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Scientists Find 'Altruistic' Center of the Brain
davidwr writes "A team of researchers at Duke University published a paper linking the brain's posterior superior temporal cortex to altruistic behavior. The BBC also picked up the story. If confirmed this has applications in neurology, psychology, child-rearing, and a host of other domains. From the BBC piece: 'Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person's real-life unselfish behaviour. The Duke University Medical Center study on 45 volunteers is published in Nature Neuroscience. The participants were asked to disclose how often they engaged in different helping behaviours, such as doing charity work, and were also asked to play a computer game designed to measure altruism.'"
You need to brush up on your Ayn Rand. The term "altruist" is used as a derogatory term, and "voluntary altruism" is something to be reviled and weakness.
"Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil."
"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master."
"Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others - and, therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
To that end, I suggest Ayn Rand was a self-serving bitch.
I've had no working sense of humor for days at a time. This isn't one of those times though. But I've regained consciousness surrounded by unhelpful people before, so cracks like that bring back sore memories for me. The worst is when people (esp. cops) think I'm on drugs. I wake up with 1% of my brain working and retrograde amnesia and a migraine with nausea and right away people are giving me bullshit about drugs.