[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shakespear1', 'S')ome years ago I heard an interview on Pacifica Radio of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Then I read his book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society".

Some things I knew intuitively but his analysis clarified a lot of things. I highly recommend it.

[WildRose]

I'm wondering why anyone would even agree to take part in such a study? Agreeing to administer electric shocks to a person because they didn't memorize a list of words, or whatever? Even more amazing is that they were told the alleged victim had a mild heart condition, which means that, theoretically, shocks could possibly cause a disruption in the person's heart rhythm?

I don't know; I'm thinking that once they agreed to take part in the study, they didn't back down because they didn't want to be seen as "weak" somehow themselves, by not being able to keep on sending the shocks. This seems similar to a mob mentality thing, where a group of people will swarm a victim because one or two in the group want to inflict harm and the others would not instigate such an attack but go along with the instigators anyway, for fear of appearing weaker.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'T')he sheepdog analogy was originally put forward by Jeff Cooper.

[gg3]

MaxPower29: That sounds like a workplace that's a setup for long term health problems. What industry are you in? At my company (installing & programming PBX systems) we say "no blame, no pain, just fix it." We have our own stress sources (such as last-minute emergency repair cases and money crunch from time to time) but people pull together as a team and that is critical to getting the job done. The loyalty factor is almost like extended family.

Re. Grossman: He's a former Army Ranger. Those are the guys who go in and do the heavy lifting, i.e. first ones behind enemy lines, calling in targeting coordinates, close-quarters combat with hostile forces on patrol etc. The degree of self-discipline it takes to make Ranger would make most of us look like chronic stoners by comparison.

I'm going to guess that one of his constant points is that society needs to have very tight control over the parameters under which its members can kill other humans: tough military discipline for example, the "just war theory," rules of engagement for police dealing with dangerous suspects, and so on. And that there should be a comparatively small warrior class, and that the rest of society should be shielded from the occasionally necessary brutality (necessary as in defense of nation from attack) involved in taking other human lives.

This would be in contrast to the "regular Army" culture which more readily embraces the idea of soldiering skills being widely distributed throughout society but at a lower level of intensity.

(Personally I see the need for both the elite warrior and the citizen soldier, and also the principled pacifist. All of these roles have to operate in a careful balance to produce the outcome of a society that is on one hand reluctant to use force but on the other hand capable of doing so when attacked, with a degree of ferocity that actively deters would-be aggressors. Switzerland is an interesting case to study, though one also needs to parse out the geopolitical elements.)

About Eichmann, that is very interesting, and it also underlines the evils that occur when paperwork takes over. Think of today's health insurance industry: an entire industry devoted to making itself an obstructive middleman that spends money preventing patients getting treatment rather than spending the money providing treatment. And it accomplishes this by creating mountains upon mountains of paperwork: probably enough each year to fill a traffic-jam of recycling trucks from here to the moon and back a few times over.

Back to Milgram, Burger, et. al.:

One of the outcomes of the Milgram study was that after the study was completed and unblinded (the subjects were told what was actually going on), some of the subjects became seriously depressed and one or more ended up committing suicide. This is one of the reasons why university research committies went all cowardly for about 30 years and didn't allow these types of studies.

Fortunately I see a trend in the opposite direction at this point, including the psilocybin studies and the Burger study. All of these, no doubt using explicitly informed consent, put people at greater risks than conventional perception/cognition studies. But as in many other areas of science, there are important things to learn that call for substantial risks, and the principle of consenting adults applies here. (The risks are less than mountain climbing and the benefits are greater in any case.)

The question remains though: What are the factors that motivate individuals to be able to give the orders to commit torture and otherwise inflict harm from a distance?

I suspect what we're looking at there is, a combination of a lower sense of personal responsibility and a heightened desire for control over others. The distancing factor is no doubt relevant, as is lack of empathy (internal distance, in a way).

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Tenth Level, was a 1975 TV dramatization of the experiment starring William Shatner, Ossie Davis, and John Travolta.

[gg3]

Yo Dude-

Transhumanism is basically a religion based on the promise of high-tech immortality. But it can't deliver. I can go into this in detail some day if you're interested.

