Conspiracy Theorists

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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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EquALLity wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2017 6:53 am Was it wrong? Well, they illegally gave people drugs and abused them to fck up their minds so they'd be susceptible to mind control. Soooo...
The CIA then tried to destroy all records of this operation, so clearly they knew it was wrong.
It sounds like this was experimental, to find out what substances might make that possible, particularly with an eye to uncovering intelligence through interrogation. I can understand why they did this for national security; they thought they were doing the right thing, and maybe they were.

A conspiracy theory would be more like the government is doing this to the population to control them now (e.g. the fluoride conspiracy theory).
It's much easier just to fund disconnected experiments like that, where very few people have to know the scope of what's going on. Application on a population-wide scale would be impossible. The plausibility of a conspiracy is something sort of like this:

(% of people who find it morally acceptable)/(Number of people involved^2)

If everybody would find it moral, and one person is involved, the plausiblity would be 100%.
If 50% of people would find it moral, and ten people were involved, the plausibility would more like be 0.5%

Expense is also a factor, but less so with a government where funds are not an issue.

I don't know what abuses were involved and what knowledge was gained, so it's hard to say if it was wrong. Sometimes in psychological experiments something as simple as inadequate debriefing is considered unethical and use of illegal drugs could have made it illegal too. Standards vary a lot, and are much more stringent today.
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PsYcHo
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2017 6:12 pm (% of people who find it morally acceptable)/(Number of people involved^2)

If everybody would find it moral, and one person is involved, the plausiblity would be 100%.
If 50% of people would find it moral, and ten people were involved, the plausibility would more like be 0.5%
Judging morality based on percentages doesn't guarantee actual morality. Just considering a little man with a funny mustache.

One of the largest issues involving conspiracies, is deciding when something is actually a conspiracy. The only successful conspiracy is one that is accepted. That's akin to determining how many students cheated on a test, based only upon those who were caught cheating. (I was a pretty smart student, but a bit lazy, and I can say 100% not all cheating students are caught. Ever. And those students likely made money helping others to cheat as well. In theory..)
brimstoneSalad wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2017 6:12 pm
It sounds like this was experimental, to find out what substances might make that possible, particularly with an eye to uncovering intelligence through interrogation. I can understand why they did this for national security; they thought they were doing the right thing, and maybe they were.

This is actually an area where I am torn between the "greater good" and actual "good".

At what point is it too far for a government to attempt to achieve a "greater good"? And the examples I linked all did lead to advanced understanding of certain key issues.

One of the key points of this forum is the reduction of harm, but another key point is that a sentient being shouldn't be subjected to harm in the first place.

It is a proven fact that our government(s) have violated individuals for a supposedly greater cause. But even if the experiments done in the name of bettering human existence are considered worthy, they tend to prolong and exponentially increase human life. And there shouldn't be a doubt that more humans = more suffering for all sentient creatures.
Alcohol may have been a factor.

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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am Judging morality based on percentages doesn't guarantee actual morality.
No, but most "conspiracy theories" are about things most people would consider bad, which makes them unlikely in themselves to be true.

Now things like NSA spying where there's a split, many people considering it good, it starts to become more plausible because the people who consider it good are less likely to have crises of conscience and blab about it. Until you get a Snowden in the mix. The longer it goes on and the more people involved, Snowdens become inevitable. The more socially acceptable the practice is, though, the longer you have before you get a Snowden.

For example, let's say there was this drug that most people think cures cancer, and the FDA didn't approve it (probably because it actually does not).
It would be easy to conspire to smuggle the drug into the country and get it to cancer patients. You could have hundreds of people in on that, because it's widely believed to be a good thing, and you might not get caught in a decade since your potential Snowdens are one in a million.

When a "conspiracy" is to do something widely regarded as good, you can really push the limits of what you can get away with.

PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am One of the largest issues involving conspiracies, is deciding when something is actually a conspiracy.
Definitely, but the main questions are the size it needs to be and the nefariousness. "Conspiracy" has negative connotations, and one of grand scope.

