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Study Suggests Magnets Can Force You to Tell the Truth
Estonian researchers claim that magnets can either force you to lie or make it impossible. Subjects in the study had magnets placed at either the left or the right side of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the results suggest that the individual was either unable to tell the truth or unable to lie depending on which side was stimulated. From the article: "Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also used powerful magnets to disrupt the area said to be the brain's 'moral compass,' situated behind the right ear, making people temporarily less moral."
...how do they work?
Just wait until Pistole hears of this.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
But how do they work?
"magnets to disrupt the area said to be the brain's 'moral compass,' situated behind the right ear, making people temporarily less moral"
Is that why people on cell phones act like assholes?
So...I thought it was strange that everybody said I was an ass hole after I took that 5 dollar bet to put the magnetic tape de-Gauzer to my temple and press the button!
Must be the pull of the North Pole influencing their moral compass...
...or feel my right arm.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Feds will be very interested in this. If it pans out, expect portable versions deployed by police departments within five years.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I find the claim that they were able to make people unable to tell the truth much more surprising than the one that they were able to make people unable to lie.
While fun and useful, lying is somewhat cognitively demanding: You have to synthesize and deliver a contracfactual statement, you can't just remember it because it didn't happen. There has been some previous speculation that you should be able to detect lying, based on the greater mental effort(and distributed across more brain regions effort) involved, vs. the recall activity required to tell the truth.
That you can knock-out truth-telling(without just inducing aphasia or amnesia temporarily, which is a bit heavy handed) is much more surprising.
Screw metal plates, I'm getting a faraday cage installed into (in lieu of) my skull!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This experiment sounds like it should be easy for a DIYer to reproduce. I can rig up an electromagnet helmet to prevent any placebo effect (no changing headgear) and make it double-blind.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Anybody know anything about them.
The article itself is very sketchy:
A random sampling of "16" ?
No mention of how strong a magnet.
Was there a "tendency" not to lie, or was it an on/off switch ?
I mean, seriously, I didn't know Elbonia was known for neuropsychological research ;-)
Modern neuroscience is killing any wiggle-room that might have remained regarding souls and free will. As I've mentioned before, neuroscientists, ethicists, and legal scholars are concerned that "my brain made me do it" will become a reasonable courtroom defense. (No, I'm not talking about the traditional "insanity defense".)
We will eventually be forced to re-think a lot of cherished beliefs about brains, minds, and behavior.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
OK, lets add this up.
Results of study appear to be conclusive and immensely counter-intuitive? Check.
Research is from a former Soviet bloc country? Check.
Study size is small? 16 people, so check.
No details on methodology? Check.
Study is published in popular press, not peer-reviewed journal? Nope, Behavioural Brain Research is peer-reviewed and appears pretty legit.
Well, if this is true and accurate, it could be completely ground-breaking in any number of fields. Fascinating if other teams are able to reproduce the results. Can you even imagine a world with reliable truth-telling machines? It's mind-boggling. The only reason that polygraphs haven't completely revolutionized our society is that they are completely BS, voodoo junk-science.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
No doubt you use different parts of your brain for telling the truth vs. lying and disabling the associated part or conduit would make lying harder. But unless something is lost in translation, this story is hype. It isn't a simple on/off switch.
This would be fun at political debates, like this one:
Morbo: Morbo demands an answer to the following question: If you saw delicious candy in the hands of a small child would you seize and consume it?
Jack Johnson: Unthinkable.
John Jackson: I wouldn't think of it.
Morbo: What about you, Mr. Nixon? I remind you you are under a truth-o-scope.
Nixon's Head: Uh, well, I, uh...the question is-is vague. You don't say what kind of candy, whether anyone is watching or uh... At any rate, I certainly wouldn't harm the child.
I am officially gone from
"Sorry honey I'm stuck in work, yeah I know it's Friday...yeah...sorry...the noise?...oh, that's the cleaners...sounds like a bar?...hahahaha you funny...they've just got the radio on....don't you trust me?...I'll try to be quick...yes...love you too....bye!"
Right chaps, my round it is?
Note that not being able to lie does not imply not being able to tell anything but the truth. Many people telling wrong things actually believe them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It makes you lie, not gives you Tourette's.
