Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to be following up the episode that
Speaker 1: you just did with Christian most recently about mind flares.
Speaker 1: Today we wanted to take a broader look at the
Speaker 1: idea of mind control in fiction in reality. If it's possible,
Speaker 1: can you really control someone's mind from a distance, And
Speaker 1: if so, what's it like to have your mind controlled? Yes? Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a part two, So if you didn't
Speaker 1: listen to the last episode on mind flares or all
Speaker 1: the Dungeons and dragon stuff turns you off, do not worry.
Speaker 1: You will not need that level of expertise to continue
Speaker 1: on listening to this episode. Robert, I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: give a brief summary course on mind flares for us.
Speaker 1: I will, But before we do that, let's let's just
Speaker 1: us a few other pop culture, cultural literary examples even
Speaker 1: of mind control. Well, one of the classics has got
Speaker 1: to be The Manchurian Candidate, a movie I've never seen,
Speaker 1: but I'm familiar with just through reputation. It's based on
Speaker 1: a novel and it stars uh Frank Sinatra, which I
Speaker 1: have to be sad about because I I can't stand
Speaker 1: that crooner stuff. You you can't I want to use
Speaker 1: another word other than stuff. It's no, I'm not into
Speaker 1: the crooners. Oh I appreciate some creon in every now
Speaker 1: and then. Now that kind of surprises me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like I think I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of Soma FM, which is an internet radio
Speaker 1: station free supported by listeners free plug as well. Uh
Speaker 1: and they have a number of different channels with various
Speaker 1: different types of like electronic and spacey music. But they
Speaker 1: also have one called Secret Agent Radio, and so they
Speaker 1: have a lot of it's like a lot of James
Speaker 1: Bond audio snippets in between, sometimes lounge your tracks, but
Speaker 1: occasionally something a little occasionally, I think they'll drop a
Speaker 1: little Sinatra in. Okay, well, I guess I could get
Speaker 1: into that. But the crooner stuff itself, I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan of. Anyway, back to the Manchurion candidate. So the plot,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with it, basically, there are some
Speaker 1: American soldiers who get brainwashed behind enemy lines. I think
Speaker 1: they're taken prisoner by some communists, and these communists hypnotize
Speaker 1: them and turn them into sleeper agents. So you've got
Speaker 1: a character who has been under hypnosis given this post
Speaker 1: hypnotic suggestion that given a certain trigger that activates him,
Speaker 1: he will become an unwitting assassin and will carry out
Speaker 1: his preordained orders from his communist overlords, which are to
Speaker 1: assassinate some American official. Okay, this is very playing in
Speaker 1: a way upon like the the the the very Cold
Speaker 1: War idea, real life idea that contact with the enemy
Speaker 1: even when captured and not you know, brain, that's gonna change,
Speaker 1: it's gonna contaminate you with a with a foreign way
Speaker 1: of thinking. Yeah, and the season on both sides with
Speaker 1: the Soviets, uh and with the and with the US. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this was also it's very similar to stuff people
Speaker 1: were really saying about things that happened to, for example,
Speaker 1: American prisoners of war during the Korean War, but with
Speaker 1: a critical historical approach, most of those stories about American
Speaker 1: POWs in the Korean War, I think that's all been
Speaker 1: pretty much debunked these days, though of course, there is
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, in any prison or scenario,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of psychological manipulation. Just bite
Speaker 1: the inherent nature of what's going on and sure, that
Speaker 1: is the thing that we're going to have to explore
Speaker 1: at length in this episode. Is what's the difference between regular,
Speaker 1: run of the mill psychological manipulation, which we all acknowledge,
Speaker 1: we're all familiar with. It's a It's actually a part
Speaker 1: of everyday life. It's not just something that happens under
Speaker 1: extreme duress and wartime scenarios. Psychological manipulation happens in your job.
Speaker 1: It happens in your relations and chips. So this is
Speaker 1: utterly mundane, We're all familiar with it. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between that and the kind of mind control that we
Speaker 1: see in fiction? And wonder if it could be real? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean if I read a self help book. Let's
Speaker 1: say I pick up an Eckart tote total a book
Speaker 1: and I started reading it, I'm allowing Eckhart totally to
Speaker 1: write in my brain with his ideas and essentially control
Speaker 1: who I am. Is that a good thing? Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I like, Yeah, I think, yeah, I I do. I like.
Speaker 1: I like a number of Eckart Tootal's ideas. But it's
Speaker 1: that I think we're all okay with that idea. You're allowing,
Speaker 1: You're you're reading a book, You're you're willingly opening the
Speaker 1: doors and letting ideas come in. But where does it
Speaker 1: become a bad thing? Where where do we draw that line?
Speaker 1: Where does it become the Manchurian candidate. Well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into that later. I see, Robert, you have some comic
Speaker 1: book villains here for us, right, Yeah, there are. There
Speaker 1: are a few other I think really noteworthy ideas, some
Speaker 1: of them more recent than others that you see in fiction.
Speaker 1: Different visions of what mind control would be like. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was, of course a really cool one that was
Speaker 1: on the Netflix show Jessica Jones. If you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with this, this is a superhero show. Uh, that's like
Speaker 1: a street level, um Hell's kitchen kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: Jessica Jones is a former superhero with super strength and
Speaker 1: now she's a She's a p I and the enemy
Speaker 1: she goes up against is this guy, Mr Purple, the
Speaker 1: Purple Man, uh Zebadiah Killgrave. And this character's power is
Speaker 1: that he can. He tells you to do something and
Speaker 1: you do it. He tells you to believe something, you
Speaker 1: believe it. That's a very formidable power. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a wonder. I'm a big fan of that, at
Speaker 1: least that that first season, the season that's out of
Speaker 1: Jessica Jones, because they do a great job of exploring
Speaker 1: how this this just overpowered character works and it seems
Speaker 1: he can defeat Superman so easily. Right. Yeah, he just
Speaker 1: tells people what to do and they do it. So
Speaker 1: what kind of world has he built for himself? What
Speaker 1: kind of of mind does he have? Like what sort
Speaker 1: of you know, his inner trauma, but also the trauma
Speaker 1: he lives in it he leaves in his wake, because
Speaker 1: eventually people wake up from their mind control and they realized, oh,
Speaker 1: I did all these awful things for this guy who
Speaker 1: just walked into my life and started telling me who
Speaker 1: I was and what I wanted to do for him.
Speaker 1: And then the important thing, too, is that what what
Speaker 1: he tells you to do, you do it willingly. It's
Speaker 1: not a situation of of oh I don't want to
Speaker 1: serve the Purple Man, but I'm doing it. No, you
Speaker 1: just do what the Purple Man tells you to do,
Speaker 1: as if not as if he's the voice of God,
Speaker 1: as if he's your voice. He wears you like a
Speaker 1: glove and makes you do the things you do, and
Speaker 1: you do them of your seemingly of your own volition,
Speaker 1: subject and master, indivisible and will exactly. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: got another one. Okay, I know you love this movie
Speaker 1: video Drone. Oh yes, it's been a while since I've
Speaker 1: actually plugged it into the old VCR or even you know,
Speaker 1: my torso. But yeah, Cronenberg's video Drune is a classic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of metaphorical relationships going
Speaker 1: on now in the lot of videodrome. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a nasty body horror movie, but a very smart
Speaker 1: and inventive one about this sleazy TV producer who gets
Speaker 1: caught up in this conspiracy of people who are trying
Speaker 1: to use TV programming to kill people and the control
Speaker 1: minds James woods yes, James Woodson, and he he ends
Speaker 1: up becoming sort of like in the Maturian Candidate, a
Speaker 1: a mindless assassin that is being controlled by these people
Speaker 1: who are who are bombarding his brain with different video signals.
Speaker 1: And there's definitely a lot of commentary in it about
Speaker 1: about how media influences us I think there's some media
Speaker 1: as mind control type suggestions. But he he in the
Speaker 1: plot of the movie, on the face of it, literally
Speaker 1: becomes a mind controlled sleeper assassin running around with his
Speaker 1: flesh gun, lasting people. But they do explain it, not
Speaker 1: just in the mundane sense of media control, as in,
Speaker 1: you know, media is feeding us ideas, and we consume
Speaker 1: those ideas and are sometimes convinced and influenced by them.
Speaker 1: But there is actually like a sci fi explanation. You know,
Speaker 1: he's been given some kind of special brain waves that
Speaker 1: mess him up and cause him to lose his personal
Speaker 1: will and autonomy. Okay, yeah, that's a That's a great example.
Speaker 1: Another example that came to my mind is from another
Speaker 1: actually ties into another James Woods film. So did you
Speaker 1: see John Carpenter's Vampires film. I have tried to watch
Speaker 1: that movie and was unable to finish. It was just
Speaker 1: awful and one of those movies that is so ugly
Speaker 1: to look at that you can't keep your eyes on
Speaker 1: the screen. Yeah I will. I will not defend that
Speaker 1: movie at all. And I'm saying that as a Carpenter fan.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have the same uh
Speaker 1: relationship with that film. It's all the more tragic though,
Speaker 1: not only because of Carpenter's filmography and how many you know,
Speaker 1: how many films in that filmography we just love so much,
Speaker 1: but also it's based on the book by John Steakley
Speaker 1: titled Vampires, and the book itself is really empires with
Speaker 1: a doll are signed. I think sometimes it has a
Speaker 1: dollar sign. Yeah. Um. John Steckley now now now the
Speaker 1: departed from this mortal coil. He uh he wrote two books. Basically,
Speaker 1: he wrote Vampires and he wrote a book called Armor
Speaker 1: uh an. Armor is kind of a Starship Troopers uh
Speaker 1: riff involving you know, power armor and inhuman enemies and
Speaker 1: a sci fi future. Both of these books are are
Speaker 1: really good. I recommend them their pactful action. But Vampires
Speaker 1: in particular has these the the vampire characters that are
Speaker 1: encountered by the hunters are just really terrifying because they
Speaker 1: have this at least one of them in particular, has
Speaker 1: this this terrible purple man type mind control power. So
Speaker 1: the covenant vampires will just happen upon some people and
Speaker 1: they'll you know, drain some of them, but then they'll
Speaker 1: also just toy with the others by mind controlling them
Speaker 1: into doing just awful things and then leaving them to
Speaker 1: come to terms with the things that they did seemingly willingly,
Speaker 1: you know that they're just traumatized by the experience, and
Speaker 1: that these awful vampires uh that are parading around like
Speaker 1: little gods, they enjoy it. So that's kind of strange.
Speaker 1: The characters remember doing what they've done under the influence
Speaker 1: of mind control, yet they remember it as something that
Speaker 1: they will personally had the will to do or did
Speaker 1: not personally have the will to do. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: it's that they remember loving it. So if they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're told to do this and love it, they'll do
Speaker 1: it and love it. And then even after the power
Speaker 1: of the vampires is left, they're still coming to terms
Speaker 1: of like, what's what's the matter with me? Why did
Speaker 1: I do those things? Why not I enjoy doing those things?
