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I think one of the subjects killed themselves due to participation because of the deep inner tension caused by our struggles with obedience versus conscience. T

I think one of the subjects killed themselves due to participation because of the deep inner tension caused by our struggles with obedience versus conscience. The results of the studies bear that out - people largely obey authority unto causing serious harm, that's what the studies tell us, and it's not an inordinate stretch to say that this dissonance causes a person to feel an urge to commit suicide such that, if few people obeyed authority giving malicious orders, they would feel little dissonance and would be way less likely to off themselves. And that's the connection between the results and the ethics. It may not be awfully scientific of me, but I'd yell you out of the quietest room on earth for trying to claim the results have no bearing on that.

scoofy 5y ago
"We can't know the results because we can't repeat the experiment," is exactly what I'd yell right back. Repeatability is required for falsifiability, and falsifiablity is required for empirical knowledge, period.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Then run the experiments again in secret. Find people who are so passionate about your epistemological model they are willing to take the risk of renegade experiments on themselves. That would be an actual adventure, much better than roleplaying a yelling match at each other in comments sections. EDIT: Hell, pretend play is for weaklings, I'll be your confederate jumbo-dumbo test taker faker, and let's go a step beyond the original experiment, let's have me actually suffer serious shocks in our Milgram Repro, for your n >= 30 guineau pigs to see. Then we'll know even better and that can be the new standard. And I'll be your confederate convict prime, set aside in especially horrible solitary confinement conditions for the Stanford Prison Repro. And when you watch me and others actually suffer horribly for days on end due to your decisions, I'm sure you'll simply have zero suicidal ideation, and you'll repeat your "we can't know!!!11!!1" drivel.
  - kinjba11 5y ago
    The Stanford Prison experiment was theater. Milgram was only slightly better. Never mind being unethical, they are just poor science. This is the core of the replication crisis in psychology: theatrical, grandiose claims get all the attention and people leap through hoops to defend them. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Repeatable and repeated are not the same thing. The Milgram experiment is repeatable in principle. It is falsifiable. The reasons to doubt the claimed results are not because we can't do it again, but because of the details of how it was done. We also should not do it again.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  It's like saying that we can't know whether parachutes reduce injuries when falling from airplanes because we've never had a proper experiment to verify this and most likely won't ever run one. We can know all kinds of things with a reasonable degree of certainty even if we can't or won't verify them experimentally.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    >because we've never had a proper experiment to verify this and most likely won't ever run one. Isn't it trivial to drop something out of an airplane along with the same thing but with a parachute and measure the impact velocity?
    - jstanley 5y ago
      But that doesn't prove anything about how effective they are at preventing injury.
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. We can prove that a parachute allows people to survive jumping out of an airplane with limited injuries. They are effective.
        jstanley 5y ago
        For example, the fact that the impact velocity of some random object is reduced doesn't mean it is reduced from a harmful range to a non-harmful range. It might be equally harmful or equally harmless either way, or there might be additional factors at play in the case of human parachutists that we haven't thought about yet. We don't have enough data on people jumping out of planes without parachutes to conclude that the parachutes are actually working. They could just be superstition.
        goatlover 5y ago
        That's absurd. The mechanics of gravity, parachutes and jumping out of planes is well understood. Plenty of people have fallen from heights without parachutes, and we know what happens to them and why (acceleration of gravity and the force impact on their bodies). We also know how parachutes, used properly, mostly prevent that sort of harm (slow people down enough to prevent excess force when impacting the ground). There's nothing superstitious about it.
- thejackgoode 5y ago
  One aspect that is special to social sciences and not discussed enough, (and what was partially mentioned in this thread) is that in this case science is built on moving grounds. Viral papers influence society, society itself changes due to other factors. Metrics become goals. And that's why they have a time constraint for the period when falsification is possible. This continuous validity constraint is unknown, but it exists for every social phenomenon.
  - scoofy 5y ago
    I never thought about that. Like soros’ market reflexivity, but for science. Makes a lot of sense.
    - thejackgoode 5y ago
      Yes, economic behavior is a good example of this. There are also countless social strategies that are in constant competition. When you provide "objective" proof of some behavior being beneficial, it becomes a competitive advantage for others to have, a "life hack" that you should adopt. And this influx of alien adopters often corrupts it, rendering less useful, skewing the study results finally. Meditation and mindfulness practice in general is a good recent example of such thing happening.
- ConceptJunkie 5y ago
  If you ask me, all of civilization is a continuous exercise in repeating the Milgram experiment in more and more extreme ways.

scoofy 5y ago

"We can't know the results because we can't repeat the experiment," is exactly what I'd yell right back. Repeatability is required for falsifiability, and falsifiablity is required for empirical knowledge, period.

