After a grueling quarter at Stanford, I am currently enjoying a much-needed spring break. With the luxury of free time, I’ve starting reading the book The Lucifer Effect by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo. I am on chapter 10 now (about halfway). I have never read a book that has generated more internal conflict than this one. One one hand, I completely respect Zimbardo’s brilliance and the shocking results that his (admittedly unethical) experiment showed the world. On the other, I am constantly nagged by the many liberties that Zimbardo took in creating (and later interpreting) his own handiwork. I guess the only thing I can say with no qualms is that the Stanford Prison Experiment stands alone from all other scientific inquiries.

Watch out for more posts on this subject once I finish the book. There are so many avenues of thought, I don’t know where to start…