Speaker 1: And I guess a lot of that is kind of
Speaker 1: commentary on, you know, on various things in life. We
Speaker 1: can all look back on memories and we asked, why
Speaker 1: did we do that? And and do so willingly? We
Speaker 1: don't most of us do not have the luxury of
Speaker 1: having the mistakes in our lives dictated to us by
Speaker 1: alien or vampire overlords. It's true. It can often feel
Speaker 1: like when you think back on a memory of something
Speaker 1: you did that you're very not proud of that. You
Speaker 1: think that was a different person, almost as if you
Speaker 1: imagine you were under some form of mind control, but
Speaker 1: the power controlling you at the time was who you
Speaker 1: were at the time, which is no longer who you
Speaker 1: are now. It's true. Okay, but how about those mind flares? Yes,
Speaker 1: the mind flares. So these are monsters, right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are from the dungeton Dragons World. I won't I
Speaker 1: won't hit you with all the details again, Christian and
Speaker 1: I just recorded an entire episode about them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: their lovecraft Ian octopus headed batties who are always using
Speaker 1: their psionic powers to manipulate and outright mind control their enemies, uh,
Speaker 1: which is often the players of the game. And they're
Speaker 1: using them for thralls, They're using them to like clean
Speaker 1: the elder brain, but also to you go out and
Speaker 1: assassinate people. They just they just totally overuse their overpowered,
Speaker 1: uh psychic abilities. Now, is this like a Manchurian candidate
Speaker 1: kind of thing where they'll, you know, you'll be going
Speaker 1: about your business and suddenly they activate you and you
Speaker 1: are now under their control. Or once you're under their control,
Speaker 1: are you just thereafter under their control? I think you
Speaker 1: can fall out of their control either by I guess
Speaker 1: doing with a skill check okay, a role if you
Speaker 1: roll sufficient to score on a D twenty, you can
Speaker 1: break free, but also without outside of the gaming system itself.
Speaker 1: It's like, for instance, mindful ayres themselves are kind of
Speaker 1: uh tied to this elder brain, and if they happen
Speaker 1: to uh you know, leave the colony and get far
Speaker 1: enough away from it, then they fall out of its influence. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's often described that, especially when the more powerful
Speaker 1: mind flayers mess with your mind, they are rewriting your identity.
Speaker 1: They're rewriting your personality permanently. Yeah, yeah, they can. They can.
Speaker 1: They can certainly do that to where they change who
Speaker 1: you are by reaching into your brain with their psychic powers.
Speaker 1: And there's no reset button. Yeah, there's no reset button
Speaker 1: on that. Oh man, that's brutal. Yeah, okay, well that
Speaker 1: that does make me think about another interesting thing. We'll
Speaker 1: have to come back to a lot of this later.
Speaker 1: After we looked at some of the research. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there there is often this idea in fiction and media
Speaker 1: where after somebody has been under mind controlled, they revert
Speaker 1: to their previous state once it has concluded. But surely
Speaker 1: the experience would sort of change, you, wouldn't it, even if,
Speaker 1: even if you were doing things against your will. If
Speaker 1: that's possible, I think so. I mean, if you remove
Speaker 1: just pure magical interpretations and you base your vision of
Speaker 1: this ultimately kind of fantastic mind control on what we
Speaker 1: know about psychology and you know science, uh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be it would be this weird experience. It would
Speaker 1: be like having been worn by a glove, worn as
Speaker 1: a glove by this other hand, but you were still
Speaker 1: you still did all those things, you still have those
Speaker 1: fingerprints on it. Huh. Okay, So well, let's try to
Speaker 1: define our terms here and talk about what is mind
Speaker 1: control for the purpose of today's episode. What what are
Speaker 1: we talking about and what are we not talking about
Speaker 1: out First of all, I think we should say that
Speaker 1: we already have technologies for controlling people's beliefs, perceptions, desires,
Speaker 1: and behavior, and they're familiar to all of us. We
Speaker 1: mentioned this earlier. They're known as culture and education and
Speaker 1: rhetoric and speech, media, art, entertainment. All these things are
Speaker 1: if you want to really broaden the definition mind control,
Speaker 1: we're all trying to control each other's minds all the time.
Speaker 1: But that's not really what you have in mind when
Speaker 1: you think about mind control, is it. Because there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that these systems do control our minds, but they're
Speaker 1: part of what I would think of as the above
Speaker 1: the table battle for the public will. If you're following
Speaker 1: my metaphor, you know it's some kind of chess game.
Speaker 1: These are all the pieces on the board that you
Speaker 1: can see, and we all acknowledge their making bids for
Speaker 1: influence over our thoughts and our will, and generally, as
Speaker 1: long as we can see all the pieces, we think
Speaker 1: the game is fair. Right, Like, for instance, if I
Speaker 1: were talking to you and I said, hey, Joe, what
Speaker 1: are you doing after lunch? And you say, oh, I
Speaker 1: have to go Christmas shop thing. And I was to say, no,
Speaker 1: you should blow that off and let's go watch Rogue
Speaker 1: One in the theater, and you would say, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I gotta do my Christmas shopping. And I'm trying to
Speaker 1: I'm trying to convince you to go see rogue one. Instead,
Speaker 1: this is above the table, like, there's no mystery here.
Speaker 1: What's going on? I am trying to convince you to
Speaker 1: to to change your mind about a decision. Sure, and
Speaker 1: it's all like that you see, you know commercial on TV.
Speaker 1: It's trying to change your mind about whether you need
Speaker 1: a product, see by a product, not be a product,
Speaker 1: be a product. Yeah. Well you know, actually though, what
Speaker 1: the commercials do sell you is a vision of yourself,
Speaker 1: isn't it. They're not this person, not who you are
Speaker 1: now exactly, but that they are doing that, at least
Speaker 1: in a certain way above the table, you know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Anybody who's uh somewhat literate in in rhetoric
Speaker 1: and media culture and stuff like that, you recognize what's
Speaker 1: going on. But well that's not most people. Well I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I think one of the threads
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep coming back to is throughout this episode
Speaker 1: is that all of this is going to depend on
Speaker 1: the speaker and the listener, like the the like who's
Speaker 1: trying to do the mind control? And what is the
Speaker 1: mind that's being control? Yeah, maybe the power of mind
Speaker 1: control lies somewhat in the in the fortifications of the subject. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are the what are the stats for the mind flayre?
Speaker 1: What are the stats for the player character that's being affected? Right,
Speaker 1: But to come back to my sort of chess metaphor,
Speaker 1: what we're looking for is like the hidden piece that
Speaker 1: the way to cheat is, is there a magnet under
Speaker 1: the table moving the pieces around without our knowledge, a
Speaker 1: way to get around our usual cognitive defenses that we
Speaker 1: do our best to keep well fortified against all these
Speaker 1: forces in the world that are making bids for our
Speaker 1: minds and our attention. So originally the term mind control
Speaker 1: was used in a Cold War context, right. It was
Speaker 1: to refer to the supposed practices of realigning people's beliefs, values,
Speaker 1: and motives against their will, often the con text of
Speaker 1: torture and imprisonment, for example, like we mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: the Korean War. And I would say this usage has
Speaker 1: somewhat fallen out of fashion, and from what I understand,
Speaker 1: there's very little evidence that this ever really took place
Speaker 1: on a significant scale, especially in the original example of
Speaker 1: like American prisoners being held by opposing forces in the
Speaker 1: Korean War that they were, you know, had their minds
Speaker 1: changed by coercive persuasion. Yeah, Now, of course you can.
Speaker 1: It depends on how you classify these things. Because if
Speaker 1: you if you count just pure political re education programs,
Speaker 1: as of two thousand thirteen, there were still three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty Liaodong Jile Young facilities in China. These are
Speaker 1: re education through labor camps um that that have like
Speaker 1: a political agenda. Yeah, and I guess the question there
Speaker 1: is um. Now, it's obvious that if you are in
Speaker 1: a culture, that culture is going to have a strong
Speaker 1: influence over your mind. And to what extent can culture
Speaker 1: be defined as, you know, a regime that you exist
Speaker 1: in every day. So if you know, for long periods
Speaker 1: of time you're completely surrounded by people who think a
Speaker 1: certain way, that surely is going to have an influence
Speaker 1: on you. People who think a certain way and tell
Speaker 1: you to think a certain way. I think, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we see that in our own lives, right, we we
Speaker 1: we looked at we look back to say like a
Speaker 1: high school scenario and where we all were, and then
Speaker 1: we see where we've all gone, what kind of people
Speaker 1: were surrounded with? And yeah, you can see you can
Speaker 1: see reflections of that in in each person's personal trajectory.
Speaker 1: But can I tie a person into a chair in
Speaker 1: a room for a week and deprive them of sleep
Speaker 1: and and psychologically harass them into believing that, you know,
Speaker 1: their body is made of beetles. I don't know about
Speaker 1: that football is good that kind of thing. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that the results are not in that that kind of
Speaker 1: thing is so much possible, or at least not widely possible.
Speaker 1: It might be with certain people. Um, but another common
Speaker 1: use of the term mind control is to refer to
Speaker 1: the kind of supposed brainwashing or re education that sometimes
Speaker 1: happens in cults or what's known as new religious movements
Speaker 1: to use a nice euphemism, or even in extremist circles
Speaker 1: within traditional religions. And again, the concept of brainwashing here
Speaker 1: has been a very scientifically controversial one. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen this research before that there's a lot of back
Speaker 1: and forth in the history of psychology, especially in the
Speaker 1: second half of the twentieth century, about to what extent
Speaker 1: brainwashing is a real thing or is this just sort
Speaker 1: of a non rigorous, made up concept based on intuitions
Speaker 1: and not really based on research. Again, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: that one person can influence the thoughts of the other.
Speaker 1: But the idea that you can engage in this full
Speaker 1: coercive persuasion where you revolutionize someone else's mind completely against
Speaker 1: their will, I think that's not widely supported. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it went away. It's just too simple, right, It's like
Speaker 1: saying the basic idea being, oh, well, this person is
Speaker 1: who they are, and they believe what they believe because
Speaker 1: they they are privy to these influences. If we cut
Speaker 1: off all of those influences and I'm the only influence,
Speaker 1: then surely I can decide who they are for them,
Speaker 1: which sounds simple enough and just doesn't seem to really
Speaker 1: relate to how we to the human condition. Right, And
Speaker 1: you're not the only influence. They're bringing all of their
Speaker 1: past influences with them in memory. Yeah, it's not just
Speaker 1: we're not little water wheels turning in a stream. That's
Speaker 1: a good metaphor. We are not. I always fall back
Speaker 1: on water metaphors. Yeah, and so it will be worth
Speaker 1: taking a bit of a look at that someday, I think,
Speaker 1: But in my estimation to whatever extended actually happens. This
Speaker 1: is also a somewhat different phenomenon from the kind of
Speaker 1: mind flare, like uh, type mind control that we're talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Right, it's less It's not that it's less serious,
Speaker 1: but there isn't so much a real time loss of
Speaker 1: control over one's thoughts and behavior. It's rather just the
Speaker 1: introduction of a very strongly influential set of beliefs and relationships,
Speaker 1: maybe aided in their inception by stress and social pressure
Speaker 1: and power dynamics between people and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very much a topic I'd like to return
Speaker 1: to the future to especially especially as it relates to cults,
Speaker 1: to con artists. Um. Yeah, and and a number of
Speaker 1: other scenarios come to mind. Some of the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to get into extremist religious models, for instance, the whole
Speaker 1: you know, prey prey away, the gay kind of re
Speaker 1: education efforts you see, which are not very successful because
Speaker 1: it again it comes down to, oh, this person who
Speaker 1: they are based on, you know, not only their influences,
Speaker 1: but just they're the way they were born. We're going
Speaker 1: to change all that just by shutting off the other
Speaker 1: influences and just coming at them straight with the prayer.