A half a dozen people plotting in secret to do something good (like surprise somebody with a special birthday gift) is almost universally successful.
As many people plotting a terrorist attack is almost universally unsuccessful. People have crises of faith and conscience, they talk to friends and family about it, and from there it leaks and the whole thing unravels and they get caught. It's important to remember that it's information from Muslims that foils most Islamic terror attacks.

PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am That's akin to determining how many students cheated on a test, based only upon those who were caught cheating.
Those are conspiracies too, but they're very small ones.

I consider more mathematical probability and human psychology.
A class-wide conspiracy to cheat would be very unlikely unless all of the students regarded it as the right thing to do, which rarely happens (sometimes teachers are unfair. which could cause this).
PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am At what point is it too far for a government to attempt to achieve a "greater good"? And the examples I linked all did lead to advanced understanding of certain key issues.
Good question. I think this research probably was for the greater good, as most research is since it broadens human knowledge. BUT when a government is doing it, we want to know it's not crossing lines and violating civil rights. Not because what they did this time was bad, but because it's a bad precedent that a bad president might use to do something genuinely evil.

So, we have to consider the probability of this power to violate civil rights being used for evil in the future. Because of that, we should be against it... but it doesn't mean it was wrong.

Kind of like if you murdered somebody you knew for sure (you had evidence/you've seen him do it, but it was inadmissible) to be a child molester and killer. Every night this guy is killing, but the police can't prove it or keep him in jail.
If you did that, it would be genuinely good... but you'd still have to go to jail even if you were right. We can't have people murdering other people based on their own private knowledge. Courts exist for a reason.
So, it would be right for you to murder that monster. BUT it would also be right for you to go to jail for it.

It's one of those situations.

PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am But even if the experiments done in the name of bettering human existence are considered worthy, they tend to prolong and exponentially increase human life. And there shouldn't be a doubt that more humans = more suffering for all sentient creatures.
That may be the case now, but increasing the body of human knowledge also helps us become better people. I don't think this will always be the case. To the contrary, in the grand scheme of things humans are the best shot at reducing suffering in the universe that we know of. We could soon eliminate disease and parasites for wild animals, feed carnivores cultured meat, put microchips in animals so we can know when they're sick or hurt and send a team of vets to help them. Who knows... there's a lot of suffering that has and will go on without humans. We can make the world better for others beyond our species if we're up for it... once we clean house and stop causing it.
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:14 pm
PsYcHo wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:56 am At what point is it too far for a government to attempt to achieve a "greater good"? And the examples I linked all did lead to advanced understanding of certain key issues.
Good question. I think this research probably was for the greater good, as most research is since it broadens human knowledge.
I think this is an area where you and I diverge. I used to consider the "greater good" to be the most morally upright path, but now I think of it an abhorrent reasoning to do anything that may lead to a positive (for some) future outcome. If I tortured hundreds of children while connecting electrodes to their brains, and discovered a key neural pathway that could easily be negated to prevent future children/adults from suffering from chronic pain, well in a hundred years those people who no longer dealt with chronic pain would praise my name.

Kinda would suck for those hundreds of children I tortured though.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:14 pm BUT when a government is doing it, we want to know it's not crossing lines and violating civil rights. Not because what they did this time was bad, but because it's a bad precedent that a bad president might use to do something genuinely evil.
Two of the examples I listed were monstrous abuses of power. Is that to say that if they were done by a single person or separate entity, they would not be as bad?

brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:14 pm Kind of like if you murdered somebody you knew for sure (you had evidence/you've seen him do it, but it was inadmissible) to be a child molester and killer. Every night this guy is killing, but the police can't prove it or keep him in jail.
If you did that, it would be genuinely good... but you'd still have to go to jail even if you were right. We can't have people murdering other people based on their own private knowledge. Courts exist for a reason.
So, it would be right for you to murder that monster. BUT it would also be right for you to go to jail for it.

It's one of those situations.
But in this scenario, I'm trying to actively do something good. (And good call, I'd definitely do that, btw... :twisted: ) In both the Tuskegee experiment and MK Ultra, there was no one actively trying to do anything morally upright. They were just seeing "what would happen?".
Alcohol may have been a factor.

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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:49 am now I think of it an abhorrent reasoning to do anything that may lead to a positive (for some) future outcome.
That's a misuse.

