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Mind Scans to Map Decision Making Mechanics
rrangel writes "Newsweek is running an article on the fMRI, which tracks brain function by measuring blood flow, and using it for watching the mechanics of economics and choice. Best quote on economic choice: '... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.' H. Hefner has known that all along."
OK, so say they find out how the brain works in this way. Who is going to use it, advertisers. If they could use drungs or subliminal things they would. Now what, my girlfriend will want to shop more. Now, they will get me to buy more useless things.
Someone please tell me how this is going to help me?
Evolution or ID?
Dropping $20 into a nice, juicy retirement savings plan every two weeks is guaranteed to change your life. Take your lottery tickets, and whatever other impulse purchases you can identify, and divert the money into savings. Why bother gambling? You'll thank yourself many times over when you're older.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
now imagine TWO male monkeys who can't look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don't take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.
Note that humans are thus called irrational, when in fact the game theory models is deficient, leaving out all of the factors that normal people use when making human decisions.
maybe they should have used MS marketing droids
:P
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
No, it would be used to get people to "trust" a corp. or Government, so that they buy more shit or follow mindlessly the politicians. Because, only the corps or gov'ts would have the money to afford such a procedure.
What if you had to figure out how a computer worked just by looking at how much electricity was being consumed by the various components? You would know something about the various components involved with specific tasks, but you wouldn't understand what was going on in the components themselves or how they work. Some are processing, some are storing, some are pathways, etc. I think this was the point of the original post. fMRI can tell us about what areas might be active, but we still have a long way to go to figure out how the brain works in detail.
... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female
Don't offer juice, offer a chance for a First Post modded up to +5, Insightful. Trust me, I have to beat the women off with a stick to get to my keyboard in time. Slashdot is my juice and I'm swimming in an ocean of it, baby.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Try running this experiment on people who haven't had anything to drink for 12 hours and see how it turns out :)
Yet another beautiful experiment runs headlong into the brutal facts.
Incidentally, this is why it is a wise dating technique, when sitting down at a restaurant, to try to choose the seat that faces the wall, not the one that allows you to ogle the other women...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Actually it was a well thought out and a well written post. You are the one who is ranting a load of crap. You find the theory repellent so you attack it and the poster rather than argue against it. Not surprising as this is /. after all.
Steven Pinker discusses similar problems in his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Suggesting that nature can be an important factor (even if only a little) gets you labelled a extremist nutter. Yet those who say mans instincts are unimportant are considered moderate and acceptable. Robert Winston in his BBC programme also had to deal with similar attacks after his show aired.
It is clear, to me at least, that a large portion of human behaviour has an instinctive aspect to it. Some reinforced by culture and others reigned in by the same. No one is denying upbringing and culture have an affect on how someone behaves or that people are unable to contain the animal within. (Which I presume is your beef with the post). Just that human evolution has also provided some instinct mechanisms that also affect how someone behaves. I don't recall the 'crap' spouting poster suggesting otherwise.