Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean or destroy innocent others. In short, its knowing better, but doing worse. Most people do not have brain tumors or or, you no criminally damaged brains. They they just, at some point, no, i shouldn't do this, but i'm going to do it anyway. It's what it means to have a cult a society and functioning society has to be laws that constrain people from doing things for selfish motives because they can get away with it. And so again, one of the great things about america has always been that we are a nation of emigrants, emigrants from literally every country in the
August 15 marks the 50th anniversary of day one of the Stanford Prison Experiment — one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology. In this conversation, Michael Shermer speaks with renowned social psychologist and creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo, exploring the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil. His book, The Lucifer Effect, explains why we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” and how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women. Shermer and Zimbardo discuss: Zimbardo’s life mission to understand the nature of evil, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and its critics, the nature of human nature, The Dark Triad that leads to violence, obedience to authority, free will/determinism, and how we can teach ourselves to act heroically.