- 4 months ago
Documentary, The Living Dead Part 2 - You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30Transcription by CastingWords
01:00Transcription by CastingWords
01:29Transcription by CastingWords
01:59Transcription by CastingWords
02:29Transcription by CastingWords
02:59Transcription by CastingWords
03:29Transcription by CastingWords
03:59Transcription by CastingWords
04:29Transcription by CastingWords
05:00Cameron was fascinated by Penfield's work.
05:03He believed that if it was possible to change memories, one could produce better, more rational human beings.
05:09Cameron was a great pragmatist, but he thought that psychiatry should not just concentrate on sick people mentally ill, but should actually go into government, that politicians should listen to psychiatrists.
05:32They thought that psychiatrists should be in every parliament and should direct and monitor political activities because they knew in a rational, scientific way what was good for people.
05:46Cameron had been an advisor to the judges at the Nuremberg trials.
06:16Cameron was an advisor to the Nuremberg trials.
06:46People would forget about it.
06:48People would forget about it.
07:16People would forget about it.
07:17Cameron was an advisor to the Nuremberg trials.
07:18He was an advisor to the Nuremberg trials.
07:20He was an advisor to the Nuremberg trials.
07:21We were looking upon memory, a pattern of circuits in the brain, which had got deranged.
07:31And if we could change that, if it was a memory which was a sick memory and it could be got rid of and replaced with a healthy memory or a healthy pattern of memories, then he might get success, even with neurotic patients.
07:48Then, 3,000 miles away, a series of grand historical events began to unfold.
07:54They would give Cameron the chance to pursue his dream.
07:56A shadow had fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory.
08:07From Stettine in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
08:17As the Cold War began, memory became a weapon in the confrontation between Russia and America.
08:23A stream of refugees from the Eastern Bloc began to arrive in the Allied sectors in Germany.
08:29To American intelligence agents, the knowledge these people carried with them was critical.
08:34America knew nothing of the Soviet Union.
08:37Well, the reason memory became important in the Cold War is because we were seeking information, and all information is based on memory.
08:45When I talk to a Soviet defector, and I'm talking back in the days of the Cold War, I want to know everything that he remembers.
08:57Human memory, in the absence of documentary information, was your only source of intelligence,
09:04because this person might have information in his memory that may be exploitable for our purposes.
09:12But the CIA began to fear that the Soviets had found a way of controlling human memory.
09:20As in the show trials of the 1930s, they seemed to be able to program people to behave like automatons.
09:28The idea that it might be possible to manipulate memory gripped the imagination of those in power in America.
09:34The Soviet secret police and their offspring in Eastern Europe and China have presented the world with a series of public trials
09:43at which prisoners, including some Americans, calmly and apparently without coercion made confessions of unbelievable crimes,
09:51espionage, sabotage, treason.
09:54To Western observers, these confessions have been so bewildering
09:58that a belief has grown that the Communists have perfected some mysterious, irresistible technique
10:03for manipulating human behaviour.
10:06What worried the CIA most was the behaviour of American prisoners in the Korean War.
10:1170% of those held by the Chinese made elaborate confessions or signed petitions against the war.
10:17An alarming number stuck by their confessions when released.
10:22Were they using drugs? Were they using hypnosis?
10:25There was great anxiety to really focus and see, is this possible?
10:32Because there was this feeling that the Soviets in particular
10:36were developing devious techniques in which they could influence the human mind
10:40and that they, that they're, that they were dangerous
10:46because of what kinds of things were they doing to affect the mind.
10:53That's Bobby Lendbeck, our mascot, I guess you'd call him.
10:57Doesn't look old enough to be in your army.
11:00I guess he isn't, but there he is, ma'am.
11:03Captain Marco, will you be good enough to lend Raymond your pistol, please?
11:08Yes, ma'am.
11:10Thanks, Ben.
11:15Sure, Ken.
11:18Shoot Bobby, Raymond.
11:21Through the forehead.
11:23Yes, ma'am.
11:37A group of CIA psychologists travelled to Montreal.
11:40They wanted to meet Dr Cameron.
11:43He had published a paper about his work called Brainwashing Canadian Style.
11:48He too was fascinated by what had happened to the American prisoners.
11:53Cameron was particularly interested to find out how these people could have changed their minds so radically.
11:59What was the method that the Chinese used, and the Russians used, and whether he could use similar methods to bring about therapeutic change in some of these neurotic patients.
12:13Cameron had begun a series of experiments to try and brainwash the memories in his patients.
12:21He called it psychic driving.
12:23He had been inspired by the best-selling gadget of 1953, the dormaphone.
12:28My friends, you'll recall that a week ago we enrolled that young man in Slumber College because a Miss Tony Monaghan of Holyoke, Massachusetts wanted to know if a person could really learn in their sleep.
12:42Now, the sleep teaching technique is based on findings that the brain is capable of absorbing information while we sleep.
12:49The instrument used is the dormaphone.
