= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ChristianKl comments on Open thread, 11-17 August 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (268)
The Stanford prison experiment suggests that you don't need that much to get people to do immoral things. ISIS evolved over years of hard civil war.
ISIS also partly has their present power because the US first destabilised Iraq and later allowed funding of Syrian rebels. The US was very free to avoid fighting the Iraq war. ISIS fighters get killed if they don't fight their civil war.
The Stanford prison "experiment" was a LARP session that got out of control because the GM actively encouraged the players to be assholes to each other.
I agree with that interpretation of the experiment but "active encouragement" should count as "not that much."
I am very confident that a college student version of me taking part in a similar experiment as a guard would not have been cruel to the prisoners in part because the high school me (who at the time was very left wing) decided to not stand up for the pledge of allegiance even though everyone else in his high school regularly did and this me refused to participate in a gym game named war-ball because I objected to the name.
I didn't stand for the Pledge in school either, but in retrospect I think that had less to do with politics or virtue and more to do with an uncontrollable urge to look contrarian.
I can see myself going either way in the Stanford prison experiment, which probably means I'd have abused the prisoners.
But you aren't that left wing anyone but go around teaching people to make decisions based on game theory.
I moved to the right in my 20s.