Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Zed mentions a spooky experiment. Milgram and and Zimbardo[0] showed…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Zed mentions a spooky experiment. Milgram and and Zimbardo[0] showed us how rough, easy-to-discern external conditions stimulated submission and violence. But here, the subject is hardly aware of the stimulus.
And, in the spookiest aspect of the experiment, the subjects still felt as if they were choosing freely."What is clear is that our brain has the interpretive capacity to call free will things that weren't," he said.
[0] If Zimbardo had that late-night show, Zimbarded!, Milgram would make a great sidekick.
