121–130 of 130 posts
What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results. Is that not the definition of Science?
It is very hard to get reproduction experiments published. Even though reproducibility is absolutely core to the scientific process. You cannot make this stuff up.
Because if no one is bothering to replicate, you __can__ make stuff up. And no one is going to know.
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Even if they didn't see through the experiments; they still believed they were helping to advance the state of science. Milgram's Experiments are often casually tossed around as proving that people blindly follow orders, but they actually showed the opposite. Teachers complied when they believed they shared a common cause with the experimenter (advancing science.) When this common cause was taken away, compliance rat…
> Removed from the prestige of Yale, compliance rates dropped; when the experimenter was not appealing to the necessity of science, compliance rates dropped. This doesn't debunk anything. The thesis was that people would unquestioningly obey "an authority figure". What your observation shows is that people don't attach the same authority to scientists with less eminent affiliations which makes perfect sense. I'm not…
It debunks precisely that. The phenomena of obeying authoritiy figures is not ideologically neutral as the popular narrative suggests. Rather people make a decision about whether or not to comply with the authority figure based on whether or not their personal ideology aligns with the goals and motivations of that authority figure. In other words, it's not unquestioning obedience. People question the circumstance, question the motivation of the authority figure, and then make a decision about whether or not they will comply.
To put a finer point on it, people who follow orders from Nazis do so because they are themselves Nazis. People who follow orders from scientists do so because they believe in science. Demonstrating that x% of the general population near [university] during [year] follow the orders of scientists does not demonstrate that x% of that same population would follow orders from Nazis. This is contrary to the popular Milgram narrative that was sold to the public.
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> It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? Humans have done some pretty terrible things; I think that being able to say "Yeah, but I wouldn't do that" is almost as impo…
You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? The people I respect want to know the truth, even if it's upsetting or disillusioning. I think Zimbardo and Milgram were similarly motivated, even if their methods were questionable. We are, after all, talking about a scientific experiment here. Starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence to justify it is what the research…
Even if it makes you dramatically less effective?
As far as I can tell, the best evidence is that we probably don't have free will in a way we would find meaningful.
However I can tell you that you will have a much better life if you act as if you have free will, in spite of that evidence.
Even if I'm wrong on that point of fact, and I could be; this isn't really my field, my point stands. Would you prefer to believe in something, even if the 'upsetting or disillusioning' side of that belief is that truly believing it would cripple you as a human?
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Except that, you are the one who makes simplistic categories. You want it to be about human nature and don't want it to be about ideologies and opinions. "It is human nature to escalate abuse within week in position of power" and "we can make people escalate abuse quickly if we indoctrinate them right" are very different conclusions with very different implications. If you are really interested in Nazi regime, you wo…
If you are really interested in Nazi regime, you would do better if you would study history, what happened when Nazi were still small, what real Nazi were saying, ideas and fears that shaped German opinions, journals of contemporary people, what opposition did and how they lost, that sort of thing. I have. The conclusion I've reached is that we're incredibly fortunate that few of those circumstances exist in the US t…
Among other things, the social darwinism and race believes of Nazi were formed by bad contemporary science (and misuse of it). They believed themselves to be rational and the right kind of man. Guess someone needed to hair split those ideas more loudly long before.
The academic hair splitting matters. The truth matters and the truth here is that this particular experiment did not shown what Zimbardo claimed to show.
In practical politial consequences of time, this experiment was used as argument that you can't possibly make prison less abusive. It did not shown that at all, it shown only that it is possible to make it abusive if you want to. Difference matters, because if you stop trying, well then conditions won't improve.