That said, the whole article has the scent of bullshit. TFA's title says "makes it impossible to lie" and yet the text says it simply tends to make people 'less moral'. The article is inflammatory nonsense hyping research that doesn't appear to make any such sweeping claims.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Yeah, I find the whole thing a bit dubious. It's not shocking to me that it might be possible to disrupt brain activity in such a way that a particular patient couldn't fabricate certain kinds of lies, but the idea that everyone's brain has a clear "lies on" and "lies off" switch that can be activated with a magnet.
Reading one of TFA:
The volunteers were presented a series of coloured discs, and told they could tell the truth or lie about the objects' colours while half were being stimulated on the left and half on the right.
Results showed that the eight volunteers who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often, while the ones with the right DPC stimulated were more likely to tell the truth, researchers said.
So it sounds like they were given the option of lying about something with no consequences, and they lied more often with one part of the brain stimulated. It doesn't say that it was "impossible" to lie, or even that it made it difficult to lie when strongly motivated to do so. Maybe it didn't directly cause them to be more likely to lie, but made them feel more whimsical or creative and likely to want to lie in a consequence-free environment.
Then there's the much-overlooked difference between "not-lying" and "telling the truth". I can tell you something false because I'm mistaken, because I'm telling you a fictional story, or because I'm over-simplifying. None of those actions are deceptive in nature, but none of them are "telling the truth".
if the comic books are right
It is actually the age old puzzle, "two doors, tiger behind one, princess behind the other. One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies. What question would you ask ...". Some poor Estonian tried to translate this puzzle from Sanskrit to Estonian and ended up writing it as a research paper instead.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Now you see why I wear a tin foil hat.
They have those earrings with the magnetic backers... I knew something was up! wee need to put the magnent on the right and a regular one of the left!
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
They said they could encourage you to lie, not that they could force you not to be able to tell the truth. That's quite different.
The article says they were more likely to lie, not that they had no choice. (Okay, the second article says they can force it... Sounds like spin to me. They have no idea what they're talking about.)
Ditto for the truth telling, btw.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Lying implies knowledge that you are intentional not telling the truth. Truthfully telling incorrect information is called 'a mistake'. sometime also could be 'Making bullshit up so as not to disturb my cognitive dissonance'
And just so people know, this is MRI level magnetic field, not 'Magnets'.
It does seem that people are less likely to lie. More research needed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So I guess we could crowdsource honesty by sending people to a scrap yard and walking them under one of those auto magnets? Hopefully the percentage of people with metal plates in their heads and Borg implants won't be too high....
Damn, we attached the magnet to the wrong side of the post-doctorate student's head when he was writing that study.
Yes, "We will eventually be forced to re-think a lot of cherished beliefs about brains, minds, and behavior."... by magnets.
The answer is simple, ask them nothing, walk away. The puzzle doesn't define that you have to talk to the guards, nor open a door, nor that finding the princess is better. Maybe you're Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter, looking for the exotic animal. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you are a woman and the guards are irresistibly cute, and happy that both are behind the door and can have both guards to yourself.
The trick to the riddle is that it is founded on an entire series of common assumptions. The fact that we fear tigers, the fact that we "want" princesses, the fact that the guards are to be asked or have any real authority to block doors, and the fact that we have to find out what is behind the doors by asking a question based on the perceived morality of the guards... THAT is interesting.
I8-D
Yeah, the headline couldn't be more wrong. These subjects had no incentive or reason to lie or to tell the truth - they had a free and unbiased choice between lying and truth-telling, and the magnets affected their arbitrary decision. It's not like they wanted to lie and couldn't.
Since I am my brain then the argument "my brain made me do it" means that "I made me do it". I don't see how this kills the idea of free-will. Since I am the chemical and electrical processes in my brain then whatever causes them to do what they do IS me. There is no philosophical difference with the situation if you had a magical soul. After all, whatever would compose a magical soul has to follow some sort of rules to come up with whatever decision it makes, just as physics and chemistry underlie the decisions I make.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I find the claim that they were able to make people unable to tell the truth much more surprising than the one that they were able to make people unable to lie.
The results are no wonder if you take account the fact that Estonians used to float on the electromagnetic cross currents of giant Russian and Western early warning radars.