12:51His method of what he called psychic driving was a persuasive message on tape which was repeated and repeated over again to the patient, sometimes when they were asleep, sometimes when they were awake.
13:07We even had people walking around with these football, American football helmets, with earphones in, and they were listening to the message all the time.
13:17The message would be, people like me, I'm popular, people like to be with me and enjoy my company.
13:26He was trying to obliterate the sick memories.
13:30And, yes, here is our subject here. This is Mr. Bill Franklin, Professor Miller.
13:35Bonjour, monsieur.
13:36Bonjour, monsieur.
13:37Maintenant répondez à ces questions.
13:40Qu'est-ce que c'est?
13:41Voici un pornograph.
13:44Qu'est-ce que c'est?
13:45Voici un disc.
13:47Comment vous appelez-vous?
13:50Bill Franklin.
13:52The CIA decided to fund Cameron's experiments.
13:55They wanted to find a way of controlling human beings by reprogramming their memories.
14:00The CIA was convinced that the Russians already knew how to do this.
14:10What they feared most was that Soviet agents with false memories could infiltrate America.
14:16They would be immune to lie detector or to truth drug.
14:19They could be programmed to rise high in American society.
14:25They might even infiltrate the CIA.
14:27People feared that it might be possible to cone or develop a person, you know, where he could rise to a high position in the American service while really secretly following the guidance of a foreign power.
14:47Because you have developed his memory to the point where his brain could carry two entirely different roles.
14:56You talk to him. What do you think?
14:58It's him. He's your Uncle Ira, all right?
15:01He is not.
15:04How is he different?
15:06That's just it. There is no difference you can actually see.
15:10He looks, sounds, acts, and remembers like Uncle Ira.
15:14Then he is your Uncle Ira. Can't you see that?
15:17No matter how you feel, he is.
15:18But he isn't. There's something missing.
15:20You can create memories that never were.
15:28And if you create memories that never existed, then you're creating an aspect of behavior that is now implanted.
15:36In other words, what I'm saying is that you can implant memories.
15:40Memories are potent sources of motivated behavior.
15:43If you implant enough memories of specific kinds, you can shape and change the nature of human thinking and feelings.
15:54What about memories?
15:55There must be certain things that only you and he would know about.
15:58Oh, there are.
15:59I've talked to him about them.
16:01He remembers them all down to the last small detail, just like Uncle Ira would.
16:06But, Miles, there's no emotion.
16:09None.
16:10Memories are not. He isn't my Uncle Ira.
16:13Wilma, I'm on your side.
16:15My business is people in trouble and I'm going to find a way to help you.
16:18I want you to realize that.
16:20Think about it.
16:21And then you'll know that the trouble is inside you.
16:25Wilma, where are you?
16:27Not on the lawn.
16:29Say nothing to her.
16:33Agents from the CIA began to travel regularly to Montreal.
16:37They were disguised as representatives of a scientific institute.
16:40It was called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
16:45The money allowed Dr Cameron to push his experiments much further.
16:50He began to work on ways of completely wiping the memory of human beings.
16:54To do this, he was using electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT.
17:05It had been first used in the 30s on animals, then on people as a way of changing behaviour.
17:10What kind of treatment is given here?
17:14This patient is prepared for electric shock therapy, which is often very effective in
17:19helping to bring mentally troubled patients back to normal.
17:23How is electric shock therapy done?
17:24We use these electrodes.
17:27We place them on the patient's head, like this.
17:30And then by means of this machine, we place a controlled electric current through the brain,
17:35just for a fraction of a second.
17:38The patient doesn't feel it.
17:39Cameron was using electro-shock a little differently than other people were using it.
17:50He was really using it to try and change the fundamental function of the individual,
17:58to alter their past memories, their past ways of behaving.
18:09And as I think he said at one point, it is to just sort of erase everything from their past
18:16so that you then had a slate in which you could record new ways of behaviour.
18:22And so he used massive doses of shock, of people receiving several shocks a day,
18:32and over a course of time, hundreds of ECT treatments,
18:39so that they were just reduced to a sort of a very primitive vegetable state.
18:45Cameron was trying to fulfil his dream.
18:48The patients brought to him would be transformed into new human beings,
18:52freed from their troubled past.
18:55The door has banged shut behind me.
19:00I don't know when I'm going to see you again with my healthy eyes.
19:06The car could not stop when I asked for it.
19:09We went on and on.
19:17I don't remember what happened to me.
19:19I was introduced to Dr. Cameron, and I don't remember Dr. Cameron at all.
19:25I was diagnosed schizophrenic.
19:30I found that out by reading my file 20 years later.
19:34I don't remember any of that.
19:36They shipped me up to what they call the sleep room.
19:40And they gave me all of these electroconvulsive shock treatments and megadoses of drugs and LSD and all of that.
19:48And I have no memory of any of that.
19:51Nothing of that time in the Allen Memorial or any of my life previous to that.
19:58All gone.
19:59White.
20:00Linda MacDonald was brought to the Allen Institute by her family.
20:04She was 26 and suffered severe depression.
