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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."
A lot of activities and mental states which do not harm people are considered morally wrong. For example, homosexuality, coveting and envy, pride, "thoughtcrime" in the novel, 1984, etc.
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
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.
What it sounds like to me is, someone found humanity's Asperger switch.
(I have Asperger's Syndrome)
AS is so much more than this. It causes 100 little problems that all add up to making your life suck.
From my own personal experience I know that people with AS have trouble reading facial expressions because they're never looking at people faces. This is because eye contact is uncomfortable (i'd call it more like creepy, or heebee-jeebees, it still happens to me). Because it's uncomfortable, they never learn to read it. I've started forcing myself to look at facial expressions in an attempt to read people's eyes. I'm slowly starting to be able to do this.
As other examples, my gait is subtly wrong. I have a hard time identifying the source of certain emotions. And I'm sometimes not to good at reading the positions of my arms and legs.
I think it's more than just a magnetic switch. I think it's a biochemical problem that causes development problems that propagate throughout your life.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
"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
And "Wilson" is "Watson." There are many more parallels with the Sherlock Holmes series, according to the creators of "House."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton