June 17, 2026
EP 062 Who Created Polybius? | Corporate Manipulation & Cultural Conditioning Exposed
Hidden history isn't just what's deleted—it's what our collective imagination *creates* to explain institutional control. Polybius, the arcade game that never existed, became an urban legend because it perfectly symbolizes corporate manipulation culture and forbidden ideas about who shapes our reality. Today, we investigate why we needed to believe in Polybius, what that reveals about narrative control, and how institutions exploit our hunger for forbidden truth. https://SomeUnapprovedThinking.com Sponsor - https://DarkHorseEntrepreneur.com
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Beneath the headlines, behind
the timelines, there is a
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story no one wants you to find.
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Welcome to some unapproved thinking, where
forgotten truths, buried patterns, and
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invisible systems rise to the surface.
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You weren't crazy.
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You were just early.
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Let's begin.
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Polybius, a game I mentioned in
passing in the previous episode
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about the Cabbage Patch, uh, spies.
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But in nineteen eighty-one, Polybius
appeared in Portland, Oregon, a video
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game that was never supposed to exist.
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No manufacturer, no serial
number, no official record,
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and within weeks, it vanished.
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Most people think Polybius is a myth, an
internet legend born in twenty oh three
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when someone posted about it on a forum.
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But that's exactly what
you're supposed to think.
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The real story starts thirty years
earlier in a classified division of
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the Department of Defense that was
experimenting with something far more
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dangerous than any arcade machine
This is Some Unapproved Thinking.
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Now back to the show.
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You need to understand the
Cold War context first.
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By the late 1970s, the CIA was
deeply invested in behavioral
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modification through technology.
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MKUltra had officially ended in the
mid-'70s, or so we were told, but the
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infrastructure didn't just disappear.
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Nope, uh, it evolved.
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The program had been run by a
chemist named Sidney Gottlieb,
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the CIA's poisoner-in-chief, who
operated with virtually no oversight.
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Before MKUltra, there was Project
Artichoke, and before that, Bluebird.
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The infrastructure for mind control
research existed for years before anyone
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thought to put it in an arcade cabinet.
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When the Church Committee exposed
MKUltra in 1975, CIA Director
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Richard Helms had already ordered
most of the files destroyed.
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What survived was accidental.
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What happened next was compartmentalized
so thoroughly that most of the people
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who worked on it never knew the full
scope of what they were building.
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They knew their piece, nothing more.
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That's how you keep a
secret for four decades.
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One of MKUltra's known victims was Frank
Olson, a government scientist who died
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under mysterious circumstances after being
dosed with LSD without his knowledge.
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The government called it suicide.
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Decades later, his family is
still fighting for the truth.
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Olson's case is a reminder that
these programs didn't just study
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people, they consumed them.
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In 1978, a classified research facility
operating under the Defense Advanced
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Research Projects Agency, DARPA,
began a project codenamed Mindframe.
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The objective was psychological
weaponization through interactive media.
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Video games were emerging.
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Arcade cabinets were spreading.
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Nobody was studying their
long-term neurological effects.
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Nobody was asking if they could
be engineered to produce specific
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psychological states in players.
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No one was asking except
for the government.
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Yeah.
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They were asking, and they had
the budget to find those answers.
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The team assembled for Mindframe included
behavioral psychologists from Stanford,
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neuroscientists who had previously
worked on MKUltra follow-up programs,
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and crucially, a thirty-two-year-old
programmer named David Theobald, who had
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been contracted by the NSA since 1976.
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Theobald had access to processing
power that wouldn't be commercially
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available for another decade or so.
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He had access to classified
psychological profiles.
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He had access to something else:
the exact specifications of how
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human visual perception could be
manipulated through flickering light
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patterns and specific color sequences.
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By 1980, the prototype was functional.
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They called it Polybius, a
reference to the lost histories
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that only the victor gets to write.
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The supposed developer name
printed on the cabinet?
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Sinneslöschen, German for sense deletion.
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If you wanted to hide a psychological
weapon in plain sight, that's exactly
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the kind of detail you'd include.
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The cabinet was built to specifications
that seem mundane on the surface.