You can't just do anything that may possibly (accidentally) result in good in some distant future. You have to have a sense of probability grounded in evidence -- not faith.
PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:49 amIf I tortured hundreds of children while connecting electrodes to their brains, and discovered a key neural pathway that could easily be negated to prevent future children/adults from suffering from chronic pain, well in a hundred years those people who no longer dealt with chronic pain would praise my name.
1. You might not have discovered anything. Maybe there was a 99.999% chance of discovering nothing, in which case you just tortured children.
2. There might have been another way to discover it that didn't involve such cruelty.
3. In the hundred year span you're talking about, it could have been discovered by somebody else with different methods.

We have a real case here in animal experimentation. Animals are harmed terribly for medical experiments, many of which produce results that save lives, some of which are pointless and only done based on the faith of the experimenters. Look at the Seralini rat study, for example. That was just torture.
There are also other, newer, methods to do some of these experiments that don't result in that harm.

You have to look at all your options, and what's reasonable to believe based on the knowledge you have access to.

PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:49 am Two of the examples I listed were monstrous abuses of power. Is that to say that if they were done by a single person or separate entity, they would not be as bad?
Most of these cases are very limited in actual harm, and the main problem was the abuse of power.

PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:49 am But in this scenario, I'm trying to actively do something good. (And good call, I'd definitely do that, btw... :twisted: ) In both the Tuskegee experiment and MK Ultra, there was no one actively trying to do anything morally upright. They were just seeing "what would happen?".
To the contrary, interrogation and torture are ongoing. Both to save the suffering of those being tortured or interrogated, and to get more credible information which will save other lives, this kind of data is extremely important with immediate effect.
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:21 am Most of these cases are very limited in actual harm, and the main problem was the abuse of power.
There are some other issues I'd like to address later, but intentionally inflicting people with syphilis or exposing them to psychedelic drugs without their knowledge are pretty clear examples of actual harm.
Alcohol may have been a factor.

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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:50 am
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:21 am Most of these cases are very limited in actual harm, and the main problem was the abuse of power.
There are some other issues I'd like to address later, but intentionally inflicting people with syphilis or exposing them to psychedelic drugs without their knowledge are pretty clear examples of actual harm.
I said it was limited in actual harm, not that there was none at all, just that it was probably minimal.

It's not uncommon to infect people with a curable disease (like syphilis) in order to study it. Likewise, psychedelic drugs wear off. As long as the syphilis was not left untreated for a very long period of time, and the psychedelic drugs were administered in limited doses (again, not over a long time), the long term effects should be negligible.

Who did they administer these to? People who volunteered? Prisoners? What did those people get for it? Money? Reduced sentences?
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:54 pm Who did they administer these to? People who volunteered? Prisoners? What did those people get for it? Money? Reduced sentences?
The Tuskegee experiments intentionally inflicted black men with syphilis, to see what long term effects it would have when left untreated. These were men going to the doctor for an unrelated issue, and infected intentionally just to see what would happen. They were not told, or paid, and definitely didn't volunteer.

Mk Ultra is a bit murkier, because there are what we factually know (people were given LSD, then subjected to experimentation without their knowledge or consent. I believe at least a few died from suicide. From experience, LSD is extremely powerful and caused not just visual and auditory hallucinations, but impairs reasoning as well. That coffee cup on the table that you believe is a demon from hell may cause you to jump out of window to try and get away. ) and what is suspected. Not all documentation was uncovered (much of it was destroyed for obvious reasons), so there is the question of how bad is the rest that we don't know about.

If you haven't researched these, they tend to lead down a weird rabbit hole of known government abuses against it's citizens, mixed with unproven speculation as well. I'm sure there are reliable sources with only proven information, and the government websites are a decent start.
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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I thought you were talking about the CIA thing.
PsYcHo wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 6:15 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:54 pm Who did they administer these to? People who volunteered? Prisoners? What did those people get for it? Money? Reduced sentences?
The Tuskegee experiments intentionally inflicted black men with syphilis, to see what long term effects it would have when left untreated. These were men going to the doctor for an unrelated issue, and infected intentionally just to see what would happen. They were not told, or paid, and definitely didn't volunteer.
Uh... no. I think you have your facts wrong on this one. That's all totally wrong.
When something sounds like an unrealistically crazy conspiracy, it usually is not real; the facts have been misreported.

