On: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classi...

[realo]

Oh? I thought that militants in that region of the planet were programmed by religious discussions in the first place.

Maybe we do not share the same definition of what a "militant" is, in Saudi Arabia?

[twic → realo]

Perhaps if you can program militants using religious discussion, then you can deprogram them using religious discussion. Militants aren't EPROMs, they don't need UV light.

Articles on the Saudi deprogramming effort:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/06/get-out-... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09jihadis-t.html?...

And a more recent (PDF) review about why deprogramming mostly doesn't work:

http://sites.duke.edu/ihss/files/2011/12/Morris_Research_Bri...

Although Saudi Arabia's may be more effective. The reason is basically that terrorists aren't actually programmed using religious discussion, terrorists are programmed using monkeybrain ties to other terrorists. ObGwern:

http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror

A clever person might therefore attempt to use stronger monkeybrain ties to deprogram terrorists. Like the PLO did:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-you-...