Magnets & Morality

[€uroMeinke]

I was intrigued listening to this story on NPR on my way home,

A person's moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now my understanding about what the study show is that, in delivering said pulse it results in people discounting "intention" in another's actions, focusing rather on the "ends" instead of the means.

The conspiracy theorist in me started thinking about future corporations handing out headgear at the door to keep you from thinking to hard about how their products are made. Then I thought about the electromagnetic waves coming from a cell phone, held to the right ear - are cell phones making us less moral? Do corporate types with cell phones firmly planted on ear less concerned about how they get results? Has the conspiracy already begun?

Anyway, I'm sure a detailed reading of the actual study would ruin the magic for me, so I'll leave it to others to do that.