multifoliaterose comments on Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy - Less Wrong

82 Post author: AnnaSalamon 29 October 2010 12:00AM

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Comment author: multifoliaterose 09 May 2011 06:44:20PM *  4 points [-]

Thanks for your feedback.

Here I would guess that you're underestimating the influence of (evolutionarily conditioned) straightforwardly base motivations: c.f. the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments. I recently ran across this fascinating essay by Ron Jones on his experience running an experiment called "The Third Wave" in his high school class. I would guess that the motivation that he describes (of feeling superior to others) played a significantly larger role than abnormally explicit reasoning in the case of the Nazi regime; that (the appearance of?) abnormally explicit reasoning was a result of this underlying motivation rather than the cause.

There may be an issue generalizing from one example here; what your describing sounds to me closer to why a LW poster might have become a Nazi during Nazi times than why a typical person might have become a Nazi during Nazi times. On the other hand, I find it likely that the originators of the underlying ideas ("Aryan" nationalism, communism, Catholic doctrines) used explicit reasoning more often than the typical person does in coming to their conclusions.

Comment author: byrnema 09 May 2011 07:28:41PM 0 points [-]

I have a question regarding the Milgram experiment. Were the teachers under the impression that the learners were continuing to supply answers voluntarily?

Comment author: multifoliaterose 09 May 2011 10:29:11PM *  0 points [-]

Don't know the answer to your question; now that I look at the Wikipedia page I realize that I should only have referred to the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment (the phenomenon in the Milgram experiment is not what I had in mind).