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This is extremely naive, have you ever worked in organizations? I'm not being facetious, but a little top-down pressure can go a long way. This isn't about a g

This is extremely naive, have you ever worked in organizations? I'm not being facetious, but a little top-down pressure can go a long way. This isn't about a grand conspiracy as much as it is about simple human nature, and the act to please those above you, keep your job, and move up yourself.

kartan 9y ago
> but a little top-down pressure can go a long way "The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- jonafato 9y ago
  It's a bit misleading to post that quote without including the validity section as well. People are not as quick to abandon their ethics as the original results of that experiment suggest. In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter". She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation." In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."
WillPostForFood 9y ago
Except the Tempe police don’t report to the governor, and the mayor of Tempe is a Democrat, and an opponent of the governor. There could have been as much pressure to make it look bad as to minimize it. But more likely there was mo pressure either way, and the police just blame pedestrians by default.

kartan 9y ago

> but a little top-down pressure can go a long way "The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

jonafato 9y ago
It's a bit misleading to post that quote without including the validity section as well. People are not as quick to abandon their ethics as the original results of that experiment suggest. In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter". She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation." In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."

WillPostForFood 9y ago

Except the Tempe police don’t report to the governor, and the mayor of Tempe is a Democrat, and an opponent of the governor. There could have been as much pressure to make it look bad as to minimize it. But more likely there was mo pressure either way, and the police just blame pedestrians by default.