[Basic] Skill of the week: Brainwashing (and Brain Hacking)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How is that more extreme than "You never saw a shooting"?

It's been done in experiments on real people, for one thing.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Aren't cult deprogramming, addiction rehab and military training examples of "good" brainwashing?

Or even all forms of mandatory schooling and childhood education. Indoctrination is merely teaching you don't agree with.

If my father had forced me to continue to attend Sunday School after I came out as atheist at age 6 would have been an attempt at deprogramming or good brainwashing in many people's minds.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Military training isn't. But yes, cult deprogramming and addiction rehab are things you could use Brainwashing skill for.

Boot camp alters personality through involuntary means. If that doesn't count as indoctrination / brainwashing/ deprogramming, then nothing does.
It's often necessary to keep soldiers alive in the field, but that doesn't change how and what it does.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Military training isn't.

Well, I've never been deprogrammed from a cult or been to rehab, but I did graduate from MCRD San Diego and the Infantry Training Battalion at the School of Infantry, and what I've seen of rehab in documentaries and the like, makes it seem very similar (except that rehab looks easier (although I guess the withdrawal makes it harder)). Certainly some of the goals of military basic and MOS training are "brainwashy" - resocialization in particular seems like a "brainwash" kind of technique.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's been done in experiments on real people, for one thing.

More real is not the same thing as more extreme. In fact it's pretty much the opposite.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Or even all forms of mandatory schooling and childhood education. Indoctrination is merely teaching you don't agree with.

If my father had forced me to continue to attend Sunday School after I came out as atheist at age 6 would have been an attempt at deprogramming or good brainwashing in many people's minds.

The problem with personal examples is that they are just that (personal) and as such tend to have a significant emotional component. One of the reasons I wished to steer the conversation away from the unfortunately blurry line between persuasion and brainwashing.

Indoctrination expects you not to question. Unfortunately many things that are supposed to be education, with at least some back and forth are indeed just indoctrination. Unfortunately most people I know don't distinguish between the two, on either the giving or the receiving end. In the United States of America I tend to attribute this to the government education system, which seems to favor indoctrination over actual education (and whose model seems to have been followed in all walks of life). Of course, that model seems to have been taken from elsewhere in the first place...

[Otaku]

Stepping back for a moment, I will risk turning this into a matter of semantics, for better or worse. We have discussed the realm of physical violence earlier and it got me thinking; there is no such thing as a "good" murder.

I am not a pacifist. I certainly believe there are times when ending the life of another human being is justified and even required. If you have the authority to end the life of another when killing that other is indeed justified and required, it is not murder. I realize that can sound rather legalistic as well, but while I believe in absolutes, I don't believe the world is simple. At the risk of sounding like an ignorant child trying to sound how he believes an educated adult might, while I view the world as black and white it is not a matter of two endless planes, or the taijitu or even a checkerboard. Rather I see life as a complex mosaic often consisting of incredibly fine pieces, that often appear grey because it requires intense, scrutiny to distinguish one element from the other... and depending on the exact nature of something, its "position" within the mosaic, the same "shape" can be either evil or good, black or white.

TL;DR: Otaku has thoughts and opinions on this matter, but wonders if a lack of common understanding means he has been regrettably wasting others' time in trying to flesh out the discussion and by speaking in the third person.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Stepping back for a moment, I will risk turning this into a matter of semantics, for better or worse. We have discussed the realm of physical violence earlier and it got me thinking; there is no such thing as a "good" murder.

I think that's the core here. 'Brainwashing' or 'murder' don't describe value-neutral actions, they already come pre-loaded with a value-judgment that puts the action firmly in 'bad' territory.

The most moral action in a given situation can be to cause the death of someone or to modify his state of mind, but in that case, it's not appropriate to label the action with a value-loaded term that carries with it disapproval. If the action was not evil, it should probably not be described with a loaded term that implies it was.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

More real is not the same thing as more extreme. In fact it's pretty much the opposite.

Real is real, and fictional is fictional. Extremeness is unrelated entirely.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Well, I've never been deprogrammed from a cult or been to rehab, but I did graduate from MCRD San Diego and the Infantry Training Battalion at the School of Infantry, and what I've seen of rehab in documentaries and the like, makes it seem very similar (except that rehab looks easier (although I guess the withdrawal makes it harder)). Certainly some of the goals of military basic and MOS training are "brainwashy" - resocialization in particular seems like a "brainwash" kind of technique.

It's the skill of granting or removing mental traits, either through non-intrusive methods (Brainwashing) or intrusive ones (Brain Hacking). It seems to match the GURPS principle of 'look at the effect, not at the dictionary definition of the word used in the name of the skill or advantage'. Karate isn't just one specific style, Honesty is not Truthfulness, and Zeroed isn't about multiplication.

Hmm. This does make it for a curious hidden default: Brainwashing might default to Teaching-6.