From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: Torture and the mind: _Star Trek_ vs. _1984_. 
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:08:31 GMT

In article <1993Jan2.233547.9837@ac.dal.ca> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
>In article <1993Jan3.015948.18450@wam.umd.edu>, rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari) writes:
> 
>Re: genetic personality differences and Orwell.
> 
>> 	You might be right, but maybe not.  There will always be
>> 	drop-out's in society.  Whether this is a great stand for
>> 	individualism is nt really clear, though.
>
>Well, that isn't exactly what I meant. This is a somewhat minor point,
>but I think it is fair to say that personalities are at least partly
>a result of genetically dictated hormone levels, neuronal
>configurations, etc.  I am skeptical that Orwell was 100% on the
>environment side of the "nature vs. nurture" controversy. 


	Ok.  Got it.  I think he was 99% enviroment, 1% nature, though.
	

	Interestingly enough, this same sort of topic (reshaping people)
	came up in another group (talk.politics.homosexuality, I think)
	when someone, hoping to bunkify my argument tried the tired old
	"Can you be cured of heterosexuality?" 

	I answered yes.  I still stand by it.



>arguable, though, that genetic factors are at work also. The Thought
>Police will _always_ be needed, because genetic variation will likely
>_always_ produce a few people who will be malcontents.


	I prefer not to call this genetic variation, but rather 
	biological variation.  It is known, for instance, that a number
	of behavioral problems are caused by intrauterine exposure
	to some chemicals (drugs, mostly--both illicit and prescription).


>>>Actually, he never confesses to the Kardassians that he saw five, even though
>>>he did. He remains defiant _even though_ the Kardassians have distorted
>>>his perceptions in a way similar to the way O'Brien renders Winston
>>>Smith unable to tell whether or not he was holding up 4 or 5 fingers.
>> 
>> 	Picard confesses to Troi at the end of the episode after
>> 	being returned to the enterprise.
>
>The fact that he never confessed to the Kardassians is what is signif-
>icant from the _1984_ perspective.  


	I think that STTNG shows that he *would have* if the guards
	hadn't come to fetch him as soon as they did. 


>My point was that STTNG affirms
>a kind of Romanticism by having Picard remain defiant towards the
>Kardassians _even though_ they have messed with his mind to the point
>that he sees five lights.  Orwell's book is partly a refutation
>of the perspective endorsed by STTNG.   


	I also have a slight problem with both 1984 and STTNG's focal
	point--the number that 2+2 equals and the number of lights.  I 
	tend to feel that there is a hard-core biological system behind
	human cognition that is, in some specific ways, immutable.  I would
	think that mathematics would be one of these points.  Another
	is language (BUT NOT SEMANTICS!).  There are certain types of 
	languages that we can logically construct, but which no human has
	ever spoken or will ever speak with any fluency--they simply
	do not work properly for the wiring of the mind.  

	I think that the concious mind *does* influence the information
	it recieves (this is quite easy to prove incidentally, anyone
	here see their blind spot?), but I have to think there are limits.
	(But perhaps the distinction I am making is irrelavent--if the
	*concious* mind believes something, that may be all that is 
	important.  Beliefs, political, moral, religious--are not
	present at the lower (hardware) level)...

 
>> 	I do not know much about drugs or the sensory depriv chamber, 
>> 	other than a very brief chance I got to try one.  It took maybe
>> 	an hour of real hard-core boredom before I started to feel
>> 	kind of funny.  About then, I got scared and wanted out 
>> 	very, very much.  Imagine if you simply awoke from unconciousness,
>> 	with no knowledge of how much time had passed, in this 
>> 	scentless, feelingless (not quite), soundless (not quite) hell.
>
>Wow...where did you get to try this? Was it really as bad as that?


	A friend who worked several years ago at a local mental
	treatment center set up a makeshift one.  They had everything
	necessary to do so--huge tubs, eeg, air masks, lots of salt, 
	the whole deal.  

