If you can't stand for some people to have more than others then you'll be miserable. Sure glad I'm tolerant of rich people.
To add some ammo to these explanations, Napier and Tost conducted a series of surveys on political attitudes of Americans and citizens of 8 Western countries, using previously collected data. Their results affirmed the "conservatives are happy, liberals are mad" findings of previous polls, but income, education, religion and other demographic variables couldn't explain the happiness gap.
However, when the authors instead grouped people by their "rationalisation of inequality," the differences between conservatives and liberals dissolved. Republican or Democrat, people not bothered by social or economic disparities tend to be happy.
This trend held for non-Americans, as well. Right-wingers in the Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland were all happier than liberals, on average.
My guess is that genetic differences account for a substantial fraction of the observed difference. Maybe the resistance to inequality was selected for because for most of human evolution having more stuff upped the odds that a person would create offspring who would create offspring. Nowadays the reproductive fitness advantage of having more stuff is much less or non-existent. Poorer people are creating more progeny than richer people. Yet this trait remains in some people.
My guess is that when we know far more about how our genetic differences cause cognitive differences we are going to discover that many of our political differences flow from our genetic differences. This could make disagreements stir up stronger passions because people will lose faith in an important (and incorrect) idea that helps legitimize the institutions of society: The idea that most policy disagreements can eventually be resolved by reaching consensus as a result of debate. If the opposing side holds their views because they are wired up by their genes to have ethical preferences that differ from one's own then one can always expect to disagree with one's opponents on key issues.
Even though people will know that certain of their preferences and beliefs come as a result of their genes my guess is that people will still cling strongly to those preferences and beliefs. Knowing that one can never convince the opposition of the rightness of one's viewpoint could make people less willing to argue and more willing to just try to seize more power to get one's genetic preferences turned into policy.
Update: My subject title is not meant to imply that rationalization was required to accept inequality while not being required to object to it. Whether oneneeds to do more rationalization to accept inequality than to object to it remains an open question. But even if one requires more cogitating to accept inequality that does not imply that inequality is bad. It could be that accepting inequality is wise (after all, the countries that tried to stamp it out impoverished themselves) but that seeing that as the correct choice requires creating a pretty sophisticated model of the world.
University of Chicago researchers find that while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans children 7 to 12 show similar patterns of brain activity to adults when watching animated videos of people experiencing pain.
The programming for empathy is something that is "hard-wired" into the brains of normal children, and not entirely the product of parental guidance or other nurturing, said Decety. Understanding the brain's role in responding to pain can help researchers understand how brain impairments influence anti-social behavior, such as bullying, he explained.
For their research, the team showed 17 typically developed children, ages seven to 12, animated photos of people experiencing pain, either received accidentally or inflicted intentionally. The group included nine girls and eight boys.
While undergoing fMRI scans, children where shown animations using three photographs of two people whose right hands or right feet only were visible.
The photographs showed people in pain accidently caused, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and situations in which the people were hurt, such as when a person stepped intentionally on someone's foot. They were also shown pictures without pain and animations in which people helped someone alleviate pain.
The scans showed that the parts of the brain activated when adults see pain were also triggered in children.
"Consistent with previous functional MRI studies of pain empathy with adults, the perception of other people in pain in children was associated with increased hemodymamic activity in the neural circuits involved in the processing of first-hand experience of pain, including the insula, somatosensory cortex, anterior midcigulate cortex, periaqueductal gray and supplementary motor area," Decety wrote.
However, when the children saw animations of someone intentionally hurt, the regions of the brain engaged in social interaction and moral reasoning (the temporo-parietal junction, the paracigulate, orital medial frontal cortices and amygdala) also were activated.
Suppose this sort of scanning was carried out with a much larger group of children. Would some small fraction of them show deficiencies in their reaction to seeing others suffer pain?
What I'd like to see: Do brain scans on a few hundred children to measure their empathy and other forms of reaction and then follow the children as they grow up and enter adulthood. Can future psychopaths or criminals be identified via brain scans?
In a review to be published in the May 18 issue of the journal Science, Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, discusses a new consensus scientists are reaching on the origins and mechanisms of morality. Haidt shows how evolutionary, neurological and social-psychological insights are being synthesized in support of three principles:
1) Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments;
I see a lot of moral rationalizing where people try to come up with rational arguments to justify moral judgments they made for other reasons. How can I tell? When presented with flaws in logical reasoning about morality most people try to restructure their logic to keep the same conclusion rather than change to a different conclusion.
It perhaps says something about the lingering effects of the Enlightenment period in the West that most people feel a need to construct rational-sounding arguments to justify their moral beliefs. Or maybe the rationalizing serves the primary purpose of building arguments to persuade others?
2) Moral thinking if for social doing, which says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them to support us; and
I agree with this point:
3) Morality binds and builds, which says that morality and gossip were crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which allows humans - but no other primates - to live in large and highly cooperative groups.
It is worth noting in this context that people who join political parties choose most of their political positions after they join their party. They find out from other members what position they should take on a variety of issues. My interpretation: Political parties are like tribes and people behave in them in ways similar to how earlier humans behaved in tribes. People choose a political party which seems to share some values and styles of cognition. Then they demonstrate loyalty to their political tribe by subscribing to its myths.
"Putting these three principles together forces us to re-evaluate many of our most cherished notions about ourselves," says Haidt, whose own research demonstrates that people generally follow their gut feelings and make up moral reasons afterwards.
