Slashdot Mirror
Magnetism Can Sway Man's Moral Compass
Hugh Pickens writes "Discovery News reports that scientists have identified a region of the brain which appears to control morality and discovered that a powerful magnetic field can scramble the moral center of the brain, impairing volunteers' notion of right and wrong. 'You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,' says Liane Young, a scientist at MIT and co-author of the article. 'To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing.' Young and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to locate an area of the brain just above and behind the right ear known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), which other studies had previously related to moral judgments. Volunteers were exposed to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions. The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm — not whether they were morally wrong in themselves. The scientists didn't permanently remove the subjects' moral sensibilities and on the scientists' seven point scale, the difference was about one point, averaging out to about a 15 percent change, 'but it's still striking to see such a change in such high level behavior as moral decision-making.' Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality, and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another."
Take it to your nearest prison and turn it on in reverse!
How long until this is used as a defense in court?
This would explain an awful lot of things.
Mostly harmless.
Wow...all those years of double daring my data center colleagues to put the hand electric de-gausser to their forehead and turn it on for 30 seconds might have more of an effect than I anticipated.....
Cue the "nazis wore headphones" brigade in 3... 2... 1....
It wasn’t my fault I fooled around honey they all had a magnet so I couldn’t tell it was wrong. Honest!
My user ID is a palindrome!
I TRIPLE-DOG-DARE ya!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
...Tin foil hat!
So, how long will it be before somebody uses the "Power Lines" defense in a murder case?
The degausser made me do it.
volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm -- not whether they were morally wrong in themselves
Short of a Doctorate of Philosophy in Ethics, what's the difference?
So, does this mean down the road someone can go into an MRI as an altruistic philanthropist and come out a Robert Pickton and blame the MRI scan?
So it isn't just a bad cliche when in the movies the bad guys always run a car salvage/crushing yard with the big electromagnet cranes.
The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm — not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
What distinction are they making between the two? There are philosophies that would hold the two ideas as identical.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
OH SHIT! *puts on tinfoil hat*
More fascinating, at least to me, is the area of the brain that works against "ends justify the means".
FTS:
The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm — not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
I don't know if this has been known before, but the fact that there's an area of the brain that judges actions as moral apart from their consequences is fascinating. It makes sense to judge actions based on known outcomes, but what's the evolutionary advantage to being moral in the abstract?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
A one-point difference on a seven-point scale among only twenty volunteers? Doesn't smell very solid to me.
OMG!!! PONIES!!??? *checks calendar* *not quite April 1*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Mu-metal is the new preferred material for protective headwear.
Anyone care to venture a guess when the RIAA will buy every single black van and large electromagnet within 100km of Washington for... "marketing" purposes?
I see a future where they'll have strong electromagnets embedded in military helmets, to ease everyone through the more morally dubious adventures overseas. Of course, in order to invent the helmet, you'd have to be already morally compromised, which would require an existing helmet... Or just a psychopath.
Your Honor it was not my fault. The Earth's magnetic field in a fit of anomalous abnormally high activity a half-hour prior to the robbery compromised my frontal lobe's capacity to allow me to understand what I was going to do was wrong......
The difference between 'likely to cause harm' and 'did cause harm.' In one question, they asked if it was morally wrong to let your girlfriend walk across a bridge you knew was dangerous, even if she made it to the other side safely. Magnetized folks thought, 'well she made it across, it's morally okay' while other people were more likely to think it was wrong even if she was unharmed this particular time.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Beer must have an extremely strong magnetic field.... morality goes out the door whenever I consume a few too many.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
After months of grueling research bombarding test subjects with all manner of loud and annoying electromagnetic devices and being told to lie just right so that the readings aren't disrupted at all, the test subjects all said they wanted to kill all the researchers in a variety of gruesome ways and didn't have any moral conundrum with doing so. As there were no noticeable flaws in the experiment, the researchers concluded that magnetism can sway the moral compasses of human beings. Case closed!
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
So, if I can just convince my date to climb into an MRI machine, I can finally score with her!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
canada is near the north pole, while the usa is closer to the south pole. the more south you go in the usa in fact, the more conservative the opinion
so clearly north pole=liberal, south pole=conservative
so i will now invent my colossal magnetic northern monopole, hide it in an office tower in dallas texas, and forever alter politics towards the forces of reason and morality! and screw up navigation compasses everywhere!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...it would certainly explain why there are so many rude cell phone users :-)
(insert witty/esoteric/dumb quote here)
What does this mean for someone like me, who lives life by my own idea of morality, which is "Do whatever you want as long as you bring no harm to another"?
Maybe they're interpreting "harm" differently.
How can magnets impact my moral choices? Isn't my soul supposed to do that? Is my soul a magnet? Maybe free will is magnetic. Or MAYBE, just maybe, those things don't exist except as concepts in the human mind.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Very useful feature that.
Deleted
Considering the variations on magnetism on the surface of Earth, I wonder if the differences of moral in different regions of the globe has anything to do with the variation on the magnetism on the planet.
if it has, i'm getting out of here, unless of course a big earthquake fixes the problem!!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
From the MIT article: "they found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions".
They don't appear to have claimed a general change to moral judgments of all types. They're saying that people were less able to make moral judgments that involved modeling someone else's internal state.
What it sounds like to me is, someone found humanity's Asperger switch.
So this is how you make a Helm of Opposite Alignment!
Lawful Evil, here I come!
So we truly do have a moral compass.
I wonder if it is orientation dependent. If I face north, am I less likely to punch somebody in the face?
so in the future if military brain implants ever become common we now know a target area where there is some useless tissue that can be removed...
Seriously, did anyone else hear the summary in the voice of an old-style B-movie narrator, complete with over-the-top sound effects? This might have creepy implications, one battery powered implant and a bit of training and you could turn anyone into an assassin. But what would happen if you did something heinous, and then turned the implant off? Granted, it seems like this only affects people's ability to judge moral intent, the article doesn't mention anything about losing your morality altogether. Although, the flip side of not being able to judge moral intent might be to do stupidly evil things without being able to intuitively understand the consequences? But the subjects judged the moral outcomes accurately based on the consequences, so perhaps this is just a form of artificially induced utilitarianism? Also, they mention "theory of mind", but before you get all worked up this probably does not correspond to any neurological effect of the autism spectrum... Or perhaps any common naturally occurring brain abnormality?
Emotions! In your brain!
is this good ? or is it bad ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Implications are interesting:
1. An army of morally removed individuals, everyone gets an electromagnet attached with a mora-meter, the computer adjusts the necessary dose based on the current situation. So now we see a woman and a child on the battlefield, mora-meter is reading 7.8 on the M-Scale, there is the target of opportunity right behind them and no time to react. Increasing the field strength. Mora-meter is at 1.89. Directive: shoot through the civilians. Outcome: 1 target down, 2 civilian casualties.
2. Cchecking the computer, the audience is reading a collective 6.5. Increasing the m-field strength. The meter is at 2. And god said: stone the homosexuals.... Increase the m-field. Pass the collection plate.
You can't handle the truth.
The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm -- not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
Sounds like researchers found the seat of superstition, not morality. The volunteers judged actions on the basis of their actual consequences instead of religious mumbo jumbo. That's not just an interesting finding, it's progress. Maybe science has found a way to get the Pope to spend more time protecting children and less time forgiving child rapists.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
A small change in moral response, and even then, it isn't as if they turned off the moral center. Looks like they just caused the subjects to focus on the effect of the action than the reasons behind it. It's almost like they muffled some of the higher reasoning functions behind morality and changed the focus from "The person's action resulted in [x], though he didn't mean it to" to "The person's action resulted in [x]".
They didn't kill morality; they hastened the response to a morally vague event. Black and white, no grey.
"In other news, scientists discover that repeatedly standing in close proximity to magnetic imaging equipment while it is in use degrades the scientist's ability to determine the moral implications of their testing. More at 11."
Wasn't this an episode of the Mentalist?
It doesn't say about the age of the volunteers but I'd wager they're all students with no real life experience, I'd like to see them try this with older people, that had their morals tested and tried over the years, all the students have is the theory of what is right and wrong, but with no life experience to reinforce it. Aside from that I'm curious how this affects cops, criminals or others that have their morals tested heavily over the years, without significantly changing their path.
Is it April first already? Sounds like someone got their date wrong.
i remember hearing about something one could drink that would achieve similar results ... with the added benefit of making everyone look better ...
Your signature says:
SARAH PALIN WILL NOT HAVE SEX WITH YOU.
She will after I take off her tinfoil hat and put a magnet up against her head!
Now we need to find-out why more crime, etc happens during a full moon.
Congress just ordered all floors on Capitol Hill to be replaced with strong magnets.
Have those MIT eggheads studied the effects of massive amounts of cash on the moral compass of humans? Is the magnetic susceptibility correlated to the amount of cash required? It would be nice to know just how much I'll need to offer going into the deal. Probably worth a Nobel in economics, that one.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
So money must be magnetic?
Rick B.
I still wonder if these researchers got something wrong in their method/technique because you'd think we'd have noticed changes to people's morality in hi B fields before.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Discovering that morality is localized is rather amazing. I wonder if this knowledge will eventually be used to determined how active that area is (fMRI?) to quantize a person's integrity. So, for example, to become a judge someone must score above a certain level. Or, more scarily, criminals might undergo forcible treatment to enhance this area. OTOH, this raises the question of whether someone has the right to be immoral or if we as a society can exclude the selfish "cheaters" that get ahead by being anti-social.
I'd imagine the first line of business would be to turn this into some pseudoscientific rubbish that an employer can use to vet job applicants. There's certainly precedent.
How long until this is used as a defense in court?
At the very least, for the folks on the TV show "Lost" we could explain away their crazy behavior -- the magnetism is outrageous there and messed with their minds!
"THE SMOKE MONSTER TOLD ME TO DO IT AND IT JUST SEEMED *RIGHT*!"
So the magnetic field applied to this region *only* turns our morals "Off"? Okay maybe "Down" on the volume button would be a better analogy...
you seem to think that North America = USA + Canada = the entire world
I have a gravimagnetic monopole but unfortunately gravimagnetism is so weak I'm too embarrassed to show it off to my friends. "There, can't you sense that? A spinning force... it feels like you should start dancing... no, huh?" I just keep it in a drawer.
My friends run the political spectrum although only half are even familiar with gravimagnetic dipoles, much less monopoles.
This whole study strikes me as being rather foolish. Did they change anyone's morals? No. They just slightly altered their responses, which shortly thereafter returned to baseline. I'm more inclined to think this had nothing at all to do with morals and everything to do with volunteers who were slightly confused because of the magnetic fields that had been run through their brains.
From the end of the article:
"Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another."
I can confirm that i never have experienced that, when doing moral judgement, suddenly a magnetic field is applied just behind and above my ear.
