A review of the famous ‘conformity’ experiments, and what they seem to show.
You may, like me, think that the Off-G team are a bit too inclined to see ALL-in-it-together conspiracies of globalist bondian super-villains behind all sort of large events; even the ones which lend themselves more to the cock-up-theory-of-history explanation. But despite this leaning, which is clearly visible in Kit’s own writings, the material presented in this piece does reach some persuasive conclusions, with which I’m inclined to agree:
Smart animals say: Never work with people or scientists.
Give monkeys a good emprical reason to conform, wisdom which they communicate to their future societies. Then claim monkeys just like to conform, and ‘replicate’ it with a human experiment where the humans conform for no reason.
But I would agree the experiments (the first two especially) have wider significance and I’m sure the lessons have been long learned, by the wrong people of course.
Cheers
The problem with behavioural psychology is that the scope is limited to behaviour, and how people explain that behaviour: rationalising that a $1 reward for lying is so meagre a reward that they may as well pretend they weren’t lying, actually. Rats avoid shocks, and prisoners avoid beatings. So what?
By the way nearly all discussions of the Stamford Prison experiment avoid one massive confounding factor: the people designated prisoners were arrested in their homes by actual cops. While most must have known they were not guilty of any offence, they knew it was a simulation, and were paid for remaining in the game, the stigma of being arrested (for White Educated etc students) was a definite kick to their self esteem.
A number of better theories about cooperative behaviour as biological-cultural artefacts, not mere behaviour, have been outlined by Boehm. One is that the big brains of humans enforce (1) premature birth and protracted infant dependency (otherwise the skull is so big the mother wouldn’t be able to get the damn thing out of her) and (2) a need for food of high calorific value to keep that brain ticking over.
This implies meat in the diet is an evolutionary advantage but humans are so puny that they had to hunt in concert to stand much chance of landing an aurochs, for example. If the best hunters didn’t share, especially with the vulnerable mummies and kids, they’d doom the species. Especially selfish free riders probably got scapegoated or ‘got’, in the Tony Soprano sense of the word.
Now that we’ve bureaucratised all this, and can farm as many yummy protein-rich locusts as we want, the rest of you can fck yourselves
I sort of echo Karen, in that, although these psychological experiments are fascinating, who are the ‘ordinary people’ who take part in them?
You can perhaps use tv lifestyle shows as an example. The plethora of property shows is a good example (Kirsty and Phil and all that). The ‘ordinary people’ who appear on these shows are all carefully selected, to persuade the public that buying a property is a really great and neat idea.
The word ‘mortgage’ is from the French language: mort = death, gage = debt. Ie, debt slavery until you die (which now applies to much more than property).
Hi @RobG, since mortgages in the UK are debts that are charges on real estate property the debts never die with the death of the mortgagor - in this sense the current reality totally breaks with the etymology of the word. In some US states mortgages can be non- recourse so a mortgagor can just hand the keys to the mortgagee and the latter can no longer pursue the former for any oustanding debt.
