APA found to be complicit in CIA torture program

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http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/report-details-psychologists-role-in-cia-torture-program/
this seems very unsavory to me, and it diminishes my level of trust in members of the profession.

It's what Christian theologians refer to as original sin, or man's fallen nature. That we are born bad, that it's genetic.

No, according to the bible, we are born good. "And God saw that it was good". It is just that this foolish Eve gave Adam the apple instead of eating it herself. But foolishness is not badness.

Sigh.....a talking snake .....yawn

I personally don't take the Genesis story literally, though considering human nature, and the state of human history, obviously something had happened that had made us self destructive, and destructive to one another, as well as toward the world at large.

IMHO the "thing" that happened was familiar to any puter geek, "GIGO." IOW there are quasi-buggy design features in the grand algorithm called the metaverse, that lead to entropy and all the other ails of which we are all familiar.

I'll be honest with you; all that computer talk goes over my head. But I think I get the gist of it.

Many Aspies like evolutionary theory, they take it as an excuse for their misanthropic and anti-men/anti-women views, or their aggressions against NTS or what they take as NTs. I strongly disagree with "most of us have the same genetic predisposition to be cruel and heartless". Some might have a genetic disposition (but still much more a certain upbringing, plus some choice), others dont.

We tend to interpret our evolutionary past how it fits our purposes best. Mine is that humankind is basically very cooperative. I dont have the "lonely male hunter" in mind who is killing animals and rivals indiscriminately, but take hunting in the past and present as being a very social event (for daily food supply there are trappers and nomads). That is because I am a) a woman, b) very NT c) had a pretty good upbringing and can therefore think without too much emotional distortion.

I mean look at the new upright walking hypothesis: that men took an upright posture not, because there were no trees left, but because they walked through water, this thesis was developed because some clever person thought that evolution works better the other way around, drawing conclusions from nowadays human beings and their attraction to water and to living close by the water instead of fixing on other species. If you have the desertification thesis of human evolution you are very close to the struggle of life theory and social darwinism, if you have the water thesis of human evolution it is a much more pleasant story. I agree that scarce natural resources can play (and indeed often played and play) an important role in making people more cruel than they are naturally, but that does not mean that "it is in the genes", and even less that it is in the genes of humankind.

Partly some scientists view is distorted, because they take tribes in remote areas as representative. But these tribes are remote for some reason. Sabine Kügler s book "Child of the Jungle" is quite instructive in this aspect.

This is all I have to say about this f**ked-up evolutionary psychology.

While most psychologists wouldn't work for the CIA, there is no doubt they could not develop strategies without the aid of psychologists. Doctrines such as fascism and communism might have been written by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Marx, but the implementation of policy needed psychologists and their work such as the eugenicist Alfred Binet.

Nietzsche shouldn't be blamed for that. His sister (who he declared "dead" due to her being antisemitic) was also the person who gained control over his works. As a result his works are still often severely misinterpreted. Nietzsche condemned nationalism and fascism, he would have been horrified to know how his words and ideas were twisted by the Nazi's and others.

Many sympathetic German psychologists were essential in the formulation of Nazi party strategies that gave rise to public policy doctrines. It's strange virtually nothing has been published about their role? without psychologists you cant create mass movements such as communism or fascism.