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What did they do to distinguish scrambling of moral judgement from simple scrambling of judgement? Seems to me that people who are simply having trouble thinking clearly are likely to make these mistakes. Someone whose ability to think at all is impaired might very well assert that the guy who let his girl walk across the unsafe bridge was blameless because they lost track of the fact that he knew it was unsafe.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I saw Sunshine last night. Danny Boyle's 2007 Sci-Fci movie about a crew that is heading to the sun to fire a nuke into it, to restart it.
Without spoiling any more than the preview gives away, as the ship approaches the sun the crew starts getting a little... weird. Ok, a lot weird. It's an okay movie, but the change in behavior isn't really ever explained. Maybe this is the pseudo-scientific rationale....
Person A accidentally breaks five tea cups while cleaning. Person B purposefully breaks one tea cup.
Most people would say that B's actions were "more wrong" than A's.
People who had their RTPJ disrupted said that A was "more wrong" because of the extent of the damage.
Another example they gave was that people with their RTPJ disrupted would say that accidentally poisoning someone was worse than attempting to poison someone and failing.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
is that you?
I smell an uptick of premature April Foolery. Or a damn fine Ig Nobel candidate.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
TMS works by using quickly-changing magnetic fields to induce electric fields and neural firing. After 25 minutes of this, the neurons in that region are thoroughly worn out and don't function right for a while (see research on "temporary lesions").
This isn't about magnetic fields in general, just about very strong, quickly-changing ones applied to this one spot for a long time. This is among the most sensational writeup I've ever seen, and it totally misrepresents the point.
Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another.
Now, now. I think we can all agree that this is strong evidence for lack of morality causing magnetism.
It allowed them to see through all the BS socially-constructed notions of right and wrong to something tangible and impactful: the causing of harm.
Sounds like more people should have this done.
The right temporo-parietal lobe junction is well known as the language integration area. The article states these people had this region of their brain, known otherwise as Wernicke's area, altered by magnetic fields, and then READ A STORY and were asked to make a moral judgment on it. This sounds a lot more like auditory processing to me, and I'll give more reason. Individuals with an infarction in this region of the brain are classically unable to note emotional changes in individuals based on speech cues.
It seems most likely (Occam's Razor) to me, that these individuals had their auditory association areas monkeyed with, and ended up being less able to pick-up emotional cues in the reader's voice, which have remarkable amounts of data in regard to the transmission of information. To these people in the experiment, the reader might have sounded like a drab and boring reader, and to the controls the same reading may have been filled with emotional information. These emotional cues are powerful motivators to come to a consensus opinion even among people of disparate moral backgrounds.
I did not read any more of the article than that, it is feasible to control for some of these aspects or to use a different experimental design to confirm the hypothesis, but I would be very careful in claiming that this is some sort of moral core of the brain. It's also been shown that magnetic fields caused agitation, and agitated people are less likely to be compassionate. I suffer from relatively constant pain from migraines and some other things, and I know most people think I'm a jerk when they first encounter me, but I am just less tolerant of people complaining (I'm actually fairly empathic and empathetic, which makes it even worse to have lousy people near me).
This is what passes for "science" at MIT now? (We already know that anything can pass for a headline at /.)
The researcher himself, as quoted in the story summary on Slashdot, debunks what the Slashdot headline advertises.
Perhaps those who had a helmet on giving them a very strong magnetic zap in the brain started thinking...
"Hey, this could be dangerous. But I feel okay, I guess it's fine"
Which influenced their reasoning through the morality of possible danger scenarios.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
From the sound of it the magnetic field didn't render people immoral monsters, but impaired judgement, making the subjects judge the actions of others based on the results of those actions, rather than their intended results. In other words, "murder" and "involuntary manslaughter" would be considered equal offenses, while "attempted murder" would be on par with "taking a walk in the park on Sunday".
Read the article from MIT, not the other sources. You'll notice a distinct difference. I hate to see good research get misrepresented.
The non-MIT articles makes grand claims that are NOWHERE in the real research. The "journalists" makes large claims about the existence of a "moral center" of the brain. The actual study and the MIT summary gives a much more restrained and accurate description. It shows that temporary disruption of TPJ interferes with the complete normal process which draws upon many areas of the brain.
Let's use a train analogy to get away from car analogies.
In order for a train to go from A to B, there must be intact railing the whole way. If we alter a section of the track and derail the train, it does NOT prove that the removed section is the train transportation center of the railroad track. It is essential, but it is only part of the process. The disruption of this area of the brain only shows that it is essential in the complete processing of moral judgement, not the center itself. I'm not talking down this research, only the journalistic representation of it.
That might explain in part why I included it on a list that includes other such moral judgments, some with extremely negative connotation.
Actually, earth's magnetic field is stronger the closer you get to the poles. So, according to this, Texans are morally superior to Canadians. That Canadians tend to be liberal, and Texans conservative, would seem to imply that conservatism is the morally superior ideology.
WARNING: Above statements are intended for humor and satire only, and do not intend to make any actual political statements about anything. Individuals having an axe to grind, and lacking a sense of humor, should take proper precautions by navigating to either FoxNews.com or the Huffington Post, where they can discuss politics as emotionally and obnoxiously as they wish.
Alaska is closer to the North Pole than a lot of the largest Canadian cities, but it certainly isn't very liberal. And their politicians are among the most immoral around. Here's a recent example.
"Morality (from the Latin moralities "manner, character, proper behavior") is a system of conduct and ethics that is virtuous. Morality has three principal meanings"
"In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred. This sense of term is also addressed by descriptive ethics."