"force you"? "make it impossible"? Where is that bullshit coming from? It shows a significant change, that's very different from the absolute phrases used in the summary.
I find the claim that they were able to make people unable to tell the truth much more surprising than the one that they were able to make people unable to lie.
Perhaps the authors of this bullshit research were using their don't tell the truth magnets when they wrote it up.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
The next sentence was made with a magnet on my left hemisphere.
The previous sentence was made with a magnet on my right hemisphere.
Which one is tru-WHO GIVES A SHIT I HAVE NO MORALS WARWRWERWARWAAWKLERJA
It sounds about as credible as phrenology, so I'll await confirmation.
But in the meantime, think about the impact this would have on society if there was truly a way (temporary, harmless) to prevent people from lying.
How many marriages would survive?
What would happen if 435 congressmen simultaneously "decided to retire...immediately"?
Would the resulting society even be recognizable?
-Styopa
Nobody's stopping you from answering the riddle with "I'd open both doors, butt-fuck the tiger and then have a circle-jerk with the guards while we watched it maul the princess."
Nobody but yourself, anyway.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
From TFA:
"Spontaneous choice to lie more or less can be influenced by brain stimulation," researchers Karton and Bachmann wrote in Behavioural Brain Research.
That's it. Based on a single study of 16 people in one test.
This isn't news. It hardly qualifies as gossip.
Could be an effect similar to how various drugs (i include alcohol under that label) makes us disregard or lower our risk aversion.
So when stimulated on one side, the persons reluctance to lie is heightened while the other lowers it.
I wonder how it would affect diagnosed sociopaths tho.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
That's not at all what the study showed/claimed/whatever. People were MORE LIKELY to tell the truth with the magnetic treatment. That's a far cry from force.
You don't ask how troll science works.
Have you ever been asked a question that was phrased in such a way that the truthful answer would make you sound like a complete ass or guilty as sin? Politicians and Lawyers are known for asking pointed character assassination questions, why not police or your boss? I'm not saying I'm not a fan of the magnet theory, I'm just saying that anything is worthwhile if used responsibly and I have a great skepticism that anything we create will be used responsibly.
Mod up 1000 times. More over some lies are actually the Truth with a capital T. Ask a conspiracy theorist to lie and say that we did land on the moon. To him, its a lie, but its really True.
So the counter intelligence angle to this is to tell agents 20 things that the enemy may be interested in 19 of which are false.
In fact, I'm not sure why they don't do more of that to detect leaks.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It was already known that magnets applied to the head can make certain individuals sing bad folk-songs.
Let's face it, torture is unreliable (even before being nebulously immoral). One would think that by now there would have been more research on a drug or tool or other non-destructive way to loosen people's tongues. Of course it doesn't get you the *truth*, it just gets you honesty about what the person *believes* to be true. (Christopher Anvil, forgot the name of the story, had a mind-reader find out the hard way that reading people's minds didn't make him omniscient; it made him omni-opinient.)
And Jack Bauer would have been out of work much faster . . . See also "Veridicator" (H. Beam Piper), "fast-penta" (Lois McMaster Bujold), probably dozens of others.
...cell phone users can be such jerks.
The magenet in the cell phones speaker is disrupting their moral center....
The question is offcourse whether they used the magnets while stating their research.
Maybe it doesn't work , but because they used the magnets , they are forced to lie , and state that it does work.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Ok... who couldn't read this article with out thinking of Dilbert and these guys: http://tim.2wgroup.com/blog/images/elbonian_computer.gif
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Why waste your time with a magnet when a simple vice grip applied in the right location can do the same thing?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I'm attracted to 'em.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Does that mean that vagina's are magnetic?
Yes, but they mainly attract assholes.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Now i know why Lie to Me was canceled :O
A couple of clarifications are in order.
First TMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) is not akin to putting a magnet on your skull....so don't embarrass yourself by having your spouse wear a special hat while you ask them about their infidelity.
Second, the researches never said that the technique makes it impossible to lie or tell the truth. They said that subjects were more likely to lie or tell the truth depending on the location stimulated.
