Although, attributing all the world's ills to a shadowy cabal of corrupt operatives is a pretty crazy conspiracy theory... that might just be the problem.

However, looking at how crazy society is today you can kind of understand how people would reach that conclusion..

Right, and a judge could rule that, in fact, it is possible to arbitrarily revoke free licensing at any time.

>it would be ridiculous for a court to find otherwise

You say that, but we live in a world of ridiculous IP law.

There's only one objective reality/truth, regardless of human ability to measure it. It's like arguing that the stars' existence is subjective because you can't count them.

> Sometimes conspiracy theories get proven right.

Definitely they do. But in this case it's hyperbolic, I think. I don't think it's up to them. I get why people feel it's reasonable, to blame the government for these things but "the government" (or equivalently, some corporate or whatever, hereafter--just for the hell of it, let's call them, whoever this group is--"the grand ol' stinky" or "GOS") don't have the power, I'm quite sure.

I think we humans like to believe something "other" has the power, because it makes us feel easier in our lives, by providing some order and hierarchy to a crazy universe, and absolving us of some personal responsibility, not only for things happening to us, but for our responses to them.

Maybe it's more like a psychological compulsion to blame "another"? Ape-brain blame fingers, fragile limited human mind sense-making of an unimaginably vast and incomprehensibly incomprehensible universe. Conjuring little make believe figures out of the dark before our eyes, to soothe.

Now I don't think it's true (for reasons I'll outline below), but even if the theory "GOS can make people go crazy" is true (as in faithful to reality) it's not, I think, a useful theory (for reasons I'll outline at the bottom).

My motivation in writing this is to help people who struggle with this thing, because I can see traps that they'd fall into. And I think with a bit of navigation, maybe guided by these thoughts I put forward here, people would avoid falling into these traps, and they'd be more freer in their thinking, and empowered in their lives, and that would be good. And I've seen many people espouse these views.

So first let's acknowledge that both MKUltra was real and the veracity of your statement:

> Sometimes conspiracy theories get proven right.

Definitely they do. And many more pernicious ones continue operating unproved and unexposed probably. MKUltra is only the public stuff that made it out as a result of a hearing--they "destroyed" all the records. Imagine the stuff that would have been in there.

But does MKUltra prove "GOS can make people crazy"? I don't think so. Who, verified as part of it, "went crazy" because of that? I don't know of anyone. Someone died, as a result of a speed overdose...But let's assume that some of the people who have claimed to have been part of MKUltra are actually telling the truth...and they underwent "mental fracturing brain-washing" procedures, etc. They were traumatized. But they didn't "go crazy". You don't need an elaborate government mind control experiment to explain, or to make, people go crazy. People go crazy on their own. Mental illness (MI) is a big thing, but it's not because "GOS made it happen."

Even if there is, or it was discovered, that there is a correlation between actual MKUltra participants and MI, how do we know it's causative? Couldn't it just be they had a predilection for MI, not that MKUltra caused it, but maybe that the trauma they experienced in MKUltra, contributed to tipping them over the edge?

Now you don't need GOS or MKUltra for human trauma. We create plenty of trauma ourselves with our idiotic behaviors toward each other. PTSD is a MI right? Some soldiers get that...Is soldiering causative? Maybe. But then what explains the ones who don't get it? But maybe soldiering is also correlative, as in a predilection for MI, is contributed to by the trauma of soldiering.

