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Comment by rcoveson | Hacker News Reader

Attempting to extract a conclusion about human nature from this event is as ridiculous as trying to determine if hypnosis is real based on the outcomes at a hypnosis performance.

The people were not randomly selected. We are not told what their instructions were. We do not know what their relationships were with the creator/subject of the piece. None of that is a "problem" with the piece, of course, because it doesn't even purport to be science. It's not "performance art" in the sarcastic sense that you might apply to a very poorly designed social science experiment. It's actually performance art. It tells us as much about humanity as an indie film depicting the same occurrences would.

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I think art does capture a perspective of humanity in a way that science does not. In a sense, you can argue science is a kind of art, also, with its own perspective of humanity-- notions of conclusions drawn only from observable phenomena isolated from interference/the world can somehow apply to a world full of interference and knock-off unforseen consequences.

I don't know how you can scientifically glean any conclusion that the artist was trying to discover or perspect, here, as effectively as she is trying to do so.

I wasn't trying to say art has no value, just that its value isn't in it being a source of conclusions. Art can raise questions that we wouldn't have had otherwise, and questions are the starting point of science (and that of further art).

> I don't know how you can scientifically glean any conclusion that the artist was trying to discover or perspect, here, as effectively as she is trying to do so.

This is what I disagree with. If there is a conclusion that you think you have drawn from this work, then you should re-frame it as a hypothesis and test it properly. Or just be content with the new questions, perspectives, and the experience of it. Just don't go saying that you learned something reliably predictive about how humans behave.

How do I test it properly in science, except through what she did here? Genuinely asking. Am I paying people 10$ amazon gift cards for the opportunity to sexually assault a woman? VR-cut-and-drink-woman-blood?

Even if you can't ethically test it scientifically, that doesn't mean the alternative is to take conclusions from it instead. You have to recognize it's limitations for what they are.

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