this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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While I don't fully agree with his methods in terms of he seemed to randomly select people who were otherwise not as much a part of the problem to blow up, why he is "nuts" has a really sad and fucked up reason / origin. He was basically mentally and physically tortured through an academically hosted, governmental project for a long enough time to make anyone lash out respectively.
True, and I didn't mean it in a necessarily derogatory way in terms of judgment for his mental illness, but for his actions. I know I should be more careful about saying things like that, and didn't mean to imply anything negative about people who struggle with mental illness.
It's complicated. Nobody should have had to go through what he did, but something awful somebody went through can't be used as a justification for them doing something awful to somebody else. It can be the reason they did it, and it may arguably make them not fully responsible for their own behavior, but it also doesn't make them an innocent.
So did anyone else in the study turn to terrorism to express themselves...?
To be fair, he was probably the youngest and most vulnerable participant, and the experiment lasted 3 years. He started attending Harvard at 16, and was probably around 16/17 when the study began.
They used psychological warfare on a kid who was already socially reserved on top of feeling alienated from his peers due to his age, and likely stressed due to being away from his family and home for the first time in his young life. During a developmental period that we now recognize is probably the most critical window for young men in particular to develop a mental illness like schizophrenia, they did this:
Like holy shit...