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> People are still essentially good. Experiment indicates that the majority (65%) are not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.

> People are still essentially good. Experiment indicates that the majority (65%) are not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment I am sorry to be a downer, and I agree that it is nice to pretend that people are essentially good. Ignoring the Milgram results, however, leads us to forget why we have to maintain societies with complex crime deterrent schemes, and why we should not trust anonymous individuals who cannot be located for punishment. "[H]alf ... were female, and their rate of obedience was virtually identical to that of the male participants." "Where participants had to physically hold the "learner's" arm onto a shock plate, ... 30 percent of participants completed the experiment."

Steve0 15y ago
That doesn't seem to be the conclusion of said experiment. "In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment." IMHO Milgram's experiment has more to do with obedience than ethics.
- alanh 15y ago
  So people know what they do is wrong and do it anyway. How does this make people "good"? It makes them knowingly evil.
  - Hyena 15y ago
    Or they felt trapped by their agreement to participate in the experiment. They made an offer to annul the contract, which would indicate that they were following through with what they had agreed to do. Moreover, the situation they were in was greatly outside their experience with what people had ever asked them to do in fulfilling an agreement. If you promised someone "I'll do whatever it takes for you to have a good time while you're visiting", you probably aren't imagining that it will involve a triple homicide and a liquor store robbery. If it starts there, you'll likely refuse. But if you slowly build up to that, the pressure to keep complying with your agreement builds....
    - alanh 15y ago
      I am familiar with the psychological phenomenon you are referring to, but these people were not forced to do anything; they clearly considered it wrong; and yet they proceeded. Feeling trapped isn't being trapped. Being rude to a researcher is not as bad as physically injuring an innocent person. Excuses do not change the fundamental reality that people commonly do things they know to be wrong and suboptimal – we are so far from perfect agents! Improving this through rationality is the whole purpose of e.g. lesswrong.
      - Hyena 15y ago
        You mention LessWrong, very nice; then you know they were forced: any time you deploy the Dark Arts to manipulate someone's behavior, you undermine their free will. "Choice" wasn't part of it, or at least not the largest part.
dbingham 15y ago
"I don't think that means what you think it means." That experiment deals with ability to disobey authority, not with the basic goodness of the people performing the actions. Nearly 100% of the people performing the actions questioned what they were doing. That indicates they knew it was wrong, instinctively and didn't wish to do it. But we are well trained to listen to authority, and the authority figure was telling them to continue. This actually backs up the idea that people are essentially good. But it also provides evidence for the idea that most people can be easily lead into violating their natural conscience. Studies of innate "goodness" performed on children reveal that most people, from birth, have an innate moral conscience that we would consider 'good'. I'll see if I can find a link to back this up. Here we go: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1311784203-lIy+svrV0/54Iv1qUUfs6A http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?adxnn...
- mcantelon 15y ago
  I wouldn't call someone that acts against their conscience "good" (unless their survival is at stake).
  - sukuriant 15y ago
    Depending on what you're thinking the authority can do, "for survival's stake" may very well be exactly what those people in the Milgram Experiment were experiencing. "No, I-I can't, b-but he's in authority, and I'll be in trouble if I don't, so", he cringes, "I must."
    - mcantelon 15y ago
      The Milgram Experiment doesn't indicate that it in any way threatened the participants for non-compliance, yet these people were willing to knowingly endanger someone else's life. I think why they were willing to do that lies more with the belief that the authority would take the blame rather than any reasonable fear of punishment from the authority.
      - 15y ago
SatvikBeri 15y ago
People react wildly differently in different circumstances. This has been proven over and over. The Milgram experiment was heavily designed to influence how people act. A twist in circumstances can easily get 100% of people to do the "right" thing. If you only look at extreme cases like this, you won't get an accurate idea of human behavior. I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people, in normal circumstances, are essentially good.
- AretNCarlsen 15y ago
  Certainly, you can get nearly 100% of people to do the right thing most of the time. That is what judicial deterrents accomplish. Those don't work if people are anonymous, however. The Milgram experiment was not intended to be "extreme". They expected less than 3% of participants to actually torture their (fake) victim to death. The U.S. group was to act as a control, such that they could proceed to compare results in Germany, for instance, where the Holocaust had so recently occurred. Following the unexpected American results, Milgram simply did not bother to perform the actual intended experiment in Germany.
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    Every day I see people act nice and behave well even though it would be trivial to be a dick or a thief with no appreciable consequences. In real life, under ordinary conditions, most people simply act decent and it does not seem to be fear of punishment.
barrkel 15y ago
That experiment shows you exactly the opposite, rather: that people who seem essentially bad (i.e. bad in essence) may simply be responding to circumstances, incentives and social pressure.
lwhi 15y ago
Most people are able to think 'this would make me feel awful, I don't want to make someone else feel this way' - those that aren't are usually canny enough to pretend. People might not be essentially 'good' - but most people are rational and lucid enough to stay within the bounds of what's socially acceptable .. even if they're unable to empathise. This was a random nutter / group of nutters .. stuff like this, unfortunately, happens all the time - although, thankfully, on a minimal scale. The issue for me, is related to some fundamental flaws in AirBnB's business model .. flaws which are seem largely absent from the alternative of CouchSurfing.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
zenica 15y ago
I agree. They should do the same experiment and replace authority with $$. Maybe they did but I cannot find reference. I think you will see 60% of people will do horrendous things for a little bit of money.

