system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do brainwashing techniques work? what is happening to your brain?
gpt
The theory is that everything you do is the result of Pavlovian training.  When you do something good, you get rewarded by your parents growing up and that behavior is reinforced by your brain.  Initially the reward is direct: you only help your mom with the dishes because she thanks you afterwards or because she gives you dessert.

Later the drive is self-fulfilling, doing things not for a reward but because you want to make your mom happy, though there may not necessarily be a direct reward.  The highest form of reward is doing something because it's right.  It is a type of reward that is given to yourself for following learned behavior of what is right and wrong.

Brainwashing is positive and negative reinforcement equivalent of direct reward (just in the opposite direction), but against the initial desires of the person.  While you receive the direct positive and negative reinforcement, there still remains the sense of right and wrong imprinted on you that will fight it.  Without any direct positive or negative reinforcement to reinforce old views, your mind gradually begins to incorporate a new sense of right and wrong until you no longer have conflict between the two.  The time it takes to brainwash someone is proportional to the amount of contrast of current views and how well-developed your sense of right and wrong is.

In other words, it is easy to "brainwash" someone into thinking that Frozen was a great film when he really disliked it, since it requires little contrast with existing ideas of right and wrong, but convincing a just person that it is okay to kill people would require far more effort.  Likewise, convincing a child to do something strongly contrasting their current ideas of right and wrong is far easier when their ideas of right and wrong are still developing.

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