From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Torture and the mind: _Star Trek_ vs. _1984_. 
Date: 5 Jan 93 12:10:25 -0400
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <1993Jan4.212840.16814@wam.umd.edu>, rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari) writes:
> In article <1993Jan4.150633.9862@ac.dal.ca> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
> 
>>Actually, unless I mis-heard Picard, his final response to the Kardassian
>>interrgator is an almost incoherent yell: "There...are...four...lights!"
> 
> 	Picard does not answer until he is told he is going to
> 	be returned to the enterprise.  At that point, knowing that
> 	the destruction of the enterprise (and who knows what more)
> 	was a lie, he answers four lights.

I'll have to trust your memory for this one. If this is indeed the case, 
then I suppose one could say that the ST:TNG episode _does_ ring
true with Orwell. If, as he later admits, Picard _did_ see 5 lights 
(or thought he did) then it seems reasonable to assume he would have said
so had the guards not intervened. In this case, the limitations of the medium
(i.e. "we have to get Picard back on the Enterprise in one piece for next 
week's show") seem to have been what kept the ST writers from going for the
_1984_ ending. 
 
>The idea of doublethink is that you hold an idea which you _know_
>>is wrong, but you supress that knowledge so that you can assert the truth
>>of the idea in question. 
> 
> 	Perhaps we have a slightly differing view of what was implied.
> 	In my view, Orwell was saying that the innermost and only belief
> 	was the one that had been tortured into him--there was no other,
> 	not even underneath.  The self-defeat never cameinto play because
> 	the mid had learnedto avoid any and all thought along those lines.

The last paragraph of _1984_ says something like "At last the struggle was
over. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother," I think.
My brother just made off with my copy of the book, so I can't
check it right now.  Earlier in the book, Orwell spells out what
doublethink is -- the ability to forget that you're lying to yourself,
and to forget that you've forgotten, ad infinitum, "with the lie always
keeping one step ahead of the truth." 

I guess I'm thinking that Smith was not _programmed_ like a computer.
He was given a new program, and was then highly motivated to adopt it (by
torture) even though at some level he knew it was wrong. The "victory
over himself," the "end of the struggle," was his act of doublethink:
his sense of integrity surrendered, he gave in and did the doublethink
thing. So I think you're right -- he was tortured into a new belief,
an absolutely sincere one. I'm thinking that the psychological mechanism
of change is doublethink. It seems analogous to a religious conversion,
somehow. Smith weeps tears of joy as his old self evaporates and 
he at last loves Big Brother. 

In other words, I think Smith's case is different from the case of an 
individual who is brainwiped by repeated shock therapy, and then reprogrammed
(a procedure which has been practised with a certain amout of success,
I gather). 
 
> 	This is only subtly different. 
> 
> 	My objection to math is mechanical in nature--one of the 
> 	non-voluntary cognitive functions (i.e. like retinal processing).

In this case, I think the point of O'Brien's emphasis on the math
was born of exactly this fact. O'Brien wanted Smith to _deny_ an
obvious and inescapable truth: 2+2=4.  The ability to do this is
what Orwell calls "doublethink."  In the end, Smith's affection
for Big Brother is his emotional reaction to the obvious 
untruth that he had now adopted via doublethink: that Big Brother was
good. 

>> Torture, then, is one way to motivate you to renounce
>> your sense of integrity.  What do you think?  
>
> 	In the case of 1984, I don't think "motivate" is the proper
> 	way to speak of what happened to Winston.  Rather, he had no
> 	choice whatsoever.  Nothing he could do--resisting was obviously
> 	not an effective option--could change what they were going to
> 	do to him.  It's rather like fixing a car--by changing the fan belt 
> 	I amnot motivating the engine to run better, I am _making_ the 
> 	engine run better.  It has no choice whatsoever.

Agreed. This is the point that O'Brien makes when he brings Smith to
Room 101 -- that for every person there is at least one pressure that is
irresistable. In other words, O'Brien understood what it takes to
effect a "conversion" in the same way a mechanic knows what it takes
to make a car run better. Apply force "A" and you'll get the desired
result. 

Where I think your analogy fails is that the process worked on Smith is
a _psychological_ one, not a _neurological_ one (except inasmuch as the
psychological is a manifestation of the neurological). In other words,
O'Brien was applying psychological pressures to effect a psychological
process, doublethink. See what I'm getting at?  I think _modern_
interrogation techniques (i.e. drugs) work the way you describe -- they
mess up your mind on the level of individual neurons, like screwing up
a computer by messing with the hardware.  O'Brien is a software man.
If you know how to do it, you can manipulate software with the same
scientific precision that is usually associated with hardware -- I think
that is the science of the Thought Police. They know how to make you
_want_ to change.

Thanks for the story about your memories becoming real...I guess all of
our experiences are really neurological events. Maybe the brain started
replaying the firings of optical neurons, etc. that it remembered
from your dinner at the Tastee Diner?  There would be no way to
distinguish this from "real life" except your knowledge that it had
happened before, that you were in a sensory deprivation chamber, etc.

Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca

 "As private parts are we to the Gods: they play with us for their sport."
  -- Blackadder