20:08Cameron began treating her with what he called de-patterning.
20:11She was kept asleep for 20 out of 24 hours.
20:15With the de-patterning process, the person would descend in their memory further and further back.
20:25They'd go back in time to before they got sick.
20:32That was the important thing, it seemed to be.
20:34Before they got sick.
20:37And then having de-patterned somebody or brought them down to where basically nothing but the essential functions of the body were going on in terms of breathing and things of this nature,
20:52that then he would begin to feed material into these individuals, positive material, such that the brain would be programmed in a positive way so that the individual would be completely altered.
21:09Then he put these tapes under our pillows called psychic driving.
21:13He would then put back into this empty brain a program of whatever sort he decided upon, and the people like myself would wake up another person, I guess.
21:30Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories, and you're reborn into an untroubled world.
21:39Where everyone's the same.
21:41Exactly.
21:41Exactly.
21:43What a world.
21:45We're not the last humans left.
21:48They'll destroy you.
21:50Tomorrow you won't want them to.
21:52Tomorrow you'll be one of us.
21:54I don't want any part of it.
21:57You're forgetting something, Miles.
21:58What's that?
22:00You have no choice.
22:01When I was discharged from the Eleanor Memorial, I felt like an alien from another world.
22:11Visiting this world, I didn't fit, I was watching myself cooking, taking care of the children, doing the washing, but I knew I was different, and I didn't know how to become like everybody else.
22:30And it was a very lonely, scary place to be, and it was a very lonely, scary place to be.
22:35People told me they were my children, but that didn't mean anything to me, so they were little people.
22:43They had names, and they smiled, and they went to school.
22:50You really had no memory of them?
22:52No, no, none whatsoever.
22:54Or of their father, whom I had married when I was 18, and I'd known for most of my life.
23:02It was, this is your husband.
23:04What's husband?
23:06What's making love?
23:08You are hearing electrical impulses from artificial neurons, an attempt to duplicate the behaviour of living nerves with electronic parts.
23:23This is how the higher nervous system, a man's brain, might work as a machine.
23:28Cameron's experiments were extraordinary in their ambition, but they were not the work of a maverick.
23:33He was part of a new scientific way of thinking about the human mind that grew up in the 1950s.
23:40The brain, scientists believed, was like a computer, and memory was information.
23:45The image of the mind became dominant was essentially a very fast and a very clever computer,
23:50such that memory was information that you had inscribed in specific places where you were then accessible for retrieval,
23:57and you could get rid of them, add them,
24:00and in many ways, history was being regarded in the same way.
24:03I mean, in the Soviet state, for example, you airbrushed memory, and that was it, and was no longer in the picture.
24:11In the 1950s, a new science of the mind grew up in America's universities.
24:16It was called cognitive science, and it linked psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience.
24:21The image of the brain was that of a computer.
24:26It was an image that fitted perfectly with the political needs of those who were running the Cold War.
24:32The image of the human being that was being built up at that particular time
24:36was that there was a great deal of vulnerability in every human being,
24:42and that that vulnerability could be manipulated to program somebody
24:48to be something that I wanted them to be,
24:52and they didn't want to be.
24:54That you could manipulate people in such a way that they could be automatons, if you will,
25:04for whatever your own purposes were.
25:06This was the image that people thought was possible.
25:09Yeah.
25:11I just feel like I don't have any thoughts like a human being.
25:15I'm just an animal walking around on the earth.
25:18In some experiments, the behaviour of mentally ill patients
25:22was directly altered by wires planted inside the brain.
25:25The thing would go off somewhere and not never see nobody else.
25:29Now the treatment has started.
25:31She's receiving a very minute amount of current.
25:34Actually, it amounts to only 5 thousandths of an ampere
25:38delivered to a very specific region in the brain.
25:41And, of course, it's changing in behaviour.
25:44Now look at that smile you've got now.
25:46Why does that make me do that?
25:48I don't like to do that.
25:51You really told me off, remember?
25:54I had no idea, but I couldn't help it.
25:58The CIA was deeply involved in the growth of cognitive science.
26:02Dr Cameron was only one of many scientists
26:04whose work was funded by the agency in the 50s.
26:07The CIA tended to be involved with those scientists and researchers
26:12who were on the frontiers of brain research,
26:14and they tended to choose them as young scientists
26:18and support them and subsidize them
26:20so their work would continue in the areas that the CIA found interesting.
26:25You've got to understand that it wasn't just one or two individuals,
26:29but that the CIA funded perhaps 15 or 20 key people
26:33right across the fields of psychology and brain research.
26:37So one can make a real case that the CIA played a catalytic role
26:42in the development of psychology as we know it today
26:45and as it was born in the 1950s and early 1960s.
26:49Who were the psychologists who did agree to help you?
26:52Well, some of them don't want to be identified,
26:56so I won't really answer that question for you.
27:00Why do they not want their names mentioned?
27:07Because they liked to deny they ever had anything to do
27:10with the Central Intelligence Agency.
