Well now. This is rather interesting:
At the age of six months babies can barely sit up — let along take their first tottering steps, crawl or talk.
But, according to psychologists, they have already developed a sense of moral code — and can tell the difference between good and evil.
An astonishing series of experiments is challenging the views of many psychologists and social scientists that human beings are born as ‘blank slates’ — and that our morality is shaped by our parents and experiences.
Instead, they suggest that the difference between good and bad may be hardwired into the brain at birth.
A physical rejection of the idea that “morality” is but a social construct (rather than, say, an essentialist survival instinct) wired directly into the body’s physio-chemical structure? The hell you say!
Although I guess that would explain why I never found the shape of a laundry basket particularly oppressive.
But be that as it may:
Professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in Connecticut, whose department has studied morality in babies for years, said: ‘A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
‘With the help of well designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life.
‘Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bones.’
For one study, the Yale researchers got babies aged between six months and a year to watch a puppet show in which a simple, colourful wooden shape with eyes tries to climb a hill.
Sometimes the shape is helped up the hill by a second toy, while other times a third character pushes it down.
After watching the show several times, the babies were shown the helpful and unhelpful toys. They showed a clear preference for the helpful toys – spending far longer looking at the ‘good’ shapes than the ‘bad’ ones.
‘In the end, we found that six- and ten-month-old infants overwhelmingly preferred the helpful individual to the hindering individual,’ Prof Bloom told the New York Times.
‘This wasn’t a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy.’
Two more tests found the same moral sense.
Of course, if this is true (and some psychologists will suggest alternative explanations for the tests’ results), I can think of a number of social constructs that would demand a subsequent revisiting. Like, for instance, tenuring leftist postmodernists who continue to teach their peculiar brand of epistemological relativism as a function of turning every proposition into a trite variable in some power relation.
BECAUSE OF THE ANTI-SCIENCE-ISM!
(h/t JHO)
NEO-LUDDITE!
there is a biological basis for all behavior.
the right has lost control of academe because the right is anti-science, anti-intellectual curiosity, anti-egalitarian, and also dogmatic supernaturalists.
go to bible college.
But this doesn’t apply to Nishi because she’s a “homo sapiens transhumanicus”.
Although I guess that would explain why I never found the shape of a laundry basket inherently oppressive.
That really deserves a link. Good times, good times.
Uh, maybe you haven’t noticed, nishi, but it ain’t the “right” under attack here.
Everything that gives leftism its intellectual cover, on the other hand…?
INCOMING!
I’m rubber (actually a super resilient material made in the zero G imagination of my futuristic mind) you’re glue (actually boiled hooves, fresh the ovens while they are still warm)…
It’s the biological basis for certain memes. Making those who resist them by pretending they are social constructs very very anti-sciencey.
WHY DOES NISHI RESIST THE SCIENCEY STUFF?
algore please call gaia
It appears from other’s comments that nishidiot is still spouting the usual crap. She needs to find new material.
Science!
I’m rubber (actually a super resilient material made in the zero G imagination of my futuristic mind) you’re glue (actually boiled hooves, fresh the ovens while they are still warm)…
Wow.
You had me going there. It is plausible. I was fooled.
Science is repeating the same tired slurs over and over and over…
Repetition is truth!
Probably the white babies hate the colored toys and need to be properly reprogrammed.
social™ science
social™ networking.
“Social science” isn’t science.
“Social justice” isn’t justice.
“Social security” isn’t security.
And there is a extra-natural condition for all basis, you mindless quantum eugenicist spambot.
i was referring to your perpetual butthurt victimhood here…
tenuring leftist postmodernists who continue to teach their peculiar brand of epistemological relativism
There is no better example of perpetual butthurt victimhood than an anime-obsessed thirtysomething teenager begging for attention via blog-trolling.
social™ science is the real science ask the dragqueenslayer
Where “perpetual butthurt victimhood” is defined by lunatics as saying anything by way of explanation or pointing out a double standard. You have Alinsky rules tattooed on your ample thighs nishi?
That’s what ol Moses said when he showed up with the tablets?
