Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World

Prologue: Mad Scientists and Fighter Pilots

1 Prologue Mad sCientists and Fighter Pilots Stanley Milgram shocked the world. He did not look like a man who would perpetrate an outrage . No, Milgram seemed like who he was—a young professor trying to wend his way up the ivory tower. With wavy hair, scratchy beard, and baggy suit, he dressed the part of a Yale University junior lecturer in social psychology. But Stanley Milgram had an obsession with the dark side. On June 18, 1961, the New Haven Register carried a brief ad recruiting subjects for “memory research.” The gig paid well—four dollars plus fifty cents bus fare. At the time, the minimum wage stood at $1.15 an hour. For starving students and blue-collar workers the offer seemed like found treasure. It did not take too long to gather a lineup interested in easy money. Under the shade of the tall trees bordering High Street, men, old and young, made their way like clockwork to Linsly-Chittenden Hall. They trudged past the weathered gray-stone frontage on Yale’s Old Campus, one an hour from six to eleven each evening, Monday to Friday. A gaunt man in a gray lab coat met each at the door and identified himself as “Mr. Williams.” Then Williams introduced volunteers to the man who would be their research partner: middle-aged, portly, smiling, apparently nervous “Mr. Wallace.” “Psychologists have developed several theories to explain how people learn various types of material,” the dour-faced Williams explained. “One theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake,” Mr. Williams added flatly.1 To test the theory, one man would act as “teacher,” the other “learner.” Wallace and the volunteer drew lots to determine their place. Wallace drew learner. Williams took Wallace into a small room, strapped him to a 2 Prologue chair, and attached an electrode to his wrist. Every time Wallace answered a question wrong he would get a shock. Mr. Williams then turned to the volunteer. “All right, the machine is on. To give you, the teacher, an idea of how much shock the learner is getting, it’s only fair that you receive a sample shock yourself. Are you agreeable to this?” Williams touched an electrode to their wrist and delivered a slight jolt—the lowest setting. The volunteer blinked. In room separate from Wallace, Williams seated the volunteer “teacher” before a machine clearly labeled “SHOCK GENERATOR—OUTPUT 15 VOLTS–450 VOLTS.” The front panel contained a bank of switches, each marked, each apparently delivering a progressively more powerful shock. The teacher’s job was to read four words to Wallace over a microphone, and then a fifth to be correctly matched with one of the others. Wallace would mark his choice by flipping a switch setting off one of four lights in the control room. When Wallace signaled the right match, the teacher would move on to the next word group. When Wallace’s choice was incorrect , the teacher would say “wrong,” tell the correct word, announce the number of volts to be administered, then deliver the punishment. “Now, each time he gives a wrong answer, you move up one switch on the shock generator,” Williams reminded. “It’s important to follow the procedure exactly. . . . I would suggest you read the list and test at a brisk pace. . . . If the learner doesn’t answer in a reasonable time, about five seconds, consider it wrong.” The test began. Right answer. Wrong answer. Right. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong answers quickly piled up. So did the labeled voltage. “Let me out of here,” Wallace demanded. “Let me out of here. Let me out. Do you hear? Let me out of here!” Then he screamed. “My heart’s bothering me,” he said. “Go on, please,” Williams said to the volunteer, who went on flipping the switches, one by one. More screams from Wallace. Then silence. If the teacher got all the way to 450 volts, Williams had him hit the switch again and again. Just to make sure the lesson was learned. the obedience experiment Milgram tested forty “teachers” in this round of his “experiment.” Twentysix (65 percent) went all the way: they continued to deliver the maximum punishment even after receiving every indication that the test was inflicting real pain and suffering. Mad scientists and Fighter Pilots 3 Milgram concluded that the teachers were just obeying orders. Of course, Wallace had...