I chose the TED talk “How we read each other’s minds” for this first impression post. I was drawn to the title of this video because I have always been curious of what others think, whether it’s what they think of me or what they think of other events and people in the world. The ability to read minds has been my go-to superpower to choose since I can remember.
Throughout the years, philosophy has wrestled with the problem of other minds: whether other people have minds and why it is hard to know or change what other people think. Rebecca Saxe, the speaker for this TED talk, introduces a new problem with other minds. She asks how is it so easy to know other minds, like when we are shown a picture of a mother holding her newborn and can instantly see thoughts of love. Saxe identifies the region of the brain responsible for thinking of other people’s thoughts, known as the right temporoparietal junction or the RTPJ. Saxe then suggests, could differences in how adults think about other people’s thoughts be explained by differences in the RTPJ that controls this? To find out, she performed a research study where a hypothetical “Grace” and her friend stop for coffee. The friend asks Grace to put sugar in her coffee for her, and when Grace goes to do so, she notices the white powder that looks like sugar is labeled “deadly poison.” Grace still decides to put the white powder in, which ends up having no effect on her friend after she consumes the coffee. People were asked about the blame they felt Grace should receive, and Saxe tracked their RTPJ activity as these people made their decisions. When there was little brain activity observed in the RTPJ region, people paid little attention to Grace’s belief that the sugar was really sugar and they said she deserved a lot of blame for any accident that could have resulted. When there was a lot of brain activity in that region, people paid more attention to her innocent belief and said she deserved less blame for an accident that could have occurred. The research participants were then exposed to a magnetic pulse that when sent to the RTPJ region would disable the person’s control of this area and create involuntary reactions. The magnetic pulse reversed people’s decisions about the amount of blame they thought Grace should receive, which suggests that it is possible to change people’s moral judgements.
What I found most interesting was the impact of the magnetic pulse on the research results. It is a bit alarming the control certain technologies, tools, and tests, like the magnetic pulse, can have over our behaviors and thoughts. It also makes me wonder the true significance of morality and just decisions when something seemingly unbreakable (depending on the person) can be so easily manipulated.
Rebecca Saxe seems like a relatively trustworthy speaker, as she is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT. She also used a correlation graph to illustrate the relationship between RTPJ activity and the decision for the amount of blame to be given. She performed research not only for the study regarding sugar, but also with young children and their ability to recognize hypothetical thought processes of toys. Her studies cover a relatively wide age range which is also good.
My research idea would question whether the magnetic pulse can control our moral decisions, instead of just disabling them to cause the involuntary reactive decision. This would enable researchers to create desirable outcomes for their research participants involved in the study. Essentially, instead of the magnetic pulse simply changing our original moral decisions, it would control which decision we make. I would send different variations of the pulse to the RTPJ to test which pulse creates which reaction and perform the study with multiple people to ensure the replication of whatever reaction it creates.
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I would agree with you that Rebecca Saxe is a trustworthy source. As you said, she is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at an established institute. Doing a little research on her, I saw she earned her BA from Oxford University and she also received a PhD from MIT. She definitely covered a wide age range as well, which can help her to generalize her research to the general pubic. I think your research question is very interesting and could create new questions about the decision making process in people. I think to maybe improve the research part; you could create different age groups and see what decisions they make based on the different pulses. You could set up a group of children, a group of adolescents, a group of adults, and a group of elderly with three to five different variations in the pulse to the RTPJ. Overall, I thought the experiment you created was very well thought out and you had good reasons as to why Rebecca Saxe is a trustworthy source for information.
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For this refinement assignment we are supposed to discuss whether or not we found the presenter trustworthy and your research design.
I think the presenter, Rebecca Saxe, was very scattered and all over the place when she was explaining the experiment and the point of moral development and judgments. When I googled her, her picture and the Ted talk we watched was from 2009 and she was pretty young in the video but according to my first search it says she was born in 1950 and is 68 years old. It also says she went to MIT and is a professor but if it lied about her age than what is the truth?
I continued to search for her on a more reputable site and she was posted and given awards for her research but based off of the video I didn’t find her explanation or experiment to be severally astonishing to the neuroscience world (as much). The example with Grace wasn’t as accurately conducted as it showed the participants reacting to a hypothetical, stating their opinion, and then using a magnetic pulse to see if it would change their opinion as to whether or not Grace is guilty of poising her friend or not. She is found to be a good source (other than google messing up her birthday but not a good experiment). Lastly, there were no confounding variables addressed as to why people responded the way they did nor was the way the experiment was conducted as to whether it was a survey or random sampling or a different way.
I really like your research idea!!! I think that this was more so the point in which Rebecca was trying to get to. “Whether the magnetic pulse can control our moral decisions, instead of just disabling them to cause the involuntary reactive decision”. I think in the original experiment it was just a reactive impulse be what would make everything better for both your suggested experiment and the original is to look at the few individuals rather than a group survey. In both experiments they need a better operational definition of who and how they are testing. What are the variables being used? If you have 6 grown adults with the same education level, similar social class, race, and overall upbringing it could narrow down the experiment rather than taking a survey.
So as to what you said, if we took 2 different impulses to the RTPJ test and each individual gave the adults a direction so, say they were told they need to take one step forward and one step right but the impulse told them to take two steps forward instead. This could later be done to many people. And see what the outcome would be.
If you want to stay with the moral decisions you could get a stuffed animal(or real one) and told to treat the animal with care while the magnetic pulse said the opposite and see what would occur.
I think in both experiments there wasn’t enough dependent variables and too many factors either being not accounted for or just several independent variables. In the study with grace there would be no way of really conducting it again and the one with the child was mostly unfinished as it never answered the main question (for what we saw) and it felt like it jumped from asking the kids questions about the sandwich to moral judgment with disregarding their entire morality and just focused on the small part of the brain.
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Off the bat I already agree with you wanting to have the ability to read minds as a superpower. That is my go to supwerpower as well. It was really interesting to see how the right temporopartetal junction (RTPJ) affects the out come of the answer. What is even more interesting is how the magnetic pulse affect the RTPJ region so it would create a random out come rather than a normal answer the person would give.
It was good to point out how Saxe is trustworthy due to her being a professor at MIT and how she preformed similar studies but with other variables, I would like to see how those studies turned out. Did those studies have the same affect the sugar one did? Also, I don’t feel as though a graph of the relationship between blame and RTPJ is evidence to show how she is trustworthy. I see that as another thing she did to show the audience what some of her outcomes rather than facts to back up her validity.
Your research idea has a good, it just needs to be developed more. I love the idea of testing to see if the magnetic pulse can control the decisions rather than creating an impulsive decision. However, there needs to be more of a plan than an idea. What situations would you create to be able to test the magnetic pulse? Who would you use for the test, i.e. a certain age group? It is a good idea to test the different pulses to see what the outcome would be, but if it does show a result where the pulse can control our moral decisions, why would it be a good idea for researchers to use this? Isn’t the point of a study to see if they out comes to be what the research predicted? The unknown of whether a researcher gets the outcome they desire is a point of the study. It’s to show that sometimes we believe things work one way when in fact they work another way. If the magnetic pulse can control decisions then it can create a way for researchers corrupt the studies by creating what can be false outcomes.
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