The future is already here, it is simply unevenly distributed. William Gibson
1. The trouble does not come alone. In February, we wrote about documents discovered in the archives that questioned the scientific value of one of the two most famous psychological experiments in history - the experiment of Milgram. And now documents have been discovered that do not just question the second of the most famous psychological experiments in history - Stanford prison experiment - but give reason to say that from the very beginning he was a planned lie.
In an experiment, which the psychologist Philip Zimbardo spent in 1971, who were recruited by young volunteers randomly divided into two groups, and then placed in an impromptu prison - some as prisoners, and others as overseers. According to the official version, which no one disputed for almost 50 years, and the “overseers” and “prisoners” very quickly got used to their roles. The former began to show unmotivated sadism, the latter became submissive and fell into depression. All this went so far that the experiment had to be interrupted on the 6th day instead of the planned two weeks.
Since then, the Stanford prison experiment serves as an illustration that human behavior depends not so much on his personal qualities as on the social role imposed on him, which he is forced to play due to the characteristics of human psychology. It was used to explain-and even to some extent the excuse-the Holocaust, the crimes of American soldiers during the Vietnamese War, torture of imprisoned in the Abu-Graib prison. The overseers themselves are not to blame, psychologists explained, but a society that endowed them with this role.
And so, after 47 years, documents were found that show that everything was completely wrong.
The French economist, sociologist and director Tibo Le Thacesier, who was going to make a documentary film about this experiment, discovered them. Many books have already been written about the Stanford prison experiment and many films have been shot, but in all of them the central figure was Zimbardo. Le Texier decided to find a new angle of view and make the main characters of the film “Permissful”. To do this, he turned to the Archive of Stanford University, where detailed work notes that describe all aspects of preparation and experimenting were preserved.
From these records, as well as from conversations with the participants in the experiment, Le Texier found out amazing things: Firstly, at least some prisoners did not fall into despair, but imitated it. The most famous of them, Douglas Corpi, who supposedly had a full -fledged nervous breakdown, actually deliberately played panic seizures, while receiving a lot of pleasure. Secondly, Zimbardo did not allow those who wanted to get out of the experiment ahead of schedule, although in his articles and interviews about the experiment he approved the opposite. That is why Corpi simulated a nervous breakdown - he had to prepare for the exam, but overseers forbade him to have textbooks in the cell. Then Corpy said that he was leaving the experiment so as not to fail the exam, but Zimbardo did not let him out of prison, and therefore Corpie decided to force Zimbardo to release him in such an unusual way. Thirdly, and this is the most important thing, overseers became sadists not on their own. Zimbardo and his assistants directly ordered them to behave like sadists. Moreover, the warders were given detailed instructions describing how to cause the greatest mental suffering to the prisoners - despite the fact that in their articles on the experiment Zimbardo wrote that the overseers did not receive instructions on how to behave. Finally, real scientific experiments are conducted to establish the truth. But Zimbardo and his assistants, as the documents show, from the very beginning had a political goal - they already “knew” that the American prison system was inhuman, and with the help of their experiment wanted to achieve its reform. Faced with all this, Le Texier, instead of filming the film, wrote the book “The History of one Lie”, which is available online for free (in French). Those who do not own French, but read in English, can find out the details in the article by American Ben Blama , who, having come across the book of Le Texier, also studied archival documents (now they are in the public domain) and talked both with the participants in the experiment and with Zimbardo himself.
The most amazing thing in this story is that Corpi and other participants in the experiment have already tried to tell about all this to journalists, but no one wanted to listen to them. Their recognitions were cut out of articles and films about the experiment, since they did not correspond to the “official” version of events.
The tradition of eating dog meat in South Korea is a thing of the past as dogs begin to be perceived more like pets, and not like cattle
2. The court of the South Korean city of Puchhon ruled that it is illegal to kill dogs for food . Perhaps this will serve as the basis for a nationwide ban. Eating dogs in South Korea is already becoming less and less popular every year, but so far it has been legal. In the Chinese Yulin, meanwhile, the next ten -day festival of dog meat began, during which thousands of dogs are scored. Defenders of animals require prohibiting a cruel holiday, the festival participants call it a beautiful local tradition and demand that the authorities plug their mouths to activists. So far, lovers of dog meat are winning - the city police have already arrested several activists who came to protest against animation.
3. The employee of the Kobe Water Supply Bureau was fined that he regularly went for lunch break three minutes earlier than the laid . The bureau convened a special press conference to apologize to the public for the outrageous behavior of his employee who deceived public trust. The whole world is delighted with traditional Japanese punctuality, but the Japanese themselves write in social networks that the water supply bureau has completely crazy.
4. The dead Japanese returned home after cremation , pretty amazing his loved ones. Last year, the “deceased” was missing, but soon the police found the body of a person who corresponded to his description. Relatives, including his wife, “without a doubt” identified the body, incinerated him in the crematorium and surrendered to grief. But now the missing husband suddenly returned home. The shocked wife herself called the police to inform about this. The question of whose body was burned remains open.
5. From the new school year, students of many Japanese schools will be able to dress as students, and students - as students. In order not to discriminate against LGBT students and transgender people, students of some schools are allowed to choose on their own what to wear-a skirt or trousers, and in other schools they introduce a unisex uniform, the same for boys and girls .
6. The Court of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador officially recognized three people by the parents of one child . The woman not named by the name of her and her two partners have been living together for several years. Multivills and polygamy in Canada are prohibited, but such unofficial cohabitation is quite legal. The court decision leads to an interesting situation - three cohabitants cannot be considered official husbands and wife, but now they are all considered to be official parents of the child.
7. Everyone probably read fantastic novels about gigantic spaceships, for centuries carrying many generations of star -fertilists to distant stars. Now, scientists have finally found out how the minimum number of people can be sent to the Star closest to the solar system, the proxim of the Centaurus, so that their descendants will fly there alive and healthy: they should be at least 98 .
8. On Wednesday, Algeria authorities turned off the Internet in the country for six days, however, not for all the time, but for several hours that coincide with the time of state exams in universities. This is done so that the students do not write off. In 2016, 300 thousand people had to retake the exam, because they were caught on the use of examination tickets merged into the network. The Algerian authorities go to such a radical measure as a shutdown of the Internet for the first time: last year they already disconnected access to social networks during the exams, but this obviously did not help. By the way, in Iraq at the time of final exams in schools, the Internet has been disconnected for the third year, and not for six days, but for two weeks.
9. Scientists have found that people who are sitting in social networks for a long time often have nightmares . This discovery was a surprise for researchers - their working hypothesis was that nightmares more often dream of those who play a lot of computer games, and those who spend all days on social networks served as one of the control groups. But the scientists could not find any stable connection between the passion for shooters and nightmares, but suddenly a stable connection between nightmares and a compulsive desire to check whether they put another like.
10. From July 1, each new car in China will be obliged to have a radio-identification chip on board, allowing to track all its movements . The authorities say that this is done to optimize traffic and the fight against traffic jams, but human rights activists and experts also call this explanation ridiculous and indicate that data on each particular car and its owner are completely not required to optimize traffic, it is quite enough to collect overall information about the automobile stream from road chambers. The chips, in their opinion, are introduced within the framework of the program unfolding in the country of constant and relentless technological surveillance of all citizens of the country, about other aspects of which we wrote in the same issue of NDM as about the experiment of Milgram.