Virtue is a concept addressed across the board from the first big boys on the block like Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, but it's a tricky subject. I had to find my own way on this one because there seemed to be endless gradations and seepage of morality into ethics and ethics into morality. My own moral compass operates from animal behaviour, my animal behaviour. I consider morality to derive directly from our basic drives or instincts. My morality goes to things like Fight-or-flight response. Ethics, like aesthetics, deals with abstractions from instincts.Lex Talionis is the granddaddy of morality and goes to things like the Code of Hammurabi.
I'm not sure morality can be tested in a lab because labs tend to require restricted environments that are artificially impoverished or supplemented in ways that vitiate the results.Today much of neuroscience looks like neo-crypto-phrenology. And moral values tend to speak to concepts of law and there the test of reasonableness holds sway, but does it in the jungle?
ideopath @ play
There's an Android App "Moral Compass" For That. Disclaimer - I wrote the thing while under the influence of a magnetic field.
Am I the only one who doesn't find this meme amusing?
I had family members randomly confiding in me that week, "Ohh, did you hear about Tiger Woods?" No, I didn't, and I still don't give a shit. I know he cheated on his wife, that's it; I don't know the names, how many mistresses, or what happened after. I know he was considered the best golfer in the world, a sport I care nothing about, and his promiscuity has no impact on that.
So, please, do us a favor and STFU about Tiger Woods. I don't care about his sex life. I would not care if he was found dead tomorrow, either.
So now we just need to keep magnets away from the GOPs. It really does explain a lot.
I misread the headline as:
:)
Management Can Sway Man's Moral Compass
And thought... now how is that news?
Soon enough they'll quit the experiments and start threating the Higgs to show it self.
"Get out here HIGGS! I KNOW you're in there. SHOW YOUR UGLY FACE!"
Maybe the tea party logo should be a great big magnet....
Yea, right, because not questioning people may cause a strong magnetic field around one's head... People are so fast to jump to conclusions based on correlation, why did the news report that it is just a correlation when there is no way* it can't imply causation? Looks like some uninformed journalist just read the wikipedia article on logic falacies.
* Except for a flawed study, but that possibility is always present, and not directly related to the measured correlation..
Rethinking email
Morality != ethics
I agree with you. Homosexuality should not be looked down upon or considered wrong.
On the other hand, to consider beliefs again homosexuality outdated or "very old goat herder" is a bit unreasonable and shows your biases. Cultures/religions are against homosexuality for cultural evolution reasons, more or less the same reason why Catholics are against birth control: it is to the advantage of the culture/religious group to have more children (and therefore out-breed competitors), so they hold beliefs that increase the number of children their followers will have. Their beliefs might be hateful, but they aren't stupid.
our new magnetic overlords.
"Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another."
What is it with Slashdotters' completely fucked-in-the-head understanding of correlation vs. causation? The article says exactly the opposite of this summary!
"Recent fMRI studies of moral judgment find fascinating correlations, but Young et al usher in a new era by moving beyond correlation to causation," says Sinnott-Armstrong, who was not involved in this research.
And that was completely obvious without even needing to see the article anyway. This is a designed experiment. Designed experiments establish causation. (See Weiss, Introductory Statistics 7E, p. 22, et. al.) Obviously a person's moral judgements aren't causing the magnet that you're switching on-and-off to work. For chrissake.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
There's a TED talk from last year on this subject from the lead researcher, Rebecca Saxe.
Knowledge Brings Fear
Here's a really interesting TED Talk about this type of stuff: http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html
Your theory fails when you get to Florida. Especially the Miami region...
How does this jive with the idea that morality can come only from a divine being? Can EMI prevent the angel on my shoulder from talking to me?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I'm a chick magnet and thus chick have no morals when they're around me.
Your assertion that south pole = conservative is based on flawed logic.
In truth, the southern states are further from either pole, since the US does not cross the equator. Now, if you said that those in Argentina were more conservative than those in Mexico, that would be interesting to see...
Boobs are filled with ferrofluid
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Posted here incase you are curious and did not want to bother with TFA
San Francisco Photographers
Good for you, you don't care about something. No one cares about that fact. The circle is complete. Ommmmm.
So... what you call "soul" is nothing but an emergent property of your brain?
Why? What makes you jump to the conclusion that because two things are connected, therefore one must be caused by the other - and specifically that you get to choose which one that is?
Connected does not mean "causal".
If the "soul" (if it exists) is connected to the brain, and the magnet interferes with this connection, why is it surprising that behaviour also changes?
Because, if the soul-mind connection can be interefered with, that negates the moral purpose of the soul as repository for merits and demerits caused by good and bad actions. If your bad actions can result from a bad connection, then the soul (and the self) should not accrue the demerits, bad karma, stains, evil, or whatever you want to call it. Because if they did, then I could go to hell for walking under a strong magnet.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I always thought that Magneto's "magnetic personality" power was stupid. How does having control over electro-magnetism give you control over other people's actions? Stupid! Or is it?!? Next they'll publish a story about radio-active spiders and their numerous health benefits...
Cultures/religions are against homosexuality for cultural evolution reasons, more or less the same reason why Catholics are against birth control: it is to the advantage of the culture/religious group to have more children (and therefore out-breed competitors)
OK, tell that to the Samoans.
