[somatic]

I don’t know about you, but the Snowden Revelations dramatically shifted my baseline of “paranoid schizo”. Before, I thought the prospect utterly bananas that “the government” was tapping every phone call, strong-arming ISPs, and intercepting mail en route to its destination.

Then I found myself in a rabbit hole of Tuskegee experiments, Operation Northwoodses, MKULTRAs, human-animal hybrids, and so on.

Now, the question I ask is, “is this technologically possible?”

[overthemoon]

I have similar feelings, don't get me wrong. I too have experienced that shift. I guess I just want to know, is what technologically possible?

I see two possibilities here: one is a handful of unimaginably wealthy and powerful hedge funds and intelligence organizations (heretofore unnamed) which are somehow coordinated in their efforts to shift public opinion to... something. The example given is something about black men, white women, and white men. I'm not sure what that means.

The other, IMO far more believable scenario, is that there are many interested parties using social media and advertisement in general to change people's minds about a myriad of topics and issues, which is not remarkable except to the extent that new technology and new techniques are being used, which we may not fully understand or be aware of.

The first requires a belief in a conspiracy among the hyper rich and powerful to create some ill-defined new world, the other does not. Both are technologically possible, but I find one more convincing than the other.

Edited to add that last sentence and to correct some awkward wording.

[somatic]

If I had to guess, I’d say that most of these people are aligned in factions, most of which probably have roughly similar interests and so are working fully or partially independently towards roughly the same things, probably with no little amount of internicene jostling for position.

And in the process they’re probably producing technological horrors simply because it’s convenient and effective to do so. No hard feelings.

Conspiracies happen all the time, and I would imagine that few ever come to light.

[everdrive]

>Then I found myself in a rabbit hole of Tuskegee experiments, Operation Northwoodses, MKULTRAs, human-animal hybrids, and so on.

These things aren't interrelated, or even very similar.

[somatic]

Sure they are: they’re all things which normal people wouldn’t do to other people, and in which the perpetrators weren’t punished.

And by “normal people wouldn’t do to other people”, I mean “stark raving mad”.

[everdrive]

I'm going to keep getting downvoted here, but it seems like people collect a bulleted list of spooky and bad things a government has done, and imply a meaningful connection via the act of simply listing the events together.

So, in our same list we have:

- A Cuban false flag operation with military intent.

- A CIA Mind Control experiment which is implied to be widespread, but documents don't actually support this. Torturing a few hapless individuals with LSD is certainly terrible, but it's different from "widespread government control."

- A terrible, scientific & racist medical experiment carried out against a vulnerable group of people.

- And then, "human-animal hybrids" ... I'm not sure how to respond to this? A few folks in China did some questionable things, maybe? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

These are all disparate groups, with disparate intent, and unrelated outcome. Please, how are these related? Some people in power did some things are morally wrong? Why include conspiracy theories in this list if that's the only similarity? If you simply wanted to discuss government transgression, you could avoid something as trivial as MKULTA and instead simply mention U.S. Slavery, or the Soviet Famine, or any of the many government-run genocides in world history.

[millzlane]

The idea is that all these things are related in their goal in to trying to control people either by using force or coercion. They were all done using the Mechanism of US gov. They also weren't prosecuted for their crimes.

[everdrive]

The Tuskeegee experiment wasn't about control, it was about studying syphilis. It was as terrible was it was racist, but it had nothing to do with government control.

A false flag operation is only about control in the loosest sense. You can't successfully false flag your way into a military conflict with an allied country: it's only useful when tensions are high enough that there is already popular support for a military operation, but an excuse is needed. In that sense, other "excuses" for military conflicts work the same way. The spurious claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was popular only because of 9/11 and sentiment about the middle east at the time. (a similar argument, for example, could not have been made about other countries with WMDs, such as France, Israel, and South Africa) I'm not suggesting any of these actions are acceptable, simply that the salient point here must be deception, not control. Broadly speaking, any government-driven policy or program in some vague sense of the word requires control. There must be enough popular support for any initiative such that it can be successful. Anti-smoking campaigns require coercion as well, and sometimes even deception. Smoking used to be wildly popular, but the government, as well as some powerful groups, were able to use emotional appeals and scare tactics to vastly change the public perception of smoking. Should we lump this effort in with MKULTRA?

I'm not sure that "human-animal hybrids" are real in any non-pedantic way. Even so, not sure what the control aspect is meant to be here.

MKULTRA, however, clearly was about control. The correct conclusion about MKULTRA, however, should be that the CIA needed more oversight, since they were apparently willing to torture people and perform highly unethical experiments to learn how effectively an individual could be controlled. Often glossed over is the fact these these experiments largely didn't work at all at all. No progress on "mass-control" was ever made, and instead, all we're left with is government abuse and torture in pursuit of something that probably isn't possible.

[edmundsauto]

Are you familiar with Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem? The narrative is that the Nazi regime was comprised of completely normal people. She then examines what the implications are in a world where perfectly normal people perpetrate the Holocaust.

One addendum, it's worth keeping in mind the base rate for these awful gov't incidents you mention. If you only see the bad things, you have subconscious blinders (Kahneman's "What You See Is All There Is"). Try thinking about MKULTRA or Cuba or Tuskegee in relation to (much larger quantity and impact from) positive things the government does, like international aid, or emergency services provided by the Coast Guard. Responses to earthquakes in poor countries, our military is there. Vaccinations, food drops, all kinds of things that the gov't does that are good.

You have to consider these things holistically to get a good picture, otherwise I agree it's very easy to rabbit hole down a conspiracy path. And it's attractive -- it means "you get it" while other people dont -- but it's not an accurate representation of the whole, which makes it a bad model to allow to fester in your mind.

[somatic]

I’m all for good governance, and I’m glad that most people in government are trying to do the best that they can with what they have available.

But I think that it’s pretty clear that they’re not running the show, where it really matters.

[edmundsauto]

I think it's pretty clear that no group of humans is running the show, where it matters. Humanity is too large, with too much complexity, too many interconnections and Nth-order side effects, for any group of people to be running it.

We are, for better or worse, cruising on a giant ship with limited steering, and all we can do is try to control how much fuel we shovel into the engine.

But the direction of the boat is controlled more like an Ouiji board; our direction is an emergent behavior.

[stOneskull]

a lot of psychopaths rise to the top

[entropea]

Read Manufacturing Consent & Surveillance Valley if you haven't already.

[somatic]

Will do, thanks.