Shawn Ryan
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Have you heard of the Milgram experiment?
No.
So this happened in Yale.
I'll give you the short version.
1962, I think.
As World War II is over, these Nazis are on trial in Nuremberg, and they're asked, like, why did you do what you did?
And they're saying, I was just following orders.
So this guy at Yale, Dr. Stanley Milgram, runs this experiment.
Will people just follow orders?
So let's say you, a volunteer for this experiment, you respond to an ad in the paper that says, we'll give you a free bologna sandwich lunch voucher or whatever at the cafeteria and 20 bucks.
So you show up and it says, we're doing a study on learning and the effects of punishment on learning.
I think I do know about this.
Is this the shock thing?
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
So they've essentially got a guy in the room right beside you strapped up to a machine that's going to shock him.
And they sit you down at a machine.
And your job is to read off some words.
And when he gets a question wrong, you shock his ass.