[extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes

[Spike]

> Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes
> 
> 
> Spike wrote,
> > The way I read the article, the researchers have not
> > only figured out that a racist's brain is more active
> > when she is looking at a member of a different race,
> > they are also claiming to know *what her brain is
> > actually doing* which is to say they have discovered
> > how to read actual thoughts.
> 
> The reports say nothing even remotely close to this.

They commented that they could discover who is a racist
by observing brain waves while the subject is looking
at photos of a person of another race.  That tells me
they are presuming to know what that brain is actually
doing while it is being more active.  I quote the article,
with my comments in {brackets.}

Light shed on dark side of grey matter

By David Adam

American scientists have developed a brain scan that, they say, can
detect people harbouring racial prejudice.

{They can read our thoughts now?}

In racially biased white people who were shown photographs of black
faces, the researchers found surges of activity in a brain region known
to control thoughts and behaviour, which they say are due to suppressed
prejudice.

{How did they determine which people were racially biased
to start with?  They selected those subjects who had
negative reactions to black associated *names*.  On that 
evidence, the researchers evidently labelled them racially 
biased *people*.  That is a stretch.

The research has provoked controversy, with some experts arguing the
study's conclusions are misplaced.

{Ja, imagine that.}

 At its most far-reaching, the study raises the possibility that the
minds of people, including police recruits, could be screened for racist
attitudes.

{Oh?  How?  If they could determine this, they would
be reading thoughts, therefore the court system is no
longer needed.}

The scientist who led the research said she was stunned when she saw the
results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this correspondence
with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, a neuroscientist at
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

{Don't worry Jennifer, you are not alone.  We don't believe
it either.}

Professor Richeson said the brain activity arose because the volunteers
were concentrating on not doing or saying anything offensive.

{I see.  How does Richeson know what what they are thinking?
Please share with us this insight, professor.  It would be
worth a cool fortune.  Those who would conclude something like 
that are dangerous and their research should be discounted or 
dismissed.  Flee, grad students!}}

 This inner struggle tires the brain so much, she said, that prejudiced
white people who interacted with black people would find it difficult to
concentrate afterwards.

{Oh dear.  This is an impressive leap of intuition at the very 
least.  Did they *tell* her they were tired out by struggling
to not say anything negative?    

What if I were taking the test and starting thinking of
a new math idea?  Would she leap to the stunningly illogical
conclusion that I was concentrating so as to not say anything
offensive?  Aaaaabsurd.  Lack of evidence, case dismissed, 
too silly to continue.

spike