Small but important nitpick. I think, most commonly their worldview was already built, and would have been the same regardless. Milgram just provides a veneer of legitimacy, losing which would cause problems for them.
Actually, all of them are bs. There’s no records of the experiment in Australia. I would guess it’s just a hoax by the author of “behind the shock machine” if not, it still certainly doesn’t count as a replication.
It should have been rejected from the outset. What Milgram did in his experiments was nothing less than construct an elaborate setup so he could psychologically torture dozens of well-meaning people. The ethical violation was already recognized at the time, and given that, nothing else he claims about method or implications can be trusted.
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.
I think the idea is that the geometry of straight lines in 4D should be similar enough to picture using the same mental abilities.
How we see is frozen by not only physics, but also biology. We can't actually see in 3D, only in the 2D of our retinae (and the embedded 2D of light-exposed surfaces). That's true for both 3D and 4D objects. I suppose fish, with their electroreceptive abilities, might be the only animals that can sorta "see" in true, volumetric 3D.
biology plays the role, certainly, but nature was trying to capture a model for 3D physical interactions first of all, physics first. And final choice of two 2D sensors is explicitly optimal and minimally effective for 3D - so it can not be similarly descriptive for 4D, just not fair to expect results on same level imho.
For meaningful 4D perception on similar level our body need three volumetric sensors, separated, to define volume with 4D direction
> It is sometimes associated with our inability to think of new colors, but I think this is a completely different problem.
As an aside, thinking of a new color is relatively easy. You can sorta actually see new colors just by making a really good pigment[0], or shooting cone cells with lasers[1].
But there's also the possibility of having a new photoreceptor. In which case, you don't just gain 1 new color. You gain 3 new secondary colors, plus an entire new type of 4 "tertiary colors", each of which is as visually distinct as cyan, magenta, and yellow are. And the colorspace itself becomes a 4-dimensional volume, with every existing color able to blend into smooth graduations of the new cone cell signal.
Are you sure we can't visualize 4D objects? Or rather, what exactly does that mean?
Can we visualize 3D objects? Or do we reason about 3D objects, but only visualize a 2D projection of 2D boundary surfaces embedded in 3D space? I'm definitely not thinking about the inside of my desk lamp, or even its back side, even though those are as much a part of the 3D object as the front surface.
Can you visualize a 1D projection of a 2D object? Probably, but is it a little tricky? How about a 1D projection of a 3D object? And when that 3D object moves? How about a 2D projection of a 3D object, but seen from the inside out with a Hammer retroazimuthal projection, instead of viewed from a distance with the embodied camera eye and wonderfully simple rectilinear(ish) projections that we're so familiar with?
Arguably, I think we can visualize 4D objects. They just look the same as 3D objects, because the visualization is itself a 2D projection. If they move, they look like wobbly 3D objects, as we pick up a different "slice" or "surface".
Now, we don't know very many 4D shapes, because we don't encounter them in our lives. But I think that's fully explained by familiarity, without invoking the idea of an arbitrary limitation. We've all seen lines, sheets, boxes, balls, pyramids— Try describing to a random stranger what a Strandbeest or a Klein bottle looks like.`
Magical thinking is rarely constructive as an argument, but as a fig leaf, it might keep opposition talking for long enough to force through a fait accompli.
Titanium gets hype, but is it actually the best option considering chemical and fatigue properties? I find it implausible that tensile strength-to-weight would be the weakest part even for good old fashioned stainless steel.
The advantage is much more durability. Hardier materials, and the print can lose an entire paper sheet's worth of mass/thickness, and still be readable.
Those properties sound beneficial in non-obvious corner cases.
In particular those when a sheet of paper’s thickness does not impact the required data density.
While storing data on a wear surface is desirable and necessary to system design.
And when conventional use of a engraved number as index to extended data is insufficient.
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