Now just because there's no evidence of any GOS capability to make people go crazy, doesn't mean they don't possess that capability. But let's consider what would have to be true if that were the case:

- You can "give" people MI. Can you really tho? You can traumatize them, but can you give them a DSM MI? Or can you only contribute to their existing predilection, and then, in only some cases? But let's assume you can give people MI, and GOS has weaponized the technology. We should then see that some notable people, rabble rousers, etc, mysteriously "go crazy" right when they look like having a big impact. I don't see any evidence for this. I see people getting taking out the old ways: honeytrap blackmail, attempted reputational assassination via fake sexual assaults accusation, physical assassinations, ensnarement in psychological/operational 'denial-of-service' such as endless litigation, and just plain old imprisonment. I mean, if it ain't broke...Seems the old ways provide plenty of scope for GOS to take out 'troublemakers'. Who knows...you might get unlucky with your fickle MI technology and end up giving someone superpowers...then you got trouble on your hands. Finally on this point, plenty of people undergo extreme trauma (hello, Africa, sadly), people are imprisoned, tortured, raped, get sick...and undergo trauma not just criminally, but even in the normal course of their lives like getting ill, or going through a traumatic breakup, or loss. But people recover. Even extreme traumatic experiences don't succeed in breaking people. Not with any reliability. And really I mean that makes sense. Humanity has evolved to become somewhat resilient. Our entire history is exceedingly traumatic, but most people are not "crazy" (heh, at least in the DSM sense).

But let's assume GOS has the tech and can make people crazy, what else would need be true:

- the person's case would have to justify the use of that tech. What would this mean? You could invoke a whole lot of esoteric principles about free-will, non-interference, cosmic law, minimizing the disturbance to the timeline, etc, etc etc...but that's like Occam's razor stuck in the really hairy tail that's wagging a tiny dog: what's the cost benefit of this? It's subtle, it's specialist, it's secretive...all that makes its deployment expensive. It's not just set and forget, you probably have to monitor people. So it seems to make sense for only the biggest most secured targets. If someone has a lot of money (lawsuits fail), close protection (assassination fail), savvy (honeytrap fail), lots of connections (judicial harassment fail) the only thing you have left is fake sexual assault accusations. That's easy enough to manufacture...but it's also not guaranteed to work. But it sounds a hell of a lot easier than making someone go crazy...But just say it's not, where is the evidence of people who are getting taken out by this? It's nowhere. The people who are apparently, "going crazy" as targets of this elaborate "GOS crazy-maker tech" are like small time, mostly poverty stricken (to a relative degree), big nothing burgers in the geopolitical/security/intelligence/corporate scheme of things. I mean, don't poor people have a higher incidence of MI simply because their lives are more traumatic and therefore any demographic-invariant predilection rate is more contributed to for lower wealth people? It's not a very nice truth, and by no means does it mean that we shouldn't do anything about trying to bring more support for MI, but it makes a helluva lot more sense than "GOS is targeting vagrants to make them go crazy". These people don't matter to GOS, they don't matter at all..not in the scheme of things, the calculus of power, they matter as humans--but these are the people who are "going crazy".

So I think it's highly unlikely that this technology exists, but even if it does, I think it's really highly unlikely that it's being deployed--because there's no evidence for it. All the people who are "going crazy" are not significant in any way. Not really. I mean they are significant as people, and their suffering is painful and sad, but they are not significant in the calculus of power. And the people who are significant in the calculus of power, are not "going crazy"--they are being taken out in other ways: the old ways.

So I think there's a psychological compulsion to believe the "other" is the cause. It evokes our ancestors sacrifice to the gods mentality. Plus, like I said earlier, it brings order to an incomprehensibly incomprehensible universe. And it absolves individuals for some of the personal responsibility both for things that happen to them, and for their responses.

But even if it is true, the theory that "GOS can and does make people go crazy" is not a useful theory, because if you believe that, and if attempts are being made to make you go crazy, then you only make yourself more vulnerable by believing that people have the power to do this to you. This tech, even if it existed, cannot be perfectly reliable, because if it was, you'd already be drooling in a sanatorium somewhere, or on the streets. It's more useful to believe it's something you can fight back against. Believe that you're too strong for that. That you're responsible for what you do in your life, not some "other".

Because whether the theory "GOS can make people crazy" is true or not, that's a more useful theory to have. Because if they do, believing you can win will make you better, and survive. And if they don't...then you will end up taking responsibility for your own shit rather than blaming it on some "other" and that's more useful for you.