People certainly are capable of anything. Last night I read about a 19-year-old Marine who is up for a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor. Insurgents tossed a grenade into his vehicle. He threw himself on the grenade to protect his fellow warriors. A day or two ago a guy, just a random dude, jumped onto a subway track to rescue someone who had fallen unconscious and fallen into the trackway. He shielded the person in the 20" gully between the tracks. They both came out unharmed. Yes, people are capable of anything.

As for mystical reprogramming, I can back that up with psychopharmacology and neurophysiology. But my point about a balance between warriors and pacifists stands here (posting immediately above). Too many pacifists and you get wiped out by others when you don't defend yourselves. Too many warriors and you get wiped out by others when you try one too many aggressive wars. If there's a balance, you maintain an effective defense without taking reckless risks.

I would like to see a variation on the Milgram / Burger experiments where both the shocker and the shockee are actors, and the actual research subjects sit in chairs in the same room "waiting their turn" to be the shocker. At what point do they a) opt out, or b) intervene to stop the shocker from shocking. And how is that modified by various loading stimuli such as reading a book, watching TV, playing a video game, or having forms to fill out? And how is it modified by distance from the event, i.e. waiting in same room vs. waiting in room just outside but within view.

BTW, I read the Stanford prison experiment also. In fact I read news reports of Stanford, Milgram, and also Jose Delgato's Electrified Bull experiment when I was about 9 years old. The Stanford experiment was written up in Life magazine when it was a more-respectable news magazine thirty-something years ago. Yes this stuff made a lasting impression on me. I suppose you could call it being vaccinated against totalitarian memes.

[TheDude]

I'd read about the electrical implant stuff but had forgotten about Delgado himself. Creepy shit.
I don't really place much faith in transhumanism either, just gotta have faith in something. What'll get us through the next 1,000 years? Ridiculous to even worry about it? I hope your vaccination holds out against totalitarians, they're coming to the USA soon enough - who here agrees that they've arrived already?
It's impressive how doggedly people will stick to their guns. You have Jews that still have a beef with Babylon. If we could only get people riled up about waste!

[max_power29]

Triple post! how does this happen?!

[max_power29]

I love that part on the ghostbusters where the guy is getting shocked by one of the ghostbusters even though he is getting the answers right (guessing what shape is on cards) but the ghostbuster was saying he was wrong and shocking him for fun. Then when the attractive chick was getting the answers wrong he was lying to her and telling her how good she was. That was such a funny scene!

"The three main characters illustrate three ways of not using science for the benefit of mankind. Peter Venkman (A delightfully droll Bill Murray) uses it as a way to pick up sexy young women, as in the wickedly funny electro-shock treatment scene. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) plunges into science as a substitute for anything else in life, and Egon uses it to avoid other people. The three characters shouldn't work together, but they do, with Bill Murray getting the most succulent sarcastic lines. The other two get the lion's share of exposition and cheerfully hilarious technobabble that would make Star Trek cry itself to sleep."-Scott MacDonald

[medicvet]

I am very familiar with both Milgrams experiments and the Stanford prison experiments. Now apply both to Abu Ghraib. There you have regular soldiers who are being told by superiors and 'pros' to do a job, and they do so. It's not a nazi thing, it's a human condition, obedience to authority. It's drummed into us from a small age to listen to those in charge because they know more than we do, and only when we begin to value independent thought more than groupthink will it ever change. In other words, I won't hold my breath.

Another thing to think about is what happens in society to whistleblowers. Those who expose an injustice or a wrong are not rewarded, on the contrary, their lives are made a living hell. The question is not why do so few speak up, but why do any at all.

[kochevnik]

I spent two years in grad school dissecting experiments like this.

In a way, we should all be grateful that the vast majority of human beings are like this - one step above a lemming - because in the future most of them will simply launch themselves over a cliff one after the other.

My father always told me that 'you tend to think that most people are just like you - that they think and act in the same manner you do - but that's simply not the case.'

To be able to stand up to authority - to be able to reason logically at a relatively high level - to be able to see and relate the connections between disparate events and people - these are skills very, very few of the 'normal, regular' population have.

We've done psych / IQ polls here before and on the other PO boards and the results are most always the same - the people here represent a very rare, slim fraction of humanity - they have unique personalities and uniquely high IQ's.

