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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."
After reading the GP on the OP and highlighting the MT on the TP I can only come to one conclusion concerning the subject matter of the article itself.
I for one welcome out cowboyNeal worshipping Dancing Baby overlords but question their ability to run Earth better then a borg augmented Bill Gates. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong besides Steve Ballmer throwing a chair and breaking the series of tubes we call the Internet. The only thing worse then a suddenOutbreakOfCommonSense coupled with the release of Duke Nukem Forver is the return of Charlie the Unicorn during a Chocolate Rain. In Soviet Russia Snakes on a plane get You but under the new rulership we are as screwed as the Star Wars Kid getting the hookup with a Wii Fit Girl. If you don't think things can get worse, I am fine with that, OK Go. See if I care. But when Dear Leader forces you to do the Hampster Dance in front of the Saugeen Stripper after the JK Wedding Entrance Dance you will beg to be thrown in with those Snakes on a Plane flying to the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny! I know that CorrelationNoCausation may apply here but I am certain that the new overlords computer will be superior to our current technology, but does it run Linux and can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of their computers! My Epeen is huge thinking about it to the point of a joygasm! Perhaps with their technology we could getyourasstomars in the time it takes to watch the Last Lecture! Imagine the number of Libraries of Congress we could store using their technology! Mod me Troll how dare you you insensitive clod! Now to distract you while I steal the Netcraft report confirming Gentoo Linux is dying. LOOK OVER THERE! OMG!!! PONIES!!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
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?
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. In today's society somebody which consider homosexuality a bad moral choice, is using a standard used by old middle age or very old goat herder morality compass. Furthermore from the biological and psychological point of view, as far as I udnerstand , you mostly DO NOT CHOSE your sexuality. Therefore speaking of moral choice is quite improper and shows an udnerstanding of sexuality which date from a few century back. Thanks god, I am an hetero sexual man attracted to big boobies (not the blue footed one thanks). But that does not blind me to the fact that your inclusion of homosexuality is a quite of symptom of the mental retardation of the majority of people still thinking it is a show of bad moral.
Frankly, that's repugnant to me. The God of Christianity strikes me as evil. If he exists, I'm afraid I'm going to have to refuse to have anything to do with him. I'll suffer my eternal punishment in silence, because I don't deal with FUCKING TERRORISTS, okay?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What exactly was repugnant to you in my post? I was merely trying to subtly make the point that if you were referring to Christianity in your original post, you had the theology wrong.
This time I'm making the point more clearly.
Possibly you were referring to other religions. In Islam, for example, it is taught that a follower's good deads will be weighed against his bad deeds after death. While there are aspects of this in the Bible and I don't want to discount this, one of the central theses of Christianity is that one is saved by trusting in Jesus' sacrifice, rather than attaining a certain level of "goodness" or avoiding a certain level of "badness".
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