6 ms·
The brain is the battlefield of the future
- BMc2020 4y agoAnd of the past. In WWI the germans had a new secret weapon that would make them invincible, called amphetamines. They did not work as well as initially hoped.
- intrasight 4y agoCertainly of the past. Without the brain, there would be no war.
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoThey worked well enough to fend off Russian invasion for my people.
- nicbou 4y agoWorld war two. The Allies used them too.
- BMc2020 4y agoMy mistake, you are right. During World War One, the government provided cigarettes to soldiers to help ease boredom and reduce stress. Prior to the war, less than 0.5% of American people regularly consumed cigarettes. By the war’s end, approximately 14 million cigarettes were distributed daily. According to Lukasz Kamienski, a political science professor at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, and author of Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War, cocaine also became a drug of abuse on the frontlines. People turned to the drug to boost energy, combat fatigue, and reduce wartime anxiety. It gained popularity when the British army created a drug known as “Forced March,” a combination of cocaine and a cola nut extract. People then began to self-prescribe the drug as a wartime aid. Many of the soldiers’ wives and girlfriends sent packages of cocaine and heroin purchased from London pharmacists labeled as “useful presents for friends at the front” or sometimes “welcome presents for friends at the front.” https://recovery.org/addiction/wartime/ https://recovery.org/addiction/wartime/
- phasersout 4y agonot just soldiers.. everybody had a good time with amphies for a while there. I don't know if the problem got as big as oxycontin but it was severe.
- aliqot 4y agoAmphetamine and Methamphetamine still commonly prescribed in USA, mainly for folks in the HN demographic. You'd be surprised.
- hirvi74 4y agoI'm one, and I wish they worked as well for me as people in this comment chain are making them seem.
- seba_dos1 4y agoNot just in USA. For folks with AD(H)D it's being prescribed to it is, however, barely useful for "having a good time" (unless you count having some kind of predictability on how you focus on tasks to be "a good time", which I guess works for its literal meaning).
- salawat 4y agoBe nice if it didn't ball and chain you to a particular state...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sneak 4y agoHow do you think Google got built?
- pohl 4y agoIt's the battlefield of the present. We're smack dab in the middle of the third world war right now and most people don't even realize it.
- xerxesaa 4y agoCan you elaborate?
- probably_a_gpt 4y agoEverything from Cambridge analytica to TikTok
- colordrops 4y agoUnless there is hot war with mass death, it's not "world war", despite fantasies to the contrary. It's game theory and diplomacy and sanctions and propaganda and other psychological operations.
- probably_a_gpt 4y agoThey did say you don’t realize.
- colordrops 4y agoThere's no world wide hot war that most people are unaware of.
- TuringNYC 4y agoSome wars are fought with pens and scripts.
- colordrops 4y agoNot worthy of being called WWIII
- twoWhlsGud 4y agoWell, there's always the V-Joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World
- huijzer 4y agohttps://youtu.be/FBWr1KtnRcI https://youtu.be/FBWr1KtnRcI
- thedorkknight 4y agoHah, this reminds me of cogitohazards and weaponized memetics from SCP lore
- kelseyfrog 4y agoNot just SCP lore, cognito hazards exist within this world too, but it's heretical to label them as such (it doesn't take much thought to reason why). I'm writing this with There Is No Antimemetics Division on my desk.
- rapjr9 4y agoWow, this guy is proposing the use of neurotoxins and biological weapons in warfare. Not to affect populations but to alter the thinking of specific individuals (for enhancing soldiers or degrading enemy soldiers, diplomats, and politicians). A lot of what he talks about is vague and no where near realization (nanorobots to alter biology as a weapon, an FMRI helmet worn by soldiers). This seems like an incredible provocation to Russia and China to develop new chemical and biologic weapons. He also seems to think that crypto millionaires are financing this kind of biohacking and chemhacking for terrorism purposes. He suggests that some of these things should not be used, but that some should be assessed for use as weapons. He names a few DARPA programs along these lines that might be considered "dual use".
- anothernewdude 4y agoSeems like we need more checks and balances. I mean, we do anyway, but it would be a good counter.
- aliqot 4y agoWe had a good one called the geneva protocol that covers stuff like chemical and biological toxins [0]. I vaguely remember Saddam Hussein being accused of using a nerve agent called VX years back and it being a big deal. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol
- throwaway94912 4y agoNo! Wake up sheeple! When the government comes for us all, you need a garage full of semi-automatic drugs! Take this, haha!
- etaioinshrdlu 4y agoI'm hoping we weaponize MDMA and psychedelics against enemy politicians (or perhaps our own?).
- jakzurr 4y ago
- Borrible 4y agoMeanwhile in China: https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/new-tech-new-concepts-chinas-plans-for-ai-and-cognitive-warfare/ https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/new-tech-new-concepts-chin...
- rapjr9 4y agoSounds like the US Army's Human Terrain System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System which was being promoted around the same time.
- vfinn 4y agoYeah, why bother with propaganda, let's just use nanorobots that spread in the air instead...
- rpaddock 4y agoFrom the Army War Collage in 1998: "The Mind Has No Firewall" Timothy L. Thomas Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.55540/0031-1723.1871 Recommended Citation: Timothy L. Thomas, "The Mind Has No Firewall," Parameters 28, no. 1 (1998), doi:10.55540/0031-1723.1871. https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol28/iss1/12/ https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol28/iss1/12/