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Your Moral Compass Is Reversible
scibri writes "Your moral positions may be more flexible than you think. Researchers in Sweden have tricked people into reversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions (paper in PLOS ONE). They used a 'magic trick' to reverse a person's responses to such moral issues as 'Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism,' by switching 'forbidden' to 'permitted' when the subject turned the page of the questionaire. When asked to read back the questions and answers, about half of the subjects did not detect the changes, and a full 53% of participants argued unequivocally for the opposite of their original attitude in at least one of the manipulated statements."
Fox news has always supported President Obama.
So they got the subjects to say duck season when they really meant wabbit season? I seem to have seen something like this before.
Isn't that a better test of people's poor reading comprehension and listening skills?
Yes!
I mean, No.
Well, whatever it is we're talking about, it's WRONG.
(Or RIGHT.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
We used to do this at school:
"What would you prefer, to be nearly hit or nearly missed?"
"Nearly missed"
"OK then!"
And then you give them a dead arm :)
Summation 2
You are confusing poor attention span with stupidity. Poor attention span can also lead to more creative thinking and thus more innovative ideas.
That's what I tell my boss, anyway! ;-)
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Strongly disagree: If the babies don't eat, they die off, and we run out of people in a generation. I, for one, am all for eating babies.
Starving babies, on the other hand, I would like to forbid.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Hey, whatever it takes to get by in life, survive and succeed, you know?
I think most peoples' moral compass....points in the direction that will be most beneficial to them at the given moment they are called upon to utilize it.
Yes. Those would be idiots who lack integrity and character. You can usually find them chasing a carrot on a string.
Pretty soon, we'll be able to buy morons like this on the open market in packages of a dozen...oh wait, I forgot, it's an election year. We already do.
That's what I tell my boss, anyway! ;-)
Fuck, DON'T! We don't need any more bosses with poor attention span!