27:12After we got our bad name and became a rogue tiger
27:16and the peace movements and everything that came in terms of that
27:22began to bloody the nose of CIA.
27:24And certainly many of the professors in the universities
27:31and in the various laboratories in terms of that,
27:35it was embarrassing for them
27:37to have to admit that they worked for CIA.
27:44Now, that's a fact.
27:45I shouldn't have said that, but that's a fact.
27:48But back in those days, they were happy to work for you?
27:51Very, very much so and very interesting.
27:59It wasn't only human beings
28:01who became involved with the experiments.
28:04Animals, too, were programmed to fight the Cold War.
28:08One project was codenamed Acoustic Kitty.
28:13The idea behind Acoustic Kitty
28:15was to develop an audio device
28:18that could function despite extraneous noises.
28:22The cat that was used for the experiment
28:24had to be cut open
28:28and have a power pack placed inside its abdomen.
28:34Wires were run up to its ear, to its cochlea,
28:37wires to its brain to determine
28:39when it was hungry or sexually aroused,
28:42and wires to override these urges.
28:45The cat was then put on a test
28:49sent across the street
28:51to eavesdrop on a conversation
28:54being monitored by a van loaded with equipment.
28:59And as this poor little monstrosity
29:01waddled across the street,
29:02a taxi cab came down and ran it over.
29:05So it was $25 million down the drain.
29:08$25 million was a lot of money then.
29:09Moscow is in the midst of the last hours of summer.
29:28Then suddenly, the Soviet threat
29:30came much closer to America.
29:33In 1960, the new president of Cuba, Fidel Castro,
29:37announced a formal alliance with the Soviet Union.
29:39America was in the midst of a presidential election,
29:43and Cuba became one of the central issues.
29:46Cuba has been lost, for the time being, to the communists.
29:50And I want Mr Khrushchev and anyone else
29:53to understand that if the Democratic Party
29:56wins this election,
29:58he will confront in the 1960s
30:00an America which is not only militarily strong,
30:04but which is waging the offensive for freedom
30:07all around the globe.
30:10He had an obsession then
30:12about, I've got to get Castro.
30:14And he pushed us,
30:15and his brother Bobby did too.
30:18Every day, harder and harder,
30:21running those covert operations
30:25to try to get Castro.
30:26He was, in our view, a bad man,
30:31the head of a government
30:32that we wanted to destabilize,
30:34and as part of that destabilization program,
30:37we set out to assassinate him.
30:43Those in the CIA
30:44who ran the psychological experiments
30:46were given the task of finding ways
30:48to assassinate Castro.
30:50So they returned to Montreal.
30:51They hoped that Cameron's repatterning
30:54might allow them to program
30:56a perfect, undetectable assassin.
31:00But what they didn't know
31:01was that Cameron's experiments
31:02weren't working out quite as he had expected.
31:05He was saying to the world,
31:06I have developed a program
31:09in which I can literally alter
31:11the behavior of people
31:13so that they will be well
31:15and able to function in society,
31:18make a contribution to society,
31:20and try to be happy,
31:21as opposed to before the treatment,
31:23they were just not able to cope at all.
31:26And it just wasn't there in the data.
31:30It just wasn't true.
31:32But Cameron was determined
31:33to prove that his methods were working.
31:36He made films which demonstrated
31:38that his patients,
31:39whose memories had been reconstructed,
31:41were better.
31:42To provide an objective record
31:44of a subject's behavior,
31:45she's filmed before treatment
31:47and again after treatment.
31:48and the two films placed side by side.
31:52Notice how the subject before treatment
31:53in the picture on the right
31:54holds onto the chair as she moves.
31:57Notice the difference in posture.
31:58The greater effort required
31:59to rise from the chair
32:01for the longer time needed
32:02to complete the simple task.
32:04Cameron was producing
32:05a new sort of human being,
32:07but not the kind he had predicted.
32:09He had succeeded brilliantly
32:11in wiping the memories of his patients,
32:13but he couldn't find a way
32:14of replacing them with new memories.
32:16His patients were completely free
32:19of their past
32:20and of all the emotions
32:21that went with it.
32:22I don't even have any kind
32:24of emotional memory.
32:25My first memories are just of being.
32:28And I had to learn how
32:30to be a social creature,
32:33and that was the most difficult.
32:35It wasn't learning how to drive the car
32:37or learning how to cook.
32:38It was learning how to communicate
32:40with you people
32:42because you talk
32:45and on many different levels.
32:49There's hidden agendas
32:50and an innuendo
32:51and just about everything
32:53that a lot of people say.
32:55Memory is wrapped in
32:57what society has decided
32:59we should feel like.
33:02You should cry at funerals.
33:04I found myself not crying
33:06at a funeral,
33:07and I felt just fine.
33:09And I thought,
33:10gee, there's something
33:11the matter with me.
33:12I'm not crying.
33:13I should cry.
33:14Everybody else is crying.
33:16But there wasn't that need to.
33:21Why is all of this being done?
33:24What have they built you to do?
33:27I don't know.
