The psychology of evil | Philip Zimbardo
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it to argue that systems rather than bad apples drive cruelty, and for its section on how anonymity changes behavior.
What it is
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how ordinary people can be pushed into doing evil by situations and systems. He draws on the Stanford prison experiment and unseen Abu Ghraib photos, then turns to the opposite case: how ordinary people can become heroes.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2012 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends RyanMcGreal · 2012-06 · on “Woman Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated by Citigroup Wins $31 Million”
> The argument that gets repeated ad nauseum, that things like this are the fault of "a few bad apples", is just plain false. Philip Zimbardo, the architect of the Stanford Prison Experiment and author, more recently, of The Lucifer Effect , argues that it's not "bad apples" that spoil the barrel, but a "bad barrel" that spoils the apples. Here's Zimbardo's TED talk on what makes people do evil: [this video]
Recommends Rochus · 2023-08 · on “In Defense of Programming Languages”
That's the usual naggers club you can meet all over the web today. And it's getting worse, not better. What these people say is an end in itself to make themselves important and does not help the matter. It undoubtedly has something to do with anonymity. Most people on these forums are anonymous, also the quoted people are obvious fantasy pseudonyms. Downvoting is even more anonymous; there is usually no record from who the downvotes come. If you're interested in the effects of anonymity to people, watch this part of Zimbardo's very interesting lecture: [this video] . The anonymity of the web, or the masses, gives these people a power that obviously overwhelms them. There were experiments which d
Recommends Rochus · 2024-01 · on “The Value of Downvoting, Or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong (2009)”
> the most notable difference between Hacker News and Reddit is that it's impossible to downvote anything on Hacker News. [..] It's an interesting design decision, but ultimately a bad one, in my opinion. That's not true (as the author realized himself). And I don't agree with the author; letting people downvote is unfortunate in my opinion, and a bad design decision. The possibility to downvote encourages misuse. I don't see any reason for the majority of downvotes I come across; mostly it's just other opinions that don't suit a few people; often it's even the correct presentation of the facts that has been downvoted. Most people on HN are anonymous. Downvoting is even more anonymous; there
Cites rasz_pl · 2014-12 · on “US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program”
Remember Abu Ghraib? there was only ONE guy not ok with what was happening. It usually takes only one man [this video] in case of US concentration camps there also was one man [LINK] he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks you as a traitor