That's a bit of a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either Nazism or totally chill.

Godwin's Law.*

If you're from a certain background it's exactly as described. In academia, frankly probably everywhere but tech, experiments as a term of art require consent when they involve humans.

* n.b. you really should have left it out, it was a good post through "hyperbole", got close-minded in the next sentence, then just sort of blew the hatch doors off. Sometimes we just don't know something someone else knows. Not understanding someone else doesn't require they have a psychological condition, much less one worth noting.

Please stop. "Godwin's Law" is irrelevant bullshit. It's not a "law" and it doesn't prove anything, or do anything except add noise to the conversation.

Right? Parent is basically saying “wow it’s so unfortunate that you have forced me to end the conversation here, I’d have really liked to continue, but it’d be against the (entirely made up, by me) law”.

Where?

N.b. "godwin's Law" is the famous joke that as an Internet discussion approaches infinity length, hitler will be brought up

Not a secret message saying discussion over lol

The *

A bank sends out two different mailers to see which gets a higher response rate. A politician tests different versions of his stump speech to see which gets more applause. A standup comedian tries different variants of a joke to see which gets more laughs. A grocery store chain tests different store layouts to see which encourages more spending on expensive high margin items. A big box store tests different doorbuster sales to see which gets more people into the store. A city government tests whether changing a traffic light pattern decreases delays at the intersection.

Unless you’re a hermit you are an unwitting participant in nonconsensual human experiments on a daily basis.

Comedians should just pick one joke and stick to it, it's unethical otherwise as some people might miss the laughs and others might laugh too much.

I said the term of art thing to try to ward off a reply like this, I didn't want you to have to put in the effort.

Using weasel words doesn’t make your claim any more correct.

It's not "weasel words" -- there's a difference between an "experiment where city government changes traffic light patterns" and "experiment as in Institutional Review Board", and I suggest relaxing in general.

No, there’s not. Any of the examples I gave could be conducted by university researchers subject to the IRB, or by corporate/government researchers not subject to an IRB and informed consent requirements. When I worked in my university’s statistical consulting center in graduate school I could have consulted on the same experiment either subject to IRB or not depending on who the client was.

Thank you for the shift in tone: I'm honestly unsure what you mean, steelmanning: you worked as a consultant at a university and not all work you did involving experiments was for IRB experiments --- I guess what I'd say is, the fact you're able to make that distinction does seem to confirm my initial observation that the grandparent of my original post in this thread was drawing on IRB-style experiments to condemn excesses of colloquial-style experiments in tech.

No, there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments.” Exactly the same experiment could be subject to IRB or not depending on who was running it. The distinction you’re trying to make does not exist.

> there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments

Then why does the IRB exist? :) How were you able to draw a distinction between your consulting assignments? QED

I didn’t. I drew a distinction between experiments subject to IRB and experiments not subject to IRB, not as a function of the type of experiment, but as a function of other factors—namely who is doing the experiment. I thought this was pretty clear:

> When I worked in my university’s statistical consulting center in graduate school I could have consulted on the same experiment either subject to IRB or not depending on who the client was.

(emphasis added). Somehow you misread it.

Yeah Im sorry, I definitely don't understand the significance of the client stuff. And it's on me.

I did have a similar job for 2 years (statistics assistant farmed out to help out on different grants as needed), but clearly not long enough.

I'm a bit flummoxed, though. I had the very distinct impression an IRB imposes certain requirements.

I shouldn't even call it an impression, you're aware of it too.

Like, an experiment under the IRB has certain tasks others don't.

I don't understand what I'm missing or what's missing in our communication here.

I almost called up an old prof to ask but any question I could think of, I sound high ("does an IRB supervised experiment have different requirements from, say, a city changing traffic light timings on a street?")

Are you just trying to say in theory an IRB could always impose no requirements other than talking to the IRB, and the IRB considered human subjects and say "go ahead, ethical"?

Note that's still a distinction. FWIW that doesn't happen in tech, no IRB, no reviews of experiments. Infamously this caused some issues at Facebook

> Does making this sort of claim not make you… tired?

Nope. Being used as an unwitting guinea pig for a trillion dollar corporation sure as hell makes me tired though. It's extremely tiresome and demoralizing, knowing that just so much as browsing their website contributes to their profits.

Basically we should have to consent for them to profit off of us in any way.