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>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.
How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?
>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.
How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does eating fast food cause compliance to authority?
It might. Give people empty calories, take away the amino acids, vitamins, enzymes and other nutrients require for normal brain activity, and people get numbed and dumbed down, apathetic, weak. I have always stood up to authority and as I have improved my health, my will power and energy to stand up to authority has increased substantially.
I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.
If it existed, it seems like there would be evidence of this, in the literatures of educational research, training, and school management. I doubt there is conspiracy of school principals.
Schools are bureaucracies, and like every bureaucracy they have rules, often rules that seem nonsensical to people who haven't had to manage one. People feel like companies and other organizations are overly regimented too.
I've never understood how the classic interpretation of milgram that "people can become monster under authority" were remotely relevant. "hurting other people" is just a natural tendency inside at least a large proportion if not all humans. That's why we've had so many wars in the history, bullys at school and abuse in generally ANY UNREGULATED ENVIRONEMENT (chrisitan schools in the 50s in france for example, prisons…
I've never understood how the classic interpretation of milgram that "people can become monster under authority" were remotely relevant. "hurting other people" is just a natural tendency inside at least a large proportion if not all humans. That's why we've had so many wars in the history, bullys at school and abuse in generally ANY UNREGULATED ENVIRONEMENT (chrisitan schools in the 50s in france for example, prisons…
> "hurting other people" is just a natural tendency inside at least a large proportion if not all humans.
Many societies convince themselves that they are civilized and others are not.
I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.
> I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules. If it existed, it seems like there would be evidence of this, in the literatures of educational research, training, and school management. I doubt there is conspiracy of school principals. Schools are bureaucracies, and like every bureaucracy they have rules, often rules that seem nonsensical to people who haven't had to manage one. Pe…
>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.
How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?
Isn’t that a reproduction of the (well-criticized) Stanford experiment, which already didn’t need to be demonstrated because we already demonstrated it with the Nazi horror?
The distinction here is some further evidence of the actual mechanism through which this operates, and, critically, evidence that we can actively work to improve our ability to challenge immoral authority. The $64 billion dollar question, though, is whether anyone in society will see it as reasonable to expect themselves or anyone else to abandon their intuition which tells them to follow without question, the 'natur…
This is a hard task, you need cognitive resources (which means you have enough sleep, food, resilience, mental energy and a stress-free environment) and a lot of time and it's also very demanding to doubt essential beliefs about oneself and ones' own values.
So I don't really think that most people will do it. It's just too cumbersome and frankly, they have other things to do and the current mode works for them most of the time. When it fails, something like the Nazi regime happens (for various reasons, not only due to lack of advanced metacognition), but high expectations won't help us, anyway.
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I think a good solution is to build a system which generally uses balance mechanisms to keep power divided - we can't expect all people to be highly self-aware and self-critical. Unsurprisingly, that's exactly why we use democracies. Unfortunately, those systems stop to work when the majority of people lack advanced metacognition or don't have the required cognitive resources or lack information and understanding. Unfortunately, this can happen pretty fast.
>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.
How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?
I have no doubt that some people in the mental health care industry have entertained thoughts about how some mental health care medications can be used to make people more docile and obedient.
I'm not saying that is the intent. But the fact that such people have that kind of power without necessarily having all the checks and balances in place needed to ensure such scenarios do not occur, is concerning. At the very least, there should be ways to provide easy and accessible ways victims of such circumstance may challenge such treatment.
There often aren't ways, because once you are labeled crazy, most people in the mental health care industry think they know what is better for you than you do.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Meaning, it's easy to exploit a power dynamic when society assumes one side is good, and one side is bad.
I'm trying to be very delicate in my phrasing, because this is not a conspiracy theory. People can and do exploit such circumstance and pad it over with good intentions. And challenging these types of situations requires extensive care, rigor, and transparency - and a willingness to look at oneself from all perspectives.
And that's often a very difficult thing to do, for anyone.
When people are forced to examine themselves from sides that only tell them everything negative about them, the individual ego fights to survive. This is the case for anyone who has experienced stigma and discrimination. The choice is always, obey or be punished. And that's not fair, because the judgements that lead to these decisions are often collected from a one sided perspective.
It's a hard problem, but it needs to be discussed. I personally hate having this problem bottled up in my head. Because I know, how easy it is, to sway it back to good intent. Intentions are garbage if people keep judging you and placing you beneath them. Actions matter. Even if those actions are as simple as, judging less.
Honestly, I think most conspiracy theories stem from people's real life experiences, but because of judgement, disbelief, and stigma - the truth mutates. The moral of the story is retained, but the person dissociates from the trauma of not being believed and being mistreated, over and over again.
People can easily become convinced that they have little recourse or options left. It's not always brain damage. Sometimes it's just getting stuck in a pattern of perpetually perceiving judgement from everyone around them. I personally don't know if having to think that way changes the structure of the brain. Furthemore, I don't know if having the brain restructured in such a way indicates anything defective. It may just be different.