Third, it really isn't much of a surprise that cranking up, or turning off areas of the brain have an effect on behavior.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
It really bugs me when I see these articles describing TMS as "using magnets". These are intricately designed electromagnetic paddles which produce a field of a specific shape which induce a current. The paddles need to be correctly aimed at a particular brain region. In order to do the aiming, you'll need a MRI scan first. They make it sound like rubbing fridge magnets on your temples.
Move along, no sig to see here.
So, will my tinfoil hat protect me from those things, or increase their power?!
Lying implies knowledge that you are intentional not telling the truth. Truthfully telling incorrect information is called 'a mistake'. sometime also could be 'Making bullshit up so as not to disturb my cognitive dissonance'
That is the most charitable explanation of mainstream Republican thought I've ever heard.
LYCEUM, Athens -- Researchers led by Aristotle have released a startling scroll detailing their findings on a beverage called "wine." Apparently, when consumed in sufficient quantities, wine can lead to loss of inhibition, poor judgement, and lascivious behavior. Combined with last year's discovery that head trauma can make a person "loopy," it appears that our cherished ideas about the soul and free will must be called into question.
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Wow. I am rather disturbed by the amount of ignorance being displayed over this article simply because the word "magnet" was mentioned. These are not refrigerator magnets or Q-Ray bracelets we're talking about here. With TMS we're talking something like a one TESLA electromagnetic coil placed right next to your skull that goes snap-snap-snap every time it goes off, momentarily creating an intensely powerful magnetic field that can either stimulate or supress the electrical activity in the targeted part of the brain. The effects are mild and temporary, but very real.
It's one thing to be skeptical of a product someone is trying to sell you, and quite another to ignorantly dismiss perfectly sound basic scientific research just because they used a word that has been misappropriated by snake oil salesmen.
The idea that stimulating or supressing a certain part of the brain can induce behavior modification is not new either. Any sort of damage to the left temporal prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain right under your left temple) is strongly correlated with having dark, intensely homicidal and/or suicidal thoughts. Many doctors have noted immediate positive post-operation personality shifts in patients who have had large tumors or cysts removed that were pressing on this area of the brain. It should not be much of a stretch to imagine that other behaviors can be modified by manipulating other parts of the brain.
I also find it bizarre that people keep commenting that they don't believe the brain can be "forced" to lie. I think a number of pathological liars who have had their lives ruined by having the constant overpowering urge to lie all the time would beg to differ.
I think the main thing we are learning these days is that the human brain is both more complex than we ever imagined and, in some very disturbing ways, far LESS complex than we would like it to be. But if we freely embrace the new knowledge we are gaining we may be close to learning how to actually repair many of the "broken" human beings that we now just keep in cages because we don't know what else to do with them. Not lobotomize or brainwash, but actually repair, back to what the rest of us consider "normal". To me, what is going on in neuroscience these days is very exciting. Ripe for abuse, of course, but still exciting because of the positive possibilities.
Does that mean that vagina's are magnetic?
I certainly find them strangely and irresistibly attractive...
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
You ask, "which door would the other guard tell me is the one with the tiger behind it?"
That's the door you want to open to find the princess.
The problem is, you can't know which side leads the subject to always tell the truth. Also, you are only allowed to make one question. Also, one of the 12 coins is either heavier or lighter than the others. And only two passengers fit in the boat at the same time.
How do you know which path leads to heaven?
Kirk: Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie, do you hear me, everything he says is a LIE!
Mudd: Now listen carefully... I'm lying.
Norman: But... if everything you say is a lie, and you say you are lying then you are telling the truth, but you cannot be telling the truth because everything you say is a lie... Conflict! Conflict! Co-ordinate!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They don't reject me at all... they are just evil.. like vampire bats, sharks and snakes..
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
That could make things interesting, don't ya think?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Many people have the sense that they are not their brains. Intuitively, their brains are like their eyes, ferrying information from the world to the "real you" that peeps out through the eyes like windows.
It's an insupportable notion, but one people hold very deal. There's a sense of self-ness that doesn't feel like it's just the reactions of zillions of neurons. And since neurologists can't yet explain the details, it's easy to treat your own perception of self-ness as more realistic than their handwaves.
There is key philosophical differences between dualism and physicalism. In physicalism, when the brain dies, you die. In dualism, there is a transcendent part that can continue to survive. Science practically presumes physicalism, and scientific arguments against dualism can veer into begging the question. Evidence like this makes it increasingly clear that there isn't any cogency to dualism, but it's not trivial.
