

Morality is modified in the lab - aeurielesn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8593748.stm

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powrtoch
"You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour. To be able to
apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral
judgments is really astonishing."

Where do people think that high level behavior comes from, if not the lower
levels?

"You think of WoW as being a high-level program, but I replaced your CPU with
the one from my phone and look, it doesn't work."

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hvs
I don't think "morality" is equivalent to "processor".

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pygy_
In his example, morality is WoW, and the analogy is sound. By disrupting the
low level activity, you prevent high level processes from emerging.

Try to degauss your cell phone, just to see what happens...

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aeurielesn
Original article (full text): <http://www.pnas.org/content/107/15/6753.full>

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planckscnst
I would be very interested in this applied to psychophathic individuals since
they apparently lack moral judgement.

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pygy_
I'm no longer keeping track of TMS research, but from what I know (up to date
as of 1 year, minus the fog of not having slept last night):

The plasticity induced by rTMS is relatively short lived (10-60 minutes,
usually), especially for high frequency stimulation (that potentiates the
activity of the stimulated zone, which would perhaps be useful if we wanted to
activate the TPJ of for psychopaths). To get maximal stability, you have keep
people in a quiet room, because distractions / other activities tend to
dissolve the effects of the stimulation.

You may get longer lasting results using a thêta burst paradigm.

All in all, TMS is mostly a research/diagnostic tool. TMS-based treatments are
yet to be discovered (discounting irrelevant, anecdotal case reports).

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joshrule
Unlike a lot of articles reporting on science, this one doesn't make any
gigantic claims. They note that morality can be manipulated in the lab, not
that scientists have cured evil or that science has found a way to reprogram
your mind.

Even better, they quote the scientist's ideas on potential next steps for this
line of work and do a decent job of detailing the actual procedures used in
the research.

There's a lot of crummy science reporting out there, so when a good job is
done, it should be noticed. Good job, BBC.

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Bjoern
Have a curious question. What is morality? I mean how do I explain that e.g.
to a machine? I have no background in AI or psychology but taking this
research.

Definition of morality, e.g. "concern with the distinction between good and
evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct"

So if we have morality which is in one part the outcome of a situation what is
the other part which makes up morality?

Morality = Outcome + X

What do you think?

