8)

 

Regarding The Milgrim Experiment, there's another factor. There's a switch experiment. Imagine a train on a ramp loses one wagon. This wagon now rolls down the ramp. There's a train station, and a train full of passengers. If the wagon hits the train, several hundred people will die. However, you are the gatekeeper and there is a switch right before the wagon enters the train station. You can route the wagon to a side track. If you do so, all passengers at the train station stay alive. But, on the side track there are 4 workers. You can't warn them. If the wagon is routed to the side track, the 4 workers will die.

What will you do?

Most people decide (without much hesitation) to route the wagon on the side track, accepting the death of the 4 workers. But there is a variation to this experiment. The same situation. The wagon is rolling down the hill. But this time there is no switch and you are not the gatekeeper. You are just standing on a bridge right before the train station, seeing what is happening. Next to you is a big man. His size and weight is enough to get the wagon to stop before it crashes into the train. But the man won't jump on the track. You have to kill him first with a knife, then throw him on the track. If you do so, hundreds of passengers stay alive.

What will you do this time?

Most people now decide to not react! It obviously is a difference if we make a decision and tech then performs it or if we actually have to do it ourselves. Nobody wants to kill a man with a knife and throw him from the bridge. But the same people had no problem to sacrifice 4 workers.

You see, even if we are in control we act differently. In The Milgrim Experiment, if you'd not show the Learner at all, all people would just go on until death. If you'd take the Learner right next to the Teacher and tell him he has to hit the Learner into the stomach each time, close to nobody would have even started.

 

There are always situations where conscience dictates acting perhaps not in your best mortal interest. My wonderful Uncle Slug (really his name, West Virginia hillbilly, Go Mountaineers!) fought at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium that last crazy cold winter during December and January 1944/45. He always said that he never wanted to kill anybody even if it meant getting killed himself. He always maintained that he shot high into the air without aiming and only discharging his weapon because he was expected to do so, this even as bullets whizzed over his head and into the cover in front of him. He also said that he was not alone in this behavior while citing knowledge of a very many others acting the same way, not willing to kill another even at cost of their own. One cold night his feet actually froze into the muddy ground that he was mired into behind a stone wall and so was evacuated from the front due to loosing a few toes and a significant amount of skin due to frostbite. More than a few soldiers froze to death on both sides of the battle that month, luckily not our Uncle Slug who lived to tell his story. We still love you Slug.