Morality altered by brain stimulation

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It has more to do with understanding how the brain works than mind control. The method they use shut a brain center down, not controlling it. True, it could eventually be refined to a method for mind control in the future, but for now it's an easier replacement for trowing people under busses (by accident of course) and see how their personality changes.

The mind is very complicated, for example there 4 or 5 centers in the brain that handles eyesight. Losing one center can cause everything from complete blindness, to losing the ability to see montions, or one side of the visual field (usually the left side).

And yet.... one asks "why do this", a question seldom asked in Science (see: Hadron Collider). This is a study which removed people's nuance in morality. It is exactly that nuance which prevents us from extolling "the Greater Good".

So, this study is very disturbing.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I don't really see how it's disturbing. It just says that if you interfere with part of the brain people lose some functioning.

[Ironside]

And yet.... one asks "why do this", a question seldom asked in Science (see: Hadron Collider). This is a study which removed people's nuance in morality. It is exactly that nuance which prevents us from extolling "the Greater Good".

So, this study is very disturbing.

Considering the problem of the "Greater Good" concept (how many evils have been made in the name of the Greater Good?) it should be a boon in that case.

More seriously, it gives an understanding on how the brain works. As with the hadron colider (were the same phenomena happens often in the atmosphere by incoming cosmic rays), we are already living with people with brain damage in those regions. This helps understanding what that means.

True, there's areas where neuroscience needs a lot of extra ethic considerations, but this experiment is hardly one of them. The horrors lies in the mere possibillity of manipulation and how a unexpected a disrupted/damaged mind works.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Considering the problem of the "Greater Good" concept (how many evils have been made in the name of the Greater Good?) it should be a boon in that case.

So you're saying that turning off peoples moral subtlety will protect them from falling for the "Greater Good" arguement. In other words, handicapping them for... the Greater Good.

See how slippery that slope is? With this technology it looks like I could take that worry away for you.

More seriously, it gives an understanding on how the brain works. As with the hadron colider (were the same phenomena happens often in the atmosphere by incoming cosmic rays), we are already living with people with brain damage in those regions. This helps understanding what that means.

to what end, though? As with the Hadron Colider, I don't believe the questions of risk or application are really addressed. The latter was a complete waste of money (found nothing) and might have detroyed the planet.

True, there's areas where neuroscience needs a lot of extra ethic considerations, but this experiment is hardly one of them. The horrors lies in the mere possibillity of manipulation and how a unexpected a disrupted/damaged mind works.

I think the field, and possibly science in general, needs a big ethical injection.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

to what end, though? As with the Hadron Colider, I don't believe the questions of risk or application are really addressed. The latter was a complete waste of money (found nothing) and might have detroyed the planet.

You don't always know what the end is going to be. Sometimes knowledge is just knowledge and lays unused for 50 years, then becomes useful. How much of our current technology relies on an understanding of fundamental physics?

"was a complete waste of money" --> they haven't packed up their bags and left it though...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You don't always know what the end is going to be. Sometimes knowledge is just knowledge and lays unused for 50 years, then becomes useful. How much of our current technology relies on an understanding of fundamental physics?

I know that not all knowledge is immidiately useful, such is obvious, but your example of Physics is a very bad one, as the practical applications are immidiately apparent and, in any case, Newton had a clear purpose, to demonstrate the underlying order of the Universe created by God.

"was a complete waste of money" --> they haven't packed up their bags and left it though...

It's a glorified experiement to try to find a theoretical "God partical" that has failed to materialise, with a side order of, "may destroy the planet". The fact that they haven't abandoned it means nothing with regard to it's utility, rather it points to a lot of people not wanting to look like fools and be out of work.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I know that not all knowledge is immidiately useful, such is obvious, but your example of Physics is a very bad one, as the practical applications are immidiately apparent and, in any case, Newton had a clear purpose, to demonstrate the underlying order of the Universe created by God.

I don't quite see what you're getting at. Knowledge can be an end of itself is what your first bit seems to acknowledge, but you were suggesting it didn't earlier.

It's a glorified experiement to try to find a theoretical "God partical" that has failed to materialise, with a side order of, "may destroy the planet". The fact that they haven't abandoned it means nothing with regard to it's utility, rather it points to a lot of people not wanting to look like fools and be out of work.

They hope to find many things, and they have been slowly ramping up the speed of it, I think they've only gone up to half power so far? It was never going to destroy the planet, I don't get where that whole thing came from.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I don't quite see what you're getting at. Knowledge can be an end of itself is what your first bit seems to acknowledge, but you were suggesting it didn't earlier.

Knowledge is merely the accumulation of facts, if it does not engender wisdom it is intrinsically useless, because you can't understand how to use it. While some knowledge might be worth knowing without an obvious practical application knowledge is not "an end of itself" in any acknowledged philosophical sense I kinow.

