What'ya know? God may just be a giant electromagnet....

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

This is interesting:

Magnets Can Sway 'Moral Compass,' Say MIT Researchers

People's moral judgment can be altered by disrupting part of the brain according to a U.S. study, AFP reported Tuesday.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) disrupted activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), located above and behind the right ear, an area usually highly active when we think about what we believe the outcome of a particular act will be.

The researchers disrupted the TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp and asked study participants to read a series of scenarios posing moral conundrums.

In one scenario, a person called Grace and her friend took a tour of a chemical plant when Grace stops at the coffee machine. Her friend asks her to get her a coffee with sugar. A container by the coffee machine is marked 'toxic' but contains sugar -- Grace does not know that. She puts it in her friend's coffee anyway and her friend is unharmed.

Participants in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were asked to judge on a scale of one to seven if they thought what Grace did was morally acceptable. One ranks as "absolutely forbidden" and seven as "absolutely permissible."

Two experiments were conducted: during one, participants were asked to judge the scenarios' characters after magnetic pulses were sent to their TPJs for 25 minutes, and in the other they passed judgment while undergoing very short bursts of magnetic interference.

In both experiments, disrupting normal neural activity in the right TPJ switched off the part of people's "moral compass."

When it was disrupted, participants were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm another person as morally permissible than those participants whose right TPJs were not altered.

[Griffin NoName]

That's a bit scary. Magnetic terrorism would be easy.

[Swatopluk]

That strong magnetic fields can influence the brain is afaik long known (e.g. deleting memory). That there'd be specific reproducible effects is new (at least to me).

That's a bit scary. Magnetic terrorism would be easy.

Fortunately few will have acess to magnets strong enough

[Opsa]

People claim to have had their moral compass affected by alcohol. Does that make booze God?

[Aggie]

Doesn't this make the Devil an electromagnet? 

I don't buy it for booze.  My take is that you don't do anything drunk that you wouldn't do sober, provided nobody was looking. I'm pretty confident of my moral compass from that respect, except in regards to stealing small items and glassware (lighters, shot glasses, etc).   I can get embarrassing and loud, but then again I act like that when nobody is around. 

If you are a nasty person when you are drunk but not when you're sober, you probably have some nasty impulses that aren't being dealt with but can be hidden or suppressed by your normal inhibitions and willpower.  I don't consider it necessarily an indicator of permanent character flaws, just that alcohol is a release for whatever is bubbling beneath the surface. In vino veritas....

Then again, maybe I'm an odd duck - I won't do (morally questionable) things in dreams that I wouldn't do awake.  You don't want to know how much dream-sex I've turned down because I was aware I was married but wasn't aware that I was dreaming.  _{boy, is that a kick in the pants when you wake up!}

[Sibling DavidH]

Great - now I can blame all my domestic failings on my rather excellent loudspeakers.

Damn, no - she'll make me get rid of them.

Great - now I can blame all my domestic failings on the vacuum cleaner.  I must never use it again, in case I go wibbly. 

[ivor]

We need to make magnetic alcohol!

[Sibling DavidH]

Y'know, the cider does pull me toward it very powerfully.

[ivor]

Oh!  And it should be lighter than air so it goes straight to your head.  So, it's a magnetic liquid that's lighter than air and you can get drunk on it.  Sounds doable to me.

[Opsa]

...and low in calories! But mightn't the magnetic factor tend to keep your zipper firmly in the "up" position? That would be hardly conducive to immoral behavior.

[ivor]

Oh!  Of course!  How stupid of me!  Zero carbs, zero calories, zero transfat and zero gravity!  Hmmm.... have to work on the zipper problem.

[Opsa]

Either that or we could sell it to celebrity philanderers. We could probably charge a lot for it, too. Their spouses would pay top dollar.

[ivor]

Now you're using your noodle!  How about politicians and priest?  That's a huge market right there!

[Opsa]

I don't know. Do priests have zippers? Maybe it can be re-worked for the cassock-wearing crowd.

[ivor]

Damn it!  I was thinking that right after I wrote that.  What about police?  They might get their guns stuck to their heads.