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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
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.
I'm guessing that the "Your Honor, I had a giant morals-scrambling magnet pressed against my head at the time" defense should be pretty easy to confirm or deny...
Now, as for the broader use, yeah, this research does indeed suggest that, for instance, somebody with a tumor or lesion in the area that the researchers were scrambling might well be "insane" in the sense of having impaired moral cognition, without overt psychosis or anything similarly dramatic. That isn't really "abuse" though. That's an enhancement of our understanding how how the brain works.
However, I'm not sure that the "Yup, I have a permanently defective capacity for moral cognition" defense would be something that you would pursue unless you, in fact, do. Indefinite commitment to a secure psychiatric facility isn't exactly a walk in the park, even compared to prison.
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
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
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!
>>> "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
It doesn't sound like a sound defense. Moral judgements have nothing to do with legality; there's nothing immoral about smoking pot, for example. Whether you're talking about Druids, Christians, Jews, Hindus, any religion, none have any injunction against smoking pot. Smoking pot harms no one. The marijuana laws were passed by lies (see the propaganda movie "Reefer Madness"). Laws are subjective; they are NOT based on morality. Adultery is immoral (and harmful), yet there's no law against it in my state.
What confuses me, (and I RTFA just because it did confuse me, and TFA gave no answer) is what kinds of moral delimmas did they present?
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 can't think of anything that's morally wrong that doesn't cause harm. Did I read the wrong FA?
Free Martian Whores!
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.
I think you're on to something. The phenomenon of the BOFH is simply the result of being surrounded by hard drives and other magnetic materials. The actions do not cause any physical harm, though most would consider it immoral.
...or maybe users are just idiots.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
"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
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
Causing other people to take time out of their lives to scrape you off the asphalt and sew you back together, all while having my taxes and/or health insurance premiums pay for it
See what I mean? People lose their shit along with all sense of causality whenever driving without wearing a seatbelt is mentioned. I would even guess that this guy is in the majority.
And by the same argument, people like this shouldn't leave the house without wearing a helmet, for the benefit of everyone else of course.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"