In 2005 Cecil opined about the possibilities of brainwashing like in the Manchurian Candidate. In other words, could a person be programmed to kill someone without their free will coming into it?
I wondered about this too. If the show was faked, it was a very good fake and I’m very disappointed in the Discovery Channel. If the show was real, I don’t see how they got permission to do it.
If Ivan was actually sitting in the ice bath, he had to have been hypnotized. There’s no way anyone could sit there for 2 minutes and not show any physiological signs.
I looked up the two scientists’ names I remembered - Cynthia Meyersburg and Mark Stokes. They’re both real people in academe (although Meyersburg is just a graduate student).
Saw the show and was wondering this myself. Most of the folks they tried to hypnotize were obviously just playing along (as shown by even the select folks they were convinced were hypnotized failing the ice water test…the ripping off the clothes test was pretty funny though, and I wish they had some additional footage for some of the women doing that experiment :p), but the guy they actually succeeded with looked pretty convincing. Up to that point I had been laughing the whole thing off and explaining to the wife that it was all bullshit, but at that point it kind of shut me up, and now…well, just don’t know.
Hoping someone will be able to come in here and say why it was all a load of horseshit to be honest.
The CIA did just the same things decades ago, hypnotised a secretary and told her she was in a rage at one of her coworkers, then gave her an unloaded gun with which she tried to kill her colleague. So this isn’t new.
I don’t think it’d be possible to literally program someone to hunt down and kill somebody (barring chemical treatments or implants far beyond current technology), but it may be possible to get somebody to semi-reliably kill a nearby person.
I.E. Bring the person into a room the target is going to enter in, say, 10 minutes. Proceed to terrify them – prime them with various things that are known to put people on edge, possibly tell them that the guy entering is going to hurt them too. Give them a gun – another weapon may work, but I think a gun is most reliable because its range and speed of use gives the lowest possible amount of time for the person to realize the target means no harm and not hesitate.
I think this sort of priming and conditioning is probably the closest you’ll get to a “brainwash” killing, and even then it’s impractical, and almost impossible to guarantee success. It’s be easier to just hire a hitman.
Anyone on here seen Derren Brown’s “Apocalypse” yet? He convinces a chosen susceptible chappy that the world’s going to experience a meteor shower, followed by sporadic bursts of zombies.
That’s why I thought this was worth posting. If it’s real, it’s huge. I don’t know how they’re supposed to keep testing it, but it’s an incredible result.
Thing is, you’d expect any group smart enough to carry out this research to be smart enough to create a front operation to take all the attention and make it appear that there’s nothing here to see, just move along, please.
I saw the comercials for the show on the Discovery channel but I forgot to watch it. Were there any psyche evaluations or aptitude tests perfromed on the ‘candidates’ before they were subjected to any hypnosis or suggestions otherwise? And how were they presented with their disclosure and consent forms? Did the participants have any prior knowledge of what the intention of the experiment was?
Anecdote at best. Can anyone confirm this story, or is there anything official written up on it, because the author seems to be making somewhat incredible claims about manipulating CIA workers without the permission of that agency.
Psych evaluations/aptitude tests: they claimed they did background checks on them.
Prior knowledge: Yes, the applicants knew they were going to be on a tv show about hypnosis. They spent the first several rounds picking those more susceptible to hypnosis and weeding out those they thought were faking (and they erred on the side of caution. They went from 185 applicants to 16 to 4). The final round involved putting the remaining 4 applicants in an ice bath (35 degrees Fahrenheit) for two minutes, telling them it was a comfortable jacuzzi, and measuring their involuntary responses/vital signs. 3 of the applicants’ pulse rates went up almost immediately, and got pulled out at 15-20 seconds. The 4th guy sat in the bath, undisturbed, with normal vital signs for two minutes.
At that point, they all thought the experiment was over. That was what they thought the payoff at the end of the show was - demonstrating you could get at least one subject to withstand an ice bath thinking it was warm.
That guy, though, they put under again, and programmed him to believe a ‘bad man, who needed to be eliminated’ was going to come out of a door carrying a briefcase in 10 minutes’ time. They told him there would be a bike with a backpack on it, with a gun inside, which he was to use to kill the guy. They gave him a verbal and tactile trigger - a producer saying ‘you did a brilliant job’ and giving him a handshake with a squeeze. They brought him out of the hypnotic state.
They made the scene convincingly enough. It looked reasonably like a minor important guy - cordoned ropes, a few journalists and photographers, and two SUV limos waiting.
The guy got the trigger, went and got the gun, and when the stuntman came out, the subject ‘shot’ him three times. They then put him under again, brought him back inside, and he had no memory of the ‘assassination.’
All Marks’ work is sourced rom FOIA documents. Besides, as the CIA has been quite open about the acts that they were then covertly dosing their staff with LSD as part of a mind control and interrogation programme, what maks you think they would hesitate to hypnotise them?
I saw the program. I was doubtful till they did the ice bath immersion and the guy passed it. That got my attention.
I’m still doubtful on the assassination. And I note that they wasn’t particularly subtle standing by the exit door with the bag and gun. I mean, he was practically waving the pistol around, and the look on his face screamed murder. Any decent security guard would have pegged him at 50 feet.
Yeah, they made him recall it all, then they did their best to reassure him by bringing in the actor so he could see he was okay.
What bugs me, how do they prevent him from accidentally getting that post-hypnotic trigger again? Can you unhypnotize? Deprogram?