JetAlone 5y ago
Then run the experiments again in secret. Find people who are so passionate about your epistemological model they are willing to take the risk of renegade experiments on themselves. That would be an actual adventure, much better than roleplaying a yelling match at each other in comments sections. EDIT: Hell, pretend play is for weaklings, I'll be your confederate jumbo-dumbo test taker faker, and let's go a step beyond the original experiment, let's have me actually suffer serious shocks in our Milgram Repro, for your n >= 30 guineau pigs to see. Then we'll know even better and that can be the new standard. And I'll be your confederate convict prime, set aside in especially horrible solitary confinement conditions for the Stanford Prison Repro. And when you watch me and others actually suffer horribly for days on end due to your decisions, I'm sure you'll simply have zero suicidal ideation, and you'll repeat your "we can't know!!!11!!1" drivel.
- kinjba11 5y ago
  The Stanford Prison experiment was theater. Milgram was only slightly better. Never mind being unethical, they are just poor science. This is the core of the replication crisis in psychology: theatrical, grandiose claims get all the attention and people leap through hoops to defend them. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...
robotresearcher 5y ago
Repeatable and repeated are not the same thing. The Milgram experiment is repeatable in principle. It is falsifiable. The reasons to doubt the claimed results are not because we can't do it again, but because of the details of how it was done. We also should not do it again.
PeterisP 5y ago
It's like saying that we can't know whether parachutes reduce injuries when falling from airplanes because we've never had a proper experiment to verify this and most likely won't ever run one. We can know all kinds of things with a reasonable degree of certainty even if we can't or won't verify them experimentally.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >because we've never had a proper experiment to verify this and most likely won't ever run one. Isn't it trivial to drop something out of an airplane along with the same thing but with a parachute and measure the impact velocity?
  - jstanley 5y ago
    But that doesn't prove anything about how effective they are at preventing injury.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean. We can prove that a parachute allows people to survive jumping out of an airplane with limited injuries. They are effective.
      - jstanley 5y ago
        For example, the fact that the impact velocity of some random object is reduced doesn't mean it is reduced from a harmful range to a non-harmful range. It might be equally harmful or equally harmless either way, or there might be additional factors at play in the case of human parachutists that we haven't thought about yet. We don't have enough data on people jumping out of planes without parachutes to conclude that the parachutes are actually working. They could just be superstition.
        goatlover 5y ago
        That's absurd. The mechanics of gravity, parachutes and jumping out of planes is well understood. Plenty of people have fallen from heights without parachutes, and we know what happens to them and why (acceleration of gravity and the force impact on their bodies). We also know how parachutes, used properly, mostly prevent that sort of harm (slow people down enough to prevent excess force when impacting the ground). There's nothing superstitious about it.
thejackgoode 5y ago
One aspect that is special to social sciences and not discussed enough, (and what was partially mentioned in this thread) is that in this case science is built on moving grounds. Viral papers influence society, society itself changes due to other factors. Metrics become goals. And that's why they have a time constraint for the period when falsification is possible. This continuous validity constraint is unknown, but it exists for every social phenomenon.
- scoofy 5y ago
  I never thought about that. Like soros’ market reflexivity, but for science. Makes a lot of sense.
  - thejackgoode 5y ago
    Yes, economic behavior is a good example of this. There are also countless social strategies that are in constant competition. When you provide "objective" proof of some behavior being beneficial, it becomes a competitive advantage for others to have, a "life hack" that you should adopt. And this influx of alien adopters often corrupts it, rendering less useful, skewing the study results finally. Meditation and mindfulness practice in general is a good recent example of such thing happening.
ConceptJunkie 5y ago
If you ask me, all of civilization is a continuous exercise in repeating the Milgram experiment in more and more extreme ways.