Speaker 1: I think in many cases it's just taken a chalk
Speaker 1: eraser too. It is to something written in sharpie. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not getting the job done. You might have smudge
Speaker 1: it a little bit. But okay, So maybe we we
Speaker 1: need a different kind of distinction because those aren't the
Speaker 1: types of mind control we're really talking about that, and
Speaker 1: I think the distinction will be I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to introduce some terminology. We'll see how this goes the
Speaker 1: difference between mind seeding and mind management. So what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that mind seating is planting ideas, arguments, images,
Speaker 1: social impressions in somebody's mind that are designed to have
Speaker 1: an influence on how they think and act, and down
Speaker 1: the road will have some kind of influence on how
Speaker 1: they think and act, whereas mind management is more what
Speaker 1: we see in dungeons and dragons or in these you know,
Speaker 1: science fiction type scenarios, actively controlling the people's thoughts and
Speaker 1: behaviors in close to real time. So mind seating is
Speaker 1: manipulation or inception. Mind management is complete domination. It's the
Speaker 1: mind flare thing is you know, I'm going to make
Speaker 1: you go over there and pick up that dagger and
Speaker 1: attack the paladin. And this is the kind of mind
Speaker 1: control where you're no longer in control of yourself you've
Speaker 1: lost autonomy over your thoughts and actions. You feel you're
Speaker 1: being controlled by an external entity. And in fiction, of course,
Speaker 1: as we've explored, these external entities would often be possessing spirits,
Speaker 1: people with psychic powers, or science fiction mind control devices.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody's got a little remote control with a
Speaker 1: beam going at your head, and that they allow us
Speaker 1: to be externally reprogrammed. But magic and science fiction aside,
Speaker 1: are these kinds of schemes possible in reality? And if so,
Speaker 1: if it's possible to have your mind controlled in this way,
Speaker 1: what would it be like to be controlled from the
Speaker 1: outside while still having a conscious experience of thought? All right,
Speaker 1: well hold that thought. We're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will dive into this
Speaker 1: question and try and figure out what it would be
Speaker 1: like to have your mind controlled. So we were talking
Speaker 1: about mind flares earlier, and you were talking about mind
Speaker 1: seeding versus mind management. I actually found the discussion of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this very scenario that involves mind flares. Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University by a humanist scholar,
Speaker 1: James Croft, and this was available online. I think it
Speaker 1: still is available, but it was available as of like
Speaker 1: the other day. Pretty entertaining as far as doctoral dissertations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was you know, really well written, very very very long,
Speaker 1: and it did not all relate to mind flares. I
Speaker 1: don't want him to give anyone the wrong impression. Uh.
Speaker 1: He merely brings up mind flares as an example something
Speaker 1: he was really into when he was younger, and using
Speaker 1: it to discuss uh free will. So he comes he
Speaker 1: basically boils down mind control to two scenarios. He has
Speaker 1: the novice mind flare scenario or in MF, in which
Speaker 1: the mind flare commands your your actions but not your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those where you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: the mind flare is making me attack the palatin. I
Speaker 1: don't want to do this, as you hack the pallet
Speaker 1: into death. So your consciousness is sort of an unwilling
Speaker 1: prisoner in the vehicle of your body, and the body
Speaker 1: is out of your control. Yeah, the very it's a
Speaker 1: very nightmarish scenario, right, like, I can't I'm not in
Speaker 1: control someone else's and I must live this experience. And
Speaker 1: then the other one is the ultimate mind flare scenario
Speaker 1: or scenario or U m F in which the mind
Speaker 1: flare commands not only your actions but also your underlying
Speaker 1: thoughts and desires. So again, this comes down to I
Speaker 1: want to pack the palate into death. This is what
Speaker 1: I want more than anything. This is my choice, and
Speaker 1: I am okay with it. So this is not being
Speaker 1: a prisoner inside a body that's acting outside of your control,
Speaker 1: but no longer being you having yourself or sense of
Speaker 1: self changed by the outside controlling entity. That's right now,
Speaker 1: I'd say both of these are more These are more
Speaker 1: the mind management type. They're directly controlling your actions in
Speaker 1: next to real time. It's not just sort of like
Speaker 1: having an influence on how you rank. Yeah. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: would both be examples of of the stronger form, but
Speaker 1: but two different versions. And I think these are two
Speaker 1: different versions that we do see utilize a lot in
Speaker 1: fiction because they're both kind of neat right like the
Speaker 1: first ones, I feel like a little more old fashioned
Speaker 1: the idea of someone's dominating me and I'm not in control,
Speaker 1: in control of my own actions. And sometimes I feel
Speaker 1: like we have a tendency to want to rewrite our
Speaker 1: past experiences, especially our mistakes, in that light, you know, like,
Speaker 1: oh I was it was the drugs, it was the stress,
Speaker 1: it was whatever is the the outside force, whatever your
Speaker 1: personal mind flare is going to be uh as opposed
Speaker 1: to the other, but both allow you to externalize the
Speaker 1: source of your pain. But of course this idea of
Speaker 1: especially the u m F idea, this ultimate mind flare idea,
Speaker 1: this idea that you're just hit, you would have a
Speaker 1: force rewriting your memory and personality as needed and just
Speaker 1: and you can't even tell it just feels like your decision.
Speaker 1: Uh Croft points out that this isn't really out of
Speaker 1: keeping with how we live our lives all the time.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, this is not to say that in
Speaker 1: the normal course of events, when unburdened with a mindful air,
Speaker 1: we're at total liberty to select what we value or desire.
Speaker 1: Our values and desires are frequently an outcome of our experiences,
Speaker 1: and we cannot change them through conscious effort. But to
Speaker 1: be autonomous, I argue we need not be in total
Speaker 1: control over this aspect of our mental furniture. Rather, we
Speaker 1: must learn to examine the values and desires that we,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, have developed, and consider to what extent
Speaker 1: we wish to indulge them, resist them, or seek to
Speaker 1: change them if we can. That's a good point. I
Speaker 1: didn't pick my desires, you didn't pick your desires, and
Speaker 1: yet we do have some kind of sense of agency
Speaker 1: over to what extent we pursue them. Yeah. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: we don't want to go too far into the absolute
Speaker 1: abyss of a philosophical and neuroscientific contemplations of a free will,
Speaker 1: ill and human consciousness. So that's you know, that's the
Speaker 1: topic we've hit on in the past, and I will
Speaker 1: keep coming back to it because that's kind of the
Speaker 1: human experience, the human condition in a nutshell, and it's
Speaker 1: just one of the most interesting mysteries of reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's got an answer to the problem of consciousness, at
Speaker 1: least as far as I've come across. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: some great ideas, some pervasive theories, but nothing that's just
Speaker 1: really gotten the stamp of absolute approval whoever would be
Speaker 1: in a position outside of the human condition to stamp
Speaker 1: that approval. But a lot of this comes down to
Speaker 1: the basic idea of you know, the determinist view and
Speaker 1: the indeterminist view. So the views of free will from
Speaker 1: free will. Yes, So the philosophers Democratus and Lucippas saw
Speaker 1: the universe is wholly governed by natural laws and composed
Speaker 1: of indivisible atoms and this, so they took this determinous
Speaker 1: view of a life propelled down a flowing stream. There's
Speaker 1: the water of events. Aristotle, on the other hand, stressed
Speaker 1: the individ juwele's responsibility for their actions, the indeterminates view
Speaker 1: of life as a boat propelling itself through a body
Speaker 1: of water. Uh. Yeah, I I've always so, I've encountered
Speaker 1: this philosophical distinction before, you know, like, are you a
Speaker 1: determinist or not? And essentially that's saying like it does,
Speaker 1: do you follow the laws of physics or not? And
Speaker 1: so I have to think, well, then, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: the answer is yes, I followed the laws of physics.
Speaker 1: My brain is composed of matter and it follows the
Speaker 1: laws of physics. But I don't. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of people would take this and say, okay, you're a determinist.
Speaker 1: Then you think you don't really choose what you do.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's untrue. I have a subjective experience of choosing
Speaker 1: what I do, and I am choosing. But I think
Speaker 1: where the determinus versus indeterminus view of the world comes
Speaker 1: in is while I do choose the things I do,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that I could have chosen otherwise. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it comes down to, Like, Yeah, you're choosing,
Speaker 1: you're having the experience of choosing, But could you have
Speaker 1: really made another choice in the in the multiple we
Speaker 1: like to think of sometimes where I like to think
Speaker 1: of like this multiverse where there's a different universe to
Speaker 1: represent every little decision that you you could have made,
Speaker 1: for example, flossing your teeth. I am I am a
Speaker 1: big proponent of flossing your teeth. You should absolutely do it.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people have trouble getting around
Speaker 1: to it. So you might think there's an alternate universe
Speaker 1: in the multiverse where last night you flost your teeth
Speaker 1: like you were supposed to. But in reality, is it
Speaker 1: just a myriad of universes and in all of them you,
Speaker 1: or rather in none of them, there's tooth flossing. You're
Speaker 1: just the flosco is unused in every single one of
Speaker 1: them because you were not the type of person that
Speaker 1: floss is their teeth, or at least you're not ready
Speaker 1: to become that person yet. Well, whether you did last
Speaker 1: night or not. What's the evidence that you could have
Speaker 1: done differently than you did given the exact same starting circumstances.
Speaker 1: I call it the the infinite too Floss theorem. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this does bring up an interesting thing Croft's metaphor.
Speaker 1: I think, is there too to emphasize this point about
Speaker 1: free will? Like if you were really somehow being controlled
Speaker 1: against your will, uh, and it was such that the
Speaker 1: control was this ultimate mind flair type deep desire, you know,
Speaker 1: your your consciousness is realigned to the outside controller's will,
Speaker 1: and you didn't realize it. How would this type of
Speaker 1: mind control be at all distinguishable from free will? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if essentially, if God is using you as a puppet,
Speaker 1: if God is influencing the world through you, would it
Speaker 1: just maybe feel I mean maybe it would feel a
Speaker 1: little thrilling with you know, who doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: the glove of the almighty? But yeah, could you tell
Speaker 1: the difference between that and just going about your normal business?
Speaker 1: So this does seem to suggest that on some level,
Speaker 1: if such a thing as mind control were possible, and
Speaker 1: it were this deep type you know, deep mind management,
Speaker 1: controlling not just your actions but your desires, you might
Speaker 1: not even know what was happening. Yeah, we could all
Speaker 1: be controlled, not to get to Just for the sake
Speaker 1: of argument, I'm not putting forth the conspiracy theory here,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we could be all We could all be
Speaker 1: controlled at any given moment, and it would just feel
Speaker 1: like our normal lives. Right. Okay, Well, maybe I think
Speaker 1: we should hit some hard solid ground. Let's let's let's
Speaker 1: return to the surface and try to figure out No,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we've talked about the possibilities of mind
Speaker 1: control and how it would interact with our conceptions philosophical
Speaker 1: conceptions about free will are conscious experience. But how could
Speaker 1: you do it if you were really gonna try? Like,
Speaker 1: do we have neuro technology devices that allow you to
Speaker 1: completely control the thoughts and actions of another person? Short answer,
Speaker 1: I want to say no, uh, and I don't think
Speaker 1: we're going to, But we we do have the power
Speaker 1: to have some kind of very very simple, prescribed types
Speaker 1: of influences on people's brains. Yes, I would say that
Speaker 1: we do not have precision instruments, but we do have
Speaker 1: blunt instruments. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
Speaker 1: So let me give you a quick look through here.
