Trying to Cure Depression, but Inspiring Torture | Hacker News Reader

Trying to Cure Depression, but Inspiring Torture

newyorker.com

67 pointsdsego11 comments

Interesting.

Seligman investigated learned helplessness by torturing dogs, and was then surprised to learn that someone else investigated torture by learned helplessness.

Psychologists aren't very bright, are they?

This comment breaks the HN guidelines in a somewhat interesting way. Your second paragraph is edgy and glib, but still borderline ok—it's possible to see a substantive point there (one that I'm sure has crossed many minds when reading about this topic), even though you expressed it more rhetorically than thoughtfully. On the other hand, your third paragraph clearly crosses the line and points nowhere good. Please don't post like that here.

The third paragraph might have been intended to be humorous rather than hateful.

My third paragraph was intended as a rather tongue in cheek way of pointing out that a major point of the article, as expressed by the second paragraph, was incredibly disingenuous. It is as if one were to ask why the scientists of the Manhattan Project didn't consider that their work would leave humanity under threat for decades, if not forever; they did consider that, they simply decided the advantages were worth the consequences.

I'm not sure how you get "glib" out of the second paragraph; it seems to me to be a fair summation of the original experiment coupled with a summary of the post 9/11 use of the results as described in the article.

Anyway, thank you for your consideration, and I will try to adhere to your wishes.

Within the context of post 9/11 torture, one might wonder about the actual goal of such torture programs.

I've never been entirely clear about the information being searched for among supposed terrorists. Operating without state sponsors, terrorist cells are pretty threadbare, and don't have many valuable secrets. The secrets they might have are limited in use, and have a short shelf life.

Then we read in the article:

  Here we have no direct data - after all,
  there have never been controlled torture 
  trials that we know of...

Given that the government has a monopoly on violence, maybe the entire goal all along was to conduct exactly this research as a non-survival experiment in humans, under an opportunistic pretense such that the subjects being expended would be considered despicable enough to waste on such exploration?

Maybe doing so would fill in such knowlege gaps, and provide answers in the only way possible.

I'd be a lot more inclined to believe this if when the programs came to light the government de-classified the details that supported the theory you suggest.

Since they've said nothing I'm going to continue to use Occam's Razor and believe that they did it either as a form of revenge or because they mistakenly believed in cargo cult of that being how stuff was done (likely thanks to Hollywood).

Considering the direct parallels someone would draw between scientifically studied torture and nazi experiments, I'd be surprised if anyone was allowed to officially sign off on this.

Hollywood tends to focus on short, intense scenes of pain stimulus such as beating, electrocution, etc. with a tearful confession coming after a few minutes.

The torture program had much more to do with long-term engineering of a prisoner's environment with the goal of breaking down his humanity and spirit over a period of months and years: stress positions, sleep deprivation, loud music, extreme temperatures, and repeated fruitless water-boarding.

I don't think we get to blame Hollywood for this. More like the techniques that our "advisors" were refining and teaching to repressive anti-communist regimes throughout the 20th century, finally applied by us instead of by proxy.

Actually, we do get to blame Hollywood (partly). http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/03/05_torture.s...

When I was a child/teen, it was popular to wonder about the effects of TV violence, and now we know. It appears many people are unable to distinguish between TV and reality. Monkey see, monkey do.

i've been in situations where the lead, alpha programmer(s) pretty much decided everything and criticized the work i was doing to an extent that i felt helpless and demotivated.

it's probably good to somehow radically adjust your role/attitude/relationships in such a working environment, if reasonably and sanely possible.

if not, it's probably better to leave than to try and "stick it out."

I often hear people say they work at startups because they are more motivated knowing that they'll have an appreciable effect in the outcome. The complement to this idea is that people in large corporations feel like they have little effect - a feeling that is analogous to learned helplessness.

As a manager or leader one of your main jobs is to ensure your employees feel like their voices are heard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com

Trying to Cure Depression, but Inspiring Torture​

Trying to Cure Depression, but Inspiring Torture