Children of the Magenta

Children of the Magenta

Review: Intelligent Disobedience

Review of Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told to Do Is Wrong by Ira Chaleff

Sami Makelainen's avatar
Sami Makelainen
Mar 15, 2026
∙ Paid

We teach obedience extraordinarily well. We teach it in homes, in schools, in workplaces, in militaries. The vast majority of the time we reward compliance and punish deviation.

And then, when someone follows orders into a catastrophe — financial fraud, medical harm, atrocities — we act surprised. We ask, “How could they do that? Why did they just go alo…

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