“Here you go gang, here’s a social construct to put in your schools!”
Like putting the 10 commandments in schools?
If it’s good enough for the Supreme Court, are you suggesting it isn’t good enough for school children? Why do you hate kids meya?
Well, if all the academic pomo’s and social studies industry suddenly becomes anti-science, it’ll be an electoral windfall for the republicans.
Because of the epistemically closed tautology!
So the implications of the study is that leftwingers have to be conditioned from babyhood to overcome aversion to evil. Works for me.
Cordially…
Like putting the 10 commandments in schools?
No, like being a complicated man whom no one understands but your woman.
Seriously though, let’s discuss the social ramifications of this relevation if true…
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
And now for something completely different.
I would like to see pfarr successfully rebut the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s Powerslave.
Bring me the blood and red wine, for the one who’ll succeed me, for he is a man and a god! And he will die too! Oh!
I would suggest that big indent on one side is to accomadate my head because it does! I have two of those and especially like them for shoulder friendlyness. But that stupid twit? I did not realize I was trying to read tripe.
Defining “good” as “helpful” runs into a number of difficulties, especially if “unhelpful” becomes “evil” by default. Run that logic far enough and you get Obama declaring dissenting opinions as “unhelpful.”
Anyway, it seems to me all that’s being measured is a baby’s ability to anthropomorphize toys. And that’s the kind of thing that falls under Taranto’s “What would we do without experts?” category.
the parrot’s dead
“Social” as an adjective modifying a noun is often used to conceal the fact that the new thing, that the construction refers to, would actually be more accurately described by using the logical operator “not” instead of the weaselly word “social” to modify the noun.*
And Nishi speaks a “leetbonics” dialect.
I still say that Nishi is a wholly fabricated construct written by Jeff in order to keep the conversation lively.
When you think about it, it’s not really Jeff’s best work because there is no way that any sentient being could be as tedious as this literary Nishi character strives to be. Has there ever been anything that came out of Nishi’s mouth that surprised anyone on this site?
Believability is essential in a good fictional chatracter,Jeff. And I don’t believe for a second that even the most doctrinaire liberal could possibly be as vacuous as your Nishi is.
On a future thread maybe you could have her confess that the Che fan who deflowered her her first year at Brown also gave her the usual college number of STDs. I mean as long as you’re writing her you might as well make it interesting for those of us who are forced to listen to her inane ramblings.
Thanks in advance on him know all you want about such a.
Ignore that last sentence… Except for the part about thanks in advance. Stupid voice recognition software.
Babies Rock!
G’nite Outlaws
Keep Firing!
Like stripping society of its morals and calling it a white-hot victory for the separation clause. Like adopting the narrowest of views so as to conflate a terminal negative with the absence of what had once been a great positive. Chalk one up for progressivism!
Science!
Well it makes sense, they know if they like woo woos or pee pees by then (according to all the experts).
Seems to me we could solve this problem of six-month-old babies being all judgey and moralistic if we could only could intervene and stop them from becoming babies, like seven months before these studies get done.
But this doesn’t apply to Nishi because she’s a
“homo sapiens transhumanicus”bigot.FIFY
Nishi is an evolutionary dead end – homo sapiens failboticus.
lulz.
;)
Hey Nishi,
We’re evolving.
The future is bright.
And also, inevitable.
The left has always viewed Judeo-Christian based morals as competition to be destroyed in order to replace with their own collectivist slave-cult.
Like putting the 10 commandments in schools?
Our entire justice system is based on concepts introduced by Moses in the Old Testament, such as rule of law and such. The Founders saw their quest for freedom as similar to the original Exodus. Using Moses as a symbol wasn’t a superstitious act to prevent the imaginary sky-god from blasting us to hell; it was an identification of the bases for the whole system.
But you didn’t learn that in U.S. History class, did you? Neither did I.
They’ve been lying to as all this time. Lying by omission.
That one’s a keeper. I’ve been hearing it creep into happy’s comments. Fighting back, or taking offense to attacks on our freedoms, is a form of identity group victimhood that me as a white two digit racist Xtian anti-science person craves.