	Like I said, it was mostly borign, then really boring.  It is pretty
	clear that I lost my ability (not particularly good, anyway) to
	measure time after not too long, because while I was only in for
	maybe 1:15, if felt like a LOT longer.

	All I got was scared.  I'm very rational, and my mind doesn't
	drift anywhere but into memory.  It was when this stuff started
	to feel "real" that I got scared.  

	Don't get me wrong.  No hallucinations, nothing like that.  Just
	an erie feeling of wrongness. Panic, soon after.  And then I demanded
	to get out (not that I needed to--I was free to get out at any time
	as the lid was not heavy--but I forgot at the time).

	To be fair, the closest I've come to this type of   
	experiance was when I took too much cough syrup--and then 
	I just wanted to sit down.  I have not ever had exposure to
	alcohol or drugs of any kind otherwise.  


>I've heard that it is only a matter of time before insanity sets in
>in one of those things. Is that true?


	I have no idea.  I would not try it again if given the option.
	I imagine that insanity *could* set in, and I have read/heard
	(first hand, in two cases--same bunch of people--who, as it happens,
	lost their jobs soon after) of severe hallucinations an order
	of magnitude above what people describe when talking about LSD
	in terms of reality.  (While LSD alters things, I'm told that
	it does not creat anything resembling reality, while the hallucination
	experiences I've heard about witrh sen.depriv are supposed to be
	very elaborate constructions.)


>> 	I've read a few accounts of people who thought that they had died 
>> 	while in the chamber, because they were not ready for what it 
>> 	offered.  With easy terror like that
>
>Is it quite terrifying?


	I imagine it depends on what frightens you.  I find my "self"
	to be extremely important to me, and this helps to explain 
	my one-up-on-puritanical view of drugs ('cept pain killers, 
	vaccines, that sort of thing--I am referring to mind-altering
	substances).  Others do not seem to much care about this aspect
	of themselves, and many seem to prefer it when their minds are
	altered constantly. 

	Alternately, I also imagine that it would be quite a terrfying 
	experience if you had any particularly bad memories, or if your
	mind wandered on current things (i.e. this flash of lightr [retinal
	discharge] looks like a big spider.. trying to eat me.. crawling
	closer) you might become unbearably frightened.  In such cases,
	your heartbeat would go up, breathing, hyper ventilation and an
	oxygen high might make things worse.

	Finally, the death fear seems to be very real for a number of
	people.  I used to spend a lot of time in the library, and I once
	came across a book that detailed a problem that was sort of
	similar--people who would dream that they had died in their sleep,
	and were in a sort of unable-to-move empty darkness that they would
	spend (relative) hours in.  In the mornings they would wake up and
	still be frazzled from the fear that gripped them ("I know it 
	isn't real--but what if _this time_ it is?  What if this is death??") 
	during the night.  

	I think that taking someone who was unconcious and putting them
	into one of these things would be a pretty effective method.  You
	would simply need to take care of waste elimination (just introduce
	gas into their air line, clean'em up, and let'em wake up again). They
	would have no idea how they got there, why, or how much time 
	had passed.  It would only be a matter of time before their personality
	disintegrated, and we have drugs that would probably help'em along.


>> 	And then there's surgery.  Suppose you hooked up a wire to someone's
>> 	pleasure center.  You could program them that way.
>
>Seems to me I read a sci-fi novel once in which that occurred. 
>_Ringworld_, I think. I wonder if that's ever been tried in real life.


	As far as I know, this has not been done with people, but it has
	been done with rats (in an experiment very similar to the 
	cocaine-food test, where rats would prefer jolts to their pleasure
	center to food or water, and would keep it up until they died), 
	cats (also, some sort of violence/agression experiments) and monkeys
	(not sure of the details).



-- 
	Blaming "society" for your problems is like blaming clouds for rain.
         ---  boycott == censorship == closed mindedness == cowardice  ---
	      "Psalms 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."  
		Shepherds are for sheep.   -----      Pain teaches.