So really, rather than inventing some physical technology to enslave people with MI, if GOS really wanted to make people go crazy, they might just invent some "narrative technology" to seed the mass consciousness with the idea that this technology existed, thus making vulnerable those people who believed that, to surrendering personal responsibility, and doing and being less, than they otherwise could have been.

That's what I think. Hopefully that helps some people.

- Do not murder is a commandment Israel received on Mt. Sinai. After that Israel continued its journey to conquer the Promised Land, which involved killing a lot of people (i.e. kill != murder)

- If you think New Testament has changed this, there is an episode in the Gospel of Luke (3:14) when soldiers come to St. John the Baptist to ask how they should change their lives. Guess what - he never tells them that being a soldier (and that was voluntary at the time) and killing your country's enemies is a sin. In fact early Christianity was popular among soldiers

> the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

According to wikipedia:

> Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought.

So if the missile was fired by people that are legally allowed to kill other people, "Do not murder" has been respected.

> Do not return evil for evil.

I feel like there is a difference between preventing someone to commit evil acts (defending yourself) and attacking them.

> Honor all people

You can honor fallen enemies.

> Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies.

Might be a stretch, but I don't think love would prevent you from killing someone if that was necessary.

> Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself.

Presumably you would rather be killed than be allowed to murder other people.

All of that may be a bit of a stretch, I don't know much about religious doctrine. But it's still coherant with "common sense" I think.

There have been whole books written about this - though I can't blame you for not having read them, many of them are turgid in the extreme. Christian ethics aim to break cycles of recrimination and escalation, but not in general to the point of helpless passivity. Of course the strictures of just war doctrine are considerably harder to square with the de facto imperial power of a country like the United States which is practically and to some extent aspirationally similar to the Roman empire in its heyday.

For a more modern take on the ethics of warfare you might find it interesting to examine the Lieber doctrine, which was instituted during the US civil war and (nominally) still in force in many respects.

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

Science is not something you have faith in. The entire point of science is allowing your beliefs to change when presented with evidence. That's the exact opposite of "complete trust". If anything, the only thing you need to have faith in is in the validity of your own experience - and that's a philosophical dilemma, not a scientific one.

Doing science means knowing we're probably wrong and will learn something new tomorrow - but we're probably at least a little bit right and that will have made our lives better until now.

If I remember correctly, he uses the ancient city of Rome as a symbol of the pre-Abrahamic, natural han ethic. Power is good, sex is good, wealth is good, strength is good, competence is good.

This contrasts with the Jerusalem ethic where an almighty god is worshipped, not perched on a mountain or a cloud, but while nailed to a cross. So now self-sacrifice is good, and the whole story revolves around the weak, the poor, the downtrodden.

We’re still in the Jerusalem phase, despite having replaced the church with the state. Perhaps one day, in a few millennia, the wheel will turn back around.

It’s a good book!

Christianity, including its ethics, obviously also had sources and influences. Both in its inception and as it has changed, fractured and adapted to its surroundings over time. And if you truly think that Jesus invented helping the poor and acting righteous, I can only recommend you read about religions. Both those that influenced Christianity and those that never came into contact with it.

Take those away and the whole edifice collapses.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/48844/axioms-...

A nice montage of some movie appearances is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsedxIoWFZo

In some, they were just a part of the distinctive background place-setting New York skyline, or a ground-level signifier of "downtown financial district'; in others, they were part of the action. Especially memorable was the 1976 'King Kong', which updated the 1933 version to have Kong climb the twin towers instead of the Empire State Building. Other films featured the observation deck, a popular tourist attraction.

1. Statue of Liberty, without question.

2. Twin Towers - showed up in just about shot of NYC put into mainstream media from the date of inception until destruction.

3. Empire State Building - Yes it is really recognizable but never got the media exposure of the WTC.

After that things get a little muddier. If I'm doing a top-5 I probably do something Times Square and Rockefeller Center to round out the big-5 pre-9/11.

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/110820/how-was-th...