What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Almost as cool as that tin foil fedora. Almost
 
dxmnkd316 said:
Almost as cool as that tin foil fedora. Almost
Click to expand...

Do you actually read and absorb what you read or are you obsessed (like many republicans) with calling “conspiracy theory” at everything?
If you read then you know, Haspel and the cia are withholding a TON of information from congress. If you’re good with that you live in a world I don’t want to be part of.

Welcome to 1984.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

DX is not a Republican...nor is everyone who thinks you wear a tinfoil hat ;)
 
solovsfett said:
Do you actually read and absorb what you read or are you obsessed (like many republicans) with calling “conspiracy theory” at everything?
If you read then you know, Haspel and the cia are withholding a TON of information from congress. If you’re good with that you live in a world I don’t want to be part of.

Welcome to 1984.
Click to expand...
Lol
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Kepler said:
It's gotta be in the brain. It's such a distinct difference of beings. I can't crawl into a beta brain. I assume they can't crawl into mine.
Click to expand...

See: Stanley Milgram Experiment, 1961.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

aparch said:
See: Stanley Milgram Experiment, 1961.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the problem isn't that of two different types of brain, we being of one type, and they being of another. It's that it's incomprehensible to us that our own brains are of the same type as theirs.

Virtually every person in the Milgram experiments, (which have been repeated in various ways since) regardless of background, delivers a potentially lethal shock to a fellow human being for no morally defensible reason at all.
We regularly abhor what someone else has done in a given set of circumstances, yet fail to comprehend at all that we ourselves*, when placed in a similar circumstance, would be very, very likely to act in the same terrible manner.

* meaning all of you. I myself would, of course, act honorably.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Wisko McBadgerton said:
Yeah, the problem isn't that of two different types of brain, we being of one type, and they being of another. It's that it's incomprehensible to us that our own brains are of the same type as theirs.

Virtually every person in the Milgram experiments, (which have been repeated in various ways since) regardless of background, delivers a potentially lethal shock to a fellow human being for no morally defensible reason at all.
We regularly abhor what someone else has done in a given set of circumstances, yet fail to comprehend at all that we ourselves*, when placed in a similar circumstance, would be very, very likely to act in the same terrible manner.

* meaning all of you. I myself would, of course, act honorably.
Click to expand...

I think there likely are different brains, in the sense that conservatives were dropped on their head as children or their parents had fetal alcohol syndrome or something, but Milgram was about deference to authority (the degree, the lab coat, the structure of the experiment) and the results were devastatingly uniform.

One of the scariest results from Milgram was that education and intelligence made no difference in the reluctance (or not) of the subjects from torturing. This is not at all what I would have expected, and in fact is so incongruous (and unreplicated for obvious human subject reasons) that it feels like a wrong result to me, but... there it is.
 
Last edited:
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Kepler said:
I think there likely are different brains, in the sense that conservatives were dropped on their head as children or their parents had fetal alcohol syndrome or something, but Milgram was about deference to authority (the degree, the lab coat, the structure of the experiment) and the results were devastatingly uniform.

One of the scariest results from Milgram was that education and intelligence made no difference in the reluctance (or not) of the subjects from torturing. This is not at all what I would have expected, and in fact is so incongruous (and unreplicated for obvious human subject reasons) that it feels like a wrong result to me, but... there it is.
Click to expand...

Getting far afield here but in my college years I tended bar and also sold stuff door to door for a while. The former allows a great opportunity to observe people and the latter was probably worth more than any 20 courses in psychology and human behavior. As it turns out, people are very easy to manipulate. Even the well educated/highly intelligent who are often more susceptible to certain logical arguments and also generally posses a high self-confidence in their ability to assess a situation for what it "really" is. Naturally, this can be used against them. And once smart folks reach the tipping point, they aren't as likely to go back as they usually have a strong confidence about (their perception of) the facts that a less educated or intelligent person doesn't as easily arrive at.

