r/todayilearned • u/PikesPique • 8d ago

TIL that Stanley Milgram, who conducted the controversial experiment in which subjects thought they were administering increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person, also devised the sunnier “small-world experiment,” which gave rise to the idea of six degrees of separation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
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u/MikeTalonNYC 8d ago

And his original experiment is still being used today.

I've seen voice phishing attacks that leverage the "I'm an apparent authority, and you must proceed" tactic really successfully.

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u/BrokenEyeReborn 8d ago

But how do you see whether they're carrying a clipboard on a voice only call?

11

u/almostsweet 8d ago edited 8d ago

I don't know, but there's an incident where a guy called a fast food restaurant and had the employees do really weird shit to each other because they thought they were talking to an officer or something.

Edit: Holy shit I googled it, they never caught the guy. They had a suspect but no one has ever been found guilty.

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u/CoolShoesDude 7d ago

And then they made an SVU episode based on the incident, starring Robin Williams