this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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The Milgram experiment. The Zimbardo prison experiment. The bystander effect. At the end of the day, humans are just monkeys with smart watches. As social primates, it's really hard to be the one to stand up against the crowd. Our brains decide how to act based largely on the reactions of other humans around us.
It's disheartening.
Don't use the Zimbardo prison experiment. From your link:
That just makes it worse! (From my point of view here.) People behaving reprehensibly because an authority figure asked them to do it? That's just the Milgram experiment, but without any apparent hesitation!
I'm going to repeat what @plyth said. "Don't use the Zimbardo prison experiment".
Zimbardo was as manipulative as the psychologists from the Robbers Cave experiment,
with the only difference being that the former was only done once, while in the latter,
the subjects figured out that they were being manipulated and turned against the psychologists.
Because of this, the conclusions Zimbardo drew himself are very different from when you conclude that
Zimbardo was behind the whole ordeal pulling the strings.
One only needed to stand up against one person, not a crowd.
Military operative have been trained to obey like dogs, their sentience has been mercilessly beaten out if them. Just look at the mindless obedience of your coworkers, sheeps to the slaughter the lot of them. The few that awaken gets co-opted by the system as sheep dogs of the system are rewarded with meaty, juicy bones. Questionning authority is not an option, it's a sin. They know their masters would never punish their obedience, it would never happen, it NEVER happens.
The military is a corrupt and vile institution, it is irrelevant who they are killing for, they are not on "your" side, they are trying to survive and will kill what they are told. All who participate in organized premeditated militarism as a job, while not under immediate attack of another organized and premeditated military, are simply lost to humanity, they have become the enemy, tools, no matter what flag they jack into at night. In hyperwar militaries are obsolete because they become incoherent, there is no enemy if cannot point to it. The enemy is you.