I got my masters in Cognitive and Neural Systems a few years ago and we worked with TMS-derived data. TMS is a *really* powerful magnet placed directly on your skull. It can induce seizures. It can make you temporarily lose various other abilities like the ability to speak or the ability to see colors. This is not a low-grade magnetic field. It was also hard at the time for researchers to control exactly which brain region they were knocking out, though this may have improved since then. The research is interesting because they've demonstrated that this area of the brain modulates morality, but the magnetic fields to generate such a disruptive effect would have rather noticeable effects (like being inside a giant MRI machine) if they were present at longer range.
We now have electrode setups that can interpret signals from the brain to control computer inputs, it is simply a matter of time before we're able to not only read, but write. This experiment is crude, like taking a piece of graphite and smearing it onto the right upper edge of a piece of paper. I envision soon after we perfect the reading of the signals we'll gain enough understanding to be able to influence and write those signals as well, with a fine point pen. Repeat offenders no more... addictions? no more. Reading slashdot at work? oh boy.
Voigt-Kampff questions from Blade Runner
[
It's not just "a magnetic field" which was used in this study, it's TMS. TMS uses a strong magnetic field to induce an electrical current inside someone's head, similar to direct stimulation using electrodes but without all the surgery. There is a electromagnetic "paddle" held next to the skull in a specific orientation so that the electrical current will be in the intended spot in the brain.
Also, TMS has no special relationship with the brain area which affects moral judgement. TMS can be used to stimulate any area and often the effect is disrupting the function of that area. So with some good aiming you can inhibit speech, distort vision, etc.
The "magnets == amoral judgement" bit is just silly.
Move along, no sig to see here.
our MU-METAL HATS!
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
OP stated: "The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm -- not whether they were morally wrong in themselves."
No, according to TFA, that is not what they found. There was nothing about something being "morally wrong in itself".
Rather, the experimental subjects tended more to judge a person's actions based solely on outcome, rather than the intent, whereas control subjects were more willing to judge based on a person's intentions, even if the outcome was negative.
That is not the same thing at all. There was nothing about an action being morally right or wrong "in itself". That would be religion, not morality.
However, the experiment did seem to leave out one common real-world situation. In the experiment, the person was either completely unaware of a possible bad outcome, or caused the bad outcome on purpose. Apparently they did not include the case where the person's intentions are good, and the the person reasonably should have known (but for some reason did not) that the outcome would be bad.
I have seen an awful lot of well-meaning people do a lot of bad things, when they really should have known better but somehow did not. Especially in government. But then, in the case of government I question whether it was really ignorance, or just pretense.
---
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- U.S. Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis
mod parent up, you betcha
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When I'm in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm a pretty nice guy. The problem begins when I cross the equator - The further south I go, the bigger a douchebag I become!
What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas!
So, strong magnetic fields can disrupt the soul?
Souls are resonant magnetic fields that exists as hyper-complex harmonics within the earth's own field. Their patterns are altered by moral choices made during their localized anchoring to ephemeral material matrices with sympathetic resonance, and so when the cohesion of the materials is lost they flow back in geomagnetic currents, up in the case of virtue, and cycling back through the icy poles to the crushing heat of the core for sinners.
You can't take the sky from me...
Density
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
You would have a point, but for the fact that we are on Slashdot, and I know for a fact 95% of the people here don't care about Tiger Woods. Just like Brittany Murphy or Anna Nicole. Billy Mays was at least notable for his character.
Lol, I didn't even know Bernie Mac was dead until I searched to remember Anna's name.
Homosexuality is only wrong in an historical socio cultural specific context. For example, while some group at some point of history considered it "neutral" some other condemned it. Furthermore from the biological and psychological point of view, as far as I udnerstand , you mostly DO NOT CHOSE your sexuality.
These points can be equally applied to pedophilia, and the first one to incest and probably beastiality as well. Will you be so quick to condemn our society's widespread disapproval of those practices?
This is not to equate homosexuality with the others--they're all quite different--except in the sense that it is not the norm. I think out of the ones above, homosexuality is the most deserving of legitimate status since it is generally practiced between consenting adults. This is a far stronger argument than "it's cultural!" and "you can't choose!" because those arguments fail when it comes to other sexual practices.
Your brain is not a computer.
[That last one is only partly tongue-in cheek.]
Why should we be surprised that magnetic fields can do the same thing?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
It makes sense to judge actions based on known outcomes, but what's the evolutionary advantage to being moral in the abstract?
It's not abstract. Consider the judgement being one of risk vs actual cost. An example is you cross the street and
mistakenly cut it very very close but you don't get hit. Do you want to do that again? Why not, you survived...
So the judgement is to the "risk" involved, not just whether you survive the experience...
Another example:
Cramer Defends His Citi Call, Says He "Has No Idea Really How Citi Is Doing"
Tyler Durden on 12/18/2009 11:03 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cramer-defends-his-citi-call-says-he-has-no-ide
+a-really-how-citi-doing
Cramer's comment is:
The main thing is the stupidity of the critics who keep
calling it a bad deal. A bad deal is one that breaks print,
not one that goes up after.
Make judgments only about whether you make or lose money.
That's what you can try to control. The rest is dross
ginned up by people who need something to write or talk
about.
This is terrible advice. If you make a trade with huge risk but
luck out and come out a profit it's good? So plunk down all your
capital on some number on roulette -- if it comes up it was a good
idea, right?
Risk matters and should be considered in the decision of what is a
good trade or not. Even if the actual trade turns out to be a loss.
[Although a loss which exceeds the original estimate of risk
indicates that the risk in the trade wasn't really understood].
