Allow me to recommend "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram. The fact
that "humans are social animals" scares the holy hell out of me. The
repercussions of that fact are largely ignored or actively belittled by most
people.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/anarchist.htm


There was an episode of CSI that touched on the fine line between a group of
people and a mob. In it, a guy was killed on a flight because his fellow
passengers failed to realize that he was sick, not crazy. Normal, nice
people who failed to observe one little fact, that he was bathed in sweat,
and killed without remorse. They altered their own perceptions of reality,
and fed it to one another, each ignoring evidence of his condition, to
justify the killing. The one person who saw was the blind man. A single
person wouldn't have killed him or would have been bothered by killing, but
the group was quite happy to.

It seems to me that in a group, one critical bit of information tends to
be... Averaged out between all the members and often falls below some
threshold which causes it to be ignored. Once the group has decided it isn't
important, no matter how hard you try, you can't get it past the group mind.
You may go back later and find that each person will confess they felt it
was important, but were not willing to challenge the collective decision.

In movies, there is often a scene where one person stands up and challenges
the group to go in a different direction. I'm always amazed that people will
such courage (or stupidity) might exist. But the real hero is the SECOND
person. The one who decides to support the nut case. That person is the one
who really makes the difference.

---
James.
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu 
> [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of Spehro Pefhany
> Sent: 2005 Sep 23, Fri 10:22
> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
> Subject: Re: [OT] Ethical Decisions - Morton Thiokol and the 
> Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
> 
> At 11:15 PM 9/23/2005 +1200, you wrote:
> >I may be almost two decades late with this - I've never seen 
> it before 
> >and I've no idea how I came to arrive at this page. (Maybe a 
> link from 
> >one of the two lists I'm posting this to? :-( ).
> >
> >        http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/#abstr
> >
> >A detailed paper by a disgruntled ex Morton Thiokol employee 
> detailing 
> >the history as he sees it that lead up to MT making (he 
> says) dubious 
> >decisions that lead to the Challenger disaster. Very old hat now but 
> >makes interesting reading and plenty of lessons to apply to 
> other areas.
> 
> I highly recommend "What Do You Care What Other People Think" 
> by Richard Feynman. Roughly the last half of the book is 
> devoted to his time on the Rogers commission investigating 
> the Challenger disaster.
> He describes his impressions of Boisjoly, Lund, and Thompson, 
> and puts it into perspective with a sort of 'control' 
> investigation of the Shuttle engines.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The 
> Journey is the reward"
> speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: 
> http://www.trexon.com
> Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  
> http://www.speff.com
> ->> Inexpensive test equipment & parts 
> ->> http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZspeff
> 
> 
> --
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