There are a lot of moral implications as well. "Blame" is a less clear concept when the "I" isn't a rock-solid, immutable everlasting soul. Does guilt attenuate over time? What is the point of punishment? These are questions for which the intuitive dualism gives different answers from physicalism.
So, when people talk about "killing the idea of free will", it's really the dualistic free will they're talking about. The idea doesn't go away lightly, especially when neurologists have only hints like this experiment. This is one more interesting pointer in defeating the intuitive, and probably wrong, approach.
Did anyone RTFA? This is /. so I guess not.
"Results showed that the eight volunteers who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often, while the ones with the right DPC stimulated were more likely to tell the truth, researchers said."
There is a hell of a big difference between "forces you to tell the truth" and "statistically more likely, within this experiment's margin of error to tell the truth".
It's all the rage now!
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
have mod points today
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I wondered how much stronger those magnets are then the one used in MRI. I've not felt the effect of an MRI on my thinking or speech. How is a small local magnet going to do this with a much weaker field that can be "localized". I think this is another pseudo science article. Ouijai boards are proven to work. So do divining rods. Even over unity power generation works for some. I think they all work for the same reasons.
For the same reasons I don't meddle in the other fringe science, I don't give this much credence.
The truth shall set you free!
Note that not being able to lie does not imply not being able to tell anything but the truth. Many people telling wrong things actually believe them.
True. Some people really were raised to believe in omniptotent magical beings, and some people really do think that income taxes are only fair if half of the voting population doesn't pay them, etc. I'm not talking about which wrong-headed thing someone believes - but I'd like to know what they actually are, rather than what they're panderingly saying. That would also cut down on the "elect me and the waters will recede" sort of nonsense.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
WikiLeaks Live Action
But only if we get to use it on Assange, too.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The must also be making the summary lie, like usual.
Even the article that repeats the claim that "Zapping the brain with magnets makes it IMPOSSIBLE to lie, claim scientists" in the headline also lies. The actual body, in both articles, says only that there was more of a tendency afterward, and that could be explained by poor controls - the people were asked to do the test twice, and there was a very small group size (16 people).
I find it hard to believe that a lie is fabricated from any sort of moral standpoint whatsoever. When I make up a lie, I do it for reasons all my own. Morality is a distant second to whatever primary reason I might have.
For instance, I would not (if asked by a stranger on a bus) tell the truth about carrying a ton of money in my back pack. My primary motive has no moral inclination. It is driven by the perceived necessity for the safety of my belongings. Secondary would perhaps be perceived by some as a moral contradiction My parents might have said that it was evil to lie and that I would spend another agonizing eternity in hell. If such were the case, and if that were anything to do with morals, they're NOT MY morals, they're social morals.
Even if a magnet is somehow able to seize up my moral faculties, I would still be free to tell the Truth, or to tell a Lie based on intellectually reasoned stimulation. No amount of mental stimulation will be able to so that.
I admit however, that there is a possibility that one could be immersed into a state of "willingness to respond with the truth rather than the false", however, it would be more due to a mental state and a clever questioner than anything else. Ask the wrong questions and *blam!* your truth serum will fall apart. As long as the mind forgets that it is unsafe, irresponsible, unsuitable or whatever else, to tell a lie, it will not bother making up one. As soon as it realizes the situation, it will invariably fight off the influence and pull its inhibitions right back to where there are supposed to be.
That noted, I find it impossible to imagine how someone could be influenced to tell a lie every time s/he opens his/her mouth. I just don't see that happening.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Strong enough to have an effect, depending on the audio you feed to them?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A magnet on the right makes one tell the truth, but a magnet on the left makes one more sinister.
I have a heavily magnetized hammer. Now tell me the truth.
What happened to all the pseudo-skeptical "magnets have no effect on living tissue" hysteria? Seems it wasn't so long ago that people were being laughed out of this forum for claims like this. People should stick to their guns.
Makes me wonder if any of this has been tied to previous, but highly variable, research on the effects of cell phones on the brain. Wow, could cell phones cause one to be truthful, depending on which ear is used. :-O