1233 Moral Pulse

Scientists recently did an interesting experiment. They determined that outside impulses could affect moral judgment. Not impulses like cake and alcohol. Electric impulses.
They set up a moral experiment with volunteers who were told a hypothetical story, where a woman is giving another woman tea. The first woman adds sugar to the tea. Unbeknownst to her, it’s not sugar. It’s poison. It kills the second woman.
The volunteers were asked to make a moral judgment. Was the first woman responsible? Overwhelmingly, they said no. The first women didn’t know it was poison and she had no intention of killing anyone.
They were then given refreshments.
A second group of volunteers got the same scenario, except they were subjected to an external magnetic pulse behind their right ears directed at a brain area called the right temporo-parietal junction, scrambling the neuron signals. Those volunteers overwhelmingly said the woman in the story was guilty because she had poisoned the other woman.
Case closed. Black and white. No mitigating circumstances.
Shades of Hammurabi Batman. You mean it only takes a small magnetic pulse to make you think like an uncompassionate tyrant?
Put out the commoner’s eyes, even though he didn’t know he was ogling the disguised queen.
Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes in a sense, it was a crime, but really, the poor woman didn’t know she was using poison.
I thought about this recently as I took a call on my new Bluetooth attachment. The one I stick in my right ear. The one that was currently receiving magnetic microwave pulses directly from my phone.
I wonder if my phone call had anything to do with my uncharitable behavior to that jaywalker at that moment.
I tried to run the traffic law-flouting bastard down.
Time to wear my Bluetooth in my left ear...
America, ya gotta love it.