The Milgram experiment shows that it is shockingly easy (literally) to get people to turn off empathy. Humans evolved for group fitness, which requires both empathy for other tribe members and warfare toward outsiders. Tribes with both attributes killed both the peaceful tribes and individuals without social skills, which selects for genes that allow people to switch. This is why torture and genocide still exist, even though we believe ourselves to be morally above that.
Evolution is not fast enough to keep up with rapidly developing technology. Apparently I am not the only one concerned that AI is leading to social isolation and population collapse. Noah Smith also noted this too. https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/maybe-the-rapture-is-already-here He notes that over the last decade that social media is being used less to communicate with friends and more as passive entertainment, like swiping through an endless feed of short form videos. It is part of the trend from human generated content to human moderated to AI moderated to AI generated. I used to post on Facebook every day, but now that the transition is almost complete I rarely visit. It's why I cling to mailing lists like this one even though I know mailing lists are disappearing as we grow old and younger people go elsewhere. The current trend is toward a world where we live alone and get all of our social interaction with AI. I agree with the Pope about the dangers of what he calls the "paradise of machines". When we live in a world where you don't know anyone and nobody knows or cares that you exist, it becomes a dangerous place. If anything goes wrong, like you can't access your bank account or unlock your house, no human can help you. -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] On Wed, Oct 7, 2026, 2:55 PM [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > I just wanted to note that the Stanford Prison Experiment could be better > classified as a form of the Milgram Obedience experiment. Meaning it was > more of conformance to pressure from the experimenter (by some, not all > guards), not spontaneous behavior. The Stanford Prison Experiment has had > attempted replications that largely failed to show what the original > claimed. > *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T8c653b0757fd475f-M1d96e2e65c944c4d24b04446> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T8c653b0757fd475f-M0905300cba1da0ea80031471 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
