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   Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 01:51:54 JST Clive Thompson

   More evidence -- this time with audio tapes from the original experiment -- showing that the Stanford Prison Experiment was rigged to encourage terrible behavior by the guards

   In Medium: https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62

   Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/K7gMN

   Talking about this with my son, I was struck by how many pieces of major science/theory/culture in the mid-20th-century insisted that they "proved" humanity was inherently, natively selfish -- but turned out to be much less true

   1/x

   • kaia, on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ and Iron Bug like this.
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     Robert Link (phaedral@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:06:21 JST Robert Link

     in reply to

     @clive von Nueman and Morgenstern were idiots who literally, explicitly said "money is utility" as if the story of Midas never reached Germany. Too, their system is too reductive. Humans are not single-value systems, we are multi-valent systems, always aggregating multiple inputs.

     But the robber-barons lapped up that money-is-utility nonsense and so here we are.

   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:06:23 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     And I'm thinking also of game theory -- which, when it emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century, predicted that people would behave as selfish maximizers

     But when they started testing the theory with real people, it didn't work that way

     real people were as liable to cooperate and give a fair shake to their supposed competitors

     4/x

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     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:06:24 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     There's also "Lord of the Flies", which came out in 1954, and cemented the idea that young boys -- when removed from the moral guardrails of proper British society -- would become absolute terrors to one another

     But when this happened in reality -- when six boys were marooned on a remote island for 15 months -- they all cheerfully banded together and co-operated, including carefully tending for one boy who broke his leg, while it healed: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

     3/x

   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:06:25 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     There's the Stanford Prison Experiment, of course, from 1971 -- where the terrible behavior of the guards seems to have been significantly nudged along by the people running the experiment

     It didn't emerge *organically*

     2/x

     Robert Link and anban repeated this.
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     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:26:05 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     • Robert Link

     @phaedral

     Yeah, the push for insisting capitalism is the true and only way to govern *everything* was big during this early-middle period of that American century

     so anything that helped cement the idea that selfish maximizing is civically *innate* was pumped up

   • Embed this notice
     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:28:50 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     @clive They grew big and were widely promoted by institutions because they are employed to justify and rationalize exploitation and abuse. It's no coincidence that psychology is deeply integrated with marketing and propaganda, or that psychiatry can and is used as a means of social control. (TBC, I'm not anti-psychology or psychiatry, it can also be liberatory and inform us about ourselves, I'm just a realist about how it has been used historically and today*"

     *Things like forcing addicts into treatment is a repeat of the criminal horrors of the past.

   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 02:28:51 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     It's interesting to think about what was going on, culturally, in this period of the mid-to-middle 20th century, that all these theories of "the horrible, selfish, violent people that lurk within us" gained such currency

     WWI and WWII, certainly, but there's got to be a lot of factors at play in why these theories grew so big and loomed so high

     5/5

     Robert Link repeated this.
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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 07:45:27 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     @clive I was once threatened by Milgram's widow for writing about this.

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 10:24:26 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     @clive among other things, she claims that milgram did not take the photos associated with the experiment as works made for hire for Stanford and that she controls the copyright to them. I find this wildly unlikely, that she uses that to threaten people.

   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 10:24:28 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @pluralistic

     Yikes!!

     Given how much reassessment there’s been about milgram’s work, she must have been busy writing nastygrams

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     anderbill (band@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 11:29:54 JST anderbill

     in reply to

     @clive preach it! i am always surprised to find that so many well-read folk do not know this.

   • Embed this notice
     Angry Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 18:51:44 JST Angry Sun

     in reply to
     @clive if this was faked how much other psychology is a bunch of shit
   • Embed this notice
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ (lain@lain.com)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 18:55:07 JST on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ

     in reply to

     • Angry Sun
     @sun @clive i'm sure the 'third wave' thing was faked / made up too.
     kaia likes this.
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     kaia (kaia@brotka.st)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 19:38:27 JST kaia

     in reply to

     • on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
     • Angry Sun
     @lain @clive @sun
     it's a long established tradition in psychology to fake research data so it aligns with preconceived notions and political agenda. those who got caught did not work diligently enough in hiding it, like Diederik Stapel or Cyril Burt.
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     bartholin (bartholin@fops.cloud)'s status on Saturday, 02-Nov-2024 19:42:15 JST bartholin

     in reply to

     • on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
     • Angry Sun
     @lain @clive @sun It was biased because the participants were Germans :neocat_melt_blep:
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     Hoss Delgado (hoss@shitpost.cloud)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 08:28:00 JST Hoss Delgado

     in reply to

     • kaia
     • on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
     • Angry Sun
     My rule of thumb for psychology research is the more chuddy and uncomfortable it makes normies, the truer it is.
     kaia likes this.
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     :gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 (bonifartius@qoto.org)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 17:18:58 JST :gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄

     in reply to

     • on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
     • Angry Sun

     @clive cc @lain @sun weren't you talking about this a few days ago?

     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ and Angry Sun like this.
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     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ (lain@lain.com)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 17:25:47 JST on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ

     in reply to

     • :gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
     • Angry Sun
     @bonifartius @clive @sun yes, in response to this post, lol
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     :gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 (bonifartius@qoto.org)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 17:27:08 JST :gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄

     in reply to

     • on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
     • Angry Sun

     @lain @clive @sun oh, lol :blobcatupsidedown: