Sheeple, shocking

Yesterday was a first for me as the office held it’s first in service day, closing all of our offices to have a day long employee meeting.  The meeting was held at the same place we hold the tax certificate sale, the school administration building.  Just for the heck of it I threw my Ninebot in the truck in the off chance I got a chance to ride it, surprisingly, I did. I rode during the morning break and at lunch I rode it a couple miles to the nearby Panera since the office had no meat free lunch options available to us. As you can imagine I got some confused looks as I walked in Panera carrying my orange wheel, leaning it on my booth.

So the meeting had a number of speakers, all of which would have been more interesting if they were allocated shorter periods of time.  As it was planned, the sessions just seemed to drag on, way beyond the attention span of most of the employees in attendance, including me.  There were a few things I cherry picked from the sessions that I found interesting.

One of the speakers taught a session on ethics.  Part of the discussion was citing two interesting experiments that demonstrated just how much like lemmings human beings can become when skillfully manipulated, something political strategists are masters at.  In the first experiment there were seven subjects.  Six of them were planted, the seventh was the test subject.  All seven people were shown two sets of flash cards with lines of varying length. Each line was labeled A, B, or C.  A second flash card was then shown with a single line that matched one of the lines on the first flash card.  The subjects then simply had to say what line was on the second flash card, A, B, or C.  The difference in line length was substantial so there was no doubt in which line was on the second card.

The subjects were seated in such a way that the six planted subjects were always asked their answer first, the test subject was always last to answer.  They did a total of 24 rounds of testing.  For the first 12 rounds the six planted subjects gave the correct answer and of course the test subject did as well.  However for the last 12 rounds the six planted subjects all gave an incorrect answer.  The test was to see if the number 7 subject would go along with the group, even though they were obviously giving the wrong answer.  Believe it or not, on average, nearly 40% of the test subjects went along with the group, giving the obvious incorrect answer for the last 12 rounds solely because the previous six planted subjects did.

He also showed some funny videos demonstrating the same behavior.  In one of them, an unknowing person was joined in an elevator by three plants.  The three plants faced the back of the elevator.  The test subject in multiple cases would turn around and face backwards as well, even though it made no sense to do so.

In a recent video, it showed a waiting room full of people at a doctors office.  There were about a dozen plants and one unknowing woman, sitting there, waiting.  At random intervals a bell would sound which would trigger the dozen plants to stand up briefly and sit back down.  The first two cycles the woman remained seated, looking around with confusion as to why this behavior was occurring.  However the third time the bell rang she got up and sat down just like the rest of the room. To make things more interesting they slowly removed the dozen people in the room until it was just this woman.  She continued to get up and sit down by the bell, even though she was now alone.

The second experiment was even more disturbing.  In this situation there were three people involved, two plants and one test subject.  There was a man in a lab coat that directed the test.  The other plant was in the next room where he could be heard but not seen.  The test subject, who was paid a small amount of money to be a participant in the experiment was put in front of a device with a number of switches.  The subject was told that this test was to see how negative reinforcement affected memory performance.

The guy in the other room was given a series of word associations and was then asked to repeat back one of them.  If the answer was incorrect, the test subject was instructed to flip one of the levers on the device in front of him which supposedly delivered a shock of increasing severity to the man in the other room.  Each switch increased the shock level by 15 volts, all the way up to 450 volts.  Of course the device was fake but the test subject did not know this.

So as the plant answered questions wrong the test subject was instructed to shock him.  As the imaginary shock levels got higher the plant would react more and more strongly, eventually screaming in agony at the higher levels.  If the test subject objected to administering the shocks the guy in the lab coat would tell them in varying levels of authority to continue, starting at the lowest level with “Please continue” and ending with “The experiment requires that you continue”.  Of course the test subjects were not required to administer the shocks and could have left at any time, they already received their small amount of pay.  After performing this test with 500 individuals an incredible 65% of them continued to shock the planted “victim”, despite his screams of pain, all the way up to the maximum of 450 volts.  Oh by the way, the test subjects were also told that the person they were shocking had some degree of a heart condition ahead of time.

These two experiments give a disturbing look at just how easy it is to manipulate a person’s behavior and thought patterns.  If you don’t think this sort of manipulation is being used on the American populace on a daily basis you may as well just stand up and sit down right now.  I just heard the bell.

Last night I had a very aggravating evening.  Apparently during an extremely bad afternoon storm with severe lightning some of my AV equipment got taken out, most notably my nearly brand new 70 inch 4K TV.  The Xfinity X1 DVR appeared to be the source and was killed as well as it had no signs of life other than the sound of a fan inside.  The TV had it’s red power LED on but would not turn on at all by any means.  My initial theory is the surge came in via the coax cable, taking out the DVR and the TV via the HDMI cable.  I was somewhat surprised that if this was the case, why my internet cable modem, tv, and X1 box in the bedroom would appear to be unscathed.

Well I had to take action quickly.  I first contacted Comcast.  After a lengthy on the phone verification that the box was dead, they said I could simply exchange the X1 box for a new one.  When I looked at my watch I saw it was 6:25.  When I looked online I saw the local Xfinity center was open till 7.  I calculated if I hauled ass I could get there with 5-10 minutes to spare.

I had never been to this Xfinity location.  The last time I went to a Comcast store it was a shitty, small, overcrowded space in a strip mall.  When I parked in the lot last night I did a double take, unsure if I was at a Comcast place.  It almost looked like an Apple store inside, complete with a friendly person signing you in at the front counter.  There were only three customers in the store at the time so it only took a couple minutes till I was helped.  I explained the situation, she said no problem and handed me a new DVR, complete with a voice controlled remote, something I was trying to score for quite awhile.

I couldn’t believe how pleasant of an experience the exchange was.  I have never been shy of criticizing Comcast in the past for their generally shitty customer service and overpriced services.  However I have to give credit where credit is due.  That new facility is awesome and the exchange experience was great.

I had hope of getting home and at least having one of my two issues corrected.  However when I plugged in the new DVR I still could not get the tv service back online, the box threw an error that indicated it still had some sort of line problem.  I even connected the new DVR to the bedroom connection just to see if it made a difference, it didn’t.  I had to call Xfinity back and had a decent interaction with the phone rep although I had to wait over 10 minutes to speak to them.  I now have a tech scheduled to come out today to try to get my tv service up and running again.  My diagnosis has now shifted.  I suspect that the powered splitter in the attic was another casualty of the surge , the fact that the cable modem does not use this splitter reinforces my theory.  I guess I will find out how good of a guess it was this afternoon.

As far as the tv goes, I placed an online warranty service request.  I have no idea how that will all shake out or how long it will take.  In the meantime I have the much smaller tv from the guest bedroom in there.  It looks disgustingly underwhelming in the huge AV nook.