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It's largely about who gets to control the narrative. If you give a quote to a journalist, they control the narrative - they can choose how to piece it together with other quotes, and where to put it in the article, and how to spin it, and with what emotional tone. If you say "no comment" to the journalist and then post your own version of the narrative on your blog later, you control the narrative from start to fini…
Basic journalist practice is that you can read the piece and suggest corrections, especially if you set it as a condition before being interviewed. You can have your own recording equipment, and someone else taking notes. You can require that you have an option to give your own response in the same page as the story (ask certain number of words). Write everything agreed down, have a record + witness. In TV all bets a…
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Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism. This quote from Solzhenitsyn springs to mind. I have always kept it close to heart: >If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary on…
> Well said. I think it's instinctual to want to believe there is some intrinsic, insurmountable difference between us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism. Or maybe they’re just tired of crap science that just won’t die. When you want to make your point, just use “Lord of the Flies” instead. It makes compelling, similar points about the human condition. But it just do…
Different conclusions, just as fascinating.
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> Removed from the prestige of Yale, compliance rates dropped; when the experimenter was not appealing to the necessity of science, compliance rates dropped. This doesn't debunk anything. The thesis was that people would unquestioningly obey "an authority figure". What your observation shows is that people don't attach the same authority to scientists with less eminent affiliations which makes perfect sense. I'm not…
> "This doesn't debunk anything. The thesis was that people would unquestioningly obey "an authority figure". It debunks precisely that. The phenomena of obeying authoritiy figures is not ideologically neutral as the popular narrative suggests. Rather people make a decision about whether or not to comply with the authority figure based on whether or not their personal ideology aligns with the goals and motivations of…
I don't want to spend too much time on this, but your position is itself informed by ideology.
I don't believe you fully grasp what went on in WW2 and are happy to promulgate a hurdurr bad guys narrative, which is fine to be honest but is antithetical to the tradition of "unconditional positive regard" upon which modern psychology is built, and so I believe any "good faith" analysis of this study is impossible for you.
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> "this is not how to research things Yes, this is how it was taught to me also. An example of "how not to do it" and something that would never pass the ethical review board in modern academia.
Whilst that may indeed be what you were taught, Jared M. Bartels paints a rather different picture of what introductory textbooks have been found to say on this subject. * http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1475725714568007
As a more mature reader I might read between the lines there and wonder.
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You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? The people I respect want to know the truth, even if it's upsetting or disillusioning. I think Zimbardo and Milgram were similarly motivated, even if their methods were questionable. We are, after all, talking about a scientific experiment here. Starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence to justify it is what the research…
>The people I respect want to know the truth, even if it's upsetting or disillusioning. Even if it makes you dramatically less effective? As far as I can tell, the best evidence is that we probably don't have free will in a way we would find meaningful. However I can tell you that you will have a much better life if you act as if you have free will, in spite of that evidence. Even if I'm wrong on that point of fact,…
I'm unquestionably less 'effective' as a member of society because I'm not religious, and I might even be happier if I took advantage of the free social capital that comes with participation in communal irrationality. But at some point, it would threaten my sense of self-actualization. I don't want to die feeling like a successful, happy fraud. Do you? For the same reason, I don't want to pretend that Zimbardo's results can be ignored because of the unscientific manner in which they were obtained.
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Because nothing you said disproves what the parent said, it simply gave an annecdote about what bad things a publisher did, unless you would categorize those as "ill-will of a single writer". Claiming systematic bias can also lead to that would have been fine in contrast, maybe even mentioning it has happened vaugely and bringing up your CNN example when challenged. The down votes are likely because your post could s…
> Because nothing you said disproves what the parent said, it simply gave an annecdote about what bad things a publisher did, unless you would categorize those as "ill-will of a single writer". Well the general implication in the paresnt discussing fabrication as 'the ill of a single writer' and that a reputable publication should curtail them. You're right in that a 'reputable publication' may also simply deliberate…
But news organizations lie. All of them do and they do it on a routine basis.
On the topic of your examples:
1. It appears that the article recognizes the normality in its last sentence, so this was corrected 2. I don't see anything in the Damore article (http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/technology/culture/james-dam...) that seemed to disagree with his memo unless I am missing a subtly. 3. This seems to be a failure to acknowledge and not a fabrication best I can tell (too difficult to find what disputes the original comment)
These seems to be examples where CNN has corrected the stories quietly instead of issuing a retraction best I can tell which while I agree is annoying at least is ensuring the latest version of the article is as accurate as possible (including in "accuracy" intended tone here). How to best handle such corrections is hard.