Well, it only forces some of us to re-evaluate. Others are happy to ignore anything that challenges the myths they want to believe.
Conservatives have more subsystems in their moral processing brain centers.
Haidt argues that human morality is a cultural construction built on top of - and constrained by - a small set of evolved psychological systems. He presents evidence that political liberals rely primarily on two of these systems, involving emotional sensitivities to harm and fairness. Conservatives, however, construct their moral understandings on those two systems plus three others, which involve emotional sensitivities to in-group boundaries, authority and spiritual purity.
When offspring genetic engineering becomes possible I expect parental choices to produce bigger differences in how people morally reason. Conservative-leaning people will make their children morally reason even more strongly in the conservative style. The liberals will do likewise. So the size of the center will shrink. This will lead to deeper political divisions and perhaps civil war in some countries and wars between countries.
I also expect offspring genetic engineering to produce more other styles of moral reasoning including ones that are rare today and others that do not exist at all today. Who knows, maybe genetic engineering will move libertarianism up in the ranks of moral reasoning styles.
Brain scans show that psychopaths are not like the rest of us in how their brains work.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere have started taking scans of the brains of psychopaths while the patients view horrific images, such as photographs of bloody stabbings, shootings, or evisceration. When normal people view these images, fMRI scans light up to indicate heavy brain activity in sections of the emotion-generating limbic system, primarily the amygdala, which is believed to generate feelings of empathy. But in psychopathic patients, these sections of the amygdala remain dark, showing greatly reduced activity or none at all. This phenomenon, known as limbic underactivation, may indicate that some of these people lack the ability to generate the basic emotions that keep primitive killer instincts in check.
Should we use information from brain scans and other measurement methods to identify people to preemptively target before they commit crimes? Some day scientific measures will probably allow us to calculate different odds for each person on whether the person will kill or rape or molest children or otherwise violate the rights of others. How should we use the future ability to perform those odds calculations? I think the answer depends on a number of factors:
1) The cost of the preemptive action for us and those who feel its effects.
2) The efficacy of the preemptive action. How much would a given preemptive action reduce the odds of a person from committing rape, assault, theft, etc.
3) The avoided costs of whatever might be prevented. The costs depend on the potential crime(s) that a given person has a propensity to commit. But then what price tag to put on, say, a rape avoided?
4) The accuracy of the odds prediction. How high would the odds and the accuracy of the odds have to be to make you think the odds warrant action by the state against a currently innocent person?
5) The costs of identification of threats. Brain scans, blood tests, gene tests, and other tests will cost money to perform.
What sorts of preemptive actions to use? I can think of a lot of actions aside from preemptive imprisonment: For example:
A) Talk therapy. But would it help?
B) Drugs or other treatments that reduce violent behavior. Note that the power of these treatments will go up as biotechnology and medicine advance.
C) Exile. This can be from a country or a region or specific neighborhoods. For example, imagine an island to ship potential pedophiles to where there are no children.
D) Tracking bracelets. For example, track when a potential pedophile goes near a playground or school. Or track when a potential murderer is parked along a street at night watching.
E) Warn the neighbors. That way they can arm and otherwise protect themselves appropriately.
F) Outlaw the creation of offspring that carry genes that'll make them high risks to become murderers, rapists, etc. This intervention requires the existence of technology for offspring genetic engineering. That technology will come in 10 or at most 20 years.
Are you philosophically opposed to all preemption guided by the results of brain scans, genetic tests, and other methods of measurement? Or do you see it as valuable and worthwhile under some circumstances?
Since I'd pull the trigger I guess I already think like a Vulcan.
Consider the following scenario: someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person.
Do you pull the trigger?
Most people waver or say they could not, even if they agree that in theory they should. But according to a new study in the journal Nature, subjects with damage to a part of the frontal lobe make a less personal calculation.
The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many.
Who can read that line without flashing on Wrath Of Khan?
Spock: Don't grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh...
Kirk: ...the needs of the few.
Spock: ...Or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now. What do you think of my solution?
With the right form of brain damage you too could think like a Vulcan. Elective neurosurgery anyone?
Conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Caltech and the University of Iowa, the study shows that emotion plays an important role in scenarios that pose a moral dilemma.
If certain emotions are blocked, we make decisions that – right or wrong – seem unnaturally cold.
The scenarios in the study are extreme, but the core dilemma is not: should one confront a co-worker, challenge a neighbor, or scold a loved one in the interest of the greater good?
The core dilemma would also confront a starship captain or an away team leader. Or, hey, the core dilemma might even confront a Hollywood director who has a cast member who needs to go into rehab. What to do? Kill off the character so that the rest of the cast members can survive.
A reduction in empathy and passion will put a person on the path of Vulcan logic?
A total of 30 subjects of both genders faced a set of scenarios pitting immediate harm to one person against future certain harm to many. Six had damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a small region behind the forehead, while 12 had brain damage elsewhere, and another 12 had no damage.
The subjects with VMPC damage stood out in their stated willingness to harm an individual – a prospect that usually generates strong aversion.
“Because of their brain damage, they have abnormal social emotions in real life. They lack empathy and compassion,” said Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Caltech.
“In those circumstances most people without this specific brain damage will be torn. But these particular subjects seem to lack that conflict,” said co-senior author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute and holder of the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience at USC.
But if you get your VMPC damaged will you get the occasional urge to engage in pon farr?
The idea of damaging my VMPC would only become appealing to FuturePundit if it also conferred a 3 times longer lifespan as compared to humans.