Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?
Not really. D-K only says stupid people are so stupid they don't know they're stupid. AFAIK, it doesn't say anything about smart people.
I recognize that smart people are less likely to make intellectual commitments because they recognize the flaws in their perception and the multivariate nature of reality. But I would not be at all surprised if once we commit we stay committed despite meeting contrary personal opinions. That behavior would make statistical sense even given the higher recognition of fallibility by the smart. When a smart person meets somebody who disagrees with them the odds are pretty good the disagreeing person just hasn't processed the available information as well.
OTOH, when confronted with a recognized authority such as peer review, a smart person is hopefully much more likely to be deferential to that authority over their own opinion than a stupid person (e.g., climate change denial by the stupid).
The scary thing about Milgram was even smart people vested a lab coat with authority. That was disappointing. It may well have changed since then, though, since one of the hallmarks of intelligence stressed in the culture of liberalism ever since has been a high skepticism towards mere symbols of authority (churches, banks, uniforms, flags, etc).
Regarding smart people, from my observations, I think your take is generally correct. I'd add that smart people aren't necessarily harder to sell in the first place, in fact they are often easier as they are quicker to comprehend the benefits the seller is explaining. And maximizing perceived benefit is half of the equation.
The thing that strikes me about Milgram isn't solely it's application regarding authority though. I see it in it's entirety as a rather diabolical sales job. Among other things, it does use our ingrained deference to authority against us (It's not just a lab coat after all, it's a (recognized) Yale lab coat. In Yale University labs. A place where quite obviously, people aren't just running around torturing other people for no reason.) but I don't think that authority is the only lever that can be used successfully at all.
Previously, in passing, I touched on my thought about who would in fact be immune to the experiment and mentioned the Dalai Lama (Big Hitter, the Dalai...) and John Wayne (meaning the character). The Dalai is like the Gretzky of moral and ethical questions in that he has literally trained his whole life to confront such dilemmas as are presented here. This experiment all happens in real time, subjects aren't given the opportunity to sit and ruminate on the moral/ethical considerations, rather they have to act one way or the other right now. All that training makes the Dalai a good candidate for success, as eliciting the true nature of the situation is probably by now fairly automatic.
In thinking about it just now I rejected the John Wayne character (fiercely independent, strong moral/ethical code) in favor of Joe Strummer of the Clash (strongly anti-authority). But now I reconsider again. The problem with Joe Strummer is what if I simply reconstructed the experiment and put the lab coat guy in the electric chair? Joe's defense (against authority) is no longer a defense, but works against him. I guess I'm back to John Wayne again, Pilgrim.
The fact that I'm falling back on only one short Asian man with a great golf swing and a fictional character with a limp points me toward a conclusion: We're
all susceptible. And that's what is frightening.
Suppose Milgram was kept secret so that we are unaware that it works. But tomorrow I reconstructed it, only this time I put a black man on the wires and used only white volunteers? Or put a MAGA-hat-wearin'-Bubba on the chair and used only liberal elites to push the buttons? Or reversed all these? Milgram points out that all these scenarios would likely have the same (shocking) result, naturally confirming what we all already knew -->
They are monsters!
Perhaps we should be heedful of some of the implications.