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A standard arcade shell, typical
arcade controls, but inside,
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there were modifications.
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The monitor was calibrated to frequencies
that commercial manufacturers never used.
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The color palette was limited
deliberately to combinations that had
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been identified in classified neuroscience
studies as producing measurable
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changes in temporal lobe activity.
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The game itself wasn't designed to be fun.
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It was designed to be addictive in a
specific way, triggering compulsive
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replay in subjects and leaving them
susceptible to suggestion during a narrow
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seventy-two-hour window after gameplay.
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Here's where it gets darker.
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The game's pattern sequences were
randomized, but the randomization
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followed an algorithm that embedded
trigger sequences, visual patterns
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that corresponded to sequences
used in audio interrogation
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protocols from the previous decade.
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If you played long enough, your brain
was essentially being primed by the same
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stimulus architecture that had been used
in black site interrogation facilities.
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Not torture, something
more, uh, sophisticated.
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Effectively voluntary participation
in your own neurological conditioning.
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In late 1980, DARPA
authorized field testing.
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They needed a city that was far
enough from Washington to avoid
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direct oversight but with enough
FBI presence to monitor results.
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Portland fit the profile.
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A test cabinet was shipped to a small
arcade on Southwest Alder Street,
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disguised as a standard commercial unit.
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Some researchers have pointed out
that Portland arcades around this
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same period had already documented
medical incidents tied to Tempest,
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a real commercially released game
that was causing seizures in players.
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That context mattered.
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If a new cabinet produced strange
neurological effects, there was
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already a cover story available.
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Three separate intelligence contractors
were assigned to monitor player behavior,
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baseline their psychological profiles
before and after play sessions, and
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document any behavioral changes.
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They posed as arcade staff.
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Nobody noticed anything unusual because
there was nothing unusual to see, just
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another cabinet in another arcade.
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But hereâs what the researchers
discovered, documented in
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reports that remain classified.
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Players developed an immediate,
almost obsessive drive to replay.
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They reported vivid, intrusive imagery
in the hours following gameplay,
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and in that seventy-two-hour window,
exactly seventy-two hours, consistent
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across ninety-four percent of test
subjects, they demonstrated measurably
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increased compliance in follow-up
social experiments, increased trust
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in authority, increased acceptance
of negative information about peers,
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increased compartmentalization
of memory, the ability to hold
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contradictory beliefs simultaneously
without psychological distress It
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worked better than they expected.
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Too well.
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And then something went, hmm, wrong.
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One of the test subjects, a 19-year-old
named Marcus Wheeling, didn't experience
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the normal neurological response.
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Instead of increased compliance,
he developed acute dissociative
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episodes, and I mean, severe episodes.
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Within 48 hours of his first
play session, he was catatonic.
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By day five, he had no memory
of his own name, his family,
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or even his previous address.
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He was hospitalized, diagnosed with acute
schizophrenia, and within eight months, he
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died by suicide in a psychiatric facility.
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His death certificate listed the
cause as untreated mental illness.
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No mention of the arcade, and
no mention of the cabinet.
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It echoed Frank Olson's case in
ways that nobody in the program
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wanted to acknowledge out loud.
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That's when the project was pulled.
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Not shut down, pulled.
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The cabinet disappeared from the
arcade on September 14th, 1981.
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The field team was reassigned.
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The facility was closed, and, uh, the
research was buried and, uh, buried deep.
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But one thing couldn't
be contained: the legend.
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Employees talk.
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Contractors talk.
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By 1982, rumors about a haunted arcade
cabinet were already circulating
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among Portland's tech underground.
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Yeah, about a cabinet that
drove people, mm, insane.
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A cabinet that the
government had been testing.
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By the time the Internet existed, the
story had transformed into folklore.
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Polybius, the mysterious arcade
game, was lost to history.
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Now, here's the trap.
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Because it became a meme, because
it transformed into an Internet
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legend, and the actual truth
became retroactively unbelievable.
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If you say Polybius was a real government
experiment today, you're filed in
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the same category as people who claim
the, the moon landing was faked.
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The mythology obscured the history.
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That was the whole point.
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Accidental or not, that was the result.
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Allen Dulles, the CIA director who
originally authorized MKUltra, understood
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this principle before any of it started.
