Read Before Marrying (the Tech Guy)

Hmm, now I'm rethinking my previous post defending the empathy of nerds. I was trying to give the little guys a break. 

Now comes this missive from the dork side by tech blogger Bex Huff that veritably blows the lid off the ugly, comic book-strewn underworld of the engineer geek.

Huff's piece, "Empathy vs. Sympathy," is written for his audience, fellow computer hacks. It reads like a primer on "how to pass for a human while really, really trying."

It's fascinating, funny and sad all at the same time and makes me think robots maybe aren't that different from some of us after all.

Observes Huff:

"Most technical people have been brainwashed by years of  'education' into believing that there's a 'right way' to do everything, and that its [sic] our job to fix it. 

When something goes 'wrong,' we want to dive in and tell everybody how to make it 'right' again. Its [sic] a trained compulsion. This is why engineers make lousy lovers, but excellent terrorists. 

In both cases, its [sigh, sic] a lack of empathy that dooms us to this fantasy world of absolute right and wrong, making it impossible to see things from another perspective."

So interesting that part about there having to be absolute right and wrong answers to everything.

Bring on the bikers, I guess.

Hive Life

I love Edward O. Wilson (Harvard, Ant King, environmentalist).

He's as cute as a baby bug. 

Did you see the recent NOVA about him?

It was great. (Watch it online.)

So, I'm hesitant to report that he may be sorta wrong on the issue of why, exactly, social insects like ants, bees and wasps are so cooperative.

He thought it was 'cause they are communally-oriented and out to help the group.

New research suggests that, a la rival Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), it's more about individuals making sure their own offspring thrive and survive.

Oh well, he's still a god among ants.

What does this have to do with empathy? 

Maybe putting yourself in others' shoes and caring -- part of the advanced altruism toolkit of humans -- is there to achieve a similar "selfish," purely progeny-promoting goal.

If being nice is selfish, I hope to be surrounded by selfish people always.

Oy, Robot

As has been alluded to previously (Us mags), I am no geek in any classic sense. 

I am blonde, by way of highlighting.

I have been known to attend status handbag sample sales.

Math and I are not friends.

These are not traits of which I am particularly proud.

But I stand firm in my hatred of the robot. 

When our planet is eventually overrun by them (whether former housekeepers or the sort supposedly to be routinely injected into our brains), I and others like me will have long since ejected to a renegade, humans-only colony on Mars, renamed "Club M."

Lately, the little empathy-wanting buggers are everywhere.

There's Keepon (please don't), a five-year-old two tennis balls with eyes invented to study how young children learn social behavior (and also to appear on YouTube).  At last week's IEEE International Conference for Robotics and Automation, Keepon snagged the Human-Robot Interaction Challenge -- beating Kelly Ripa by a nose.

But seriously, you know who really could have aced that competition, a real, live, actual, human child! 

Speaking of children, mine will beg to see this summer's bot flick, WALL•E (shudder), about a stumpy, clean-up droid who's the last one left on Earth.  Director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) explains his film thusly:

"WALL-E is the only one still truly living. And what is the ultimate purpose of living? To love. And WALL-E falls head over heals with EVE. 

Now, WALL-E's feelings aren't reciprocated because, well, she has no feelings. She's a robot, cold and clinical. WALL-E is the one who has evolved over time and garnered feelings. 

So in the end, it's gonna be WALL-E's pursuit to win EVE's heart, and his unique appreciation of life to become mankind's last hope to rediscover its roots. In short, it's going to take a robot's love to help make the world go round."

Did you read that last line? O.K, 'cause I thought it was just me.

Finally, over at physicist Brian Greene's modestly-titled "World Science Fair," which did sound cool this morning on NPR, they'll be a-grapplin' with this whole robots-as-humans dilemma on Saturday -- or at least getting Charlie Rose out of the studio -- with "What it Means to Be Human."

I do hope they figure it out as I'm beginning to have my doubts.

Who Cares About Your Mother

All this blogging about putamen and mu makes me sleepy.

It also reminds me of the time time I was on the subway and a surprisingly giggly, female, self-identified neuroscience grad student was holding forth (at a volume which made eavesdropping unnecessary) on the topic of the hilarious, utter irrelevance of the field of psychology and the absurdity of denying that form (brain structure) dictated all.  Her companions' eager nods indicated they agreed.

"Mommy and daddy love" as mental mover and shaker, in other words, was, like, totally out with this bunch.

This does seem to be the way the wind is blowing in many of our institutions of higher learning. 

Over at Brain Blogger, Jared Tanner asks: "Neuroscience: Psychotherapy's Executioner?," before answering his question in the negative. 

We can have room for both neuroscience and psychology, he asserts, if we blur the Cartesian distinction between body and mind. Changing the body (brain) with medication impacts the mind (behavior). Likewise, psychological therapy impacts brain function.