Strangely, he doesn’t yet see your protestations that you get banned all over the place because you’re such a rogue truthteller as “perpetual butthurt victimhood” yet.
but then i havent started typing it in small letters…and
formatting it poorly for
emphasis…with RANDOM CAP thrown in to emphasize…well, nothing
so that explains it lulz ;-)
ACK. Stop that Jeff.
Fighting back, or taking offense to attacks on our freedoms, is a form of identity group victimhood that me as a white two digit racist Xtian anti-science person craves.
That’s not the identity group victimhood part. The identity group victimhood part happens when people elect to include themselves in with for reals, say, racist Xtian anti-science people.
You’re not generally prone to do that I don’t think Mr. Jeff.
My earliest memory is some evil sonuvabitch slapping me on the ass. I’ve been hunting that deviant piece of shit for years!
Seriously though… I need some quotes for the first chapter of “Lost My Ashes”… Dr Feinstein? Oprah’s calling!
A meya by any other name is still a douchenozzle. That is all.
The Ten Commandments has an historical place in the development of western law. Having it in courtrooms therefore doesn’t bother me.
Putting it in classrooms as a moral guide? I wouldn’t. But I don’t see why in principle it’s all that different from any other kind of foundational ethics taught, for instance, under the rubric of “core virtues” in many schools these days.
The problem seems to be that it attaches to a religious tradition. And we seem terribly afraid that exposing children to religion anywhere in the public square could turn them all into Jesus freaks.
Lord know exposing them to ideas like don’t steal, don’t kill, and don’t go coveting your neighbor’s MILF would turn them all into gawdbothering jesuslander xianists.
I did. As well as in Boy Scouts.
Interesting.
MY laundry basket is very oppressive! Because I am the only person in my household doing the laundry; and that is because I am the only person in my household.
And I am the only person cleaning dishes, and I am the only person cleaning the house, and I am the only person grocery shopping, and I am the only person doing the sewing…
“Social” isn’t the only combining word that leads people astray. I recently asked a Facebook commenter if “systemic poverty” is worse somehow than regular poverty (got no answer, predictably). “Ruling class” or “ruling elites” is a good one. “Institutional prejudice” is another.
It’s a way to make the common description stand out and seem bigger and more important while adding nothing to it.
Mikey, you really should stop oppressing yourself like that, you chauvinist pig.
Late again, foolish. dicentra:
#56 Pablo: You are correct. But I was so trained by my oppressor parents that I actually like a clean house, a neat yard, and all of the things that portend the Great Evil called Ward Cleaver.
Or the Great Evil called Fred MacMurray. Your Evil may vary.
“An eye for an eye” was a groundbreaking and lenient legal concept back in the day. And it didn’t make the Twelve Tribes blind, either.
The separation clause, adopted by the morally shiftless, has become its own religion. Well, not exactly its.
It’s how they slide covetousness through to become Teh Entitlement. You racist. For example, I hear the Greek govt is chock fulla Greek racists. Or would be if the Greek peeps in the street would only Greekly wise up.
Unfortunately, it’s a construct that hangs around half a dozen blogs at least. like replicators they are
jesus crist superstar is popular with proggs
And #56 Pablo: I am also the guy that manages the coffee fund and kitchen fund at work. I make the coffee. I buy the coffee stuff. I buy the kitchen stuff. I wash the kitchen towels.
Because I can do it, because I like things done in a certain way and if I do those things then they are done the way I like them done. So paper towels are bought, plastic flatware, napkins – everything down to Sweet’n’Low is bought and in place. Everything is neat and clean.
You know, I think I missed my calling. I should not be a lawyer, I should be a logistics officer.
May I see your license, Mikey? Or somebody Officially In Charge?
Babies are great; too bad they don’t last very long.
Well, some do, cynn.
Thanks dad.
#64: Which license?
Drivers? Still good.
Bar? Just got it.
USCG Aux ID? Just got it.