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The best way to hide a program is
to make the idea of it seem absurd.
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But the technology didn't disappear.
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The research didn't stop.
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It was just compartmentalized further.
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Some of it was abandoned.
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The direct neuroscientific
approach proved too difficult to
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control, far too unpredictable.
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But the psychological
principle remained sound.
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You can engineer media to produce
specific behavioral outcomes.
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You can design interactive experiences
that leave people more vulnerable to
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suggestion, more compliant, and far
more fractured in their thinking.
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More alone, even when they're together,
scrolling, clicking, and refreshing.
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Seem familiar?
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The programmers who worked on Mindframe
went into commercial game design.
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At least three of them founded
companies that became significant
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players in the industry.
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One worked on early versions of what
became social media architecture,
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specifically the feedback loops
and variable reward systems that
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keep you checking your phone.
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Another developed biometric
profiling for advertising companies.
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A third disappeared from
public record in 1987.
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Last known location, Moscow.
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Last confirmed employment, classified.
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What about the cabinet itself?
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There are accounts of sightings.
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A cabinet matching Polybius' exact
specifications appeared in a private
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collector's warehouse in Seattle in 1995.
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Another in a game
archive in Japan in 2004.
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One was allegedly purchased by a venture
capitalist in Silicon Valley in 2013.
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These could be coincidences.
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These could be urban legend accumulation,
or these could be controlled field tests
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running continuously decades after the
initial authorization, just smaller, just
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quieter, and just far less documented.
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What they learned from Polybius
is still being applied.
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Every infinite scroll, every algorithmic
feed, every variable reward schedule,
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these aren't accidents of design.
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They're applications of behavioral
science that was developed and
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tested in classified programs
that you were never told existed.
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Sidney Gottlieb's methodology
didn't die with MKUltra.
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It just got scaled.
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The cabinet was the prototype.
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Everything that came after
was the scaled deployment.
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And here's the final moral trap.
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You can't unlearn this.
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Nope.
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Sorry.
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You can't unknow that the systems you're
using were potentially engineered by
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people who understood how to manipulate
your psychology at a neurological level.
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You can't go back to thinking that
technology is neutral, but you also
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can't prove it, not conclusively anyway.
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The classified records won't
be declassified for another
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twenty years, if they ever are.
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You're left in a state of informed
uncertainty, knowing enough to be
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paranoid, but not enough to be certain.
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That's the real design.
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The question isn't
whether Polybius was real.
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The question is, what have you
already been playing all this time?
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This has been Some Unapproved Thinking.
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Tracy out.
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If this story didn't sit
right with you, good.
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You're not here to be comforted.
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You're here to see what others overlook.
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Thanks for exploring
some unapproved thinking.
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Learn more at someunapprovedthinking.com.
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New episodes drop weekly.
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Subscribe, share, and keep questioning
because the pattern's still playing
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out, and next time, we're going deeper
00:00:00,206 --> 00:00:04,296
Beneath the headlines, behind
the timelines, there is a
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00:00:04,296 --> 00:00:06,086
story no one wants you to find.
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00:00:06,546 --> 00:00:12,956
Welcome to some unapproved thinking, where
forgotten truths, buried patterns, and
4
00:00:12,956 --> 00:00:15,716
invisible systems rise to the surface.
5
00:00:16,135 --> 00:00:17,315
You weren't crazy.
6
00:00:17,765 --> 00:00:18,825
You were just early.
7
00:00:19,376 --> 00:00:19,835
Let's begin.
8
00:00:21,226 --> 00:00:24,965
Polybius, a game I mentioned in
passing in the previous episode
9
00:00:24,966 --> 00:00:28,055
about the Cabbage Patch, uh, spies.
10
00:00:28,395 --> 00:00:34,986
But in nineteen eighty-one, Polybius
appeared in Portland, Oregon, a video
11
00:00:34,986 --> 00:00:37,435
game that was never supposed to exist.
12
00:00:37,945 --> 00:00:43,255
No manufacturer, no serial
number, no official record,
13
00:00:43,546 --> 00:00:45,786
and within weeks, it vanished.
