Vaniver comments on [Link] Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's Studies Really Show - Less Wrong

10 [deleted] 02 December 2012 11:45PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 03 December 2012 06:24:28AM 5 points [-]

The claim made by the OP is "if people believe in what they're doing, they will hurt people;" the claim made by nigerweiss is "if people use system 1 thinking, they will hurt people." To differentiate between them, we need a statement intended to make people use system 1 thinking without relying on them believing what they are doing.

It's not clear to me that nigerweiss's division is more precise than the OP's division, or has significant predictive accuracy. I would have expected "you have no other choice" to evoke 'keep your head down, do what you're told, they must know what they're doing'; that is, the system 1 thinking that nigerweiss claims would lead people to push the button, when it led to less people pushing the button. Why is it a status attack that awakens system 2 (huh?), except because we know what we need to predict?