Anyway, the basis of all sales is the simple rule that everyone will agree to an action the moment the perceived benefit outweighs the perceived cost. As far as I have observed, there's no upper limit to this rule -- You, me, everyone -- We would all readily agree even to commit murder so long as these conditions are arranged. (because, of course, this is the basic formula for decision making. ) For some individuals, the introduction of an accomplice often reduces the perceived cost to an action by half. But the introduction of authority to the equation lowers the cost perception factor to as low as zero for some, but at the least, it reduces perceived cost by more than half for virtually everyone. So an action that had initially required a benefit of 10, is reduced to perhaps only needing to meet a measly benefit of 3 to be readily undertaken.

My feeling is, this is why Milgram works, shocking (pun) as it may be. And being smart just doesn't help enough in determining that a concrete fact is not, in reality, a fact at all. From my experience I'd say people who are immune to the experiment would be very rare. (Perhaps the Dalai Lama or maybe John Wayne for very different reasons) I myself don't find it surprising though. It doesn't necessarily suggest people are uniformly evil or uncaring, but rather are uniformly very poor at correctly assessing situations and/or making decisions under certain kinds of circumstances. Because whether those circumstances are arranged or come about by chance doesn't matter, I personally have found it's always been very useful to be suspicious of certainty wherever it's found.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Wisko McBadgerton said:
Getting far afield here but in my college years I tended bar and also sold stuff door to door for a while. The former allows a great opportunity to observe people and the latter was probably worth more than any 20 courses in psychology and human behavior. As it turns out, people are very easy to manipulate. Even the well educated/highly intelligent who are often more susceptible to certain logical arguments and also generally posses a high self-confidence in their ability to assess a situation for what it "really" is. Naturally, this can be used against them. And once smart folks reach the tipping point, they aren't as likely to go back as they usually have a strong confidence about (their perception of) the facts that a less educated or intelligent person doesn't as easily arrive at.

Anyway, the basis of all sales is the simple rule that everyone will agree to an action the moment the perceived benefit outweighs the perceived cost. As far as I have observed, there's no upper limit to this rule -- You, me, everyone -- We would all readily agree even to commit murder so long as these conditions are arranged. (because, of course, this is the basic formula for decision making. ) For some individuals, the introduction of an accomplice often reduces the perceived cost to an action by half. But the introduction of authority to the equation lowers the cost perception factor to as low as zero for some, but at the least, it reduces perceived cost by more than half for virtually everyone. So an action that had initially required a benefit of 10, is reduced to perhaps only needing to meet a measly benefit of 3 to be readily undertaken.

My feeling is, this is why Milgram works, shocking (pun) as it may be. And being smart just doesn't help enough in determining that a concrete fact is not, in reality, a fact at all. From my experience I'd say people who are immune to the experiment would be very rare. (Perhaps the Dalai Lama or maybe John Wayne for very different reasons) I myself don't find it surprising though. It doesn't necessarily suggest people are uniformly evil or uncaring, but rather are uniformly very poor at correctly assessing situations and/or making decisions under certain kinds of circumstances. Because whether those circumstances are arranged or come about by chance doesn't matter, I personally have found it's always been very useful to be suspicious of certainty wherever it's found.
Click to expand...

This is a great post. Thank you for taking the time.
 
Wisko McBadgerton said:
And once smart folks reach the tipping point, they aren't as likely to go back as they usually have a strong confidence about (their perception of) the facts that a less educated or intelligent person doesn't as easily arrive at.
Click to expand...

Dunning-Kruger called and disagrees with this assessment.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

unofan said:
Dunning-Kruger called and disagrees with this assessment.
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't. Dunning-Krueger says that if your IQ is 80 you may think it's 100. If it's 150 you may think it's 130. It doesn't say that if you're just ordinary dumb you think you're Einstein. Or conversely, if you are in fact Einstein, it doesn't say you're not aware you're still smarter than the average bear.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top