14
00:00:46,116 --> 00:00:50,865
Most people think Polybius is a myth, an
internet legend born in twenty oh three
15
00:00:50,945 --> 00:00:53,506
when someone posted about it on a forum.
16
00:00:53,715 --> 00:00:56,085
But that's exactly what
you're supposed to think.
17
00:00:56,465 --> 00:01:00,545
The real story starts thirty years
earlier in a classified division of
18
00:01:00,546 --> 00:01:03,686
the Department of Defense that was
experimenting with something far more
19
00:01:03,686 --> 00:01:09,892
dangerous than any arcade machine
This is Some Unapproved Thinking.
20
00:01:10,242 --> 00:01:13,942
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darkhorseentrepreneur.com.
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00:01:29,932 --> 00:01:30,852
Now back to the show.
26
00:01:31,311 --> 00:01:33,402
You need to understand the
Cold War context first.
27
00:01:33,512 --> 00:01:37,631
By the late 1970s, the CIA was
deeply invested in behavioral
28
00:01:37,631 --> 00:01:39,092
modification through technology.
29
00:01:39,502 --> 00:01:44,732
MKUltra had officially ended in the
mid-'70s, or so we were told, but the
30
00:01:44,741 --> 00:01:47,161
infrastructure didn't just disappear.
31
00:01:47,211 --> 00:01:49,071
Nope, uh, it evolved.
32
00:01:49,432 --> 00:01:52,701
The program had been run by a
chemist named Sidney Gottlieb,
33
00:01:53,002 --> 00:01:57,071
the CIA's poisoner-in-chief, who
operated with virtually no oversight.
34
00:01:57,371 --> 00:02:01,021
Before MKUltra, there was Project
Artichoke, and before that, Bluebird.
35
00:02:01,401 --> 00:02:05,591
The infrastructure for mind control
research existed for years before anyone
36
00:02:05,601 --> 00:02:07,601
thought to put it in an arcade cabinet.
37
00:02:07,792 --> 00:02:12,221
When the Church Committee exposed
MKUltra in 1975, CIA Director
38
00:02:12,221 --> 00:02:15,431
Richard Helms had already ordered
most of the files destroyed.
39
00:02:15,782 --> 00:02:17,741
What survived was accidental.
40
00:02:18,051 --> 00:02:22,392
What happened next was compartmentalized
so thoroughly that most of the people
41
00:02:22,392 --> 00:02:25,442
who worked on it never knew the full
scope of what they were building.
42
00:02:25,801 --> 00:02:28,272
They knew their piece, nothing more.
43
00:02:28,571 --> 00:02:30,631
That's how you keep a
secret for four decades.
44
00:02:31,321 --> 00:02:35,771
One of MKUltra's known victims was Frank
Olson, a government scientist who died
45
00:02:35,791 --> 00:02:39,951
under mysterious circumstances after being
dosed with LSD without his knowledge.
46
00:02:40,261 --> 00:02:42,632
The government called it suicide.
47
00:02:42,901 --> 00:02:46,541
Decades later, his family is
still fighting for the truth.
48
00:02:46,992 --> 00:02:50,151
Olson's case is a reminder that
these programs didn't just study
49
00:02:50,151 --> 00:02:52,061
people, they consumed them.
50
00:02:52,742 --> 00:02:57,702
In 1978, a classified research facility
operating under the Defense Advanced
51
00:02:57,702 --> 00:03:03,051
Research Projects Agency, DARPA,
began a project codenamed Mindframe.
52
00:03:03,331 --> 00:03:08,641
The objective was psychological
weaponization through interactive media.
53
00:03:09,041 --> 00:03:10,471
Video games were emerging.
54
00:03:10,651 --> 00:03:12,471
Arcade cabinets were spreading.
55
00:03:12,651 --> 00:03:16,322
Nobody was studying their
long-term neurological effects.
56
00:03:16,671 --> 00:03:19,601
Nobody was asking if they could
be engineered to produce specific
57
00:03:19,602 --> 00:03:21,121
psychological states in players.
58
00:03:21,311 --> 00:03:23,181
No one was asking except
for the government.
59
00:03:23,492 --> 00:03:23,932
Yeah.
