See, this is what bugs me. Nobody thinks this sort of behavior is good. Nobody. People already know that from observing degenerate cases like WW2 Germany and North Korea. So that isn’t anything earth-shattering to “learn” from the story. More to the point, since the story states right up front that it is “a famous scientific experiment”, we are led to believe (i.e., we “learn”) that this sort of thing is a normal part of animal and human social psychology, and presumably something to carefully guard against. But as we dig deeper we find that the experiment is largely fabricated, and the actual experiment on which the story is based actually observed different behavior. It turns out that what we were supposed to “learn” isn’t true. It’s just a meme that sounds clever.

In reality, this degree of behavior is probably not natural, and instead must be nurtured by power-hungry psychopaths like Hitler, the Kim’s, and possibly certain orange people (which wasn’t happening in the alleged study).

So I still claim that we haven’t learned anything from the story. At least nothing that is true. Unless anyone actually previously thought that sort of behavior was good, which is surely unlikely.