PS: Remember, Cramer is the one who just lucked out on blowing up
his hedge fund. This indicates he would do it again (at least
until his luck runs out, at which point he won't have the money
to do it again)...
I still have a point, even if you can prove 100% of people don't care about Tiger Woods.
TMS - transcranial magnetic stimulation is an extremely high magnetic field used to suppress function in an area of the brain. In research, TMS is used to map areas of the brain by "knocking out" an area and testing the subjects to see what function is now missing. This is no simple magnet but a carefully designed system to inject a significant amount of magnetism into the brain. The careful design is necessary to inject the magnetism beyond just the outer surface of the brain. This technique is approved for treating depression when typical drugs are not working.
Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.org/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/?mc_id=comlinkpilot&placement=bottom
By the way, the field is so high the patient wears hearing protection due to loud snapping noise from the system.
Sadly, Discover could have done better with just a google search on TMS.
canada is near the north pole, while the usa is closer to the south pole. the more south you go in the usa in fact, the more conservative the opinion
so clearly north pole=liberal, south pole=conservative
so i will now invent my colossal magnetic northern monopole, hide it in an office tower in dallas texas, and forever alter politics towards the forces of reason and morality! and screw up navigation compasses everywhere!
Or you could just encourage Southerners to read more </ducks>
No, you didn't. I knew that people care not for my opinions. As they don't yours. So your point was irrelevant. But if my post clued in the OP and prevented just one more occurrence of this shitty meme, then my job here is done.
The CERN physicists play with 100T magnets. Which seem to be located in Switzerland. Under the bank. Hmmm.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
takes a whole new meaning..
All the quack Enquirer-ad-product people start hocking 'Love Magnets'...
Now, powerful magnets WILL be part of our new future combat helmets! 10% more dead bad guys (tm) guranteed!
you seem to think that North America = USA + Canada = the entire world
Did your silly Canadian schools teach you differently? Repent of your ways or be sent to Mexico!
" The scientists didn't permanently remove the subjects' moral sensibilities "
I think they mean " The scientists /don't think/ they permanently removed the subjects' moral sensibilities "
If ever there was a question about ethical experiments...
I can't find any information on one key question: was "moral reasoning" the ONLY mental process affected? Or was cognitive ability in general impaired?
After all, if you interfere with my ability to think clearly by blasting me with loud noises, giving me mind-altering drugs, or electrocuting me every 10 seconds, I will have difficulty making complex moral decisions... but I'll also have difficulty remembering multiplication tables.
A better experiment would mix in the moral choice questions with other questions to test general memory, sensory, language, and deductive skills. If all of *those* are similarly impaired, you haven't learned anything but "messing with the currents in peoples' brains makes it hard for them to think."
I am in mexico :-)
That's a justification you just pulled out of where the sun don't shine. Don't talk as if it counts as knowledge.
The most famous known case of a society that tolerated or encouraged homosexual behavior is pederasty in ancient Greece. Older men took younger men as lovers, in addition to marrying women. This pattern, BTW, recurs all over the world. The marginalization or acceptance of same-sex relationships is orthogonal to reproduction.
As to the second point, you're presumably not telling us that the Catholic Church adopted their birth-control policies as a calculated move to boost their numbers, but rather, that they have such large numbers because they adopted that policy in the distant past. However, knowledge of effective birth control didn't really exist in Europe until the late 20th century, and Protestant churches used to have similar prohibitions until then. So, your explanation requires us to uncover some sort of pre-20th century church that both allowed its members to practice birth control, and even more, whose members actually knew how to achieve it effectively.
Not to mention that the Catholic Church is historically notorious for having a serious anti-sex attitude and all but telling people not to have sex.
Are you adequate?
Islam doesn't forbid contraception, and it is growing faster than Christianity.
Are you adequate?
canada is near the north pole, while the usa is closer to the south pole. the more south you go in the usa in fact, the more conservative the opinion
so clearly north pole=liberal, south pole=conservative
so i will now invent my colossal magnetic northern monopole, hide it in an office tower in dallas texas, and forever alter politics towards the forces of reason and morality! and screw up navigation compasses everywhere!
lol, fail.
Be seeing you...
Sort of scientifically explains Magneto's moral decisions.
Control factor
and then I looked up...cell phone towers...major power transmission network..they can control the whole city.
I don't think any of those things are immoral. Fortunately, they don't use subjective things like your examples in morality research. What the OP and you both ignore is that intentionality is very important in moral decisions. It is why we have the phrase, "The ends justify the means," and why most people have an uncomfortable reaction to the phrase—often it isn't true.
...all the magnetic fields we pass through in our daily, technologically advanced, modern lives...
Doesn't this just mean that strong magnetic fields can induce current which impairs the functioning of the brain, in a way similar to alcohol and other intoxicants?
The use of intoxicants--including non-chemical ones--can develop into addiction, the very definition of which seems to include a "loss of moral compass".
then what say you about mexico?
I can't think of anything that's morally wrong that doesn't cause harm. Did I read the wrong FA?
I was beginning to wonder if I had a magnet on my head because I can't think of anything morally wrong that doesn't cause harm either. Glad to know I'm not the only one that thinks this way.
I suspect religion may be the real culprit here, because that's the only place I can think of where things that cause no actual harm are called morally wrong.
On that note, did we just stumble across the area of the brain responsible for religion/magical thinking? Can many of the world's problems be solved with mandatory magnetic hats?