Steve0 15y ago

That doesn't seem to be the conclusion of said experiment. "In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment." IMHO Milgram's experiment has more to do with obedience than ethics.

alanh 15y ago
So people know what they do is wrong and do it anyway. How does this make people "good"? It makes them knowingly evil.
- Hyena 15y ago
  Or they felt trapped by their agreement to participate in the experiment. They made an offer to annul the contract, which would indicate that they were following through with what they had agreed to do. Moreover, the situation they were in was greatly outside their experience with what people had ever asked them to do in fulfilling an agreement. If you promised someone "I'll do whatever it takes for you to have a good time while you're visiting", you probably aren't imagining that it will involve a triple homicide and a liquor store robbery. If it starts there, you'll likely refuse. But if you slowly build up to that, the pressure to keep complying with your agreement builds....
  - alanh 15y ago
    I am familiar with the psychological phenomenon you are referring to, but these people were not forced to do anything; they clearly considered it wrong; and yet they proceeded. Feeling trapped isn't being trapped. Being rude to a researcher is not as bad as physically injuring an innocent person. Excuses do not change the fundamental reality that people commonly do things they know to be wrong and suboptimal – we are so far from perfect agents! Improving this through rationality is the whole purpose of e.g. lesswrong.
    - Hyena 15y ago
      You mention LessWrong, very nice; then you know they were forced: any time you deploy the Dark Arts to manipulate someone's behavior, you undermine their free will. "Choice" wasn't part of it, or at least not the largest part.

dbingham 15y ago

"I don't think that means what you think it means." That experiment deals with ability to disobey authority, not with the basic goodness of the people performing the actions. Nearly 100% of the people performing the actions questioned what they were doing. That indicates they knew it was wrong, instinctively and didn't wish to do it. But we are well trained to listen to authority, and the authority figure was telling them to continue. This actually backs up the idea that people are essentially good. But it also provides evidence for the idea that most people can be easily lead into violating their natural conscience. Studies of innate "goodness" performed on children reveal that most people, from birth, have an innate moral conscience that we would consider 'good'. I'll see if I can find a link to back this up. Here we go: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1311784203-lIy+svrV0/54Iv1qUUfs6A http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?adxnn...

mcantelon 15y ago
I wouldn't call someone that acts against their conscience "good" (unless their survival is at stake).
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Depending on what you're thinking the authority can do, "for survival's stake" may very well be exactly what those people in the Milgram Experiment were experiencing. "No, I-I can't, b-but he's in authority, and I'll be in trouble if I don't, so", he cringes, "I must."
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    The Milgram Experiment doesn't indicate that it in any way threatened the participants for non-compliance, yet these people were willing to knowingly endanger someone else's life. I think why they were willing to do that lies more with the belief that the authority would take the blame rather than any reasonable fear of punishment from the authority.
    - 15y ago

SatvikBeri 15y ago

People react wildly differently in different circumstances. This has been proven over and over. The Milgram experiment was heavily designed to influence how people act. A twist in circumstances can easily get 100% of people to do the "right" thing. If you only look at extreme cases like this, you won't get an accurate idea of human behavior. I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people, in normal circumstances, are essentially good.

AretNCarlsen 15y ago
Certainly, you can get nearly 100% of people to do the right thing most of the time. That is what judicial deterrents accomplish. Those don't work if people are anonymous, however. The Milgram experiment was not intended to be "extreme". They expected less than 3% of participants to actually torture their (fake) victim to death. The U.S. group was to act as a control, such that they could proceed to compare results in Germany, for instance, where the Holocaust had so recently occurred. Following the unexpected American results, Milgram simply did not bother to perform the actual intended experiment in Germany.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  Every day I see people act nice and behave well even though it would be trivial to be a dick or a thief with no appreciable consequences. In real life, under ordinary conditions, most people simply act decent and it does not seem to be fear of punishment.

barrkel 15y ago

That experiment shows you exactly the opposite, rather: that people who seem essentially bad (i.e. bad in essence) may simply be responding to circumstances, incentives and social pressure.

lwhi 15y ago

Most people are able to think 'this would make me feel awful, I don't want to make someone else feel this way' - those that aren't are usually canny enough to pretend. People might not be essentially 'good' - but most people are rational and lucid enough to stay within the bounds of what's socially acceptable .. even if they're unable to empathise. This was a random nutter / group of nutters .. stuff like this, unfortunately, happens all the time - although, thankfully, on a minimal scale. The issue for me, is related to some fundamental flaws in AirBnB's business model .. flaws which are seem largely absent from the alternative of CouchSurfing.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

zenica 15y ago

I agree. They should do the same experiment and replace authority with $$. Maybe they did but I cannot find reference. I think you will see 60% of people will do horrendous things for a little bit of money.