They hope to find many things, and they have been slowly ramping up the speed of it, I think they've only gone up to half power so far? It was never going to destroy the planet, I don't get where that whole thing came from.

There is a 1:150 million chance it could trigger a quantom singularity and destry the solar system, it's highly unlikely, but possible. Now you might say, "well that's not going to happen" and you'd almost certainly be right, but the fact is that it could and the sheer hubris of the scientists involved in building the thing without first getting the consent of every man woman and child on the sodding planet is astounding.

[Ironside]

So you're saying that turning off peoples moral subtlety will protect them from falling for the "Greater Good" arguement. In other words, handicapping them for... the Greater Good.

See how slippery that slope is? With this technology it looks like I could take that worry away for you.

I've never seaid anything about making that permanent on somebody, I'm just saying that use of the Greater Good is ironic when talking about people that cannot differ between the murder of a tyrant and the murder of a saint. Making it permanent would be even more ethically questionable than an icepick in the brain... since it's never been claimed to be a cure.

But if you would like, we could go into more ethics. Would it be unethical to analyse what side effects of a certain brain damage (born with or caused by accident) has?
Would it be unethical to repair a mind of a criminal so he could start to feel compassion, something impossible due to brain damage, if he requested it? Now I'm only talking about the speciffic case.

to what end, though? As with the Hadron Colider, I don't believe the questions of risk or application are really addressed. The latter was a complete waste of money (found nothing) and might have detroyed the planet.

As been mentioned, the Hadron colider has not been run with the higher energy levels yet and even those levels have been reached in the atmospere by cosmic rays before. Should it cause a black hole devouring earth it would already have happened.

I think the field, and possibly science in general, needs a big ethical injection.

Don't walk this path since it might awaken an angry God?

Neuroscience is a field where etics is always needed to consider. You are aware that it's a field were they can make blinds see and restoring lost limbs (through cybernetics atm)? And that's not talking about people who have lost their long term memory or their left side of their body? Or consider their own limbs as dead matter stiched to their bodies? Because it might be abused, we shall condemn them to their fates.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

But we don't know if there are any obvious practical applications. There could be dozens that we just don't know enough right now to make sense of. We accumulate facts and then someone makes sense of them. So the pursuit of knowledge is a worthwhile goal. I wouldn't be surprised if just the process of building the thing taught them enough to eventually be worth the money.

And information about how the universe works is interesting, and therefore useful.

Isn't that black hole destroy the solar system stuff just rumor?

As I recall the scientists tried to disregard the black hole "rumor" not on the grounds that it was was false, more on the grounds of, "you don't understand how unlikely it is."

As to "interesting, and therefore useful", don't talk rot. That sort of argument is a complete non-starter, and is exactly the attitude that can be the problem.

I've never seaid anything about making that permanent on somebody, I'm just saying that use of the Greater Good is ironic when talking about people that cannot differ between the murder of a tyrant and the murder of a saint. Making it permanent would be even more ethically questionable than an icepick in the brain... since it's never been claimed to be a cure.

I'm not suggesting you think we should start making "brain hats" but you have to acknowledge the massive danger this sort of technology has.

But if you would like, we could go into more ethics. Would it be unethical to analyse what side effects of a certain brain damage (born with or caused by accident) has?
Would it be unethical to repair a mind of a criminal so he could start to feel compassion, something impossible due to brain damage, if he requested it? Now I'm only talking about the speciffic case.

You can't equate passive observation with intervention.

As been mentioned, the Hadron colider has not been run with the higher energy levels yet and even those levels have been reached in the atmospere by cosmic rays before. Should it cause a black hole devouring earth it would already have happened.

Theoretically it will produce those same (extremely harmful) cosmic rays, but as this is a mechanical attempt to replicate a part of nature we don't really understand (which is why they want to test it) and they don't know what they're doing, they're just "pretty sure".

Don't walk this path since it might awaken an angry God?

Much more concrete than that, there's no need invoke an "angry God".

Neuroscience is a field where etics is always needed to consider. You are aware that it's a field were they can make blinds see and restoring lost limbs (through cybernetics atm)? And that's not talking about people who have lost their long term memory or their left side of their body? Or consider their own limbs as dead matter stiched to their bodies? Because it might be abused, we shall condemn them to their fates.

Some technology isn't worth having, nuclear being one, and the overall benefits outweigh the costs. Nuclear technology very nearly destroyed us all, still threatens us, and the power plants serve as a sop to prevent the development of truly useful renewable energy.

[Viking]

Theoretically it will produce those same (extremely harmful) cosmic rays, but as this is a mechanical attempt to replicate a part of nature we don't really understand (which is why they want to test it) and they don't know what they're doing, they're just "pretty sure".

