I read an article once that argued that the Milgram experiment is universally misunderstood.

(in Psych101 they’ll tell you that the experiment proves that people will harm each other by being obedient to authority. A person in a lag coat is the authority in this case. people obeyed the lab-coat guy like 95% of the time)

In the years between the experiment becoming famous and it being banned by ethical boards, many variations on the experiment were tried. Most interesting was a variation where the lab-coat guy was replaced by a police or army guy. In these experiments, the willingness of the participants flipped. With 90+% of the participants refusing to obey. This strongly suggests that what was compelling about the lab-coat guy was not authority after all.

The article argued that the difference was people thought of the lab-coat guy as science and their participation wasn’t obedience to authority, but rather a sense of duty to the greater good. (culture regarded scientists and science very differently).

The Milgram experiment was a whole genre of psychological study I’ll call “why Nazi”. I think the idea that people will obey authority even when it’s evil is much less scary than the idea that your every-day Nazi thought he was helping; thought that a few wicked deeds now would lead to the best future for the most people.