[IanCal]

A remarkable number of humans given really quite basic feedback will perform actions they know will very directly hurt or kill people.

There are a lot of critiques about quite how to interpret the results but in this context it’s pretty clear lots of humans can be at least coerced into doing something extremely unethical.

Start removing the harm one, two, three degrees and add personal incentives and is it that surprising if people violate ethical rules for kpis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

[cyanydeez]

> 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[29][30] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that

Its unlikely Milligram played am unbiased role in, if not the sirext cause of the results.

[lores]

Milgram was flawed, sure. However, you can look at videos of ICE agents being surprised that their community think they're evil and doing evil, when they think they're just law enforcement. There was not even a need for coercion there, only story-telling.

[fao_]

Incorrect. ICE is built off the background of 30-50 years of propaganda against "immigrants", most of it completely untrue.

The same is done for "benefits scroungers", despite the evidence being that welfare fraud only accounts for approximately 1-5% of the cost of administering state welfare, and state welfare would be about 50%+ cheaper to administer if it was a UBI rather than being means-tested. In fact, much of the measures that are implemented with the excuse of "we need to stop benefits scroungers", such as testing if someone is disabled enough to work or not, etc. are simulatenously ineffective and make up most of the cost.

Nevertheless, "benefits scroungers" has entered the zeitgeist in the UK (and the US) because of this propaganda.

The same is true for propaganda against people who have migrated to the UK/US. Many have done so as asylum seekers under horrifying circumstances, and many die in the journey. However, instead of empathy, the media greets them with distaste and horror — dehumanising them in a fundamentally racist way, specifically so that a movement that grants them rights as a workforce never takes off, so that companies can employ them for zero-hour contracts to do work in conditions that are subhuman, and pay them substantially less than minimum wage (It's incredibly beneficial for the economy, unfortunately).

[alsetmusic]

Rightwing propaganda in the USA is part of a concerted effort by the Heritage Foundation, the Powell Memo, Fox News, and supporting players. These things are well understood by researchers and journalists who have produced copious documentation in the form of articles, books, podcast series, etc.

One excellent example is available here[0] in a series by the Lever called Master Plan. According to their website, a book has been written broadening the discussion.

They have played us for fools and evidence of their success is all over the news and our broken society. It's outrageous because none of this was by accident or chance. Forces didn't magically come together in a soup that turned out this way.

0. https://the.levernews.com/master-plan/

[fao_]

Indeed, and many of those same groups are also funding right wing propaganda in other countries.

[IanCal]

What you have quoted says a third of people who thought it was real didn’t disobey the experimenter when they thought they were delivering dangerous and lethal electric shocks to a human. Is that correct?

[cwizou]

Maybe there was an edit but it's the opposite, 66% disobeyed.

[IanCal]

Right, so a third didn’t disobey.

[cyanydeez]

A third of a half who were believers.

So of the entire populace of Milligram participants, 16.5% believed and obeyed.

That's a much, much smaller claim than the popular belief of what Milligram presented.

However, it's still possible that you only need ~16.5% to believe & obey authority for things like the Nazi death camps to occur.

[IanCal]

We immediately only need to consider the half that believed the situation was real, if we are concerned with what people do in believably real situations.

Even if we take the 16% though, that's one in six people willing to deliver very obvious direct harm and/or kill another human from exceptionally mild coercion with zero personal benefit attached other than the benefit of not having to say "no". That is a lot.

[chrononaut]

Normalization of deviance also contributes towards unethical outcomes, where people would not have selected that outcome originally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

[funkyfiddler369]

I am moderately certain that this only happens in laissez-faire cultures.

If you deviate from the sub-cultural norms of Wall Street, Jahmunkey, you fucked.

It's fraud or nothing, baby, be sure to respect the warning finger(s) of God when you get intrusive thoughts about exposing some scheme--aka whistleblowing.

[zombot]

> lots of humans can be at least coerced into doing something extremely unethical.

Experience shows coercion is not necessary most of the time, the siren call of money is all it takes.

[lazide]

Still > 0