Experimenter movie plot
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Donna Abbott: How do you justify the deception?
Stanley Milgram: I like to think of it as illusion, not deception. Semantics, you may say, but illusion, you know, has a revelatory function, as in a play. Illusion can set the stage for revelation, to reveal certain difficult-to-get-at truths.
Donna Abbott: But still, when you go to see a play, you pay for a ticket. You know you're seeing a play. These people didn't know it wasn't real. You tricked them.
Stanley Milgram: "Hello, today we'll be doing an experiment about blind obedience to malevolent authority. I'd like for you to pretend that this machine is delivering painful shocks to a person in the other room." How truthful do you think that would be?
Donna Abbott: But if you think of it, really, *you* were delivering shocks to your subjects. Psychological shocks.
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Stanley Milgram: Less than six degrees of separation exist between you and several million strangers who you may or may not encounter in your lifetime. When we understand the structure of this communication net, we stand to grasp a good deal more about the fabric of society. Maybe it's not necessarily justified, this common human complaint. The feeling that we're all cut off, alienated, and alone. I don't need to go into detail do I?