They didn't infect anybody at all; that would have been an impossible violation of ethics (too extreme to make a plausible conspiracy). They failed to treat the infection after treatment became available. Still a breach of ethics, but not so extreme as the myth.

https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/faq.htm
Q. How many men participated in the study?
A. Early in the study, 399 men with late latent syphilis, and 201 men without syphilis were initially enrolled. As the study evolved, additional participants were added, so the number of men in the study varies according to the source.

Q. Were the men purposely infected with the disease?
A. No, the 399 men in the syphilitic group were initially recruited because they already had late latent syphilis. The 201 men in the control group did not have the disease.

[...]

Q. When did the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee become unethical?
A. The study became unethical in the 1940s when penicillin became the recommended drug for treatment of syphilis and researchers did not offer it to the subjects.
The initial study was not unethical, it was only because the study wasn't ended when treatment became available that made it unethical. Why? Because it was no longer providing scientifically valuable information because syphilis was treatable then, and the study participants may have suffered opportunity cost.

Had they at least split the study into control and experimental groups and treated one, it could have had value, but once it became clear the treatment worked, they would have all had to have been treated.

Also, even this breach in ethics was so famous that the law was changed as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards. Researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin was found as an effective cure for the disease they were studying. Revelation in 1972 of study failures by a whistleblower led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent,[3] communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results.[4]
That's basically the worst there is in terms of contemporary research. And even so it's relatively benign.

They actually did get payment in free healthcare and food and free burial insurance. They were given some information; I think they knew they were in some kind of study, and they were being treated for "bad blood", but the information was inadequate.
They also weren't told that they could spread it by sexual intercourse, as I understand it (or it wasn't made clear enough).

Had they never been involved in the study, many of these people would have died anyway, although that's no excuse for not informing them and not treating them for the disease or possibly even preventing them from getting treatment (it's not clear to me how this was done or how accurate that is, it's likely just because they thought they were already getting treatment so they didn't seek out another doctor -- a grave violation of trust either way).

Tuskegee was terrible, but not 1% as terrible as the myth claims, and the fact that there was such a huge reaction in changing laws and standards for human studies kind of shows how implausible malicious conspiracies are, even more so today as transparency and ethical standards advance.

The families also received a large settlement, and ongoing healthcare (to this day).

And it wasn't malicious. The study was meant to "learn more about syphilis and justify treatment programs for blacks". At the time it wasn't known how bad syphilis was or how it affected quality of life. There are many diseases people have and live with long-term, and it was necessary to provide evidence for the harm of syphilis specifically to justify expensive treatment programs as part of social welfare.

It was well-intentioned (it wasn't just a racist thing, which is why black doctors supported it too), but it went wrong when it failed to close or update its methods in light of new evidence and treatments.
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Re: Conspiracy Theorists

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Direct quote from the site.

" In fact, the men had been misled and had not been given all the facts required to provide informed consent.

The men were never given adequate treatment for their disease. Even when penicillin became the drug of choice for syphilis in 1947, researchers did not offer it to the subjects. The advisory panel found nothing to show that subjects were ever given the choice of quitting the study, even when this new, highly effective treatment became widely used. "

It's likely I had mis-information about the origins of the experiment, due to learning about it 15 years ago, but is seems you are trying to justify the fact they intentionally let these men suffer from this disease, even when they knew there was a cure. That sounds like "the ends justify the means" line of reasoning. (Which I don't necessarily disagree with, depending on the circumstances) How far are we willing to allow individual injustice for the reduction of harm?

Here's another item to consider, we both obtained our current information from the cdc.gov website. I distinctly recall reading about this in school, from a textbook, where it said the persons were intentionally infected to study the disease. Of course, it's not like a government who has a branch like the NSA would intentionally alter any information. I mean, our own President wouldn't try to alter any information either. It's much more likely (and comfortable) that I just misread the information years ago, and everything on a government site about previous government misdeeds is accurate.

(I... I don't know if I'm joking or not.... Gotta go make a hat outta tinfoil real quick, and I'll get back to ya. )
Alcohol may have been a factor.

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