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As I understand it, it is an optimistic experiment: almost a third of people can think for themselves and won't torture only because they were given an order.
by d0mine 8y ago
As I understand it, it is an optimistic experiment: almost a third of people can think for themselves and won't torture only because they were given an order.
Some of us are not automatons :) https://www.xkcd.com/610/ https://www.xkcd.com/610/
- anigbrowl 8y agoI fail to see what's 'optimistic' about that. By those numbers, independent-minded people are outnumbered 2:1 by tools. Those numbers are likely way off the mark given both the tiny number and relative homogeneity of subjects in the original study, and the decades that have since passed with all the social and cultural changes. But the fact that so many populist politicians choose to predicate their campaigns on increasing animus towards some marginalized social group suggests there's quite a lot of people who either don't want to think for themselves or select for authority figures that will permit them to indulge their worst impulses.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoIt's not obvious that it's a binary classification of people into buckets labeled "independent thinker" and "drone / tool". Surely every social person participates in groupthink to some contextually-dependent degree.
- anigbrowl 8y agoIt becomes binary when people are ordered to harm someone else and must decide whether or not to obey. I picked the word tool not as an insult but as a descriptor of a person who has allowed themselves to be so instrumentalized.