Collisions with much higher energy levels happen all over the universe every millisecond. I think the idea here is that the "mechanical attempt to replicate a part of nature" is equivalent to throwing a rock to the ground rather than letting it fall from a mountain side by itself.

[Ironside]

I'm not suggesting you think we should start making "brain hats" but you have to acknowledge the massive danger this sort of technology has.

But the technology is already known and also the basic concept. What is researched here is what a certain brain center does and what happens if it's damaged.

You can't equate passive observation with intervention.

Volonteers that are exposed to a temporary condition, compared to observing someone with a permanent condition, who cannot give their permission?

Much more concrete than that, there's no need invoke an "angry God".

Hey, I like my excuse of making a SMAC referense.

Some technology isn't worth having, nuclear being one, and the overall benefits outweigh the costs. Nuclear technology very nearly destroyed us all, still threatens us, and the power plants serve as a sop to prevent the development of truly useful renewable energy.

Hardly. The power plants would've been replaced by (most likely) coal at the time they were built and should they start build more nuclear power plants nowaday, it would not be enough anyway, so truly useful renewable energy is still needed to be developed. Besides the current holy grail of energy, fusion power is based on nuclear power. And without nuclear energy, the apex of energy development would be solar, forever. So for example, we can scrap ever reaching efficient space travel, even within the solar system.


PBI do you know what would happen if such a micro black hole meet an electron? Since the hole is much smaller than the electron, I'm curious if it's even possible for the hole to absorb mass.

[PBI]

PBI do you know what would happen if such a micro black hole meet an electron? Since the hole is much smaller than the electron, I'm curious if it's even possible for the hole to absorb mass.

As far as I know, it's possible - bear in mind an electron is both a point particle and quantum mechanical in nature, so it can tunnel into all sorts of unexpected places. I really couldn't comment on how likely it is - classically, it should be absurdly unlikely due to the tiny size of the event horizon, but the problem is inherently a quantum one and requires a quantum mechanical description of black holes, which is not my field of expertise.

For me, the issue really boils down to the observation that despite cosmic ray collisions equivalent to those in the LHC having happened in huge numbers every day for billions of years, there is still a conspicuous amount of non-black hole matter in the universe.

You are all, however, ignoring my basic point. When deciding upon a course of action one must consider: risk (likelyhood), those at risk (value and number) and the actual risk of harm (magnitude).

Now, the LHC scores low on the first one but scores 100% on two and three, i.e. total anihilation of everything, including the planet.

This seems to me like the Pascal's Wager line of reasoning - that if the consequences of a line of action would be "infinitely" bad, then we should never do it no matter how unlikely they are.

Aside from the fact that this reasoning would prohibit us from doing anything, ever, this also neglects the possible negative consequences of not acting. One could make the case that technological stagnation would doom us all just as completely as the earth collapsing into a black hole would, just more slowly.

I'm also not sure I would agree that the destruction of the human race can automatically be judged infinitely bad, rather than just extremely, but still finitely, bad.

When we consider that this is the only planet we know supports life then the magnitude becomes Universe-size.

It seems to me a big leap to suggest that the fact we haven't seen any other life-supporting planets yet implies there aren't any to find, considering both the limits of our observational techniques, and the droves of exoplanets we discover every time someone refines those techniques. Of course, I have no problem with the idea that research funding councils shouldn't draw much of a distinction between a Universe-destroying disaster and one which will "only" destroy the Earth.

[HoreTore]

to what end, though? As with the Hadron Colider, I don't believe the questions of risk or application are really addressed. The latter was a complete waste of money (found nothing) and might have detroyed the planet.

lol, what?

First of all, the "might destroy the planet" stuff was an urban legend, the experiment had zero chance of that happening. And it has produced a lot of splendid results already, and will continue to produce a lot of new information.

This is one of the things it has produced. Do I know what it is? Nope, but then again I don't have a PhD in physics, and so when the guys who do have PhD's in physics says the picture holds a lot of information I will have to trust them.

[Beskar]

Apparently the test run for finding the "God Particle" occurs soon. For those who don't have any scienfitic knowledge, it is a nickname of the fundamental elementary particle (Higgs Boson) which has massive ramifications on how the universe works.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"S IT SAFE?
Hawking says,
" What happens when the mass of the black hole eventually becomes extremely small is not quite clear, but the most reasonable guess is that it would disappear completely in a tremendous final burst of emission, equivalent to the explosion of millions of H-bombs."
"there might be primordial black holes with a very much smaller mass that were made by the collapse of irregularities in the very early stages of the universe. Such black holes would have a much higher temperature and would be emitting radiation at a much greater rate."
Why does this not apply to the LHC?
How do you *know* it is safe?
Two main reasons:
1. Theory - Hawking himself recognized that black holes radiate. Given the energy available in the LHC, if a black hole was created it would necessarily be a very small one - a micro black hole - the energy available in the collision of two LHC protons is not a lot on a cosmological scale. The black hole would evaporate almost immediately into a shower of particles.
2. Cosmic rays - Extremely high energy particles (orders of magnitude above the LHC) coming from outer space are incident on upper atmosphere where they collide with the nuclei of gas molecules. We see the showers resulting from these collisions at sea level. This is appears to be safe, so we can be confident that the LHC will be."

