RE: Milgram & Authority

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
> The subjects were very upset during and after the experiment.  Some broke 
> down while administering "lethal" shocks.  They often cried and begged the 
> "researcher" to let them stop zapping the victim.

I saw a documentary about this research about ten years ago, and they made
a point which hasn't come up here: that Milgram, in subjecting his exper-
imental subjects to such psychological stress (many were traumatized for
months afterwards about what they had done) was being just as unethical, just
as unfeeling and unthinking, as his experiment was designed to show his sub-
jects as being.  Why was Milgram willing to push his subjects to such lengths?
Was his obedience to the "authority" of abstract scientific research any more
defensible than his subjects' obedience to that authority?

In a strained attempt to tie this thread to the list, I will point out that
our own efforts to distribute cryptographic tools will be judged by their
consequences, not by our hopes.  We have as much responsibility as Milgram to
consider the likely results if we succeed.  It will be a different world, and,
we hope, a better one.  But some things will be worse, of that there is little
doubt.  We must constantly weigh the bad against the good and take actions
on that basis, rather than blindly and unthinkingly seeking to push the env-
elope just to see what happens.

Hal