[extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 12:22 PM
> 
> > If racism is similarly a neurological disease
> 
> This is an extreme reading of the original rather dodgy research,
> which just
> claimed that racists use more mental effort in disguising their real
> attitudes when answering tests that would reveal their racism in a
> context
> where such attitudes are disapproved, and that this brain activity
> can be
> instrument-detected. Heritability or specialized `racism' brain
> structures have nothing to do with it, as I understood the article.
> 

Which is why I said "if". Nor do you know whether or not such brain
structures are heritable or not. We do know that other brain structures
and activity patterns are heritable, specifically schizophrenia and
other neurological diseases. All this article does is detail that there
is a distinctly unique brain function, structure, and activity pattern
found in racists vs non-racists. It remains to be seen whether racism
is heritable, but given this evidence, plus the fact that racism does,
in fact, run in families (learned or inherited), objective science begs
for research into this question.

If an individual has to make a significant and detectable mental effort
to not appear racist vs an individual who is not in fact racist, this
indicates a rather significant difference in brain structure, and that
such individuals must learn non-racism, rather than learn racism and
thus lends support to a genetic, rather than teratogenic, cause.

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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