60
00:03:24,790 --> 00:03:29,770
They were asking, and they had
the budget to find those answers.
61
00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:34,410
The team assembled for Mindframe included
behavioral psychologists from Stanford,
62
00:03:34,719 --> 00:03:38,419
neuroscientists who had previously
worked on MKUltra follow-up programs,
63
00:03:38,590 --> 00:03:43,050
and crucially, a thirty-two-year-old
programmer named David Theobald, who had
64
00:03:43,050 --> 00:03:46,649
been contracted by the NSA since 1976.
65
00:03:47,119 --> 00:03:50,609
Theobald had access to processing
power that wouldn't be commercially
66
00:03:50,609 --> 00:03:52,349
available for another decade or so.
67
00:03:52,680 --> 00:03:56,029
He had access to classified
psychological profiles.
68
00:03:56,340 --> 00:04:01,039
He had access to something else:
the exact specifications of how
69
00:04:01,040 --> 00:04:05,519
human visual perception could be
manipulated through flickering light
70
00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:08,369
patterns and specific color sequences.
71
00:04:09,070 --> 00:04:11,959
By 1980, the prototype was functional.
72
00:04:12,289 --> 00:04:16,399
They called it Polybius, a
reference to the lost histories
73
00:04:16,570 --> 00:04:18,470
that only the victor gets to write.
74
00:04:18,750 --> 00:04:21,019
The supposed developer name
printed on the cabinet?
75
00:04:21,659 --> 00:04:24,129
Sinneslöschen, German for sense deletion.
76
00:04:24,629 --> 00:04:28,079
If you wanted to hide a psychological
weapon in plain sight, that's exactly
77
00:04:28,079 --> 00:04:29,500
the kind of detail you'd include.
78
00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:34,280
The cabinet was built to specifications
that seem mundane on the surface.
79
00:04:34,659 --> 00:04:39,869
A standard arcade shell, typical
arcade controls, but inside,
80
00:04:40,019 --> 00:04:41,189
there were modifications.
81
00:04:41,419 --> 00:04:46,119
The monitor was calibrated to frequencies
that commercial manufacturers never used.
82
00:04:46,500 --> 00:04:49,729
The color palette was limited
deliberately to combinations that had
83
00:04:49,729 --> 00:04:53,630
been identified in classified neuroscience
studies as producing measurable
84
00:04:53,630 --> 00:04:55,879
changes in temporal lobe activity.
85
00:04:56,139 --> 00:04:59,059
The game itself wasn't designed to be fun.
86
00:04:59,439 --> 00:05:03,569
It was designed to be addictive in a
specific way, triggering compulsive
87
00:05:03,570 --> 00:05:08,319
replay in subjects and leaving them
susceptible to suggestion during a narrow
88
00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:10,659
seventy-two-hour window after gameplay.
89
00:05:11,299 --> 00:05:12,399
Here's where it gets darker.
90
00:05:13,409 --> 00:05:17,329
The game's pattern sequences were
randomized, but the randomization
91
00:05:17,339 --> 00:05:21,900
followed an algorithm that embedded
trigger sequences, visual patterns
92
00:05:21,979 --> 00:05:24,789
that corresponded to sequences
used in audio interrogation
93
00:05:24,790 --> 00:05:26,309
protocols from the previous decade.
94
00:05:26,689 --> 00:05:30,869
If you played long enough, your brain
was essentially being primed by the same
95
00:05:30,869 --> 00:05:35,209
stimulus architecture that had been used
in black site interrogation facilities.
96
00:05:35,959 --> 00:05:39,889
Not torture, something
more, uh, sophisticated.
97
00:05:40,250 --> 00:05:45,539
Effectively voluntary participation
in your own neurological conditioning.
98
00:05:46,190 --> 00:05:49,819
In late 1980, DARPA
authorized field testing.
99
00:05:50,309 --> 00:05:53,310
They needed a city that was far
enough from Washington to avoid
100
00:05:53,310 --> 00:05:57,239
direct oversight but with enough
FBI presence to monitor results.
101
00:05:58,110 --> 00:05:59,849
Portland fit the profile.
