What Aaron has done is reproduce here, on a small scale, Prof. Phillip Zambardo's famous "Stanford Prison Experiment."
http://www.prisonexp.org/
One of the most notorious psychology experiments ever conducted, it involved labelling one group of typical students as "guards" and a second group of students as the prisoners. In short order the "guards" became abusive and power-crazed and the prisoners became subservient and unhappy.
Labelling people is a very powerful thing. People accept labels and what they imply.
By dividing the posters here at PeakOil.com into "experts" and "non-experts" Aaron has created two classes of people and initiated a curious little experiment. Some people are preening and buying into their new status after having officially been labelled experts and others are irked at being left in the "lower class" of non-expert poster. (I'll admit it...I'm kinda irked myself.....Its just part of human nature).
It will be interesting to see if this turns out like Zambardo's experiment.
