I guess if I could truly know one thing that seems presently unknowable it would be why a person can believe something that is extreme–even completely untrue–and then that same person can believe, at a different time, something that is completely opposed to the original thought. How can we be programmed, deprogrammed and then programmed again? We may now the chemistry behind it, but why are some people more prone to these reactions than others? Why are we more susceptible at certain stages of our lives? Memory isn’t elastic for most of us, but it seems like the part of the brain that governs belief systems is. When I think about those questions it feels to me like AI that truly operates with the understanding of a human being is so far away. It seems that though we know more than nothing, we only know very little.

An example: To the Manson Family members, it seemed perfectly reasonable to follow the orders of a pathetic little man who wanted them to invade homes, murder the occupants in brutal fashion and scrawl horrifying messages on the walls using their victims’ blood. These were the children of good homes who, if circumstances were different, if they came of age in a less-turbulent time, probably would have been filing law-school applications or joining the Peace Corps. Sure, there was a ton of drug use that threw their chemistry out of whack, but plenty of people who haven’t used drugs join cults and or accept cultures with preposterous rules and structures. They enter into a delusion and embrace it. The human brain is such a complex and mysterious thing that it staggers me. I feel bankrupt when trying to comprehend it.

In 1976, former Manson acolyte Susan Atkins, a murderer who died in prison in 2009, who threw her life away and took the lives of others for no good reason, discussed the horrors she’d committed. She had changed her mind by then, but it was far too late.