Doesn't look like "zero" chance to me, bolded the last bit for you. Like I said, I want a copper-bottomed garantee, not, "almost certainly".

[Beskar]

Doesn't look like "zero" chance to me, bolded the last bit for you. Like I said, I want a copper-bottomed garantee, not, "almost certainly".

I am guessing you don't drive, fly in a plane, or use any cooking application too either. Those have a very significant higher chance of killing you.

[Viking]

2. Cosmic rays - Extremely high energy particles (orders of magnitude above the LHC) coming from outer space are incident on upper atmosphere where they collide with the nuclei of gas molecules. We see the showers resulting from these collisions at sea level. This is appears to be safe, so we can be confident that the LHC will be."

Doesn't look like "zero" chance to me, bolded the last bit for you. Like I said, I want a copper-bottomed garantee, not, "almost certainly".

It appears to be safe to take trains that to go faster than 100 km/h without getting turned into a frog. The guarantee you seek is in principle impossible to give.

[PBI]

Doesn't look like "zero" chance to me, bolded the last bit for you. Like I said, I want a copper-bottomed garantee, not, "almost certainly".

Copper bottomed guarantees don't exist in science (nor as far as I'm concerned in any other sphere of human knowledge). Any scientific result is only ever a statistical best fit, with an associated level of uncertainty. It is unfortunate that due to the generally extremely low levels of such uncertainties which make it into most visible applications of science that this fact has been largely forgotten among the public, and thus people talk about a thing being "scientifically proven" as though that means it is proven conclusively beyond all doubt.

In any scientific experiment, we can never be better than "almost certain" that it will not destroy the Universe. The best we can do is to examine whether it has been done before; in the case of the LHC, we can observe that the type of collisions planned in the detector are equivalent in energy and particle type to those that occur between cosmic rays and the atmosphere. We can then consider the typical cosmic ray flux in our area of space (a lot), the total effective surface area of the atmosphere (big) and how long these collisions have been going on for (a long time) to conclude that if collisions at these energies do produce anything nasty, it is vanishingly unlikely.

Ultimately though, there are no guarantees. The question is whether the risk of experiments with unknown physics having nasty consequences outweighs the negative consequences (and there will surely be negative consequences) of suppressing all future research. After all the LHC is not the only experiment being run to look for previously unknown physics - by definition the only experiments which can find new physics are those where we are not sure beforehand what the results will be. Has our society reached such a level of technology that it is possible for us to stagnate indefinitely, and simply sustain our current standard of living on what technology we currently have? And if so, is the status quo really so fantastic that no attempt to improve it would ever be worth the risk?

And as others have observed, it has often been the case that research performed purely to advance human knowledge has led to applications that would likely not have come about otherwise. The most obvious example I can think of is electricity: Were the pioneers of electromagnetism supposed to have been able to foresee all of its future applications before they started mucking around with magnets and bits of wire? If we are interested only in the potential applications of science, then past experience suggests that at least some effort should be put into trying to make inferences about the underlying principles of science rather than only going after the obvious applications of what we already know.

As to the question of the results - the LHC has only been performing actual experiments to look for new physics since the end of March:

Geneva, 30 March 2010. Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC at 13:06 CEST, marking the start of the LHC research programme.
...
CERN will run the LHC for 18-24 months with the objective of delivering enough data to the experiments to make significant advances across a wide range of physics channels. As soon as they have "re-discovered" the known Standard Model particles, a necessary precursor to looking for new physics, the LHC experiments will start the systematic search for the Higgs boson.

One could legitimately argue about whether the results, if they are close to our expectations, will be worth the massive expense. I for one heartily wish whoever was responsible could have refrained from attaching the ridiculously overblown and controversy-seeking title "the God Particle" to what is actually just a fairly mundane test of the Standard Model - the view among many of my colleagues seems to be that simply finding the Higgs boson in the expected energy range, and nothing else, would be a pretty disappointing outcome. It is certainly premature to state however that the machine has achieved nothing - the experiment hasn't been done yet.

As for the original subject of the thread, I personally think that having a "brain hat" which would let me control the exact state of my own mind, rather than having it dictated to me by external factors and my own body chemistry, would be awesome. I think it would be at least worth considering whether the benefits might outweigh the obvious risk of someone else getting their hands on the controls.