33:32I don't think anybody really knows
33:34except that it's over in Moscow
33:37and my American operator here.
33:43Or whatever it is,
33:44it's supposed to happen soon.
33:46Right at the convention.
33:48Maybe it...
33:51I don't know.
33:57They can make me do anything, Ben.
34:01Can't they?
34:04Anything.
34:07The CIA were terrified
34:09that the Russians might also be working
34:11to produce a programmed assassin.
34:13They decided to continue funding Dr Cameron.
34:16Whether he was creating
34:17healthy human beings or not
34:19was now irrelevant.
34:21The perfect assassin
34:21would be programmed
34:22for one simple task.
34:24The fewer memories and emotions
34:26involved, the better.
34:28The perfect agent
34:29would be somebody
34:30conditioned to be
34:31kind of amoral.
34:34You could train them
34:35to use firearms indiscriminately.
34:37You could train them
34:38to shoot people
34:39with very little feeling
34:40or thought.
34:41You could train them
34:42to use abusive
34:44and brutalizing procedures
34:46in order to obtain information
34:48with no hesitancy,
34:50with no concern.
34:55For example,
34:57I might not easily
34:59be able to go into a laboratory,
35:02take a knife,
35:03and cut a cat's head off.
35:05It's something that I would find
35:07very difficult to do.
35:08Now, in order to achieve that,
35:11you would have to deal
35:12with significant aspects
35:14of memory.
35:19Not having a memory
35:21is not knowing who you are
35:23and not having any sense
35:24of how to fit into the world.
35:27I didn't know it was
35:28not right to flirt at parties
35:30if you're a married person.
35:31I carried a dictionary
35:33with me for five years
35:35and would run into
35:36strangers' kitchens
35:39at parties
35:39trying to look up the words
35:41and trying to figure out
35:42what it was that was going on
35:43in the living room
35:44so that I could take part in it
35:45because I wanted to.
35:47I wanted to be
35:48just like everybody else.
35:50And I knew I wasn't.
35:53I didn't know
35:54what the script was.
35:56I didn't know
35:56what the next cue
35:59was going to be.
36:00I didn't know
36:01who the actors were.
36:02I didn't know
36:03what the plot was.
36:04I didn't know
36:04what the end of the play
36:05was going to be.
36:07And it was
36:08very, very scary.
36:09the end of the play
36:14was going to be.
36:15It was a very scary
36:15experience.
36:15It was a very scary
36:17experience.
36:18It was a very scary
36:19experience.
36:20It was a great experience.
36:20And it was some
36:22of the people
36:24in the world
36:25of the world
36:25and are still
36:26in the past.
36:27Oh, my God,
36:28there's no way
36:28in the past.
36:29Oh, my God,
36:30there's no way
36:30with people
36:31and there's no way
36:31in the past.
36:33The assassination of President Kennedy began to tear the CIA apart.
36:43Some within the organisation believed that Lee Harvey Oswald
36:46had been trained by the Soviet Union to kill the president.
36:50Others feared that it was the result of their own assassination programme,
36:53that somehow had gone horribly wrong.
36:56Either way, those who interrogated Oswald
36:58became convinced he had not acted alone.
37:01Someone else seemed to be in control of his behaviour and his mind.
37:05I was amazed that a person so young would have the self-control that he had.
37:10It was almost as if he had anticipated the situation.
37:15It was almost as if he had been rehearsed or programmed
37:19to meet the situation that he found himself in.
37:25It was almost as if he anticipated every question,
37:28every suggestion, every move that any of the people in charge of him made.
37:36Rehearsed by whom?
37:38Who knows?
37:39Do you have anything to say in your defence?
37:43Oswald has been shot!
37:45Four years before he shot President Kennedy,
37:50Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union.
37:52To many, this was proof he was a Soviet agent.
37:55But two months after his death, a KGB agent defected to America.
38:00His name was Yuri Nosenko.
38:02He told the CIA that his job had been to watch Oswald in Russia.
38:06He assured them that Oswald had never been trained by the KGB.
38:09It was the beginning of paranoia inside the CIA.
38:18Some senior officers refused to believe Nosenko.
38:21They had another KGB defector called Anatoly Golitsin.
38:25He told them that Nosenko was false.
38:29He had been sent by the KGB to trick them.
38:32Nosenko was the key because Nosenko handled
38:38Harvey Lee Oswald in Russia for the KGB.
38:45Mr. Golitsin says that Nosenko is a Soviet plant
38:52to mislead American intelligence.
38:54So, when Nosenko says that Oswald was not acting on behalf of the KGB,
39:03that means that, in fact, Oswald was acting on behalf of the KGB.
39:08And there you go.
39:09And you are in the wilderness of mirrors.
39:14You see everything, and, in fact, you see nothing.
39:17Nosenko was held in complete isolation by the CIA
39:22and interrogated day and night, but he stuck to his story.
39:27But those in charge of his interrogation did not believe him.
39:31They were convinced he had been implanted with false memories by the KGB.
39:37Nosenko's brain is the depository of the truth.