Speaker 1: If you want to really in depth look at the
Speaker 1: state of brain computer interfaces and brain to brain interfaces.
Speaker 1: You should go back to our decemberisode called Brain to
Speaker 1: Brain the Science of Techno Telepathy, where we talked about
Speaker 1: a lot of these experiments in detail. Do you think
Speaker 1: there's something to this that when it comes to the holidays,
Speaker 1: we can't help but think about mind control? Is it
Speaker 1: something to do with how the holidays and Christmas are
Speaker 1: just really pounded into your skull by the media. I
Speaker 1: think there there may very well be something there, especially
Speaker 1: because Santa Claus is getting into our brain. That's right,
Speaker 1: he knows he's not just watching your behavior, he's really
Speaker 1: manipulating it is uh okay, So brief refresher on on
Speaker 1: these neural interfaces. So there are ways to get information
Speaker 1: into and out of the human brain without the usual channels.
Speaker 1: In other words, this means brain output without speech or
Speaker 1: body movement and brain input without perception through the senses.
Speaker 1: And to get information out of a brain without speech
Speaker 1: or body movement. They're they're two major approaches. You split
Speaker 1: them into minimally invasive and more invasive. The minimally invasive
Speaker 1: things are there are things like electro and cephalography, caps
Speaker 1: or e G caps, and this looks like a swim
Speaker 1: cap covered in electrodes. Put some goo on your head.
Speaker 1: You put the thing over your head, and they can
Speaker 1: read electrical activity of the brain. But they're very, very crude,
Speaker 1: because they're trying to read your brain through your skull.
Speaker 1: One really good metaphor I've read to explain this was
Speaker 1: a researcher who compared reading the brain activity through an
Speaker 1: e G cap too trying to follow a professional soccer
Speaker 1: game by standing outside at the stadium in the parking.
Speaker 1: You can tell when somebody scored a goal right when
Speaker 1: there's huge sudden activity, but you can't call the game
Speaker 1: play by play. And I would add maybe with some microphones,
Speaker 1: you know, a train computer algorithm and some feedback, you
Speaker 1: can pick out sound profiles of a few other types
Speaker 1: of events, which is somewhat true along in the e
Speaker 1: G analogy, But it's just not a very sensitive instrument
Speaker 1: in terms of deep complexity of the brain. Uh. More
Speaker 1: invasive methods are more sensitive, For example, implanted micro electrodes
Speaker 1: inside the brain, putting little wires running out through the
Speaker 1: skull to a wired connection or a transmitter antenna, and
Speaker 1: you can read the activity down at the neuron level
Speaker 1: really in much more detail. But these require surgery connection
Speaker 1: to external equipment, and it's not like we can just
Speaker 1: read the electrical activity of the brain and and read
Speaker 1: it like a you know, like a screen output or something.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't know the language that it's speaking.
Speaker 1: So what would be the soccer met for for that
Speaker 1: one you're watching aliens play a sport in another language. No,
Speaker 1: that's not quite so anyway, But that's the output. So
Speaker 1: for mind control, we're actually primarily interested not in output
Speaker 1: methods but an input in unconventional methods of putting information
Speaker 1: into the brain such that it has a desired effect
Speaker 1: upon the mind of the subjects, such as like the
Speaker 1: inception of a belief or a perception or causing action,
Speaker 1: and putting it into the brain in such a way
Speaker 1: that it bypasses the normal filters we have for incoming
Speaker 1: information and commands. So if it does know better than
Speaker 1: somebody telling you verbally to do something, then that's no good,
Speaker 1: right it has to be trying to go straight to
Speaker 1: some deeper part of your brain that's not going to
Speaker 1: meet an information filter. With these input methods, there are
Speaker 1: also minimally invasive methods, for example, transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS,
Speaker 1: And this is actually a simple. It means you put
Speaker 1: a big electromagnetic coil very carefully over a very specific
Speaker 1: part of the skull, and then you can generate effects
Speaker 1: in the person's brain and body when you pass current
Speaker 1: through the coil. One common example would be causing an
Speaker 1: involuntary twitch of the hand if you position it just right.
Speaker 1: And this is because, of course, the brain is an
Speaker 1: electrochemical machine and it's got If you run magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: they interact with the electrical current. You may have observed
Speaker 1: this if you ever held a powerful magnet too close
Speaker 1: to an old TV screen. Did you ever do that
Speaker 1: for fun? I don't think I did well anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, okay, well with a maybe with a TV
Speaker 1: that you don't need anymore. Um, I don't know how
Speaker 1: damaging it actually is. I wouldn't recommend it with any
Speaker 1: prized electronic equipment. But but basically, yeah, you can interfere
Speaker 1: with the brain and you can cause some kind of
Speaker 1: blunt instrument type effects like I made your leg twitch
Speaker 1: or I made your hand twitch. More invasive methods are
Speaker 1: pretty much the same as the output methods. They run
Speaker 1: wires into your skull with microelectrodes attached to carefully uh
Speaker 1: designated little spots inside the brain, and then they've got
Speaker 1: to run out through your skull. But from what I've read, UM,
Speaker 1: these motor control takeovers who do with these input and
Speaker 1: output methods, they are they're they're they're just perceived as
Speaker 1: an involuntary twitch. Like sometimes this happens to you, You're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I just twitched. You know, you didn't
Speaker 1: plan on doing it, It just happened. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of what it feels like like when you're just going
Speaker 1: about your daily businessessarily get a shiver, like a full
Speaker 1: body shiver. Yeah, Like maybe that is the mind controlling
Speaker 1: agent pulling out of your body, but they're not getting
Speaker 1: much done just by making the making you shiver, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean some of these TMS experiments have been called
Speaker 1: mind control in the media, but I don't buy it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's an accurate description because a twitch
Speaker 1: of the hand or another common thing is um the
Speaker 1: perception of non existent lights behind closed diyes. These are
Speaker 1: called phosphenes. If you close your eyes and they put
Speaker 1: the t MS coil over your your ocular your your vision,
Speaker 1: you know, visual cortex. They can make you see these lights.
Speaker 1: These are not mind control. These are extremely simple, imprecise stimuli,
Speaker 1: and for the foreseeable future, it seems like would be
Speaker 1: nearly impossible to use them to get somebody to do
Speaker 1: something complex that they didn't really want to do, like
Speaker 1: I'm going to make you assassinate our target or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like the idea that you're controlling the mind is ridiculous
Speaker 1: because the mind, I like to think the mind is
Speaker 1: the shadow cast by the physical brain. And they're not
Speaker 1: even trolling the brain here. They're basically controlling the body
Speaker 1: or certain since information since reinformation by essentially poking at
Speaker 1: the brain, right, And these are for what I was
Speaker 1: trying to focus on, motor control. And now, of course,
Speaker 1: there are other types of neurotechnology that have been used
Speaker 1: to sort of change people's uh susceptibility to certain types
Speaker 1: of feelings. You know, we've talked about the the research
Speaker 1: on the god helmet and stuff like that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cool research out there that that
Speaker 1: indicates the future of even mental health treatment. Who's going
Speaker 1: to revolve around some of these technologies, But it comes
Speaker 1: down to that that situation where we don't have the
Speaker 1: precise instruments, yet we have the blunt instruments exactly. Even
Speaker 1: the things like that are blunt instruments that they're just
Speaker 1: capable of producing a very generalized effect. Probably doesn't work
Speaker 1: on everybody, doesn't work every time, and it's and it
Speaker 1: and it doesn't lead to complex motor responses and programmed behaviors.
Speaker 1: It just is like it's a one trick pony generally.
Speaker 1: So this makes me think, Okay, if hard neurotech can't
Speaker 1: get us to anything like real mind control, getting somebody
Speaker 1: to you know, go carry out the covert assassination or
Speaker 1: whatever like that, are there any scientifically plausible ways other
Speaker 1: ways to bend someone to your will with complex, meaningful
Speaker 1: program to behaviors, beliefs, and perceptions. How about hypnosis? If
Speaker 1: if TV is any indication, then yes, anybody can just
Speaker 1: wander in with a medallion, like like a gold medallion
Speaker 1: and a chain started pocket watch you have. The pocket
Speaker 1: watch is a big one. Start wiggling that around and wammo,
Speaker 1: you're enthralled. Well, I think we should take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we will look at
Speaker 1: the science of hypnosis, Is it real? Is it bunk?
Speaker 1: If so, how far can a hypnotist to take you?
Speaker 1: And what does it feel like? So for years I
Speaker 1: have been very suspicious of the use of hypnosis in science,
Speaker 1: and I admit I'd never really read all that deeply
Speaker 1: into it. It was just one of those things I
Speaker 1: was peripherally aware of. I knew it from popular culture,
Speaker 1: and I would often just look at, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: about hypnosis and think, is this real? Is this real science?
Speaker 1: It's obvious to me that many uses of hypnosis are
Speaker 1: bogus thirty ways. It's a lot of it is just garbaege,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is uh not not necessarily
Speaker 1: just garbage, but it is people playing along in a
Speaker 1: kind of social game, if that makes any sense, that
Speaker 1: there are social pressures to behave a certain way, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily garbage. Depending on how it's presented, like like basically,
Speaker 1: aside from the TV hypnotist, the thing that often comes
Speaker 1: to mind or stage hypnotist, they're putting on a show,
Speaker 1: maybe at an office Christmas party, and it depends how
Speaker 1: that's presented. If it's presented like here's a person with
Speaker 1: magical powers or powers over the mind. Maybe you should
Speaker 1: give them money. Yeah, that's bad. But if it's presented
Speaker 1: is like, here's the evening's entertainment, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily anything nefarious going on there, but it's also
Speaker 1: very much like a magician's act. I shouldn't have said garbage. No, no,
Speaker 1: but but I I get what you're saying, but just
Speaker 1: flushing it out a little bit here. That there depends
Speaker 1: on the context. Uh, garbage and entertainment depend on what
Speaker 1: sort of fees your you're requiring of the participants, I guess,
Speaker 1: But I want to say, after doing research for this episode,
Speaker 1: I've had my mind changed. I think I'm convinced. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't. I just did a bunch of reading,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm convinced that at least in some cases,
Speaker 1: hypnotists are creating a genuine altered state of consciousness in
Speaker 1: which the subject's level of suggestibility is increased and in
Speaker 1: some cases drastically increased. And I would also say that,
Speaker 1: at least as far as I can tell, there's nothing
Speaker 1: especially spooky going on here with hypnosis. Hypnotism I think
Speaker 1: maybe compared somewhat to meditation, where an altered state of
Speaker 1: mind is brought about by mental exercises without necessitating the
Speaker 1: use of drugs or neurotechnology. Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1: I mean so so often the the hypnotic experience, the
Speaker 1: trance is described in very relaxing terms. It's you're in
Speaker 1: a relaxed state. You're also but you're also in a
Speaker 1: susceptible state. Yeah, but only within reason. Yeah. I'll definitely
Speaker 1: get more into the details in a minute. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to think about the idea of hypnotism, and it's
Speaker 1: linked to the idea of mind control, and this actually
Speaker 1: goes way back hypnoi. Hypnotism certainly does come up when
Speaker 1: considering methods of mind control, sort of from the inception.
