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Comment by mgreenbe | Hacker News Reader

First, I don't buy the post's statistics. 65% of the subjects administered every shock in the experiment. But

  when we believe that someone knows more than us about a 
  subject, they can get us to do what they want most of the 
  time (or 65% of the time if you can believe the experiment)

mis-parses the probabilities.

Second, I think the "(65% of) people obey to authority despite what should be their better judgment" overfits the results of the experiment. Perhaps people simply listen to scientists during experiments?

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The point is that the listen to scientists because they are wearing white coats, despite the (play-acted) agonized yowls from the unfortunate victim, from which the experimental subject can clearly infer that they are causing suffering. If you think that tuning such information out is normal or sensible, I suggest some self-examination.

Note that in the Milgram experiment the scientist figure never tells the subject it's safe or makes excuses for the degree of shock administered, they just insist that an external authority 'the experiment' requires the subject to continue.

Your description doesn't quite match the one in the article:

The researcher tells you to keep going, and that the shocks will cause "no permanent tissue damage" to the Learner.

True, sorry about that - I was thinking of the specifications for the original experiment at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment But still, it comes down to the question of whether you believe this abstract assertion, or the person who is (supposedly) on the receiving end of the shocks.

The disturbing issue raised by Milgram's experiment is how you can apparently persuade a majority of people to do just about anything, as long you have an appropriate authority figure around to affirm that it's safe/ legal/ necessary. With things like waterboarding and suicide bombing being stples of the news in recent years, this strikes me as a serious problem.

It seems Milgram did not follow the experimental specifications exactly as given on Wikipedia. The "tissue damage" exchange is mentioned further down on the Wikipedia page and comes from Milgram's own anecdotal recollections of the experiment.

If this is the case, it seems that he improvised rationalizations as needed to get the subjects to continue administering shocks. This strikes me as rather sloppy on his part. (...not that I think the numbers would have been all that different had he not done this.)

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