Man? Perpetual. And I know this as the little bro (the major) has no problem doing anything I just related. And he is still airborne qualified.
Again – I like things done in a certain way, and if I do that then it is done exactly the way I like it done. I am a friendly, genial chap (GeoffB can vouch for that). But I also like things done in a way that actually causes me less grief even if it seems that it is causing me more effort in the immediate time.
So I take on ‘funds’ and make them work to my betterment.
But actually cross me? Make my work harder than it must be? Anything like that? God forgive you, because I will not.
Mine did.
Food service, citizen.
Mikey, I don’t get people like you. You’re the Felix Unger of the law field.
#71 cynn:
Felix Unger of the law field?
Did Felix Unger ever throw a line to a disabled boat and then follow that up with a tow line, and then monitor the operation as that disabled boat was brought back to a safe harbor?
I like things neat and clean; I like things set up, and practiced, and drilled; so that it isn’t a run around and scream and shout. That run around and scream and shout is just injury and death looking for an opportunity. I prefer to have already thought about things. It must be something about those TCT classes the Coast Guard had me take, and the ICS classes the FEMA sponsored.
Think. Imagine. Train. Reconsider. Repeat.
I stand corrected! You’re the Chuck Norris of the legal profession! Oof!!
Mikey NTH understands a lot about life. If you need things done a certain way, the absolute best course is to do them yourself.
I hereby swear on my copy of “Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language” that Mikey NTH is “a friendly, genial chap” so help me Eco.
The Chuck Norris of the legal profession doesn’t file briefs. They file themselves out of fear of him.
Seeing what a fantastic driver Monsterette 1 turned out to be, we paid for Monsterette 2 to go to a driving school. The instructor taught her explicitly to do something I do implicitly: At all times, know where your “out” is. If the shit hits the fan, and that car over there loses control, heading right for you, what are you gonna do?
This morning I heard someone talking to Beck about the “go to hell” plan, as in “what do you do if it all goes to hell”. He has had the author of a book dealing with surviving stuff like 9/11 on before, who said that the people who survived are the ones who immediately started getting out the moment the first plane hit.
Observe how Teh Won has handled most crises that have come along, and you’ll see his gut reaction is almost always wrong (the police acted stupidly).
I don’t really have any problem seeing Felix Unger as a Coastie. He was certainly no weakling.
When I was in the Navy, Friday was “field day”, meaning the areas where we worked got cleaned thoroughly. There was another fellow in the group who would come in on Friday wearing crisp, starched&pressed whites (here is the shirt; add white trousers and gaudy insignia, with highly-polished black shoes). “Smitty” would spend the day scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, dusting, and generally participating enthusiastically — then leave at the end of the shift, wearing crisp, starched&pressed whites with not a stain on them anywhere.
It’s a gift not everyone has. I wore dungarees on field day, and sometimes had to throw them out and buy new, they were so grubby at the end.
Regards,
Ric
#75: HA! Should have known you were looking this thread over!
Seriously – I like to be friendly and genial – it is my default setting. And the work-funds – no one has complained since I took them over, and I do keep things up – it does help me also, you understand. :)
But there are times on the water when it goes all training (limited as that may be) and then…
#78 Ric:
When I got out of high school I cleaned lavatories and showers at Camp Dearborn – a park and campground owned by the City of Dearborn, Michigan.
As much as I wanted, I could find no way to stay dapper while doing the cleaning.
Shit-hot brownshoe flyboys got out of field day. But our shit had to be squared away like everyone else. We had our own crappy duties to pull, just stuff others might not have called, well, crappy…
Bob #81: Heh. I was enlisted, so only a brownshoe by association. We got out of a lot of toilet-cleaning by virtue of that, especially aboard ship, but cleaning up hydraulic fluid spills with TSP and denatured alcohol made an *ahem* adequate substitute, in my opinion.
Regards,
Ric
I love the internet.*
That story’s slightly different from the story told me by a Navy Lieutenant gal who married my best friend bh. She had the schism between surface ship types and submariners. So Bob, Ric, help resolve the question here if you will?