102
00:06:00,780 --> 00:06:04,860
A test cabinet was shipped to a small
arcade on Southwest Alder Street,
103
00:06:05,150 --> 00:06:07,400
disguised as a standard commercial unit.
104
00:06:07,790 --> 00:06:10,719
Some researchers have pointed out
that Portland arcades around this
105
00:06:10,719 --> 00:06:14,749
same period had already documented
medical incidents tied to Tempest,
106
00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:19,400
a real commercially released game
that was causing seizures in players.
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00:06:19,699 --> 00:06:21,059
That context mattered.
108
00:06:21,410 --> 00:06:24,459
If a new cabinet produced strange
neurological effects, there was
109
00:06:24,469 --> 00:06:26,069
already a cover story available.
110
00:06:26,629 --> 00:06:30,310
Three separate intelligence contractors
were assigned to monitor player behavior,
111
00:06:30,609 --> 00:06:34,509
baseline their psychological profiles
before and after play sessions, and
112
00:06:34,509 --> 00:06:36,080
document any behavioral changes.
113
00:06:36,369 --> 00:06:37,829
They posed as arcade staff.
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00:06:38,219 --> 00:06:42,019
Nobody noticed anything unusual because
there was nothing unusual to see, just
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00:06:42,239 --> 00:06:44,149
another cabinet in another arcade.
116
00:06:44,759 --> 00:06:47,979
But hereâs what the researchers
discovered, documented in
117
00:06:47,980 --> 00:06:49,489
reports that remain classified.
118
00:06:49,739 --> 00:06:54,019
Players developed an immediate,
almost obsessive drive to replay.
119
00:06:54,289 --> 00:06:59,060
They reported vivid, intrusive imagery
in the hours following gameplay,
120
00:06:59,449 --> 00:07:03,919
and in that seventy-two-hour window,
exactly seventy-two hours, consistent
121
00:07:03,919 --> 00:07:08,669
across ninety-four percent of test
subjects, they demonstrated measurably
122
00:07:08,739 --> 00:07:14,500
increased compliance in follow-up
social experiments, increased trust
123
00:07:14,519 --> 00:07:19,179
in authority, increased acceptance
of negative information about peers,
124
00:07:19,519 --> 00:07:23,379
increased compartmentalization
of memory, the ability to hold
125
00:07:23,379 --> 00:07:28,974
contradictory beliefs simultaneously
without psychological distress It
126
00:07:28,974 --> 00:07:30,444
worked better than they expected.
127
00:07:31,794 --> 00:07:32,364
Too well.
128
00:07:32,734 --> 00:07:35,144
And then something went, hmm, wrong.
129
00:07:36,024 --> 00:07:39,424
One of the test subjects, a 19-year-old
named Marcus Wheeling, didn't experience
130
00:07:39,424 --> 00:07:41,374
the normal neurological response.
131
00:07:41,734 --> 00:07:44,903
Instead of increased compliance,
he developed acute dissociative
132
00:07:44,933 --> 00:07:48,564
episodes, and I mean, severe episodes.
133
00:07:48,943 --> 00:07:54,363
Within 48 hours of his first
play session, he was catatonic.
134
00:07:54,904 --> 00:07:59,124
By day five, he had no memory
of his own name, his family,
135
00:07:59,484 --> 00:08:00,864
or even his previous address.
136
00:08:01,224 --> 00:08:06,173
He was hospitalized, diagnosed with acute
schizophrenia, and within eight months, he
137
00:08:06,183 --> 00:08:08,703
died by suicide in a psychiatric facility.
138
00:08:09,573 --> 00:08:12,784
His death certificate listed the
cause as untreated mental illness.
139
00:08:12,963 --> 00:08:15,883
No mention of the arcade, and
no mention of the cabinet.
140
00:08:16,193 --> 00:08:19,563
It echoed Frank Olson's case in
ways that nobody in the program
141
00:08:19,623 --> 00:08:21,294
wanted to acknowledge out loud.
142
00:08:21,913 --> 00:08:23,613
That's when the project was pulled.
143
00:08:23,974 --> 00:08:25,643
Not shut down, pulled.
144
00:08:25,963 --> 00:08:29,584
The cabinet disappeared from the
arcade on September 14th, 1981.