39:40Whatever the truth is, is in his memory, is in his brain.
39:49And the thing is to find a key which will open that brain
39:52so we can find the true memory from the false memory.
39:58The CIA set out to wipe Nosenko's false memories.
40:02They used all the techniques that Dr. Cameron had taught them.
40:05The problem of detecting whether or not a memory that has been implanted
40:11can be uncovered and revealed to be a false memory
40:16involves great risks because you have to break through the amnesia
40:19and you have to force the individual to confront the conflict of that experience
40:24which can lead to ab reactions, disorientation, confusion,
40:29and sometimes actual mental illness.
40:32He might be a basket case.
40:35One drug affected me very strong.
40:38I simply was floating.
40:41I was almost half-conscious.
40:44And suddenly, I couldn't breathe.
40:46I couldn't take air in, couldn't take air out.
40:50Almost died.
40:51They noticed on TV camera, they run,
40:54immediately pulled me out of cell.
40:56And next door, it was my shower stall and bathroom facilities.
41:01They put me in the shower, cold water, hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, to bring me.
41:09Nosenko was kept in complete isolation for three years.
41:13The Americans tried every possible technique to break into his memory,
41:17but all of them failed.
41:18The CIA was torn apart by his case.
41:23Those who believed him were themselves accused of being under Soviet control.
41:2715 years before, Dr Cameron had set out to free human beings from their past.
41:40His experiments ended in a dark world of paranoia.
41:44There was no way of telling whether a person's memory was true or false.
41:48No one could be trusted.
41:49We had been really chasing a phantom, if you will, an illusion.
41:56That the human mind was more capable of manipulation from the outside
42:01by outside factors than it is.
42:06We found out that the human being is an extremely complex thing.
42:18There were no simple solutions.
42:21We got trapped a lot of times with complexities and illusions that didn't exist.
42:29But you've just got to bear in mind that these were very strange times.
42:42The CIA had pursued the psychological experiments for one simple reason.
42:47They had been convinced the Soviets were doing the same thing.
42:50But the KGB had long ago given up trying to use psychology.
42:55They had found another way of predicting the behaviour of human beings.
42:58To my mind, practically, psychology isn't developed enough
43:03to make the practical conclusions.
43:06When I started to work as an intelligence officer,
43:10I was asked by my chief,
43:13and do you know what he asked me first?
43:18He asked me whether I read Dostoevsky.
43:21In his opinion, you've got to know the psychological problems
43:29in the way they've been described by Dostoevsky.
43:35He said that Dostoevsky would let me understand people,
43:40would let me see what is happening in his head.
43:45Dostoevsky would help me to see the reasons for his actions.
43:52Oh, God damn it.
43:56Do you think the Americans should have read Dostoevsky?
43:59The CIA?
44:00They do it.
44:02As far as I know, they do it.
44:05They'll study Dostoevsky.
44:07The CIA stopped all funding of psychological research,
44:17and Dr Cameron turned to study the memory of a simpler organism,
44:20the flatworm.
44:25But the dream of creating a controllable mind
44:28that could be programmed was far from over.
44:31It was about to take a strange new twist.
44:33Cognitive science came up with a new idea.
44:38If it was impossible to make the human mind behave like a machine,
44:41the alternative was to make a machine with a mind of its own.
44:50Scientists now began to build intelligent machines
44:52with memories that could be programmed.
44:56They taught them to recognise and to understand the world around them.
44:59The scientists were inspired by the same underlying belief
45:04that had driven the experiments of the 1950s,
45:07that the mind and the computer were identical.
45:10But they were going to push this idea much further.
45:14A lot of people thought that the mind was,
45:17in some respects, like a computer.
45:19But there were others.
45:21They insisted something much more radical,
45:24which was that the mind is a computer,
45:26and the only good psychological theory is a computer program,
45:30because basically there's just a computer in the head.
45:34It was a heady idea for them.
45:36They had the notion that very soon,
45:39using these new computer techniques and ideas,
45:41they would be able to simulate the processes on the computer.
45:44And when people are that confident,
45:46they are good salesmen for their ideas,
45:49and a lot of people bought it.
45:51At this very same moment,
45:53the Cold War also changed direction.
45:56It was no longer fought out by human agents.
45:59It became instead a war of machines.
46:02Both sides now possessed enough nuclear missiles
46:04for what was called mutual assured destruction, or MAD.
46:08The fear was that the slightest mistake
46:11could lead to all-out war.
46:13To those in charge of America's defense,
46:15the idea of intelligent machines was extremely attractive.
46:19Their memories would be completely controllable.
46:21Unlike human beings, they would not make mistakes.
46:24Artificial intelligence emerged
46:26at the point at which there was the immediate worry of a war,
46:30some kind of a rationally breaking-out war,
46:33and that maybe this was some way
46:34of helping to control the situation.
46:36So there was a lot of magic thinking, I think,
46:39that was set loose by the concept of artificial intelligence,
46:42that we would have a wonderful kind of control,
46:45a big-brother control kind of thing.