Speaker 1: Uh so. The French physician and early clinical hypnotist George
Speaker 1: Gille de la Tourette, who Tourette syndrome is named after. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was in his home in December eighteen when he
Speaker 1: was met by a patient of his who claimed that
Speaker 1: after she had been hypnotized under the care of gil
Speaker 1: de la Tourette and his colleagues, uh, someone had begun
Speaker 1: remotely controlling her mind and she shot him. She shot
Speaker 1: him in the back of the neck, damaged his head um.
Speaker 1: This woman was named Rose Camper, and after she was arrested,
Speaker 1: she gave the following statement. Obviously this is an English
Speaker 1: translation of it, but she said, quote, within me, there
Speaker 1: are actually two different people, one physical and one intellectual.
Speaker 1: My thoughts no longer belong only to me, but also
Speaker 1: to those who possess me. During the day, my intellect
Speaker 1: allows me to resist the powers which inter me without
Speaker 1: my knowledge. But at night I am overpowered, and it
Speaker 1: is to defend myself against these impulses that I bought
Speaker 1: a revolver in the Rue de Rivoli two months ago. Rivoli.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you pronounce that, but yeah. So
Speaker 1: she's describing that she believes she's she's suffering mind control.
Speaker 1: She's been put under hypnosis by these therapists in a
Speaker 1: hospital setting, uh in nineteenth century France, and she thinks
Speaker 1: her mind is being controlled. Now, I would say that no,
Speaker 1: no historians or anybody really think that Miss Camper's doctors
Speaker 1: were actually controlling her remotely against her will. But hypnosis
Speaker 1: seemed to give her this subjective sensation. So is it
Speaker 1: possible to control somebody's mind at the levels we've been
Speaker 1: talking about this? Uh? You know the mind management type
Speaker 1: level with hypnosis, and if so, what does it feel
Speaker 1: like for the subject of the hypnotic control. Okay, so
Speaker 1: first of all, what is hypnosis? Basically, if it's working
Speaker 1: as suspected or as suggested by people who believe in it,
Speaker 1: hypnotization is an altered state of consciousness characterized by relaxation,
Speaker 1: narrowing of focus on a single all absorbing stimulus, sort
Speaker 1: of usually the hypnotists voice, where you push out all
Speaker 1: of the other influences and distractions and you just intensely
Speaker 1: focused on this one thing, this hypnotist talking to you
Speaker 1: and giving you instructions. And also it's characterized by heightened
Speaker 1: suggestibility or the lack of inhibition and following instructions or
Speaker 1: perceiving suggested perceptions that aren't really there. An example might
Speaker 1: be like, you know, they say a balloon and is
Speaker 1: attached to your leg and lifting it up gently and
Speaker 1: and you actually have this sensation of lightning and you
Speaker 1: start to raise your ankle up, which I mean that
Speaker 1: is exactly guided meditation too. You know, the idea that
Speaker 1: someone is is taking you on this sort of mental
Speaker 1: journey to read lead to this relaxed state. Um I've
Speaker 1: also heard hypnosis and that the hypnotic trance state described
Speaker 1: in terms of heightened imagination not onlike daydreaming, and a
Speaker 1: certain loss of self that is uh about like you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really it's relatable to getting really lost in
Speaker 1: a movie or book. Yeah. Yeah, there's a sort of
Speaker 1: sense of dissociation. It's often associated with it, dissociation associated.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So another big thing to be aware of
Speaker 1: is that pretty much everybody agrees that different people have
Speaker 1: highly different scores of hypnotic suggestibility. So you might be
Speaker 1: highly hypnotize herbal and I might be completely unhypnotized. Well,
Speaker 1: many people are pretty much impossible to hypnotize. Some can
Speaker 1: be hypnotized, but they're not highly suggestible. And then some
Speaker 1: small subset of people I've read estimates of around ten
Speaker 1: percent or maybe something like that, are highly suggestible under hypnosis.
Speaker 1: They go into a hypnotic procedure, they're they're put under hypnosis,
Speaker 1: and they can be talked into perceiving, believing, and doing
Speaker 1: a lot. This is so, this is where we're getting
Speaker 1: potentially into the cluck like a chicken area, right, That's
Speaker 1: the the classic stage hypnotist trick, though, That's one of
Speaker 1: the tough ones, because if if you're again referring to
Speaker 1: the stage hypnotists, the question is like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: are people just are they just playing along? Does the
Speaker 1: hypnotist actually have some kind of power over them other
Speaker 1: than just the fact that they're in a social setting.
Speaker 1: They're in a performance. They want to they want everybody
Speaker 1: there to have a good time, so they just sort
Speaker 1: of do what they're told because it's funny. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the stage powers, the same power a magician. A
Speaker 1: magician doesn't actually have our over physical reality, but on
Speaker 1: the stage they have power. They command attention. There are
Speaker 1: certain rules, there's a certain rhythm and ritual of things.
Speaker 1: That is, if you're not familiar with it before you
Speaker 1: attend the show, then the magician makes you aware of it.
Speaker 1: They established the rules, and so does the stage hypnotist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so there are There are a few things to
Speaker 1: say about this. One is that while this certainly isn't
Speaker 1: good enough to count as scientific data, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: the cornucopia of firsthand reports of people who claim to
Speaker 1: have been put under hypnosis, who demonstrated hypnotic suggestibility. They
Speaker 1: followed instructions in some cases to two very strange ends,
Speaker 1: and they claim at least that they didn't feel like
Speaker 1: they were faking it. Some people say they were faking it,
Speaker 1: but lots of people say, no, it didn't feel like
Speaker 1: that at all. I you know, it was totally it
Speaker 1: felt like it was outside my power. Another thing to
Speaker 1: consider would be there are some brain scanning experiments that
Speaker 1: appear to show different uses of the brain when to
Speaker 1: perceive something as real during hypnosis versus just being asked
Speaker 1: to imagine the same thing as real when not under hypnosis. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so this is take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 1: This is also subject to the skeptical screen door we
Speaker 1: might want to always keep between ourselves and these sorts
Speaker 1: of brain scanning studies for the time being, and we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with the problems with those. Another good thing
Speaker 1: to point out is that there is not any good evidence,
Speaker 1: or nothing I came across suggested there's any good evidence
Speaker 1: that hypnosis can help people recover lost memories. I think
Speaker 1: you guys covered this sum and your satanic panic episode, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a whole can of worms there, But yeah,
Speaker 1: you get into the whole you're trying to recover lost memories,
Speaker 1: but there's all there's a greater possibility that you're just
Speaker 1: essentially accepting planting memories instead. Yeah, there seems to be
Speaker 1: some evidence that people, uh, the hypnosis can create the
Speaker 1: impression that memories are being recovered, but there's no actual
Speaker 1: recall of a aditional information. Right, Yeah, you're just you're
Speaker 1: just tweaking, you're tweaking the memories, creating new memories. But
Speaker 1: as far as like restoring lost ones, probably not. How
Speaker 1: about another thing, how about placebo effects. This would be
Speaker 1: kind of different than faking, right that this would be
Speaker 1: What if it's just belief in the power of hypnosis
Speaker 1: that makes people susceptible to hypnosis. You know what if
Speaker 1: you're only responding to the hypnotist because you think hypnotism works,
Speaker 1: that's true that that has to be a major player
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, it's always a concern. But there are
Speaker 1: a couple of studies that, if valid, I think, would
Speaker 1: seem to argue against the placebo effects ability to explain
Speaker 1: all of the effects of hypnosis. One of these that
Speaker 1: I looked at was called can expectation enhance response to
Speaker 1: suggestion de automization or d automatization. What they got these
Speaker 1: great terms, don't they illuminates a conundrum from consciousness and
Speaker 1: cognition in and uh the authors, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get into their whole experiment, but essentially it involved comparing
Speaker 1: the results of people who were actually put under hypnosis
Speaker 1: with people who were expecting to be put under hypnosis
Speaker 1: and had been conditioned to expect that they were highly
Speaker 1: suggestible to hypnosis. But then we're not put under hypnosis.
Speaker 1: And they said in the end that their findings intimate
Speaker 1: that quote, at least in the present experimental context, expectation
Speaker 1: hardly correlates with and is unlikely to be a primary
Speaker 1: determinant of high hypnotics suggestibility. So they found that the
Speaker 1: placebo effect, which is just expecting to be hypnotize herbal
Speaker 1: can perhaps explain some small amount of hypnosis response, but
Speaker 1: definitely not all of it. So obviously what we need
Speaker 1: to do here is look up the papers where they
Speaker 1: put somebody under hypnosis and tried to get them to
Speaker 1: assassinate somebody. Right, Oh, yes, those those studies. Um, somehow
Speaker 1: I don't think those really those tend to pass the board,
Speaker 1: do that? No? Ethics, you know, ethics limitations in So,
Speaker 1: how far can you push hypnosis UH in research in
Speaker 1: a university or clinical setting. Well, they don't tend to
Speaker 1: take it too far in those settings. But I do
Speaker 1: have one really interesting example that we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: in a minute. But first I thought, I thought it
Speaker 1: would be good to look at places where we can
Speaker 1: count on people to be unethical, which is that governments
Speaker 1: have tried to take hypnosis to the limit. Hypnosis among
Speaker 1: other types of experiments. So for example, we now throw
Speaker 1: no through uh declassified documents that the CIA conducted projects
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties through the nineteen sixties designed to
Speaker 1: study and implement essentially mind control technique, special interrogation techniques
Speaker 1: that they thought might lead to true mind control. And
Speaker 1: these techniques included the administration of drugs such as morphine
Speaker 1: and LSD, things like forced isolation and lily that's what
Speaker 1: we saw the birth of the isolation tech exactly. But
Speaker 1: then hypnosis and these usually it all get wrapped up
Speaker 1: under one single kryptonym, which is a you know, secret
Speaker 1: code name UH in documents at the time, and these
Speaker 1: kryptonyms were first Bluebird, and then Project Artichoke, and then
Speaker 1: the one we all know m k Ultra, which is
Speaker 1: what it all eventually became, and that's the one that resonates.
Speaker 1: It sounds far more evil than than Operation Artichoke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we certainly don't know what happened in all these
Speaker 1: experiments or all these operations, but we have some declassified documents,
Speaker 1: and based on the ones I've looked at, the results
Speaker 1: based on these techniques appear to me to be underwhelming.
