This reminds of the book Dark Forest in the series 3 body problem Spoiler Alert : In this book, a character invents a way to impart any belief into your mind.

This reminds of the book Dark Forest in the series 3 body problem Spoiler Alert : In this book, a character invents a way to impart any belief into your mind. So if you read "water is poisonous" while in the MRI-type machine, your brain will completely believe that water is poisonous. The intention was for people to believe that they can win against the technologically superior aliens. But the character made a one character change (+ to -) to modify the machine to make a person believe the opposite. So "humans will 100% win against aliens" became "humans will 100% lose against aliens" Very interesting idea.