If you're preparing, you need to understand at a very very deep, gut level, that in the end almost everyone will do EXACTLY what they are TOLD to do.

No one here has done a better job of trying to explain TRUE human nature than Jack. If you think he's full of shit, then my bet is you'd probably test out as a great button pusher. Enjoy your swim.

[mmasters]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', '[')url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment]Wiki[/url]

ABC News Repeats Experiment

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. Jerry Burger, Santa Clara University: "Virtually everyone says, 'Well, I wouldn't press those buttons.' In fact, most of us predict that nobody would press those buttons."

But time and time again people pressed the buttons. In fact, 70-percent pressed the highest, most dangerous button possible.

[AirlinePilot]

I have been saying here for quite some time, that whatever major problems unfold for us as a planet concerning PO, the cultural inertia or "lemming factor" is what is going to be one of the greatest obstacles to overcome. I totally agree with kochevnik above. There are very few who can put the pieces together, see what is really going on, and act on it, rather than blindly following the crowd over the cliff.

[jupiters_release]

The irony is morality started along with institutional christianity because it was a perfect way of preserving a morally dubious hierarchy. It really gets to the root of western history, our mythologies deny our realities, an anthropological recipe for insanity. On the same token blaming the majority of people who obey authority requires faith in another western product: free will.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stratovarius', 'I') learned about this a while back. The point of the experiment was not to show how sadistic people are. The whole point of it is to show how far people are willing to go to respond to authority.

There was a variation of the experiment where the victims of the experiment pushed a button which caused a signal to be sent to an actor who saw the signal then administered the shocks. The people being experimented on never directly shocked the people.

The number of people who proceeded all the way to something like 300 volts shot up.

Let's apply this to Nazi Germany. Hitler tells someone to do this, then that person does this, then that person does this, then that person does this and it takes a while before someone actually dies.

Whenever there is a break in command until the intended action is actually carried out, humans are more capable of doing horrendous things.

Even Eichmann was sickened when he saw the camps. All he had to do to committ mass murder was to shuffle papers and give orders when he was told to by authority and then those orders where than carried out by people who gave even more orders.

The shocking part of the experiment is that many people say, "Fuck that, I would just knock the fucking lights out of an experimenter who told me to do something like that." But you know what? Most people will carry out the experiment even to the very end, few people get up before even starting.

(Btw, I wasn't defending Nazis so please don't flame me.)

[Concerned]

HOW TO GET THEM TO 100%.

You need to have some sort of ethnic profile so for the experiment I would take an Arab male, heavily bearded and unhandsome. Dress in clothing that makes most suitable case for terrorist e.g. orange jump suit or turban or whatever the analyst say.

Get white guys and women. Somehow have them tour a facility and stumble across the interrogation of this "insurgent" or "terrorist" explain than said Arab has knowledge of bomb to go off in x hours in Iraq. Give some excuse why regular person administering the shocks is currently unavailable and request their help. Adding stern words regards the gravity of the situation, wanting to save lives and how this although risky is the only option available at short notice to help.

I WOULD BET YOU WOULD GET SO CLOSE TO 100% ZAPPING THIS GUY ALL THE WAY IT'S NOT FUNNY! All thanks to authority and following orders.

[bshirt]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('max_power29', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'A')pparently consistent with the original Milgram conclusions... 3/4 of you folks are more than willing to do evil upon one another.

Very nice... we're doomed.

[max_power29]

Using the word "lemming" is itself a "lemming" behavior. The lemmings killing themselves was a staged documentary. I think they were actually driven off of the cliff by a Disney film crew.

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('max_power29', 'U')sing the word "lemming" is itself a "lemming" behavior. The lemmings killing themselves was a staged documentary. I think they were actually driven off of the cliff by a Disney film crew.

[flametree]

Has anyone considered the 30% who did not complete the experiment? Why not? Saints? pacifists? people who had direct experince with inflicting pain? Are those with real power less likely to push the button? Obviously the powerless are more likely to push the button.

If about 70% of the population will do something and I can throughly agree with those figures, then the other 30% must deviate significantly from the norm. Why ? How? upbringing? biology? psych makeup?

Many fascinating questions about power. You could tell alot about a society from this type of experiment.