You also said:
Adultery is immoral (and harmful)
I contend that is not necessarily always the case. Open relationships can and do work. The main practical problem with adultery is the dishonesty that typically surrounds it, and that indeed causes harm, which in that case makes it immoral, but adultery doesn't necessarily have to be dishonest or harmful.
Knowledge != Intelligence
"Magnetism Can Alter the Left side of the brain" Thats where the frontal lobe is located and where reasoning and logic come from. Thats what helps us choose right from wrong. Sounds like MIT researchers reversed the brains polarity.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. - Nikola Tes
Yea I have had bad posture and all kinds of things at odds with interacting with people that don't appreciate my attention to details. I have the opposite of what many might sense as ADD/ADHD and Aspergers at the same time. It happened about 6 years ago when I was given vaccines all at once to "catch-up" with what they said I was behind on getting. They gave me MMR, Polio, Flu Shot, and a couple others and it amounted to tripple the vaccination that I was supposed to get in such durration. Within a month, my heart stopped twice and I was compelled by impulses that I was surrounced and being yelled-at by a drill instructor pissed-off at me. For the next couple years, my math skills suffered and I left the computer repair business. My health took a hit with my Immune System nearly giving-out, and just because of that I've gotten all kinds of Candida imbalance and yeast infections just from touching anything without gloves, and every cold and flue virus has hit my four times in the year rather while everyone else at the most gets twice. I've blacked-out half a dozen times, and when I've defended people from causing physical harm to anyone I know, a slight bump on the shoulder sends me to the sand despite being a foot taller(6'8") and 250 pounds of fitness.
I will not sue the HMO that did this to me, and I will not advocate any procedure other than to get your nutrition and 30 minutes of oxygenation and aerobic activity with lymphnode massage therapy. Doctors kill 15 million people every year just from medication mistakes and don't get a ticket from OSHA, yet they send USDA after all the organic farmers and non-GMO'd heirloom plantations that grow actual food for good will.
My health has gotten so bad that I've decided to live on the sea in my boat, and I can't afford even the 300 a month for a marina slip. I do my computer consulting work by satellite on the boat and it barely gets me by with maintenance and necessaries on this craft. I don't know why people don't correlate EMF cell-phone damage to this story's topic of mental state modification by Magnetism, but I must say that the trend of Slashdot is verry little to do with the Scientific Method. I can't use Cell Phones because my Immune System is fragile enough that the EMF from the Phone a couple feet from me causes acne and fungal infections to begin taking root: it suppresses the immune system, so I use a satellite dish on the boat hull with some stabilizers for when I can deploy it on a nearby marker for a stable link. My health has only improved because I'm in a cleaner environment for my immune system to rebuild itself, and I have an excellent view of the Catalina Island Channel and have been able to get aquainted with the woman of my dreams since seeing her 15 years ago at the same highschool but this time she is receptive to a nerd after becoming a nerd herself (she hates jocks now, finally).
In some ways, I don't know what to say because it's worked-out for the better. But for others not as fortunate as me, and I'm the McGuyver that just barely got by on a shoe string, I hope someone bombs every f*cking doctor office in a HMO. They are nothing but a bunch of drug dealers, and if you are injurred they always bring up a non-disclosed form they say you or I waived liability to. Compensation for damages is not good enough. It's not the vaccine that kills people, it's the delivery mechanism and the GMO'd vaccine virus itself: if they don't want everyone get sick at the same time, then let me pick a week of the year where I can get sick when I'm ready somewhere else. If the vaccine is a nail, they're hitting it into my head with a sledge-hammer for Christ's sake. Let me get sick on my own.
The primary PNAS article is pretty annoying IMHO. One of the main purposes of publishing research is to describe the methods so that others can reproduce it. In the Materials and Methods section, the only description of the fields applied refer to using 70% intensity setting of a commercially available product, the Magstim SuperRapid, which does not even appear on the manufacturer's website. Also, the orientation of the field is described only by referring to the orientation of the handle of the device. I would expect a published article to describe the actual field intensity, orientation, and some description of field geometry.
Guessing that the SuperRapid is equivalent to the Rapid, they are applying 70%*3.5 Tesla = ~ 2.5 Tesla. Holy cow, that's a lot. For comparison, Earth's field is 0.0005 Tesla.
I assume that no one really cares what happens when you apply these kind of fields to the brain given that one doesn't experience anything like this in normal situations. Is the point that we can learn about brain function by poking it in various ways, and this is just a good way to poke it?
Boobs are magnetic - that explains everything then.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
"She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes. I'll kill you amy. She'll be coming..."
Futurama - series 1 episode 2
Guess it won't just be Bender singing folk songs when a magnet is placed on his head.
This article is misleading, suggesting that any old magnetic field can alter someone's morality.
In reality, transcranial magnetic stimulation temporarily disrupts part of the brain. It can blind you, cause you to lose feeling in parts of your body, or cause temporary aphasia (not the sort of thing you'd generally like to be subject to given that we don't understand exactly how functions are localized within the brain). All that this demonstrates is that it can alter one's ability to reason out a person's morality as well. This is not necessarily even a specific response - for all we know it could be disrupting the subjects' ability to empathize with the characters or understand the story altogether.
It is however somewhat interesting that the behavior elicited when the TMS was applied became more utilitarian than deontological - one philosophy is not necessarily better than the other. I'd question whether their morality was impaired at all. Perhaps it was the morality they had been conditioned to accept that was disrupted. The "memory" of their moral training, so to speak.
