[AretNCarlsen]

> People are still essentially good.

Experiment indicates that the majority (65%) are not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

I am sorry to be a downer, and I agree that it is nice to pretend that people are essentially good. Ignoring the Milgram results, however, leads us to forget why we have to maintain societies with complex crime deterrent schemes, and why we should not trust anonymous individuals who cannot be located for punishment.

"[H]alf ... were female, and their rate of obedience was virtually identical to that of the male participants." "Where participants had to physically hold the "learner's" arm onto a shock plate, ... 30 percent of participants completed the experiment."

[dbingham]

"I don't think that means what you think it means."

That experiment deals with ability to disobey authority, not with the basic goodness of the people performing the actions. Nearly 100% of the people performing the actions questioned what they were doing. That indicates they knew it was wrong, instinctively and didn't wish to do it. But we are well trained to listen to authority, and the authority figure was telling them to continue.

This actually backs up the idea that people are essentially good. But it also provides evidence for the idea that most people can be easily lead into violating their natural conscience.

Studies of innate "goodness" performed on children reveal that most people, from birth, have an innate moral conscience that we would consider 'good'. I'll see if I can find a link to back this up.

Here we go: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?adxnn...

[mcantelon]

I wouldn't call someone that acts against their conscience "good" (unless their survival is at stake).

[sukuriant]

Depending on what you're thinking the authority can do, "for survival's stake" may very well be exactly what those people in the Milgram Experiment were experiencing. "No, I-I can't, b-but he's in authority, and I'll be in trouble if I don't, so", he cringes, "I must."

[mcantelon]

The Milgram Experiment doesn't indicate that it in any way threatened the participants for non-compliance, yet these people were willing to knowingly endanger someone else's life. I think why they were willing to do that lies more with the belief that the authority would take the blame rather than any reasonable fear of punishment from the authority.

[dbingham]

My guess is that they were rationalizing it in the experiment context. "The authority is telling me to go ahead, there has to be something else going on here. His life can't really be in danger."

[sukuriant]

The mere presence of authority could have been threatening to some people. We'd need studies for this too, though.

[ZoFreX]

I don't find it that surprising, given that we are taught from birth to obey authority figures (parents, family, teachers, policemen) /without question/. It's perhaps a useful simplification in early life but is one I've long-considered harmful.

[pbhjpbhj]

>given that we are taught from birth to obey authority figures (parents, family, teachers, policemen) /without question/

One of the important aspects I'm trying to maintain with my kids is a right to reply and express their opinion. My eldest's teacher goes against this, she demands "do it first time" whilst I demand a response - he can refuse but he can't ignore a request, if he can reason his way out/in to something then that's far better IMO than blind obedience.

It can be a useful simplification in the sense that one needs a child to obey commands like "don't touch the hot stove" and "don't run in to the road" ("stop" covers both).

[cookiecaper]

It's important to teach children to obey authority figures. It's also important to teach them critical thinking skills and learn how to detect when a thing is arbitrary. However, instead of teaching the child to disrupt the authority in place, I think it is preferable to teach the children to obey unless there is a moral imperative against doing so.

For instance, while your son's teacher may assign him some silly work, while there is no reason to do this work other than the teacher said so, he should learn to work within the framework and do the work anyway because he is subject to the teacher in his current circumstances. If the teacher, however, assigns him to physically harm another student or participate in another morally objectionable act, he should refuse to comply. Things go much smoother this way than they do if people are constantly nagging and arguing over things that really have no incident; much energy could be saved by both your son and his teacher by compliance with non-useful but non-harmful requests rather than disrupting the flow of instruction and encouraging further disorder and disrespect to authority.

[aedocw]

It's INCREDIBLY important to teach children to obey authority figures WITHIN REASON. If a teacher, cop or fireman is asking your kid to do something that doesn't seem quite right, their first instinct should be to ignore them, and get help from someone they know. The only people a kid should blindly obey is their own parents.

As far as I know, very few people teach their kids that it's OK to question authority (within reason - and yes, respect authority always. If you're in a teachers classroom, you follow their rules.)

[pbhjpbhj]

>I think it is preferable to teach the children to obey unless there is a moral imperative against doing so

// I'm not teaching my kids to be anarchists ;0) But equally well I'm not happy for them to be drones or to accept the word of others without reflection on the truth/moral good/right action.

>while there is no reason to do this work other than the teacher said so

// That's a pretty good reason and one that, within the school framework is hard to argue against. The only sorts of arguments that will work against such reasoning are those arguing for a greater moral good or similar.

>Things go much smoother this way than they do if people are constantly nagging and arguing over things that really have no incident;

Who decides what has no incident. Things that matter to one don't to another.

