Netted an unusual critter during my digs. He is a psychologist specialized in "positive psychology" who wrote a bunch of happy-sounding self-help

books such as The Optimistic Child, Learned Optimism, and Authentic Happiness. Also had the strange honor of being consulted to help CIA create

their secret torture programme! You know the infamous one involving Gina Haspel of recent relevance…

Anyway. How can it be that such a happy doctor who knows all about the good things in life is also an authority on torture?

Let's check his early scientific publications. I went throught them all and decoded the abstracts into what they actually mean, because the dry

academic lingo is quite frankly worse than legalese.

> Effect of intensity and duration of punishment on extinction of an avoidance response (1965)

Will rats who run to avoid being electroshocked run slower if you punish their effort by shocking them anyway? Yes, they will!

> Failure to escape traumatic shock (1967)

If you tie up a dog and shock the bejeezus out of it over and over (at random intervals to maximize the mental anguish), will the dog now respond to future torture sessions by collapsing on the floor and whimpering helplessly, even though you don't tie it up any more? Affirmative!

> Effects of inescapable shock upon subsequent escape and avoidance responding (1967)

Do dogs have a harder time to learn to do tricks to avoid shocks if they recently went through an extended torture session where nothing they did could stop the torture? Yes, they do! How long does this effect last? 48 hours.

> Chronic fear produced by unpredictable electric shock (1968)

Can you give rats severe stomach ulcers by shocking them until they're so afraid they don't even dare to eat? Why, of course!

> Chronic fear and ulcers as a function of the unpredictability of safety (1970)

Is the level of fear induced in rats by shocking them related to the level of ulcers they will develop as a result? Yes, with correlation 0.74!

> Drinking: Discriminative conditioning in the rat (1970)

If you condition a rat to drink by shocking it if it doesn't, will it still drink even more if you also inject it with thirst-inducing chemicals?

Yes!

> Conditioned drinking produced by procaine, NaCl, and angiotensin (1971)

Which thirst-inducing chemicals are most effective to use to boost the effect of shock conditioning? We end up recommending procaine, but angiotensin injected directly into the hypothalamus works well too. Either way the little buggers are going to drink until they explode!

> Poisoning and conditioned drinking (1972)

Just being curious here, could the reason procaine stimulates drinking be because it's a poison? Seems like it.

> Learned helplessness in the rat (1975)

Will a rat be mentally broken if you tie it up and shock the bejeezus out of it, just like a dog is? Yessiree.

> Learned helplessness in the rat: Time course, immunization and reversibility (1975)

Just double-checking the former to be sure here. Rats are cheap anyway!

>>664124

> Frustration and learned helplessness (1975)

If you break an animal mentally (the way we just verified works on both rats and dogs), will that animal experience problems in more normal life challenges in the future, for instance when it comes to overcoming minor frustrations? You know it will!

> Conditioned drinking as avoidance learning (1975)

Just ironing out the hairy details of how to make rats overdrink here. The devil is as always in the details.

> Failure to escape shock after repeated exposure to inescapable shock (1976)

Some other sadists, sorry I meant scientists posted a different theory of exactly why a rat feels so helpless when you shock it! I just had to zap another bunch of rats to prove they're wrong and I'm right!

> Retention of learned helplessness and immunization in the rat from weaning to adulthood (1976)

Will a rat be mentally broken for life if you break it with shock therapy as a baby? Yes!

> Sudden death in the laboratory rat (1976)

Just had a bunch of rats I didn't know what to do with (this batch had been mentally broken by having them grow up in isolation cells), and on a whim I decided to check if they would struggle less when getting drowned than normal rats do? Turns out they would, just as I thought! I'm right

as always!

> Debilitated shock escape if produced by both short- and long-duration inescapable shock: Learned helplessness vs. learned inactivity (1979)

Once again some other loser comes up with a competing theory. Once again I zap a few rats to prove him wrong. Once again I win.

> Inescapable shock as a weanling impairs adult discrimination learning (1979)

If you zap baby rats until smoke comes out their ears, will they then be dumb as rocks as adults, unable to learn anything? I just had a hunch they might, and it turns out I'M RIGHT AGAIN!

> Tumor rejection in rats after inescapable or escapable shock (1982)

Is it easier to give a rat cancer by implanting it with carcinogenic chemicals if you also zap the living daylight out of it at the same time?

Yes! Yes, it is! Electrotherapy is just so versatile!

> Learned mastery in the rat (1983)

Stumbled over some weird effect where rats actually became better at avoiding shocks, in spite of all my efforts to crush their little souls. Only happened under very specific conditions. 2000 second long shocks were involved. Someone who cares about actually making rats smarter should look into it closer, I won't.

> Tumor rejection and early experience of uncontrollable shock in the rat (1985)

Just a quick confirmation of an idea I had: I thought that a rat you fried hard as a baby might be easier to give cancer as an adult if you give it a quick zap first, just to remind it that life sucks. I was right, of course!

P.S. At this point in his career, Dr. Seligman had gotten tired of probing the psyches of rats and dogs and moved on to studying college

students. Electric shocks were replaced with loud annoying noises for trauma infliction, either because Dr. Seligman's conscience kicked in, or

because he couldn't get away with using shocks on humans. You decide.

>>664123

Ooops, I forgot to mention the name of the good doctor. It's Martin Seligman.