From: Blanc Weber <blancw@microsoft.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 94 19:35:21 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The Herd Instinct & Response to Authority
Message-ID: <9404200136.AA08012@netmail2.microsoft.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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From: Tom Allard

"This shows that, in real situations, people will follow herd instincts
and obey orders."

Herd instincts:  of following together in large numbers, what the rest 
of the cows are doing or go where the rest of the herd is headed.
The experiments on test subjects were done with individuals who were 
not aware of what others were doing in the same situation, so they 
could not have been imitating anyone's behavior.  So it was a 
demonstration of something else, that being mostly their state of 
ignorance, or their deficient knowledge (of morality, of pain, of the 
meaning of what they see, hear, etc.).    I would suspect that this was 
because they grew up without sufficient opportunity to exercise  
independent judgement or develop their own self-directing abilities.

I think "herd instincts" are in the eyes of the beholder.

From Jeff Davis:  (from an earlier post)    "I am prone to action on instinct."
[so he said...]  "We better be DAMN careful who we put in authority in 
this country."

Blanc