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Comment by SoSoRoCoCo | Hacker News Reader

Imagine what happened that WASN'T documented.

This is totally off-topic but related to your post: The CIA LSD testing was completely off the books. The journalists who uncovered it relied on hundreds of interviews. The CIA simply hired Sidney Gottlieb to do whatever he wanted to with zero oversight because the CIA wanted to achieve mind-control before the Russians. Gottlieb literally bought all of the LSD in the world at one point, and it was given to people such as Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary and Whitey Bulger.

Absolute frikken insanity:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que...

https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-ci...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/buried-treasure-the-ci...

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It's not impossible that British efforts along those lines are even worse because we know that they did play with (not quite as "move fast and break things" as the CIA) LSD, but there's no real pressure or habit of properly declassifying material from the depths like this (MI5 do publish a little, SIS do not at all, ever... no matter how hard you ask). What little MKULTRA material exists was preserved almost purely by luck, IIRC.

I also don't even want to imagine what the Soviets got up too - they'd probably laugh at Enhanced Interrogation.

This is quite funny. Testing LSD on British soldiers:

https://youtu.be/ziqpwkhqTRs

Wow indeed. And oh, the irony -- LSD is the ultimate anti-mind-control drug.

Not necessarily. LSD reduces the influence of implicit priors. What gets reintegrated depends on context ("set and setting").

Brainwashing doesn't need drugs for that, and has been far more successful.

Definitely. Just pointing out that LSD is not guaranteed to be a psychologically liberating experience.

Yep. No guarantees. I had a friend that that fried his brain on it.

It's a powerful tool that has been unfairly demonized.

Agreed!

I’m sure you’re aware of the concept of “set and setting.” The environment can greatly influence the character and content of a psychedelic experience.

Mind control can be as simple as attaching trauma to a particular ideology, or invoking a spiritual experience with some specific subject matter.

I think it could probably be done although it would be wildly unwieldy and unethical.

Yes, I'm very aware. The CIA was engaging in torture in the name of research.

My quip was based on the fact that under proper set and setting LSD has the ability to "open the mind" beyond the "normal world" and its associated conventions.

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