The article says they only asked them moral judgment questions. How do you we know that reasoning skills in general weren't affected? If the person couldn't reason through the situation as well they'd be more likely make the "wrong" choice.
AccountKiller
Your level of douchbaggery remains the same, the further north you travel the more the level of douchbaggery in others around you increases, thus yours becomes less noticeable.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... how many lies is there in three 1/4 truths?
"To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."
1. TMS is not a magnetic field. It is a strobing of a field building up then collapsing, essentially it is Z number of magnetic fields, each lasting a few milliseconds, where Z equals X seconds times Y pulses per second. The collapsing fields dump energy into the neurons' axons. This has the effect of electroshock, except the target is a small area, not the whole brain.
2. If a magnetic field applies to a specific brain region did something, a magnetic field applied to the whole head would also. There is nothing in the brain that can tell when a part of the brain is being stimulated vs. the whole thing. Thus, someone in an MRI would have the same reaction. OTOH, they'd have a reaction to everything it were possible to instigate via external stimulation.
3. TMS doesn't change anything to anything else. It disrupts the region it is focused on, and sends it into a seizure state to where it cannot function. Thus TFA is not about changing someone's morals, it is about incapacitating the brain region with which a person makes such decisions, eliminating that part from the overall process. The result is amoral, not different morals. This far more trivial effect has been shown many times by applying TMS to various frontal areas, most notably the orbitofrontal.
Anything the brain can do, TMS can make it unable to do for a few seconds to minutes. TMS is focal electroshock. But not so focal that it can differentiate between small neighboring areas. Thus if you zapped the motor strip to incapacitate the thumb, the very near by region controlling the neck would likely get hit, and they'd lose the ability to keep their head upright.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
... Transcranial (through the skull) Magnetic _STIMULATION_ .
TNS is designed to muck things up, and it's already known that it will disable (or excite) the parts of the brain that it's pointed toward.
It's interesting that if you muck up the part they pointed to, you get an effect selective for moral judgments, but to believe that one couldn't affect moral judgments by mucking about in the brain is to believe in dualism.
We are now marketing a morally magnetic set of underclothing.
It has been tested:
see! - Volunteers were exposed to transgroinial magnetic stimulation!
and the polarity reversing was shockingly demonstrated.
i.e. - Our underwear WORKS!
The subsequentially teabagged transgroined are now fully compliant with America's moral majority.
When your feet hurt, your whole body knows it. But you can be relaxed and comfortable even if you are on your toes all day, thanks to Nikken insoles!
As well, Nikken introduces RAM Technology. RAM (radial-axis magnetism) Technology features small magnetic spheres in groups of six!
ON SALE NOW!
.
- aqk
F U
It doesn't sound like it's scrambled any moral compasses to me. How can something be immoral if it doesn't cause harm?
girls in a bar?
And should I use a bar magnet because I'm in a bar, or a horseshoe magnet because I'm hoping to get lucky?
No wonder Magneto is a bad guy...
Homosexuality is legal and NOT morally wrong as long as it is between consenting adult. Ephebophilia is also considered OK in most country (15/16 years old limit) as teenager that age are consdiered responsible enough to ahve sex and sexual decision, pedophilia on the other hand is considered wrong because the kids do not have the moral and intellectual capability to take such decision. equating pedophilia and homosexuality is making a very bad argument.
... 25 minutes of cellphone on the right ear?
Having read through that, all I can think is that the magnetism made people more rational. It said that after the treatment, people were more likely to base morality solely on whether an action caused harm. To me, that is entirely reasonable. If something causes no harm, we have no basis to call it immoral other than some personal preference without citing some higher power (which again, I see as irrational).
Mods, please +1 funny
Time for Congress to get busy passing a law banning people from holding their cell phones to their RIGHT ears with a BIG fine if they are seen doing so and a ODUBLE BIG fine if they are seen doing so while on a smoke break
The big question is what were peoples opinions about their decisions after the magnetic field was removed?
I ask because I've had experience with people that have had mental disorders that were treatable with the proper drugs, and it has always fascinated me - when people were on the medicine, they were fine. When they were off the meds, they were irrational.
The really interesting thing is that, once back on their meds, they will recall their actions while off the medication as having been perfect rational and justifiable at the time - the brain will rationalize the past behavior, even though it is other wise okay now.
So, does *that* happen in this instance - do people, once no longer under the influence of the field, realize they were making a bad decision, or do they rationalize it?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
The summary and the beginning few paragraphs of all three articles seem to be trying to draw attention with some misleading descriptions of what the experiment discovered. What they describe studying was not the ability to act morally, but to judge morality of a hypothetical scenario after the fact (i.e. with known outcomes). It might indicate the possibility of an effect on the ability to judge the morality of one's actions before performing them, but it doesn't really tell you what. Moreover, the only portion of morality judgment it seems to affect is the consideration of intent. Essentially, they're saying people in their experiment no longer cared what an actor in their hypothetical scenarios was trying to do, but what happened. So, if you're trying to hurt someone and you fail, that's cool, but if you're trying to help someone and end up breaking their arm, that's not cool. It doesn't really have anything to do with the "inherent" moralness of an action, but only of the outcome. So if you're saying, "My philosophy is if doesn't hurt anyone, it's cool to do", then as long as you successfully manage to never actually hurt anyone, a person affected by this alleged phenomenon would be cool with you, too. If, however, you're doing something that shouldn't hurt anyone as far as you know but, for whatever reason, ends up doing so, then they would judge it to be wrong.
Wait, so how big is the magnet under Capitol hill?