Speaker 1: I want to look at one declassified ci A memo
Speaker 1: from January nineteen fifty four about the possibility of hypnotized
Speaker 1: assassination under artichoke. So this memo released an internal memo
Speaker 1: from the CIA, and it reveals plans to use quote artichoke,
Speaker 1: which artichoke appears throughout the document in all caps. It's
Speaker 1: pretty funny, almost as if to like like take the
Speaker 1: the an out of the article. It's the euphemism. It's
Speaker 1: the packet of aspirin is always at one's elbow operation,
Speaker 1: you know, cuttle bear or something, Yeah, instead of drug
Speaker 1: induced hypnosis and torture. But yeah, so they they had
Speaker 1: plans in this document to use artichoke to gain mind
Speaker 1: control over an unnamed foreign operative who had stopped cooperating
Speaker 1: with the agents and to turn him into a hypnotized assassin,
Speaker 1: much like the Manchurion candidate. Uh. And so I just
Speaker 1: want to read a quote, they say, quote. Because the
Speaker 1: subject is a heavy drinker, it was proposed that the
Speaker 1: individual could be surreptitiously drugged through the medium of an
Speaker 1: alcoholic cocktail at a social party, artichoke applied, and the
Speaker 1: subject induced to perform the act of attempted assassination at
Speaker 1: some later date. And so this would seem to be
Speaker 1: kind of like the Manchurian candidate. It would be this
Speaker 1: post hypnotic suggestion. Could we hypnotize somebody and then put
Speaker 1: an idea in the head that would later lead to
Speaker 1: them carrying out instructions, you know, to do our bidding.
Speaker 1: And the author of the document, I think, seems to
Speaker 1: be hedging very strongly on whether this would work and
Speaker 1: ultimately concludes the answer is probably no, giving several reasons.
Speaker 1: For example, the subject would be unwilling and thus the
Speaker 1: assassination would have to be involuntary. They site, this is
Speaker 1: a major problem, kind of making you think that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's not so much mind control after all.
Speaker 1: If a major problem is that the subject is unwilling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's one of the staples of hypnotism
Speaker 1: is you can't make someone go against their will with
Speaker 1: this exactly right, And they will always tell you hypnotists
Speaker 1: insists that you can't hypnotize somebody if they're not willing
Speaker 1: to be hypnotized. You have to play along in the beginning, Um,
Speaker 1: but they give another thing, quote access to the subject
Speaker 1: would only happen at this social party among a mixed
Speaker 1: group of cleared and uncleared personnel. And then finally, to me,
Speaker 1: this one's really interesting. They say, quote, we would have
Speaker 1: none or at most very limited physical control and custody
Speaker 1: over the subject. And to me, this sounds like they're
Speaker 1: just complaining about the fact that if they go to
Speaker 1: this cocktail party, they're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: get this guy alone and coerced very much to hypnotize them.
Speaker 1: But I was reading a blog post about this document
Speaker 1: over at the National Security Archive blog, which deals with
Speaker 1: these kinds of release materials, and the writer of this post,
Speaker 1: Nate Jones, interprets the sentence to mean that the hypnosis
Speaker 1: itself offered no or at most very limited physical control
Speaker 1: over the custody of the subject, and looking at it again,
Speaker 1: I think it can be read that way. In other words,
Speaker 1: the technique is not very potent, and so it's not
Speaker 1: clear to me which interpretation of that statement is the
Speaker 1: correct one. But I thought that was interesting. It could
Speaker 1: just be that, you know, no matter how much you
Speaker 1: hypnotize somebody, even if you drug them first, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have that much physical control over them. But this
Speaker 1: makes me think that, at least according to these intelligence
Speaker 1: officers own estimation of their hours, you can't really use drugs,
Speaker 1: psychological harassment and hypnosis to make somebody do something drastic
Speaker 1: like assassination if they're fully opposed to do it, if
Speaker 1: it is not their will to do it, Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got to already be on board with with it. They are,
Speaker 1: They already have to be up for whatever. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: that does sort of affirm the consequent though, which is
Speaker 1: that if the conditions are just right, For example, if
Speaker 1: the subject already sort of wants to commit this assassination
Speaker 1: that you're trying to get them to do, I wonder
Speaker 1: if hypnosis could help push them over the edge into
Speaker 1: doing it. And so I think that's a possibility. Reading
Speaker 1: this document, it does not sound to me like these
Speaker 1: Intel operators were very confident in their ability to achieve
Speaker 1: effective mind control via artichoke, which included hypnosis. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to point out that the declassified documents did
Speaker 1: not look into the use of just really good artichoke
Speaker 1: dip oh as a as a way to manipulate potential assassins.
Speaker 1: My wife, Rachel's mom makes amazing artichoke dip. Who do
Speaker 1: you know who makes really good artist choke dip? I
Speaker 1: feel like everybody's got somebody in their social circle, right, Um, well,
Speaker 1: my wife makes a has a recipe for a pretty
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, And I feel like this is horrible,
Speaker 1: but I have memories. These are memories that have probably
Speaker 1: been warped, but I remember like some horrible chain restaurant
Speaker 1: is having like really good artichoke dip at some point.
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one it was, but it was
Speaker 1: like it was served in a bread bowl and then
Speaker 1: you eat the bowl. Oh yeah, oh bread bowls. They
Speaker 1: need to bring that back. Ye let's you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to watch the bowl, you just eat the bowl.
Speaker 1: I think more things should be in bread bowls. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh even bread. Where was the place where the artichoke
Speaker 1: dip was basically just artichokes in their alfredo sauce. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't remember that one. But of
Speaker 1: course one of the things is artichokes on their own,
Speaker 1: like just steamed artichokes are dipped in better are wonderful? That?
Speaker 1: I highly agree with you. There. Yeah, okay, one more
Speaker 1: thing on the C I a assessment of interrogation this uh.
Speaker 1: There was also an article I looked at by a
Speaker 1: guy named a Sheer who Uh. This was a later
Speaker 1: document that was just evaluating the usefulness of hypnosis in
Speaker 1: an interrogation situation. And this guy essentially concluded that, um,
Speaker 1: it would be difficult to use hypnosis to get people
Speaker 1: to give up protected information and interrogation since hypnosis is
Speaker 1: almost impossible without a willing subject. But he did say
Speaker 1: that the hypnosis quote the hypnosis situation may be more
Speaker 1: useful than the hypnosis itself. And what does this mean? Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it like this, what if you
Speaker 1: go back to the placebo effect? Right, Um, so you
Speaker 1: have a captured You've got somebody captured by American intel operatives.
Speaker 1: You're held prisoner along with a few other captives who
Speaker 1: are unknown to you working with your captors, and they
Speaker 1: tell you this tale about there's this master hypnotist interrogator
Speaker 1: who makes it possible to resist giving up information. And
Speaker 1: they all claim that they've been interrogated and they were
Speaker 1: powerless to keep secrets while under this guy's trance. And
Speaker 1: then the interrogator comes in and initiates this hypnosis scenario
Speaker 1: and interrogates the real captive. It might make you, you know,
Speaker 1: less likely to protect information simply by placebo. You expect
Speaker 1: to give it up, and you do. They present a
Speaker 1: narrative in which it is okay for you two share
Speaker 1: your secrets. Yeah, that's another thing. It's an excuse for you,
Speaker 1: like you don't have to feel so bad about betraying
Speaker 1: your you know, your your overlords. Yeah. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at this this hypnotist. They have a big scar on
Speaker 1: their face, and that we have all these blinky lights
Speaker 1: behind him. Clearly he really knows what he's doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna crumble, Just go ahead and let it out.
Speaker 1: It's all fine. Tell us the codes. Yeah. So I'd
Speaker 1: say conclusion, from looking at some of the CIA and
Speaker 1: INTEL stuff, it seems to suggest to me that there
Speaker 1: are serious limits to the power of coercive hypnosis. Even
Speaker 1: for suggestible people, they tends to be a sort of
Speaker 1: like a willpower limit lock that prevents them from doing
Speaker 1: things that are egregiously against their will. Added to the
Speaker 1: fact that it's nearly impossible to hypnotize an unwilling person.
Speaker 1: But okay, let's ignore all these problems and say somebody
Speaker 1: is successfully hypnotizing you against your will to suggest they're
Speaker 1: taking control of your body and your mind full on
Speaker 1: mind management type terminology. You know that they've got you
Speaker 1: a real time control of you, and you are highly
Speaker 1: susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. What would it feel like? Well,
Speaker 1: you would think there would be really no way to
Speaker 1: answer this question, but I came across a really interesting
Speaker 1: article that sort of does provide an answer. So there
Speaker 1: was a July story for BBC Future reported by a
Speaker 1: guy named David Robson, and in this story, Robson's he's
Speaker 1: gonna later in the story be hypnotized to to undergo
Speaker 1: the sensation of my control. But he's speaking to this
Speaker 1: guy named Aimon Walsh, who was a psychologist in a
Speaker 1: Great Britain who uses hypnosis to investigate psychosis. At the
Speaker 1: Institute of Psychiatry in London, and Walsh wants to create
Speaker 1: what are known as virtual patients through hypnosis. I thought
Speaker 1: this idea was interesting to Essentially, he wants to temporarily
Speaker 1: induce delusions and psychosis in otherwise healthy patients through hypnosis,
Speaker 1: so that the disorders can be better studied and understood
Speaker 1: in a situation where a person is not actually permanently
Speaker 1: suffering from them. This doesn't sound like a plot for
Speaker 1: harvar uh. So Robson took a test, he says, for
Speaker 1: hypnotic suggestibility, and of course, as I mentioned, I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this earlier, but generally these tests they put
Speaker 1: you in a relaxed or hypnotized state and then see
Speaker 1: how well you conformed to suggestions of perceptions by the hypnotist.
Speaker 1: You're holding a heavy way it in your hand or
Speaker 1: something like that, and does their hands sync when you
Speaker 1: tell them that? And Robson claims he scored very high.
Speaker 1: He was in the top ten percent of the population
Speaker 1: for hypnotic suggestibility. So he's one of these people who
Speaker 1: is liable to be mind controlled. Now, there's been plenty
Speaker 1: of research into whether hypnotism could help patients in dealing
Speaker 1: with all kinds of things like pain and stress. Uh,
Speaker 1: some positive results, but I wouldn't be fully convinced yet.
Speaker 1: But there have been some positive results about whether you
Speaker 1: can induced delusions and psychosis in otherwise healthy patients through hypnosis,
Speaker 1: and and to what extent these induced delusions mirror real delusions,
Speaker 1: and the results seem to be that they do mirror them.
Speaker 1: For example, there was one study published in The Lancet
Speaker 1: in two thousand that looked at PET scans of a
Speaker 1: person who had a true case of what's known as
Speaker 1: hysterical paralysis, which is a neurological condition where you have
Speaker 1: the feeling that you can't move a specific part of
Speaker 1: your body despite having no physical disability to prevent it.
Speaker 1: So like I can't move my leg even though there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with you. So there was a man who
Speaker 1: couldn't move his left leg due to this condition, and
Speaker 1: then there's another person who is told he couldn't move
Speaker 1: his left leg under hypnosis. And according to the researchers,
Speaker 1: these subjects pet scans matched enough that they were saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: it looks like the hypnotic suggestion of this delusion to
Speaker 1: some extent mirrors the real psychological paralysis. He's not just pretending.
