Thread by @rubic3n

The Stanford prison experiment has its 50th anniversary.

A good time to remember this scary part of ubiquitous human nature.

There are no goodies or baddies.
There is no 'law enforcement by all means' for those on the self-declared good cause side.

There are elements in our closer and wider environment that have come up again and again that lead me to view it in the light that we are in this now.

In a huge revitalized 'Stanford Prison Experiment'.

With perceivably enormous funding behind it.

simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

Using the SPE serves to draw analogies and to have a more structured frame for analysis in this guessing game that we find ourselves in.

Why this virus? Why now? Why the governmental reactions? The role of the US and CCP? Afghanistan. So many open questions - and more.

In the end, the SPE analogy might not seem helpful at all, but it might be worth an attempt.

There are always shortcomings of every analogy:
- This wider 'scenario' we are in, is mostly not openly declared as an experiment (though: Yascha Mounk, Scholz #Versuchskaninchen, ...)

- You do not take part in this 'SPE reload' in informed consent (though, as it looks like, also that was limited in the original) - neither informed nor consent
- You were not given choice over the role. In 'SPE RL', roles are not arbitrary, they are filled with opinion, identity

- Role: Some of us are role switcher, two timers, impersonators, 'mask' wearers. It might even be lucrative to swap sites
- There is no 'opt-out' of this experiment, there is no end point with a 'return' to 'normality' after it

Thus, in short, borrowing this analogy of the Stanford Prison Experiment is just a scaffold for providing a structured background for association.

If you were to recreate the Stanford Prison Experiement on a global scale - what would you need for your concoction?
(Maybe if we are lucky, we can spot the next ingredient)

(They have had their 5+ chances for germ game after germ game, we cannot even get together to discuss?)

Concoction ingredients for a reload SPE:

Structure (agents, groups of agents, edifices). Prompts, props, role descriptions, money handlers,...
Michel Foucault might give us more to look out for
Erving Goffman
Game Theory
Garbage Can Theory ...

monoskop.org/images/4/43/Fo…

I am sure we could bring together a canopy of structural 'ingredients' - my list here is rather meagre.
But as a start:
'Rigging the environment' - filling the environment of learners with reifications that interlink with practices, which are scaffolded
l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/paper…

With this SPE reload experiment designed to lasting world wide change of behavior and identities, you would need the rigged environment with reification, practices, (groups of) agents that act as facilitators and scaffolders, you would need adaptations of the rigged elements.

"Make it really 'stick' with this world.
Last chance and all, transhumanism and DNA change as a perspective to overcome these rather misfitting human genome entities"

Clad in nice glossy brochures, nudging as scaffolding

This 'experiment' is not primarily about observating behavior. This 'experiment is meant to bring about transformation, -assumed- with an end picture in mind.
Apart from the structure in a 'rigged environment', every transformational process needs energy, ...