Resist Authoritarianism by Refusing to Obey in Advance
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
The post cites the famous Milgram experiment
Milgram told his subjects (some Yale students, some New Haven residents) that they would be applying an electrical shock to other participants in an experiment about learning. In fact, the people attached to the wires on the other side of a window were in on the scheme with Milgram, and only pretended to be shocked. As the subjects (thought they) shocked the (people they thought were) participants in a learning experiment, they saw a horrible sight. People whom they did not know, and against whom they had no grievance, seemed to be suffering greatly—pounding the glass and complaining of heart pain. Even so, most subjects followed Milgram’s instructions and continued to apply (what they thought were) ever greater shocks until the victims appeared to die. Even those who did not proceed all the way to the (apparent) killing of their fellow human beings left without inquiring about the health of the other participants.
I have heard of various versions of this experiment in pop-science - always seemed dubious to me. Seeing as the article was posted on HN, it was a good opportunity to find out if the study is legit. So I went skimming through the comments and sure enough user readthenotes1 provides a few links refuting the study - the stats and the methodology.
Milgram himself was privately aware of the methodological weakness of his research and struggled with many of the issues about the validity of experiments and their generalisability beyond the lab. Privately Milgram reflected that his work was more art than science, and described himself as a “hopeful poet.”
- source
The study was repeated multiple times with different subjects, results were cherry-picked and the methodology was not scientific.
readthenotes1 summarizes succinctly
Milgrim found that, but that's because it's what he wanted to find.