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Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

If you put 72 things on the table, and some of them are weapons, and you are telling a bunch of audience members that they can do whatever they want and you will take full responsibility for it, you are quite blatantly implying violence and rape as possibilities.

The choice to hold the piece through the night for such a long time further goads the audience.

Basically, she was blatantly setting up the audience for this reaction. Repeat the same experiment in the middle of the day for an hour without putting a gun and knife on the table and you'll see a very different result.

EDIT: really, it's a piece of art about how it's very easy to manipulate an audience

EDIT 2: another downvote for not liking the same piece of art as you. Please grow a pair of balls.

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> Repeat the same experiment in the middle of the day for an hour without putting a gun and knife on the table and you'll see a very different result.

Yeah, if you change the conditions you get different results.

> she was blatantly setting up the audience for this reaction

I agree that the reaction was predictable. I disagree that it detracts from the experiment/performance. In fact it's the opposite - if the reaction is random then the experiment is pointless - if the reaction is predictable - the experiment tells you something about human nature.

I just don't find it that interesting that if you put people into a situation that provokes people to commit violence then they will do it. What does that say about human nature? It's not something we are afraid of admitting nor something unearthed.

I thought her real test would be that even if she put any sort of weapons on the table, no one would use it/them on her. That’s what made the experiment/art interesting.

> That’s what made the experiment/art interesting.

Why? Anyone seriously harming her would have committed a crime and get jailed.

Even if it was done via remotely operated robots via some privacy-proof Tor network, so the participants could be absolutely sure not to be punished for their crime, and someone did seriously harm her, what did it accomplish?

Not much, I'd say. Some people acting cruel when they can get away with it is expected behavior, just look at any kindergarten, not to mention the history books.

So then what’s the point of conducting this experiment when we already know the expected behaviour?

My point is, most folks think the expected behaviour was the unexpected behaviour. I think it’s the other way around.

> the experiment tells you something about human nature

Hardly told us anything new tho, so trivial result as such. Water is still wet.

Quite gutsy of her tho, I'll give her that.

And yet, each generation and group needs to discover the wetness of water.

> If you put 72 things on the table, and some of them are weapons, and you are telling a bunch of audience members that they can do whatever they want and you will take full responsibility for it, you are quite blatantly implying violence and rape as possibilities.

That sure is one interesting way of seeing it. Another way of seeing it is "Just because something is available, doesn't mean you have to exploit/use it".

If you could, with 100% security, steal without getting caught, would you?

> The choice to hold the piece through the night for such a long time further goads the audience.

People have the option to say "Nah, I'm tired, lets go home" instead of staying there if they're tired. But I'm guessing they wanted to see how it ended, so they stuck around.

In the end, people had options, and some people chose options many would consider "less good".

>another downvote for not liking the same piece of art as you. Please grow a pair of balls.

Please grow some balls yourself and accept that not everyone has to have the same opinion and use of the downvote as you.

Agree. People use upvote to like or agree a comment. A down vote inversely function the same way. He thinks he is view so special and deserves no downvotes at all. What a character.

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