
The tortured lives of “targetted individuals” - spiderfarmer
https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of-targeted-individuals/
======
nkrisc
If they've been implanted with microchips or other devices, it should be
trivial to determine if that's true or not with modern medical imaging
techniques. However I suspect they won't believe any evidence that doesn't
align with their pre-determined conclusion.

Anything that shows what they say isn't true will be considered another layer
of the targeting and campaign against them, furthering their conviction
they're being targeted. Quite simply they're torturing themselves.

It's sad, but I wonder how do you help someone like that?

~~~
ashleyn
Among those with mental challenges, "microchip implant" allegations were more
popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Remebmer that Boomtown Rats song about the
school shooter? I suspect it was because both IC technology was becoming
widely known and medical imaging still didn't quite catch up to where you
could get a CT and prove it easily. I actually don't see the "microchip
implant" accusation as much anymore, probably for that exact reason.

What I do see now is the rise of "microwave auditory effect" accusations,
where the government or some other clandestine organisation is using radio
waves to create voices in their head. Obviously, these are a lot harder to
disprove, requiring a wideband SDR and expertise in operating one to
conclusively rule out, something far less common than modern medical imaging.

Additionally, it's dubious that the subject would believe you even if you put
them in a faraday cage and showed them the blank waterfall view proving no
radio transmissions are even occurring. Owing to the nature of schizophrenia,
they'd move onto the second-most common allegation I've seen: "psychic
attacks", an accusation that handwaves away all physical explanations for the
percieved harassment with an ill-defined mysticism that cannot be fully
explained.

I often wonder myself how I would handle schizophrenia, and if the heroic
mental gynmastics it creates are merely a product of a large ego, unwilling to
admit one can be wrong in their judgement...or are genuinely
organic/structural in the brain.

~~~
slededit
> I often wonder myself how I would handle schizophrenia, and if the heroic
> mental gynmastics it creates are merely a product of a large ego, unwilling
> to admit one can be wrong in their judgement...or are genuinely
> organic/structural in the brain.

I don't know how accurate the movie was, but the movie A Beautiful Mind
explored the topic of thinking your way out of schizophrenia. Its well worth a
watch if you haven't seen it.

------
ebcode
>even the most advanced technology can’t make someone hear voices or
experience a different reality.

That's the advanced technology that we know of, anyway. Surely the aliens
among us have more advanced technology that are capable of these kinds of
things.

I say this only partly in jest, but it is downright amazing where your mind
can go when you're trying to reconcile an "out-of-band" subjective experience
with how you expect the world to normally function.