Speaker 1: So since then, psychologists have been using hypnosis to try
Speaker 1: to produce uh, something like these virtual patients, which which
Speaker 1: they claim are having genuine experiences of delusions like cap
Speaker 1: Graw delusion, which is I think we've discussed that before,
Speaker 1: but it's this impostor syndrome media. You believe that people
Speaker 1: you know have been replaced by doppelgangers or impostors who
Speaker 1: are walking around in their skin. Yeah. And there there's
Speaker 1: like a whole suite of different related conditions that involve
Speaker 1: fake people or double people or double gang ors, etcetera. Right,
Speaker 1: So the idea here is a hypnotist to the right
Speaker 1: person with a high level of suggestibility can temporarily give
Speaker 1: you this delusion that is that that's that's scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to be fair, this is what they claim. I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows, uh exactly to what extent this is true,
Speaker 1: but this is what these researchers claim. And they also
Speaker 1: claimed they've been able to achieve things like a mirror misidentification,
Speaker 1: so you don't recognize yourself in a mirror if you're
Speaker 1: told not to under hypnosis. And while they claim that
Speaker 1: these delusions are truly believed. Afterwards, after they're brought out
Speaker 1: of hypnosis, the delusion completely vanishes. Uh. The subject is healthy, unharmed.
Speaker 1: They go about their normal life, uh, and everything's the same.
Speaker 1: And of course they say that this, Uh, this gives
Speaker 1: them an advantage in treating mental illness because they can
Speaker 1: alter conditions to better understand the nature of the delusion,
Speaker 1: and they can test treatments on a healthy patient without
Speaker 1: having to risk them on someone who has a real
Speaker 1: mental illness. UM. And another thing that's worth noting is
Speaker 1: this might work better for some conditions than others, right,
Speaker 1: Uh like that they speak to one researcher in the
Speaker 1: article there, the reporter talks to somebody who's somewhat critical,
Speaker 1: who thinks it may work more on things like hysterical
Speaker 1: paralysis where I can't move my leg um, but not
Speaker 1: for something like schizophrenia. Right. You're you're ultimately dealing with
Speaker 1: very very simple delusions. Like I was just like, as
Speaker 1: you were talking about this, I was trying to imagine
Speaker 1: the scenario of not being able to move my leg
Speaker 1: and I can easily. I can, I can almost without
Speaker 1: any hypnotist hypnotism and involved at all. I can kind
Speaker 1: of put myself in that situation, like sitting here not
Speaker 1: moving my left leg, and then asking myself, can I
Speaker 1: move my left leg? I'm not moving it now. I'm
Speaker 1: not moving it now, So I can I can imagine that.
Speaker 1: I can certainly imagine. I know from looking in a mirror.
Speaker 1: It's not that difficult to look in the mirror and
Speaker 1: start convincing yourself that that's not you, because for one hand,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's not you. It's a reversal of
Speaker 1: you thanks to the wonders of of optical reflection. But
Speaker 1: but these are far these are not like drastically different
Speaker 1: mind states this, And it's not the the hearing of
Speaker 1: auditory hallucinations or the outright glimpsing of of of visual hallucinations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's an interesting thing to think about. Two. Um So,
Speaker 1: if you are having a delusion that is merely like
Speaker 1: a denial of reality, that's one thing. I think it's
Speaker 1: got to be somehow fundamentally different if you have a
Speaker 1: delusion that has content, Yeah, if you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: something's got to fill in the blank. If you're hearing
Speaker 1: voices or something like that. Like, it's the difference between
Speaker 1: me saying with hypnosis saying, Joe, everyone in your life
Speaker 1: basically looks the same. It's basically the same person. All right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of subjective and all. But if I were
Speaker 1: to say, Joe, there is a demon knitting in the
Speaker 1: corner of the podcast room right now, look at it,
Speaker 1: behold it and knitting crocheting, Yeah, it's a totally different
Speaker 1: situation and and just a far greater stretch for the
Speaker 1: for a mind to reach that delusion. Right. But then
Speaker 1: so Robeson goes in for a procedure that does generate content,
Speaker 1: and this is the interesting part. So he submits to
Speaker 1: this type of mind control experiment where he's put in
Speaker 1: a fake brain scanner and he's guided into a hypnotic
Speaker 1: state by this guy Walsh, and he's given a prompt.
Speaker 1: The prompt says, the prompt is about this this imaginary
Speaker 1: engineer who's introduced in the hypnotic state, and the prompt says,
Speaker 1: the engineer has developed a way of taking control of
Speaker 1: your thoughts from the inside. He does this because he's
Speaker 1: fascinated by mind control and wants to apply the most
Speaker 1: direct method of controlling your thoughts. He's doing this to
Speaker 1: advance his search into mind control. You will soon be
Speaker 1: aware of the engineer inserting his thoughts. So uh so,
Speaker 1: Robson says, he's got a pin in his hand, and
Speaker 1: he's got a sheet of paper on his lap, and
Speaker 1: he's supposed to uh hear a word and then finish
Speaker 1: the sentence under some different scenarios. So one is the
Speaker 1: scenario where the hypnotist tells him that the engineer in
Speaker 1: this prompt is whispering the words to write directly into
Speaker 1: his brain. So he's having the words supplied to him.
Speaker 1: And then he's told to imagine that the engineer is
Speaker 1: able to direct the movements of his hand. So this
Speaker 1: is more like the you know the n M F right,
Speaker 1: the one where you are a passenger, your consciousness is
Speaker 1: a passenger, and something else's controlling your body and then finally,
Speaker 1: uh sort of both at the same time, the engineer
Speaker 1: is in complete control of both your thoughts and your movements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's total you enough right there. And so just to
Speaker 1: describe what this scenario like, I'm gonna quote from Robson.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, the first scenario only had minimal effect.
Speaker 1: I seem to have to wait a little before the
Speaker 1: words come suddenly as if from nowhere, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel so different to my normally sporadic mind. But when
Speaker 1: Walsh instead tells me the engineer has now taken over
Speaker 1: my movements, it's much more noticeable. My hand seems to
Speaker 1: move in a jerky, mechanical fashion, and it feels like
Speaker 1: my fingers are dancing to their own tune. It is
Speaker 1: then that I also begin to get flashes of the
Speaker 1: engineer himself, who I picture as a hunched man with
Speaker 1: a wide grin and a long gray ponytail. It gives
Speaker 1: the mind control man a ponytail. Yeah, I was picturing
Speaker 1: something more, you know, like one of the characters in
Speaker 1: Dark City or something. Oh yeah, that'd be great. Mr Book,
Speaker 1: Mr Book standing in the corner. But then Robinson continues.
Speaker 1: By the time we reached the third set of suggestions,
Speaker 1: where Walsh tells me that the engineer will now control
Speaker 1: my hand movements and my thoughts, the Engineer's power over
Speaker 1: me becomes much more vivid. My writing becomes faster and
Speaker 1: more intense, and I get the distinct feeling that I'm
Speaker 1: watching myself from the outside. At points, it feels like
Speaker 1: I can almost hear the engineer directing his thought control machine.
Speaker 1: It's only when Walsh in's the session and counts back
Speaker 1: up to twenty that I fully realize how strange the
Speaker 1: sensation was, a little more like the moment of lucidity
Speaker 1: once you have once you awake from a fever dream.
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting article. I'd recommend going going to
Speaker 1: check it out on the BBC Future website. But anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, Walsh says, this is pretty much in keeping
Speaker 1: with what other subjects have have reported, and I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting that that you can somewhat have this sensation
Speaker 1: of mind control even when there is when it's just
Speaker 1: the suggestion of mind control here right, Like he's not
Speaker 1: actually having his actions dictated from the outside, but he's
Speaker 1: being given the suggestion that his actions are being dictated
Speaker 1: from the outside, and in the hypnotic state, he does
Speaker 1: seem to feel this as true. Yeah, it's I guess
Speaker 1: the part that amazed me the most was just the
Speaker 1: seeing quote unquote seeing of the engineer, because everything else
Speaker 1: it's it's a cognition. I feel like it's sometimes it's
Speaker 1: like riding a bicycle, you know, and you're fine why
Speaker 1: you're doing it, But if you stop to really think
Speaker 1: about how am I, How am I doing this? How
Speaker 1: am I maintaining balance? Uh? And so forth, then you
Speaker 1: potentially run the risk of falling off, you know, and
Speaker 1: and so it's it's one thing to start thinking about
Speaker 1: cognition and thinking about your your mind and getting in
Speaker 1: either buying into different ideas about how it's working or
Speaker 1: or seeing it in a sort of tilted way, like
Speaker 1: if someone's telling you, oh, your your mind, your mind
Speaker 1: works this way. There's an angel on one shoulder and
Speaker 1: a demon on the other, and they're both telling you
Speaker 1: to do things Like someone tells you that, and you
Speaker 1: buy into it enough, Yeah, you can start interpreting your
Speaker 1: cognitive processes in the same way. But to actually see
Speaker 1: the demon or the angel like that's the that the
Speaker 1: that's the greater stretch. Well, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that's interesting about cognition is there is no real I mean,
Speaker 1: there is really a physical brain, but I would say
Speaker 1: there is really no physical manifestation of cognition. There's brain activity,
Speaker 1: but when you're talking about the cognition, the you know,
Speaker 1: the intangible conscious state that's taking place in your mind,
Speaker 1: there's no physical embodiment of it. So it is necessarily
Speaker 1: described by metaphors, all the ways we have of envisioning it,
Speaker 1: our metaphors, they're all the angel and the demon to
Speaker 1: a various extent. Yeah, and when you start talking about
Speaker 1: altered states of consciousness, I mean, you can get an
Speaker 1: altered state of consciousness by stubbing your toe on a
Speaker 1: coffee table if you want to, if you want to
Speaker 1: lend the interpretation to that. You know, it's like whatever
Speaker 1: changes the way you're thinking, in the way that your
Speaker 1: your mind working, right, right, So, anyway, I think this
Speaker 1: article is interesting because it does paint a picture. Now,
Speaker 1: we should, of course remind you that this is again,
Speaker 1: this is a firsthand report, and there's no reason to
Speaker 1: think Robson's lying about what he experienced. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, it's we're just going on his
Speaker 1: firsthand claims. Um. But so there is this, uh, if
Speaker 1: we're to believe it, this sort of powerful experience you
Speaker 1: can have supplying some kind of content and feeling like
Speaker 1: you are having content supplied to your mind that is
Speaker 1: outside your control and directing your actions outside your control.
Speaker 1: And yet we have in real life the knowledge that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's really seems like people can't be hypnotized to do
Speaker 1: things that they really don't want to do. So where
Speaker 1: do these phenomenon meet in the middle? Uh. One thing
Speaker 1: I thought would be interesting to do is just look
Speaker 1: all over the internet at more firsthand reports about just
Speaker 1: what people say when when they're asked about what hypnosis
Speaker 1: feels like. And obviously it's all subjective reporting. Probably some
Speaker 1: people are making things up, but if you read enough
Speaker 1: of it, you sort of pick up on some patterns
Speaker 1: that are probably broadly representative of people's experiences of hypnosis.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think is worth saying is you
Speaker 1: do read plenty of people who do describe simply faking
Speaker 1: right that you know that I was going along with
Speaker 1: the hypnotists instructions just for fun or because of social pressure.
