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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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.

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