Let me give an example of the sorts of issues that he currently has to address, they're pretty low level: The school has a policy where the teachers lead a class out at a time from the building to be met by parents/carers. The teacher tells them to put their coats on, but it's often too hot to do so and my lad is there in summer in a jumper and coat (causing a minor harm to himself) because he's being obedient. Weather here is very changeable. His jumper and coat should rightly be in his bag. I say he should tell the teacher "it's too hot to wear my coat, can I put it in my bag please". The teacher is possibly menopausal and may be having difficulty assessing the temperature - should he just put his coat on, or should he make a [albeit small] stand with the possible outcome being the greater comfort of all the class [ie they wear appropriate levels of clothing]?

>disrespect to authority

I don't consider it disrespectful to question someone’s reason or motive in giving an instruction. Indeed if you can't explain why one should carry out your instructions then you need to question them.

I could be wrong but I think the child questioning the reason to put on a coat in hot weather today, if they learn to reason an argument, is better equipped to question those who have authority in more vital questions tomorrow.

If something has no incident then why demand it's fulfilment?

[ZoFreX]

One of the examples I normally bring out for this is the case of me being told off by a teacher for insisting that my spelling of a word was correct and theirs was wrong. This (excuse for a) teacher insisted that it had no bearing at all that my spelling was indeed correct, and that I was in the wrong for disagreeing regardless. Needless to say, I adopted a slightly different teaching style.

[elizabeth-iii]

I guess that not all parents teach you to obey. I always knew that you never should talk to police, never whistleblower to teachers or anybody, be positive and keep to yourself until you asked for help. It is just people, especially authorities are negative. If you say something to the police, they will use it against you.

[Steve0]

That doesn't seem to be the conclusion of said experiment. "In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment." IMHO Milgram's experiment has more to do with obedience than ethics.

[alanh]

So people know what they do is wrong and do it anyway. How does this make people "good"? It makes them knowingly evil.

[Hyena]

Or they felt trapped by their agreement to participate in the experiment. They made an offer to annul the contract, which would indicate that they were following through with what they had agreed to do. Moreover, the situation they were in was greatly outside their experience with what people had ever asked them to do in fulfilling an agreement.

If you promised someone "I'll do whatever it takes for you to have a good time while you're visiting", you probably aren't imagining that it will involve a triple homicide and a liquor store robbery. If it starts there, you'll likely refuse. But if you slowly build up to that, the pressure to keep complying with your agreement builds....

[alanh]

I am familiar with the psychological phenomenon you are referring to, but these people were not forced to do anything; they clearly considered it wrong; and yet they proceeded. Feeling trapped isn't being trapped. Being rude to a researcher is not as bad as physically injuring an innocent person. Excuses do not change the fundamental reality that people commonly do things they know to be wrong and suboptimal – we are so far from perfect agents! Improving this through rationality is the whole purpose of e.g. lesswrong.

[Hyena]

You mention LessWrong, very nice; then you know they were forced: any time you deploy the Dark Arts to manipulate someone's behavior, you undermine their free will. "Choice" wasn't part of it, or at least not the largest part.

[SatvikBeri]

People react wildly differently in different circumstances. This has been proven over and over. The Milgram experiment was heavily designed to influence how people act. A twist in circumstances can easily get 100% of people to do the "right" thing. If you only look at extreme cases like this, you won't get an accurate idea of human behavior.

I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people, in normal circumstances, are essentially good.

[AretNCarlsen]

Certainly, you can get nearly 100% of people to do the right thing most of the time. That is what judicial deterrents accomplish. Those don't work if people are anonymous, however.

The Milgram experiment was not intended to be "extreme". They expected less than 3% of participants to actually torture their (fake) victim to death. The U.S. group was to act as a control, such that they could proceed to compare results in Germany, for instance, where the Holocaust had so recently occurred. Following the unexpected American results, Milgram simply did not bother to perform the actual intended experiment in Germany.

[jamesbritt]

Every day I see people act nice and behave well even though it would be trivial to be a dick or a thief with no appreciable consequences.

In real life, under ordinary conditions, most people simply act decent and it does not seem to be fear of punishment.

[barrkel]

That experiment shows you exactly the opposite, rather: that people who seem essentially bad (i.e. bad in essence) may simply be responding to circumstances, incentives and social pressure.

[lwhi]

Most people are able to think 'this would make me feel awful, I don't want to make someone else feel this way' - those that aren't are usually canny enough to pretend.

People might not be essentially 'good' - but most people are rational and lucid enough to stay within the bounds of what's socially acceptable .. even if they're unable to empathise.

This was a random nutter / group of nutters .. stuff like this, unfortunately, happens all the time - although, thankfully, on a minimal scale.

The issue for me, is related to some fundamental flaws in AirBnB's business model .. flaws which are seem largely absent from the alternative of CouchSurfing.

[zenica]

I agree. They should do the same experiment and replace authority with $$. Maybe they did but I cannot find reference.

I think you will see 60% of people will do horrendous things for a little bit of money.