Brilliant Dot Organiz Slash Michael Shermer

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Micheal shermer talks about a theory that could cut either liberal or conservative. He explains how he planted two abandoned cars in different parts of New York City and watched as passers by took everything useful from them. The idea was, how long before somebody called police it away or broke the windows. But instead, what happened, within minutes, and we have a video of it, is people began to smash the car just for the pleasure of destruction.

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.