46:47And it was always a tempting one.
46:50It wasn't quite a mean Orwellian one.
46:52It was like the people in Orwell.
46:54They thought it would be great.
46:55Things would be looked after.
46:58And scientists, you have to understand,
47:01always go the easy route.
47:03Once again, cognitive science became caught up
47:08in the political pressures of the Cold War.
47:11The Department of Defense, through its research agency, ARPA,
47:15offered to fund the whole of the new discipline
47:17of artificial intelligence.
47:20In return, the scientists' work would be used
47:22to build intelligent weapons.
47:24The source of this funding was kept very quiet.
47:29The scientists were embarrassed.
47:31They didn't want the public to find out what their real job was.
47:34You have to remember that ARPA's funding
47:37of artificial intelligence was for military purposes.
47:40But many of the people in that community
47:42come from liberal intellectual institutions.
47:45They particularly are not interested in military objectives.
47:52And so ARPA has always been very good
47:54at being able to marshal those forces
47:58and to trick them or lead them or move them
48:03in directions that have significant military benefits.
48:07It had an explicit goal of transitioning this technology
48:12into the military-industrial complex.
48:15How do you trick these researchers, these scientists?
48:21You lead them in directions that are useful militarily
48:25without explicitly asking them to think about the applications.
48:31So we'd say to them,
48:32let's work on TV image processing.
48:34And they would get results that would be applicable
48:37to processing of imagery for military purposes.
48:41Slow.
48:45Pitch.
48:47Ready.
48:50Execute.
48:55During the 1970s,
48:57a completely new type of weapon was developed in America,
49:00intelligent missiles with memories that could be programmed.
49:04The most famous was the cruise missile,
49:06which had a picture of its target stored in its memory.
49:09These weapons were a direct product
49:11of the science of artificial intelligence.
49:14They fundamentally altered the balance of power in the Cold War.
49:27In return, artificial intelligence became a powerful science.
49:30The idea that human beings and computers were identical
49:34came to dominate not just scientific thinking,
49:37but popular culture too.
49:38I'd like to grab inside your head for a minute
49:49and haul it over here
49:50and down here for a minute
49:53where I've got some friends gathered
49:55at something called the cyber...
49:57Breathlessly enthusiastic television programs were made.
50:00They portrayed the artificial intelligence scientists
50:02as heroic figures.
50:04People often ask if there will ever be machines that think.
50:08Well, we ourselves are machines that think
50:10by using great computers in our brains.
50:13And someday we will know enough
50:15to build machines that do such things and more.
50:18No mention was made of the fact
50:20that Marvin Minsky had already built a thinking machine.
50:22His work had helped to create the memory of the cruise missile.
50:31One of the most interesting things
50:33about the history of artificial intelligence
50:35is that the public was engaged
50:36in a kind of gee whiz perception of artificial intelligence
50:40as the quest for a thinking machine,
50:43when, in fact, what was really happening behind the scenes
50:46and out of the view of the public
50:48was this development of very dangerous,
50:51really revolutionary weapon systems
50:53that had the potential for changing the nature of war.
50:56And it was that that was the primary focus
50:59of the funding agency
51:01that was providing almost all the money
51:03for artificial intelligence research.
51:06And this was almost never mentioned
51:07in the general press coverage
51:10of this particular field.
51:12And I want to build myself
51:13into a machine that lives forever.
51:15We are at 1625-47
51:20on the 23rd of February,
51:23literally 425 in the afternoon.
51:30And Eagle Troop has just penetrated
51:33the main Iraqi defenses.
51:36What we're seeing here is the simulation
51:38of an actual battle
51:39that occurred during the war with Iraq,
51:42recreated by ARPA.
51:44And the events that you're seeing here
51:48are as they were reported
51:51by the soldiers who took part in the battle.
51:55And it represents literally
51:57a giant composite memory
52:00of all of the individuals
52:02who participated in the battle,
52:04as well as a variety of experts
52:07who had the opportunity
52:08to study the battle after it occurred.
52:10The Gulf War could be viewed
52:14as an absolutely tailor-made testing ground
52:18for a lot of DARPA ideas and systems.
52:21Since we had an environment
52:23that was basically flat,
52:25it was like a laboratory
52:26in the sense that it gave
52:29the military supporters of AI
52:31a tailor-made situation
52:33in which they could prove their case
52:34with systems that could remove personnel
52:37from harm's way.
52:39We are not in the business
52:40of destroying Kuwait
52:42while we are liberating Kuwait.
52:44And we certainly didn't want to go in
52:45and completely destroy the oil field
52:47or do undue damage.
52:48Now what you're seeing here
52:49is that's the manifold area,
52:50the very small area that I talked about,
52:52and you're looking right through the nose
52:54of the guided munition
52:55as it's flown straight into
52:56the small manifold area
52:57to destroy it.
52:59The Gulf War was a triumph
53:00for those who had developed
53:01intelligent weapons.
53:03Much of the conflict
53:04was fought by machines.
