Ah, but we all have experience in being taught, don't we. Some good, some bad. We would do well, I think, to give a long, hard look to the way we were taught, not only regarding how it may have affected us, but also in how it might affect our children, were they to be subjected to similar treatments.
Because, in the face of authority performing such seemingly pointless gestures, I have half a mind to teach my children to reject such orders on general principle, and say so to their teachers in no uncertain terms—without being rude about it, which might be a bit of a challenge.
Point is, when my kids grow, I want them to be the sort that would say no in Milgram's Experiment from the moment the victim revoked consent, if not earlier. (Also, intuitively one-box on Newcomb's problem, etc. etc.)
When children can evaluate good ideas, it makes sense to tell them to obey the authority when a request is good, and to disobey when the request is harmful.
But before that age, the obedience in the Milgram's experiment and the obedience in "please stop hitting your younger sibling" or "please stop talking now so we can learn the alphabet" is probably processed by the same algorithm.
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it