Hi. This is Arthur speaking. I asked my mom if I could blog on here, and she said “Sure.” So here I am.
I am the oft-mentioned teenage son whose thoughts and actions are at times wise and odd, naive and unexpected, insightful and provocative, and just generally unique. I think about a variety of things, and blog often about my take on pop culture, as one who is both fascinated and perplexed by the world he should be a part of, but sometimes is not. I notice things about my friends’ taste in music, fashions senses, youth vernacular, and other assorted teenagery things. An anthropologist in malls, you could call me.
Still, I make an effort to keep relatively current on political and social issues, although I’ve been so busy lately that it took me over a week to notice that Karl Rove had resigned. I’m still not sure that his resignation is real. Nothing makes sense anymore in this world and especially this administration, not even the few quasi-good things that the White House spews.
I also think a lot about philosophical problems and hypothetical dilemmas. I will conclude this post with a relatively short one.
Two research psychologists are studying brain wave patterns. They are studying prisoners convicted of violent crimes, especially multiple violent crimes. The two scientists are analyzing the brain wave patterns of these criminals, and also of an equal-sized control group made up of normal, everyday people.
The first scientist comes up to the second one, and says, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we proved our hypothesis. The anomaly we were looking for was present in100% of the prisoners, and absent from the control group.”
“Well, what’s the bad news then?”
“The anomaly was present in one of the members of the control group.”
The question is, what happens next? What should happen next?
Hello Arthur, I’m Diotima and I’m a Philosophy student. I just read your entry (funny is the first time I enter to your mom’s journal).
But before boarding the question, I have to congratulate you for having an inquisitive mind (not every body has it… good for you!).
About what happens next… well… the answer will depend on how you focus the problem, and how do you focus it will bring new questions.
Let’s see, if the wave patrons affects the person…
Epistemologically (and the problem of being): how much of a person’s acts are made because wave patrons? (This question deepens, how much of my being is affected? Do my brain waves determine who I am? Do I have will or all is reduced to biological chemistry?) If it’s only a tendency…
Ethically: Should a person has to be throw in jail because he may, or may not become violent? Should all the city had to be taking that test to se if other people appears with the wave? What if other people appears with it? Does that mean that men have tendencies to be violent? (Would that make St. Agustin right in saying that men inclines to be evil?)
What will happened with the people in jail if this results to be a disease of sorts (or something that can be corrected)? Should this entire people be in jail? (also, the medicine can be a point of debate, If it’s only a tendency, and not a decisive factor, would you take the medicine? How much would the medicine affect who you are?)
Politically: How will this knowledge affects people? Should laws be changed?
It’s not an easy question Arthur, and all the derived questions aren’t easy either (and the fact that all of them are connected in between doesn’t help).
Some times the questions are far more important than the answers (in all philosophical questions this is true), and I’m afraid that I wont be able to give you a satisfactory answer, firstly because I don’t know the answer (the only way I can answer is based on me, in what will I do with this information and how will this affect me), and secondly because the only way you will find a satisfactory answer is trying to solve the problem yourself . I will give you a tip. Do not made this questions as far away / or not happening to me case, try to made this hypothetical questions in a way that they affects you (what will happen if someone I knew has this anomaly? Will my relationship with this person change? And what if it’s me? How will this affect me?). If you can answer this based on you (on what you know and what you believe).
I hope this might I had been of help
Sincerely
-Diotima
P.S. I apology if my English isn’t that good, but it’s not my first language.
I do not seek answers to my questions in this post. I only seek discussion.
Personally, if I were one of the researchers, I’d watch the person in the control group with the anomalous brain-wave pattern. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t *have* that knowledge and ignore it completely. But I’d have to keep in mind, as well, that correlation does not equal causation.
But I’d tell that person, I think. They ought to know about it. Of course, it could then become a self-fulfilling-prophecy-like thing. Or they could use it as an excuse (it’s not my choice, it’s biology).
I really do believe that in cases like that, though, we have choice. Choice to act on our proclivities or not. Some of us are lucky and our general tendencies match up pretty close with what society terms “good behaviour”. Some of us aren’t so lucky, and curb ourselves for the sake of fitting in, or for the sake of the welfare of those around us, or simply for the sake of not being arrested. Some of us funnel our “antisocial proclivities” into other venues which aren’t illegal or unethical… But it’s always a choice.
A person with a biological predisposition to violent behaviour is not a monster or a criminal. And until they actually make the choice (*if* they ever make that choice) to hurt someone, to break the law, then I don’t think it’s ethical to pre-emptively punish them.
It would make me want to take a survey of the general population, though, especially people who have lived a long time without any blemish on their character and see how many people have lived with the anomaly and never “acted on it” or. Now *that* would be interesting to see.
What should happen? Questions. History is full of bad information (that looked so right at the time) put to good use, with embarrassing or even tragic results to show for it.
