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user2722 6 hours ago

It really calls into questions the conclusions drawn from the last 50 years. Here's the ones disproven I remember:

* kids grow to be rich because they accept delayed gratification

* alpha males are the leader of the pack and all other males are useless

* people accept violence if there is a higher authority which justifies it with a reason

How many people suffered or delivered suffering because of their beliefs in the above?

KSteffensen 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Didn't the Dunedin study also find that childhood self-control and delayed gratification correlated with adult life outcomes?

https://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/files/1571970023782.pdf

wredcoll 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Last I checked, the delayed gratification was also highly correlates with having wealthy parents.

Intralexical 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Making someone think they're an accomplice to torture is itself recognized as a form of psychological torture. Telling someone that they're helping to advance science proves nothing, except that people can be deceived, manipulated, and exploited by bad actors.

Milgram decided to repeat his gross ethical violation 30 times(!), with dozens of test subjects each time. Overall, the majority of people actually disobeyed the orders to continue with higher voltages.

I think the only reason it's become so popular is because it makes for a shocking story, with grandiose implications. The specific "agentic state theory" Milgram invented is not backed up by his data, and personally, I find it philosophically dubious and psychologically concerning that he gravitated to it.

See:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-yo...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095935431560539...

arethuza 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On that second point - I can strongly recommend the book Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath%27s_Curse

cucumber3732842 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Wikipedia makes it sound like questionable at best. I'll wait a decade and see if it comes out looking like milk or wine.

Spooky23 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Alot of the problem with these “disproven” things is over broad scope or abused in the popular media beyond comprehension.

The delayed gratification thing in particular is correlation vs. causation. It was really more about trust. Forcing kids to delay gratification is meaningless or counterproductive.

user2722 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Agree. But according to Gemini [for what's worth] the final 1990 Mashmallow's study [since first versions were cautious] did indeed jump to conclusions to point there was a causation to a better later life. The media might have amplified, but the wrong (or misleading) conclusion was already present in the _scientific_ paper.

watwut 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The thing about experimental science is that you should not make much conclusions from one study or one paper. Those should wait till consensus is reached, till there are many independent studies confirming the same thing under various conditions.

kakacik 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The first point, and I can see in my own life, is valid. Not properly rich by any means, but vastly surpassed any expectations and most of my peers from earlier life (which is rather easy when coming from poor eastern Europe but somehow most folks from back home didn't, too deep in their little comfort zones or fears of risks that were mostly made up).

It can be reframed as cca discipline too, willingness to suffer a bit for later rewards. Can see this as massive success multiplier in many real world situations.

wredcoll 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

The great thing is you can just focus on the one person who "worked hard" or "self disciplined" or "studied well" and got rich while ignoring all the other people who did the same thing and didn't.