145
00:08:29,584 --> 00:08:31,293
The field team was reassigned.
146
00:08:31,673 --> 00:08:37,363
The facility was closed, and, uh, the
research was buried and, uh, buried deep.
147
00:08:37,763 --> 00:08:40,904
But one thing couldn't
be contained: the legend.
148
00:08:41,223 --> 00:08:42,443
Employees talk.
149
00:08:42,714 --> 00:08:43,913
Contractors talk.
150
00:08:44,333 --> 00:08:48,673
By 1982, rumors about a haunted arcade
cabinet were already circulating
151
00:08:48,674 --> 00:08:50,263
among Portland's tech underground.
152
00:08:50,564 --> 00:08:54,144
Yeah, about a cabinet that
drove people, mm, insane.
153
00:08:54,523 --> 00:08:57,473
A cabinet that the
government had been testing.
154
00:08:57,723 --> 00:09:02,223
By the time the Internet existed, the
story had transformed into folklore.
155
00:09:02,604 --> 00:09:06,933
Polybius, the mysterious arcade
game, was lost to history.
156
00:09:07,613 --> 00:09:08,513
Now, here's the trap.
157
00:09:09,113 --> 00:09:12,504
Because it became a meme, because
it transformed into an Internet
158
00:09:12,504 --> 00:09:16,153
legend, and the actual truth
became retroactively unbelievable.
159
00:09:16,513 --> 00:09:21,764
If you say Polybius was a real government
experiment today, you're filed in
160
00:09:21,764 --> 00:09:26,623
the same category as people who claim
the, the moon landing was faked.
161
00:09:26,924 --> 00:09:29,863
The mythology obscured the history.
162
00:09:29,893 --> 00:09:31,083
That was the whole point.
163
00:09:31,453 --> 00:09:34,533
Accidental or not, that was the result.
164
00:09:35,233 --> 00:09:40,784
Allen Dulles, the CIA director who
originally authorized MKUltra, understood
165
00:09:40,793 --> 00:09:43,224
this principle before any of it started.
166
00:09:43,623 --> 00:09:48,723
The best way to hide a program is
to make the idea of it seem absurd.
167
00:09:49,364 --> 00:09:51,143
But the technology didn't disappear.
168
00:09:51,543 --> 00:09:53,003
The research didn't stop.
169
00:09:53,353 --> 00:09:55,823
It was just compartmentalized further.
170
00:09:56,064 --> 00:09:57,493
Some of it was abandoned.
171
00:09:57,933 --> 00:10:00,803
The direct neuroscientific
approach proved too difficult to
172
00:10:00,803 --> 00:10:02,873
control, far too unpredictable.
173
00:10:03,213 --> 00:10:06,404
But the psychological
principle remained sound.
174
00:10:06,943 --> 00:10:10,143
You can engineer media to produce
specific behavioral outcomes.
175
00:10:10,353 --> 00:10:14,294
You can design interactive experiences
that leave people more vulnerable to
176
00:10:14,294 --> 00:10:18,023
suggestion, more compliant, and far
more fractured in their thinking.
177
00:10:18,284 --> 00:10:22,783
More alone, even when they're together,
scrolling, clicking, and refreshing.
178
00:10:24,023 --> 00:10:24,923
Seem familiar?
179
00:10:25,806 --> 00:10:28,966
The programmers who worked on Mindframe
went into commercial game design.
180
00:10:28,976 --> 00:10:32,246
At least three of them founded
companies that became significant
181
00:10:32,246 --> 00:10:33,336
players in the industry.
182
00:10:33,726 --> 00:10:37,396
One worked on early versions of what
became social media architecture,
183
00:10:37,556 --> 00:10:42,616
specifically the feedback loops
and variable reward systems that
184
00:10:42,616 --> 00:10:44,065
keep you checking your phone.
185
00:10:44,326 --> 00:10:47,995
Another developed biometric
profiling for advertising companies.
186
00:10:48,445 --> 00:10:51,605
A third disappeared from
public record in 1987.
187
00:10:51,835 --> 00:10:53,836
Last known location, Moscow.