First, the obvious question, how could the anomaly be both absent from the control group but present in one of the control group?
Questioning Premises…
A control group of normal everyday people? First you’re going to have to define normal. All of our brain sciences are in their infancy and we’re not very good at defining either normal or various neurological differences yet.
Do brainwave patterns dictate behavioral choices?
I’d doubt that the anomaly alone is some kind of binary off and on switch for violent criminal behavior. I’d think it prudent to ask what other factors are involved in violent criminal behavior in progress. A switch isn’t much if it isn’t hooked up and functioning as a switch.
Correlation is not causation. What would these brainwave patterns really mean when their percentages in various groups are mapped out across the range of humanity (and perhaps even in other mammals/primates)? Would that blow any binary “neurotypical vs. anomaly” assumptions out of the water? Could the anomaly even cluster in other groups without the violent behaviors?
Were you inspired in part by stories such as “Homeland Security Tests Automated ‘Hostile Intent” Detector’ and other stories that have been discussed on Witchvox and elsewhere?
If I said “Almost entirely absent” then the surprise at the end would be ruined. It is a problem I debated in my writing, to be sure.
Normal everyday people means chosen from the general population as randomly as the nature of such things allows for.
It would be necessary to do further research, true, but in the meantime you’ve got this one guy who has the same brainwave anomaly as every violent criminal you tested. Correlation is not causation, true, and therein lies the ethical dilemma. You don’t know that the pattern causes these behaviors, and to assume so would be foolish. When Dave Barry visited Japan, the only two groups of people, if I remember correctly, who owned American cars were the yakuza and dentists. For all we know, this brain wave anomaly is present in the vast majority of theoretical physicists. But you have to wonder about the one guy, and how would the two research psychologists react to him? Should they not tell anyone about him? Should they tell him themselves? Obviously, they’ve got to publish there results as “Only one member of the control group exhibited the anomaly,” so that much people are going to know who read the study.
Post Hoc is my very favorite fallacy.
And I was inspired by the textbook to a class I am no longer taking, but have kept the textbook I bought because it is fascinating, even if the author does have an irritating and occasionally offensive skeptic’s bias.
Skeptics have blind spots, some more than others. Even so, I enjoy skepdic dot com (frequently offensive/irritating/faulty) almost as much as I enjoy San Jose State University’s most excellent “Mission Critical” page on logic. They’re both valuable, even if in different ways.
Ethics, logic, imagination/scope, and reality checks are entwined on the road to discovery.
It would be nice if findings were always carefully ushered in by excellence in the given field, healthy inquisitiveness, excellent timely logic, and a willingness to emphasize, when applicable, that they’re not yet sure what role(s) a finding plays or does not play across different groups and individual differences. (That doesn’t seem to be the case with the technology involved in the article I mentioned.)
So, back to your dilemma, what exactly would you tell the individual with the anomaly in the control group? Just as there is lying by omission, partial supposed truths can cause a lot of suffering.
One has to carefully frame any information (what we know, what we don’t know…) as well as consider the audience but in order to better do that one imagines to question one’s own scope, reactions, and assumptions. Internal honesty fuels professional honesty and demands a high level of imagination many may be uncomfortable with, insufficiently trained for, and differently motivated toward.
Discovery moves away from people’s comfort zones and present reality anyway. Not everyone is willing to deal with that (or fund it) at the same pace and professionals have to cope.
I don’t have any thoughts to add (though you do have me thinking); I just wanted to belatedly say hello.
I came across this in my random internet surfing and thought I’d comment since it got me thinking. The firsst question I’d have to your hypothetical question is were the people from the”normal” population group chosen completly anonomously? Perhaps a deeper look at the person with the anomoly would show that s/he already has in thier life a positive outlet for thier agressive tendencies. Perhaps this person is a huge sports fan or player, perhaps they are a profesional fighter, perhaps they go to rock shows frquently and tear sh** up in the mosh pit, do they go to the gym and pump iorn on a regular basis, maybe they are a sexual sadist? Perhaps after pursueing these energy outlets the feel a tension releife and conduct themselves in an acceptable manner during the rest of their daily goings on?
I think a finding like you sugested would maybe open the door to further reserch on the general public. Studies to see if in the general law abiding public people who are atracted to the kinds of activities mentioned above had a greater instance to have the “anomoly” in thier brain waves, to see if it is frequntly absent in people with pacifist personalities. Lets say these studies were done and the result was found to be as I’ve mentioned, this would then beg the question; in the criminal group what was different in their lives before the commited violent crime, than from people with this tendancy that find legal outlets for thier aggressiveness? perhaps the criminals had no outlets? perhaps this would open the door to post prison rehabilitation programs that included not only counsiling in life skills, but also acknowledgment of the need for high energy stress reliving activities?
Now obviously I’m just speculating one direction a study like you just mentioned could go. But you Got me thinking.