53:06It was a war without
53:07personal, painful memories.
53:09The deaths and destruction
53:11on the Iraqi side
53:12were witnessed only by the machines
53:13and a few soldiers.
53:16When those soldiers returned,
53:18they found that their memories
53:19were different
53:19from the public perception
53:20of the war.
53:22When I came back from the war,
53:23I talked to those people
53:24who were not there,
53:25and their memory,
53:27at least to me,
53:28was completely different
53:29than what I had experienced.
53:30Their memory was a long distance,
53:32very clean,
53:33very precise video game war
53:35where you put the X on the target
53:36and you shoot the bomb
53:37from 10 miles away
53:38and you go home
53:38and you have a soda
53:40or a beer or whatnot.
53:43And that's not how I recall it.
53:45For us,
53:45there was a lot of blood,
53:46sweat, tears, fear, anxiety,
53:48and it was.
53:49When you came back,
53:50there were two completely
53:51different perceptions
53:53of what had happened.
53:55It almost made it too simple.
53:56It almost made it without pain,
53:58without suffering,
53:59without blood.
53:59The scientists who had begun
54:02the experiments on human memory
54:0440 years before
54:05dreamt of freeing people
54:06from the memory
54:07of terrible events in the past.
54:10Those who had designed
54:11the machines that fought
54:12the Gulf War
54:13had finally achieved just that.
54:16The detailed record
54:17of the terrible and brutal events
54:19are contained not in human minds,
54:21but in a giant computer
54:22built by ARPA.
54:24Every gunshot and every death
54:26can be played back
54:27from any position.
54:29The easiest way
54:30to think of this,
54:31literally,
54:32is that we're on a magic carpet
54:33and we can travel freely
54:35throughout the database
54:36and observe the events
54:38that are occurring
54:38as they occurred
54:39at that point in time.
54:44What this record represents
54:47is a ground truth
54:50of the events
54:51as they occurred
54:52on this given day.
54:53It's memory locked
54:56in the computer,
54:57if you will.
55:01Unlike human memory
55:03and the frailties
55:04associated with it,
55:05this is a record
55:06that won't change.
55:08This composite memory,
55:11if you will,
55:12will remain the same
55:13throughout history,
55:14not subject to embellishment
55:16nor to losses.
55:19But at the very moment
55:25of triumph,
55:25the world was changing.
55:27The simple structure
55:28of the Cold War
55:29was beginning to disappear.
55:36Soviet power
55:37started to collapse.
55:39As it did so,
55:40memories from the past
55:41re-emerged
55:41throughout Europe.
55:43They fuelled bitter rivalries
55:44that had been hidden
55:45since the end
55:46of the Second World War.
55:47Fifty years ago,
55:49many hoped
55:50that these memories
55:50had been wiped forever,
55:52that the past
55:53was under control.
55:56And now,
55:57we've lived through
55:58a period in which
55:59that notion
56:00of managed memory,
56:02if I can put the thing
56:03that way,
56:03has changed.
56:04And what we get instead
56:05is this horrible emergence
56:08of the past.
56:09We haven't escaped our past.
56:11We see it all over
56:12the new states of Russia,
56:13of the former Soviet Union.
56:15We see it all over
56:16the Bosnian War
56:17and the rest of it.
56:18And begin to have notions
56:20that are much more biological,
56:22that we're trapped
56:22in our evolutionary past,
56:24that we're victims
56:25of our history.
56:29We then become slaves
56:30of the past.
56:31We become tragic.
56:33We become victims,
56:35basically,
56:36of the past
56:36and of fate.
56:37The idea that it was possible
56:47to free human beings
56:48from the ghosts
56:48of the past
56:49was a noble dream.
56:51It was part of an age
56:53that believed
56:53it could control history
56:55by manipulating
56:56human memory.
57:01That age is now over
57:03and we are caught up
57:04by the irrational forces
57:05of the past
57:06once again.
57:08Except for a few individuals
57:09who live in a different world,
57:11a world free of memory.
57:13What had been done to me
57:15was wrong and horrible,
57:17but I was freed up
57:19because I didn't have
57:20any memory.
57:21I didn't have to worry
57:22about a memory.
57:24I was exactly
57:25who I had shaped myself
57:27into being.
57:28and people kept
57:29wanting to feel
57:30sorry for me
57:31and that I was a victim.
57:33I understand that
57:34because there were
57:35horrible experiments,
57:36but on a personal,
57:38individual basis,
57:40I was not a victim
57:41because I was freed up
57:44from any of the garbage
57:45that people
57:46who have memory
57:47carry around with them
57:48all the time.
57:50Memory is a dangerous thing.
57:58Not just for individuals,
58:00but for whole societies,
58:03for cultures.
58:04They keep looking backwards
58:07and trying to relive
58:09and reshape the past
58:11when they can't.
58:13And they know they can't,
58:16but it keeps pulling them
58:17backwards
58:17and they keep reliving
58:19the stuff that happened.
58:24And I'm free of that.
58:28open the door.
Be the first to comment