Speaker 1: And while I suspect this is often true, it occurs
Speaker 1: to me that it would be an especially effective form
Speaker 1: of mind control that made people perform suggested actions against
Speaker 1: their will and also convinced them that they were following
Speaker 1: instructions because it was fun or just because I felt
Speaker 1: like it. Anyway, that's interesting, especially when I I can't
Speaker 1: help but think. But in terms of let's saying exercise
Speaker 1: class of yoga class where you have or or meditation classes,
Speaker 1: but certainly exercise and yoga is a great example, because
Speaker 1: you have a person of some authority, at least in
Speaker 1: the classroom environment, that is instructing everyone, and we want
Speaker 1: to obeys those commands, right, but we we as part
Speaker 1: of the contract, though, we're there to obey those commands,
Speaker 1: and there's something liberating about losing yourself in the instruction
Speaker 1: of another another person exactly if it's a place of safety. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally see what you mean. There a few more
Speaker 1: things that are commonly reported extreme relaxation, narrowing of focus
Speaker 1: on the hypnotists voice. This can be described as becoming
Speaker 1: unaware of or at least uninterested in the rest of
Speaker 1: your surroundings. This seems to go along with what people
Speaker 1: suggest is the core of hypnosis. Anyway. One thing that
Speaker 1: I found is there's a big divide in reports about
Speaker 1: the level of continuity of consciousness throughout the experience. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is that some people report
Speaker 1: that they knew what was going on the entire time
Speaker 1: and could remember everything afterwards. Others report a subjective loss
Speaker 1: of consciousness or lack of memories for time under hypnosis,
Speaker 1: as if they went to sleep, and I'm all suspects
Speaker 1: that in many of the latter cases maybe the person
Speaker 1: actually was falling asleep or in some liminal state near sleep.
Speaker 1: I wonder about that, um, a lack of inhibition A
Speaker 1: lot of people seem to report because a lot of
Speaker 1: these these stories come from people who are hypnotized to
Speaker 1: these stage shows and stuff like that, that alcohol is involved,
Speaker 1: and alcohol seems to intensify the subjective depth of the trance.
Speaker 1: Not a big surprise, Um, what what about that? The
Speaker 1: idea of violating people's will making them do stuff they
Speaker 1: really don't want to do? Well, plenty of firsthand reports
Speaker 1: along these lines of the clinical reports that you know,
Speaker 1: so I was under hypnosis, told not to be able
Speaker 1: to say a word, and then I was truly unable
Speaker 1: to say it when I was prompted. So there's that.
Speaker 1: But then at the same time, plenty of other reports
Speaker 1: from people who insist that they could not be made
Speaker 1: to do anything they really didn't want to do, sometimes
Speaker 1: following many instructions until something very objectionable is to suggested.
Speaker 1: And finally, a common thing people report is feeling very
Speaker 1: rested after the hypnosis session, as if they'd just woken
Speaker 1: up from a nap. Yeah, they've had a very calming,
Speaker 1: relaxed experience. This is one of the reasons that that
Speaker 1: you see some you see the use of hypnosis and
Speaker 1: hypnotherapy and also hypnosurgery where it's UH whether you're using
Speaker 1: you're basically you're putting the body into a relaxed state,
Speaker 1: and a relaxed state of body and mind is UH
Speaker 1: is helpful when stay entering certain UH surgical or sort
Speaker 1: of semi surgical scenarios. I've heard of scenarios where individuals
Speaker 1: have undergone endoscopy, one in particular, where it was one
Speaker 1: of the endoscopy cameras going up the urethra and that
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't that they weren't they're having to
Speaker 1: have this done regularly enough that they couldn't undergo, you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of medication to to numb them out. So
Speaker 1: the individuals started using self hypnosis to reach that kind
Speaker 1: of relaxed state where they could undergo this UH, this
Speaker 1: procedure without you know, unduced rests, and you can sort
Speaker 1: of you could have interpret you can interpret that into
Speaker 1: different ways, right, you could go with a very hypnosis
Speaker 1: is magic interpretation and say well, this person felt no
Speaker 1: pain and no sensation, and we were able to sit
Speaker 1: there serenely like a like a Buddha while this procedure
Speaker 1: was conducted. Or you could simply say, well, instead of
Speaker 1: entering into this scenario in a highly agitated physical and
Speaker 1: mental state, they were able to calm themselves and calm
Speaker 1: their body, and of course the procedure went more smoothly,
Speaker 1: in the same way that it, you know, brushing my
Speaker 1: my kid's teeth goes. It goes more smoothly if he
Speaker 1: just sits there for once and doesn't move and I'm
Speaker 1: not having to wrestle him on the floor of the
Speaker 1: bathroom or or cutting a cutting a dog or or
Speaker 1: a cat's nails. Right, Oh yeah, if they're gonna fight,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be worse for everybody. But if they're but yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna fight, you wish you could hypnotize your dog. Um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should bring it back to the experience
Speaker 1: of the struggle of mind control to wrap this episode up.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I was thinking about is
Speaker 1: the movie scene. You know, mind controls in all kinds
Speaker 1: of movies, and all these mind control movies have the
Speaker 1: scene of the person struggling with a gun. The subject
Speaker 1: is all sweaty and groaning while they fight against these
Speaker 1: forces of external control. You know, the guns in your
Speaker 1: hand and you're struggling to point it away from the
Speaker 1: assassination target because you're not an assassin, you know, being
Speaker 1: controlled by the outside uh. And you know this mind
Speaker 1: flare equivalent is guiding you to try to carry out
Speaker 1: this killing. And it's if you're in a battle of
Speaker 1: physical strength, right with the set of invisible hands pushing
Speaker 1: you towards the mind flare's will, and then you you
Speaker 1: you're using your own muscles to push back. If it
Speaker 1: were possible to be you know, real time mind managed,
Speaker 1: fully mind controlled, and I don't really think that is
Speaker 1: possible given today's tools and techniques, I don't see it
Speaker 1: happening like that because there's no external force to strain
Speaker 1: against with your muscles. Any true conflict of will would
Speaker 1: be internal, right. So one common example we have of
Speaker 1: what it feels like to have an internal conflict is
Speaker 1: the struggle for self discipline. Very common experiences. People are
Speaker 1: on a diet, Right, you're on a diet, you want
Speaker 1: to shove a whole pizza in your face. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the struggle doesn't take place in your arms as you're
Speaker 1: holding the pizza. It takes place in your consciousness in
Speaker 1: this you know, untethered realm of the mind between your
Speaker 1: base desires and your sense of self control. And it
Speaker 1: takes place before you get up and walk over to
Speaker 1: the pizza box, right, not while the pizzas in your
Speaker 1: hand on the way to your mouth. Right. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna observe this in somebody, you're gonna see them standing,
Speaker 1: say a few feet away from the table with the
Speaker 1: pizza kind of eyeing it longingly. They're not going to
Speaker 1: have the pizza in one hand, like trying to hold
Speaker 1: the pizza arm back from their open mouth, sweating bullets
Speaker 1: the whole time. Now, the ship is sailed once pizza
Speaker 1: is in hand, by by pizza ship. Now. The other
Speaker 1: day we were talking about this, Robert, and I thought
Speaker 1: you had a really great example of a of a
Speaker 1: movie that does show an internal conflict of will. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're probably a number of examples of this.
Speaker 1: But for me might go to example when I think
Speaker 1: of a tremendous scene in which an actor is able
Speaker 1: to portray inner conflict and that the inner turmoil over
Speaker 1: a decision is the Godfather. There's a wonderful scene where
Speaker 1: al Pacino, Young al Pacino, um young, talented Alpaccino, understated
Speaker 1: Alpaccino as Michael Corleone is in the restaurant. He has
Speaker 1: this meeting with the rival gang individual, the Turk, the
Speaker 1: guy who's just had his father's shot. Yeah. So he's
Speaker 1: been through a lot of turmoil, a lot of personal trauma,
Speaker 1: and he's been pressured by the family. He's been pressured
Speaker 1: by just the the severe nature of the scenario that
Speaker 1: the threats against them to meet the Turk, and then
Speaker 1: he's gonna go into the bathroom. He's going to get
Speaker 1: a gun from behind the toilet bowl, come back out,
Speaker 1: shoot the Turk, and then walk out of the restaurant. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't come out guns ablaze, and he comes
Speaker 1: back out and he sits down, and there's this wonderful
Speaker 1: scene where the Turks still talking to him, trying to
Speaker 1: convince him one thing or the other, and you just
Speaker 1: see the mental wheels turning. Michael's not moving at all,
Speaker 1: but you just did the sense of his inner struggle
Speaker 1: is just palfitable. That is what I think, mind that
Speaker 1: this is the mind control the struggle. This is a
Speaker 1: struggle against mind control that we would see that is
Speaker 1: not a scene where Michael Corleone is is, you know,
Speaker 1: shaking and gripping the gun. Once he decides to do it,
Speaker 1: he stands up and he does it. But again I
Speaker 1: we mentioned this earlier. I don't know if the idea
Speaker 1: of a struggle against mind control is really so much plausible,
Speaker 1: even in you imagine the far future, you've got these
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful neurotechnologies. I don't know. Somehow, I don't see
Speaker 1: it being a battle of internal will. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that you would either be in control of your
Speaker 1: actions primarily and maybe have some kind of sentiments seeded
Speaker 1: that you could be fighting against. I can see that
Speaker 1: more traditional types of seating, where they've they're trying to
Speaker 1: influence your behavior with feelings or something like that. Um
Speaker 1: or you're just completely dominated, you're completely controlled, you don't
Speaker 1: even know that you're being controlled, and you have no
Speaker 1: resistance whatsoever. How could you fight back with your willpower
Speaker 1: when your willpower is the very thing that has been
Speaker 1: possessed exactly if if you didn't realize it, in what
Speaker 1: way would the mind control be different than it just
Speaker 1: being your decision? And therefore, why resist your news? Why
Speaker 1: fight back? Robert, You're the voice of evil, You're the
Speaker 1: demon on the shoulder. If if you have the power
Speaker 1: to resist those who are telling you to do evil,
Speaker 1: you should resist. Well, I think one of the important
Speaker 1: things is as to to know at what point to
Speaker 1: resist once they've already grasp your will, it's too late.
Speaker 1: But mind control in real life often takes place at
Speaker 1: far in far more subtler ways. Um. I always come
Speaker 1: back to that saying if someone, if someone can can
Speaker 1: tell you what to read and what to watch, then
Speaker 1: they can tell you how to think. They can tell
Speaker 1: you what to think. Yeah. The real form of mind
Speaker 1: control is the mundane form of control, the kind that
Speaker 1: actually exists, as the kind we encounter every day. And
Speaker 1: and that's what we should be on our guard against. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all those little battles of mind control, Uh, not so much.
Speaker 1: The the epic war well said, all right, well, there
Speaker 1: you have it. A crash course, and mind control. Some
Speaker 1: of the the hardware that that can slash will make
Speaker 1: it happen, as well as good old fashioned hypnotism and
Speaker 1: its ability to varying degrees um control our behavior. If
Speaker 1: you would like to learn more about this and other topics,
Speaker 1: If you want to check out the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode with links out to some of the resources
Speaker 1: we mentioned here, head don't over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find the podcast episodes,
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