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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."
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.....
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.
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......
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.
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)
Thanks for that link! For years now I've been hearing people talk about house this, house that, and I thought, "When did house music make a big comeback?" Now, thanks to your informative link, I know that House is a TV show.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You have a better chance of getting laid by the bimbos in Philosophy 101?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So this is how you make a Helm of Opposite Alignment!
Lawful Evil, here I come!
>>> "Your Honor, I had a giant morals-scrambling magnet pressed against my head at the time"
That's what she said.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
i remember hearing about something one could drink that would achieve similar results ... with the added benefit of making everyone look better ...
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*!"
That reminds me:
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Ahah! This conclusively links em fields to the phenomenon of em sensitivity lawsuits. The EM fields remove the "sensitives" moral compass and allows them to fake symptoms for financial gain through lawsuits without feeling guilty.
I misread the headline as:
:)
Management Can Sway Man's Moral Compass
And thought... now how is that news?
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
Well, you see judge, I was really busy that day and I had to sign the contract while I was getting an MRI of my head.
So, strong magnetic fields can disrupt the soul?
I've always been told I have an iron will...
Of course morality causes magnetism. I know for a fact strong moralism repels me!
Just answer these questions in your own minds and in your own hearts.
Most importantly, answer these questions honestly.
1. You're walking along a country road. It's a beautiful spring day. As you walk along, you notice that up ahead in the distance, lying in the middle of the road in the dirt, is a tiny baby sparrow. Both its wings are broken. You have... a hammer.
2. You're a medical student in your final year of study. It's a very very important year for you. Because of the economic climate, you've been forced to live with your grandmother. She's a tattoo artist - with Parkinson's disease. Every time she makes you a cup of coffee she shakes so much it froths up the milk on top, which is something you can't fucking stand. You have... a hammer.
3. You're a young and upwardly mobile merchant banker. Your girlfriend has just fallen pregnant. You think a child at this point in your career could be detrimental to your future career prospects. You have... a coathanger.
4. You are an arctic explorer. For the past six months you've been travelling through the arctic waste. It has been a period of intense isolation and loneliness for you, devoid of contact with any other human being. On this particular day you're walking along a stretch of beach some eight kilometers in length. At the far end of that beach, basking itself on a broad, flat rock there's a beautiful, white, baby seal. As you approach you notice that its eyes are like two deep, brown pools. Its fur is as fresh and as clean and as white as the driven snow around it. It is an unsurpassed beauty and splendor between man, beast and nature. You have... an erection.