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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

I'm convinced MKULTRA isn't still going on simply because it was based on faulty assumptions about how the brain works and how easily it can be manipulated. Not that there aren't likely programs with similar intent going on (more focused on influencing the masses rather than programming individuals) but the whole "mind-breaking people with LSD and trauma" genre of conspiracy theory probably isn't real.

Also I don't know what you mean by "so many," when the default consensus on HN is often very much pro-conspiracy.

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>the whole "mind-breaking people with LSD and trauma" genre of conspiracy theory probably isn't real.

Though there isn't anything showing the continued use of LSD, the use of trauma to mind-break people continued until at least 2008 under the guise of "enhanced interrogation.". Black sites still seem to exist, so it's unclear if it really stopped.

>the use of trauma to mind-break people continued until at least 2008 under the guise of "enhanced interrogation.".

That isn't a continuation of MKULTRA though, it's just torturing prisoners, and torture is notorious for not being an effective means of interrogation (which is why I'm convinced the only reason it was being pushed by the Bush administration post 9/11 was simply pandering to American bloodlust.) People will just as easily lie to make the pain stop as tell the truth.

You see both as attempts to get people to say/do what the CIA wants and that they're both based on a faulty understanding of how the mind works. That's enough for me to view them as a continuation, even if some of the details differ.

I suspect that most people are susceptible to such techniques. It's not hard to find historical examples of mass delusions or bouts of madness in large populations. Sometimes something like a severe drought (hunger) convinces an entire society that human sacrifice is a good idea in order to improve the weather.

Why wouldn't similar things cause most people to break when a team of people are working to break them, with the aid of drugs and otherwise to make the trauma seem real?

I think there's a difference between breaking someone and breaking them in a specific way that allows them to be controlled. As far as I know, the MKULTRA documents themselves show their experiments to be a failure. Pumping someone full of LSD then playing "kill the President" over headphones doesn't work.

The closest working analogue I can come up with to MKULTRA's goals is cult indoctrination, and that only works so long as someone remains within the cult's sphere of influence.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss what you believe doesn't work. Any government willing to subject its own citizens to what happened at MKUltra is capable of forging documents and releasing them with the goal of making the readers believe the experiments were complete failures.

OK, but at that point we're assuming some or all of the evidence that exists for MKULTRA was fabricated, intentionally declassified and released, while taking for granted that those documents are still accurate except for any part that discredit the program's effectiveness.

That the government wanted the public to know that these heinous experiments were taking place, just to try to convince them they didn't work, when it would have been much easier and more effective to simply never reveal them to begin with if they did work.

And if what the MKULTRA documents themselves say don't matter, then all of this is just a matter of faith. What is there to even discuss if the evidence doesn't matter one way or the other? Anything could be a coverup, false flag or misdirection.

"[...]when it would have been much easier and more effective to simply never reveal them to begin with if they did work."

I don't necessarily agree with what you're suggesting as being simpler. It may, in fact, be simpler to reveal the experiments and discredit them by using forged documents. Regardless of what may be simpler, I don't think it's scientific to take either position, which is why I prefer an agnostic stance when reading things that essentially require taking a faith-based position.

Well a contrived example of a bad or ineffective technique is not a counter point. Nor, of course, is MKULTRA docs themselves that claim ineffectiveness, whatever small, unredacted amount of which we're privvy to.

People do break and defect to other countries all the time. It happened numerous times on both sides during the Cold War. Surely part of that process is convincing your captive or target that your side's "cause or mission" is better than the one they came from.

To what extent is that even wrong I don't know. What is a culture but a cult on a grander scale (as has sometimes been said of religion)? Not all cults need be death cults.

You can't just tell someone to do something repetitiously and they blindly follow the order. You would have to convince the person that if they didn't do something, the world would be worse off or something even more horrific would happen in a fictional alternate universe if that person was not stopped.

MKULTRA in the LSD sense is garbage. Look into Monarch if you want an understanding of what is realistically likely possible. I have dealt with several victims of the process as patients, and I can assure you that quite a bit of it is real.

You can look at the videos of the congressional testimony if you want more information.

Reminds me of this great joke from the late comedian Trevor Moore: "What if governments learned from the MKUltra experiments in the 50's that trauma allows you to control people, so they purposely orchestrate disastrous events to keep their citizens afraid + dependent on them, and that's one of the reasons that mental illness has been rising? lol"

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