Hell Ric,
The hydraulic fluid smelled pretty bad on its own! I can’t imagine a mixture of it, trisodium phosphate and alcohol. Of course, I smelled pretty bad too after sitting on the deck a few hours in the alert5 fighter. In the Persian gulf…
For those who don’t get it, like your car, the air conditioners in military aircraft only work while the engine is on. Which isn’t when you’re pulling alert5 duty; where an aircraft and crew are sitting on deck ready to be launched in under 5 minutes. Think of it as the carriers quick reaction force, since in most cases it took a minimum of 20 minutes to prepare an aircraft for flight from scratch.
No A/C. Persian Gulf. HOT!. Sweat. Smell…
The whole brown and black shoe thing is pretty much as bh’s link described, sdferr.
And you’re friend’s Lieutenant lady is correct, the submarine community is very close knit. But, to my knowledge there is no “schism” between the “black shoes” in the surface and submarine force. But, full disclosure, although I was in involved in strategic systems later in my career, I was not a submariner.
But my cousin moved between submarine and surface duty assignments.
On the other hand, it is true that the Captain of an aircraft carrier, the XO, as well as the air boss, will have been aviators at one time in their career.
Jus’ so I’m clear Bob, the sub people wear black shoes in concert with surface ship officers, save in the instances of aircraft carriers where aviators wear the brown? So, for instance, on a cruiser the officers are in black shoe, same with a sub?
Feeding time = good. Messy diaper cleanup = evil. Yeah, they know the difference.
Sub and suface ship crews wear black shoes sdferr. Aviators wear brown shoes. Once aviators cease flying and take on surface commands they stop wearing brown shoes and star with the black ones.
According to Naval tradition, the black shoe thing comes from the shoe’s inherent ability to stay neat looking on coal burning ships where the soot would settle everywhere. Conversely, when the first aviators trained on dusty fields, they had to keep dealing with the brown dust all over the shoes, so they changed the uniform to high-topped brown shoes, which some believe they got from the Marines…
Although, I find it hard to believe that any shit-hot aviator would have used a Marine’s retreads-so to speak…
I’m not making this stuff up, it’s how it was emplained to me-sort of…
Actually, it was clearly written in the Navy regs. And the brown shoes and golden wings meant we were required to get 8 hours of sleep per day. Which was a lot more than most of the others on the ship.
But the 8 hour rule didn’t apply when we were on liberty…
Sleeping beyond six to eight would kill me I think, that extra two being such hard work it’d eat up any presumptive refreshment to be gained and I’d come out of the effort exhausted. heh
“It’s a gift not everyone has. I wore dungarees on field day, and sometimes had to throw them out and buy new, they were so grubby at the end.”
Ric,
I guess I missed that gift as well. Those whites were sweet when you first put them on but it didn’t take much more than a dirty look to require washing them.
“But the 8 hour rule didn’t apply when we were on liberty…”
Bob,
I had a ship Captain describe the 8 hour rule as: a requirement for aviators to get eight hours sleep per day and anything you get at night must be gravy! One of the few funny black shoe types I’ve met. Of course it’s hard to be funny when you are on six hrs on and six hrs off watch shifts.
“…a requirement for aviators to get eight hours sleep per day and anything you get at night must be gravy!”
Danger,
I never heard a senior officer use that one, but it was a regular in the dirty shirt wardroom.
Drat! HTML fail…
“I never heard a senior officer use that one, but it was a regular in the dirty shirt wardroom.”
Bob,
That Captain was on shore duty teaching a Division Officer class with only aviators attending. I don’t think he would have said it amongst the surface warfare bretheren.
…do you guys for real defend my country? Just checking in.
What do you mean cynn? Don’t you and your co-workers make light of your milieu? Have you ever been involved in an organization where some things are done out of tradition? If you think the “shoe” disussion is demented, think about the Bukingham palace guards tall furry hats!
If you think this is bad, go to the Corey Haim afterlife7 thread and check out Colonel John and JeffS talking about the culinary nuances of MREs…
No, once again I stand corrected. Furry hats are a go; lace is always out.