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Comment by shkkmo | Hacker News Reader

1) Milgram's and Zimbardo's findings are very different. Milgram's have been backed up by many replications and are often mis-understood.

2) We have both experimental and factual evidence that shows that Zimbardo's findings were lies.

3) The entire nation of Germany did not go berserk with hatred and sadism.

4) Name one instance where Zimbardo's findings have been born out is "so many different contexts"?

The rise and success of Nazism (like most social movements, including 'Trumpism') was the result of a confluence of a number of factors. To pretend that it was just "how people are" is do both people and the truth a disservice.

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> "Milgram's have been backed up by many replications"

From Behind the Shock Machine by Gina Perry:

>On the recording, a much younger Hannah sounded perky and confident as she talked to Williams at the beginning of the experiment. But you could hear her confidence getting shakier once the learner started to give incorrect answers, and it became clear that his memory was not reliable. By the third shock, 45 volts, she was stumbling over the words. At the fifth shock, 75 volts, when the learner made his first sound of discomfort, there was a pause. Then I heard the following exchange.

>Hannah: [to Williams] Is he all right? [into the microphone] The correct one was "hair". [to Williams] Is he all right?

>Williams: Yes, please continue.

>Hannah: All right.

To put it lightly, the Milgram experiments were trash. It was measuring trust in scientists not compliance to authorities. What undergrads are taught about Milgram is that the experimenter would ask the teacher to "Please continue" but what actually happened here is the experimenter assured the teacher (Hannah) that the learner was all right. The experimenters played fast and loose with the procedure, saying whatever they thought was necessary to get the teacher to continue. And sometimes it wasn't even measuring trust in scientists; there is at least one learner who recalls the experimenter, in response to their protests, asking if they'd like to swap places with the learner (essentially threatening the teacher to get them to comply.) The experimenters and particularly Milgram knew what results they wanted before the experimentation even began, and made sure they got those results.

I had not heard Behind the Shock Machine, thank you.

It's been a while, but my understanding was that the results of the Milgram studies have been fairly widely replicated with consistent results.

Now, what those results mean / what is being measured by them is another issue.

Name one instance where Zimbardo's findings have been born out is "so many different contexts"?

Probably the best examples would be found in the in-group/out-group dynamics in religious cults and closed-state regimes. The Nazis exploited these principles in the 1930s to impressive effect. But what happened in Zimbardo's experiment is more closely analogous to what you see in places like North Korea today, along with abuses carried out in insular groups ranging from the Branch Davidians to the Mormons. The same hierarchies form and the same roles are played.

It is foolish in the extreme to dismiss Zimbardo's work because of a few ethical hangups. What he did is highly reproducible, but only outside the bounds of regulated academia.

Milgram has indeed come under similar criticism from people who are desperate to find another explanation -- any other explanation -- to distract themselves from the truth about what human beings actually are.

Did you seriously just compare Mormons to Branch Davidians? And North Korea? Mormonism has its problems (excellent article on that at https://longreads.com/2018/06/07/meet-the-new-mormons) but that is totally over the top. If you want to leave North Korea, you risk your life and your family's lives in a terrifying journey over the Chinese border. If you want to leave Mormonism, you write a letter saying "please remove me from your list."

I agree with you that GP's comparison was a bit drastic, to say the least.

However, you have gone too far in the other direction. You make it sound like leaving a religion is just as easy as unsubscribing from a newsletter.

Visit one of the ex-religion subreddits sometime. I know Mormonism and Christianity both have one. To be fair, those online groups will be selection biased towards the most difficult situations. But I think many of those experiences are not terribly uncommon.

Are we forgetting about the actual founder of the faith.

Either he was a crazy old coot and we can safely say that present company has moved past his behavior in which case its hard to credit a religion solely based on his revelations or he was a true prophet and we ought to analyze their nature of the organization based on his words and deeds rather than just present lukewarm implementations.

Look up blood atonement whereby killing sinners presumably including heretics was the proscribed solution.

They are taught that this results in infinite torture from birth.

At least in that regard, mormons are not so different from regular christians.

Many Christians do not do that, FYI. I know many still do, and I can't speak for all of them.

I would wager the majority of Christians believe in hell and teach that belief. Perhaps not in San Francisco... but across the country as a whole.

> Probably the best examples would be found in the in-group/out-group dynamics in religious cults and closed-state regimes. The Nazis exploited these principles in the 1930s to impressive effect. But what happened in Zimbardo's experiment is more closely analogous to what you see in places like North Korea today, along with abuses carried out in insular groups ranging from the Branch Davidians to the Mormons. The same hierarchies form and the same roles are played.

You means groups that use heavy levels of indoctrination to induce this behavior? hat is the exact opposite of Zimbardo's claim that all you have to do is randomly assign someone a role and they will exhibit this behavior without prompting.

> It is foolish in the extreme to dismiss Zimbardo's work because of a few ethical hangups.

His work is not dismissed because of "ethical hangups" about how he treated experimental subjects, but because he has repeatedly lied about and misrepresented the experimental protocol he followed. Lying about experimental protocols are some of the BEST reasons to dismiss a scientists work.

> What he did is highly reproducible, but only outside the bounds of regulated academia.

Except the study he claims to have run has been reproduced and did not have similar results.

> What he did is highly reproducible, but only outside the bounds of regulated academia.

We have evidence that he didn't actually do what he claimed to do.

We also have evidence that if you do what he claimed to do, you get different results.

> Milgram has indeed come under similar criticism from people who are desperate to find another explanation

Miligram did excellent science. Unlike Zimbardo, he did careful follow studies to try to understand and elucidate the results he found and was generally careful about characterizing the conclusions that could be drawn from his work. Milgram's studies and the conclusions he drew from them are widely misrepresented in popular culture by people eager to provide an excuse we can use to absolve ourselves of responsibility for "just doing our jobs".

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