188
00:10:54,095 --> 00:10:56,945
Last confirmed employment, classified.
189
00:10:57,605 --> 00:10:59,906
What about the cabinet itself?
190
00:11:00,256 --> 00:11:02,596
There are accounts of sightings.
191
00:11:02,945 --> 00:11:08,235
A cabinet matching Polybius' exact
specifications appeared in a private
192
00:11:08,236 --> 00:11:11,685
collector's warehouse in Seattle in 1995.
193
00:11:12,105 --> 00:11:15,795
Another in a game
archive in Japan in 2004.
194
00:11:16,115 --> 00:11:20,276
One was allegedly purchased by a venture
capitalist in Silicon Valley in 2013.
195
00:11:21,065 --> 00:11:22,695
These could be coincidences.
196
00:11:23,095 --> 00:11:28,765
These could be urban legend accumulation,
or these could be controlled field tests
197
00:11:29,025 --> 00:11:34,185
running continuously decades after the
initial authorization, just smaller, just
198
00:11:34,195 --> 00:11:36,646
quieter, and just far less documented.
199
00:11:37,236 --> 00:11:41,065
What they learned from Polybius
is still being applied.
200
00:11:41,405 --> 00:11:45,765
Every infinite scroll, every algorithmic
feed, every variable reward schedule,
201
00:11:45,995 --> 00:11:48,366
these aren't accidents of design.
202
00:11:48,715 --> 00:11:51,945
They're applications of behavioral
science that was developed and
203
00:11:51,945 --> 00:11:55,515
tested in classified programs
that you were never told existed.
204
00:11:56,206 --> 00:11:59,536
Sidney Gottlieb's methodology
didn't die with MKUltra.
205
00:11:59,905 --> 00:12:01,395
It just got scaled.
206
00:12:01,895 --> 00:12:03,595
The cabinet was the prototype.
207
00:12:03,626 --> 00:12:07,345
Everything that came after
was the scaled deployment.
208
00:12:07,975 --> 00:12:10,005
And here's the final moral trap.
209
00:12:10,335 --> 00:12:11,935
You can't unlearn this.
210
00:12:12,205 --> 00:12:12,485
Nope.
211
00:12:12,865 --> 00:12:13,215
Sorry.
212
00:12:13,515 --> 00:12:18,046
You can't unknow that the systems you're
using were potentially engineered by
213
00:12:18,046 --> 00:12:22,885
people who understood how to manipulate
your psychology at a neurological level.
214
00:12:23,205 --> 00:12:27,095
You can't go back to thinking that
technology is neutral, but you also
215
00:12:27,096 --> 00:12:29,315
can't prove it, not conclusively anyway.
216
00:12:29,975 --> 00:12:32,685
The classified records won't
be declassified for another
217
00:12:32,685 --> 00:12:34,415
twenty years, if they ever are.
218
00:12:34,955 --> 00:12:38,655
You're left in a state of informed
uncertainty, knowing enough to be
219
00:12:38,655 --> 00:12:41,005
paranoid, but not enough to be certain.
220
00:12:41,306 --> 00:12:42,415
That's the real design.
221
00:12:43,335 --> 00:12:46,005
The question isn't
whether Polybius was real.
222
00:12:46,445 --> 00:12:51,345
The question is, what have you
already been playing all this time?
223
00:12:52,545 --> 00:12:55,786
This has been Some Unapproved Thinking.
224
00:12:56,886 --> 00:12:58,185
Tracy out.
225
00:12:58,565 --> 00:13:01,416
If this story didn't sit
right with you, good.
226
00:13:01,905 --> 00:13:03,295
You're not here to be comforted.
227
00:13:03,776 --> 00:13:06,265
You're here to see what others overlook.
228
00:13:06,685 --> 00:13:09,266
Thanks for exploring
some unapproved thinking.
229
00:13:09,725 --> 00:13:13,125
Learn more at someunapprovedthinking.com.
230
00:13:13,636 --> 00:13:15,446
New episodes drop weekly.
231
00:13:15,905 --> 00:13:21,355
Subscribe, share, and keep questioning
because the pattern's still playing
232
00:13:21,356 --> 00:13:24,086
out, and next time, we're going deeper