel Springer (Germany) so I won't deal with that.
Social media is also heavily directed by the platform operators, their "moderation" policies - Facebook/Instagram are on a massive crusade against nudity, for example - and especially their "algorithmic feed" selection. FB got under fire for throttling traffic to "left wing" sites (https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-report...), YouTube under multiple fires for stuff like Peppa Pig scare videos or for actively feeding users conspiracy propaganda, Reddit has many, many accusations of censorship regarding Uyghurs (since the Tencent ownership stake)...
tl;dr: social media platforms have intentions on their own and are not shy of using them.
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#133Gottlieb 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…
#1
How we talk changes how we think.
This is how propaganda works. We're somehow hard wired for sociability, cooperation. Something about our mirror neurons, theory of mind, and empathy.
#2
Our minds strive to maintain equilibrium.
There's an immune system like resistance to change, of any kind. The backfire effect of persuasion must be somehow related to this.
And yet, successful propaganda, persuasion somehow bypasses our defenses. Maybe we have an evolutionary glitch, where fearful stressed out people are more malleable.
#3
We don't remember changing our minds.
This is terrifies me.
Swarm Intelligence [2001] explanation of social cognition cites the research about our amnesia. My guess is that forgetting is somehow necessary for learning.
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutio...
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Please (!) share more recent explanations for the neuroscience of propaganda, cults, persuasion, and so forth.
The only hopeful, optimistic stuff I've read recently is about de-radicalization and successful cult deprogramming. TLDR: Empathy, tenacity, and patience.
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#134I 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.
I don't share arminiusreturns' view on the intelligence community. I know there are the black site psychos, but most of the people I've met in the IC care deeply about the rule of law and making the world safe for all of us.
But they are right that things truly are quite compartmentalized. And yes, when the USA said to Snowden "we won't torture you if you return" that sent chills down my spine. It shouldn't have been necessary to say that.
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
290 of which are “how do we solve the Jewish Problem”
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#136Gottlieb 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…
This itself is a meme, and an extremely popular one at that. I hear it all the time, all over the place.
Did you come up with this idea on your own, via close observation and rational analysis of the highly dimensional, infinitely complex reality that we all live within, including significant interaction with "the alt right" in their natural habitat? Is that the genesis of this idea in your mind?
If so, I wonder how it is that so many people have this very same idea inside their minds. Did they all come up with it on their own, via the same, skilful methodology that you used? If so, I wonder why encountering people who give off the slightest hint that they think in high dimensions with strict logic and epistemology, is so incredibly rare. I've asked easily 100++ people who believe your meme how they know it to be true, and not only have I received no high quality answers, I can't recall if I've ever received any answer that isn't simply a restatement of the original meme itself. (Come to think of it, this is a fairly common pattern that I've noticed when asking the same question about a variety of different memes. Hmmmm, that's interesting!)
Similarly, did the "members" of "the alt right" also arrive at their beliefs via this same methodology? Or in their case, is it just a rumour that was adopted without question, without being subjected to the strict critical thinking process that those who accepted your meme into their minds?
Another relevant question might be: what evidence (current and historic) can the respective sides collectively offer to substantiate their side of the story? And if no evidence can be provided, then from where does the confidence in the correctness of the idea derive? The confidence is there, of that there's no doubt. My question is: where did it come from, or, what is it composed of? Can the one who is in possession of it articulate it in written language? Or, are they maybe "very busy right now".
Some other important questions might be: What is actually True? How might we know, for sure? How many epistemic states are there: two (True/False), or three (True/False/Unknown)? And, what might be the possible consequences if our beliefs happen to be incorrect about some of these things - do the history books provide any lessons on that sort of thing?
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#137Earlier 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…
On the other hand closed groups of experts also don't work. I once knew some really extreme religious guys - pretty much flat-earthers. They were all heading for bioscience and networked like crazy - they got jobs in academia. Lonely brilliant scientists didn't.
Most likely a lot of science-communities have already been overrun by "networks".. Maybe the era of rational thinking is coming to an end.
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#138Gottlieb 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…
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#139Gottlieb 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…
Regarding influencers at least (and a lot of other social media phenomenon), the uniform actor is the ad industry. It's the sole reason influencers make a living and flaunts the latest products.
There certainly is intent: make people desire useless shit, get people spending.
Regarding the ad industry and social media in general, I am surprised that people think it is not about control, that the effects we are seeing are not planned. This is not conspiratorial thinking. Behavioral psychology has always been central to advertising. It is manipulation on a vast scale. The problem is it has become so widespread and ingrained in our daily lives and everything we see and hear that most of us now seem completely blind to it. Hey, it is black Friday soon; you will probably buy something you do not need, right? You are practically saving money by buying...
The design of social media platforms are even worse (more malicious, with intent) than traditional ad campaigns.
Re: The CIA's Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and a 'Poisoner in Chief'
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 p…
Why?
Do you apply this same standard when debugging software, or do you discard the realization of all observed patterns for which you lack an immediate explanation?
It's interesting to observe how the manner in which logic is executed changes when the topic of conversation changes in various ways.