James_Bach comments on Asch's Conformity Experiment - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 December 2007 07:03AM

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Comment author: James_Bach 26 December 2007 08:25:49AM 0 points [-]

I don't see this exercise as being so much about rationality as it is about our relationship with dissonance. People in my community (context-driven software testers) are expected to treat confusion or controversy as itself evidence of a potentially serious problem. For the responsible tester, such evidence must be investigated and probably raised as an issue to the client.

In short, in the situation given in the exercise, I would not answer the question, but rather raise some questions.

I drive telephone surveyors nuts in this way. They just don't know what to do with a guy who answers "no opinion" or "I don't know" or "can't answer" to every single question in their poorly worded and context-non-specific questionnaires.