On Mon, May 19, 1997 at 12:14:37AM -0700, Lucky Green wrote:
At 10:28 PM 5/18/97 -0700, Alan Olsen wrote:
(There are also a number of psychological studies that show that people will do all sorts of horrific things to their fellow man when someone in authority tells them to. If they are led to believe that they are "bad" in some way, many will enjoy it.)
Right. I read a book on that. I think it was called "The Millgram Experiment". Normal people would administer (fake, but they didn't know it) electroshocks to a subject even after the subject had stopped moving and could have been assumed to be unconscious or even dead. An excellent demonstration of the power of authority. And the gullibility of the average person.
Present company excepted? Of course, studies have shown a majority of Americans think they are better than average drivers... The most important lesson of that study is that in this regard we *all* are average persons. There isn't any magic pill, or personality trait, or belief system, or special knowledge, that makes us immune to manipulation. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html