"[T]he ultimate solution," he writes "...lies in a balance between the two."

Weird Words Part II

Mu.

No, not as in "cow goes __"

As in: mu brainwave suppression, an indicator of mirror neuron activity and empathy; autistics don't have it.

Autistics, men, same difference.

Just kiddin'! 

But Taiwanese researchers have just shown that men's mu and women's mu are different.

"Psychologically, females are usually thought to be superior in interpersonal sensitivity than males."

The study showed that women's mu suppression (mirror neuron activity) was "significantly stronger" when they watched hand actions than males'. Whether the hand was male, female or androgynous made no difference for both sexes.

"Furthermore, it has been acknowledged that females show superiority in empathy and appear to perform better at reading others' facial and body actions while communicating, and score higher on tests of emotional recognition. Therefore, the gender differences....noted here...might arise from gender differences in empathy."

The paper also mentions a previous study showing stronger activation of females' vs. males' facial currogator (frowning) and zygomatic (smiling) muscles when they viewed angry and happy faces. Once again, the gender of the faces viewed didn't make a difference, which I find interesting.

Now activate your zygomatic muscles and have a nice day!

Waste Some, Feel Better

You can't make up the peculiarities of language. 

Or rather, someone did, but accidents happen that are just too funny.

Case in point: the word "putamen," a part of the brain involved in efficiency processing. 

Or: "puta" (a really bad Spanish curse meaning horrible, skanky whore and so much more) + "men" (males of our species).

Puta + men = I love it!!

But I digress . . . 

"This is the worst experiment I've ever been in. I never want to do anything like this again!'"

That was the reaction of some Craig's Listers recruited by the California Institute of Techonology for an excruciating exercise in which they had to allocate food for a Ugandan orphanage, either taking away many meals from a few or even more from many.

Perceived equity and emotional considerations (shown to originate in the insula brain region) won out over pure efficiency and logic (in the putamen!). The subjects gave less food to the children overall, but in a more evenly distributed way that felt more "fair."

Guess they slept better for it; wonder about those orphans.

Proves that doing a greater good and being good aren't always the same thing . . .

Hurts So Good

There's no pain like the pain of someone you like. 

Jerks, not so much.

Researchers at McGill U. created a state of "high empathy for an actor" (oxymoron?) in one group of subjects "and in the other half a state of low empathy." 

Then they tested the subjects' reactions to "heat stimuli of various intensities...while they watched the actor being exposed to similar stimuli." 

The group that felt high empathy towards the victim/actor rated the heat as more intense and unpleasant than those in the low-empathy group.

Really hope they got paid.

Who You Gonna Call?

"I believe empathy ranks right up there with love, faith and hope. It has this quality to it that you're putting yourself in someone else's shoes. None of us needs sympathy or pity. When you're in a crisis, who are you going to call, a doctor or a government official or someone who's been there? You're seeking empathy. We all crave it."

                                                                                    

 -- 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Jerry White, in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, 5/21/08                                                                               

Moral Arguments

Errol Morris, who made a film called Standard Operating Procedure about the nastiness at Abu Ghraib, and evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser had a little tete-a-tete about the biological underpinnings of morality and other such things over at Seed:

"I'm not sure that I have any real grasp on morality at all, much less some universal idea of morality. I've thought a lot about what happened at Abu Ghraib, and maybe this shows just a fundamental deficiency on my part, but I've come away even more confused than when I started and more convinced that social science really hasn't grappled with these issues in a way that I find satisfactory."

Welcome to the Evolution

Ever wonder how we may have evolved into such a diverse species, empathy-wise?

I mean, how is it that YOU are such a super-nice person (note my new "Donate" button) and your neighbor is, well, BTK? And yet you're both "human beings," technically speaking.

It's evolutionary my dear Watson! 

As in, it may take all kinds.

According to SUNY Binghamton theorists Omar Eldakar and David Wilson, "Selfish Punishers" (love that name) could have evolved to punish other Selfish Punishers, thereby protecting more directly society-benefitting altruists. 

They're the Mr. T's of the Darwinian plain. 

 

Sure, they also abuse do-gooders, but that only makes their victims band together and become stronger. So, it's all good!

"Altruists pay the selfish punishers by allowing themselves to be exploited, while the selfish punishers return the favor with their second-order altruism. That way, no one needs to pay the double cost required of an altruist who also punishes others, says Eldakar. If so, then the best groups might be those that include a few devils along with the angels."

Thanks to Bio-Medicine.org.

Psychopath of Least Resistance

Joining the pile of periodicals on my bedside table -- three Us mags and two The Economists swiped from my building's recycling bin and four of my dad's old The New Yorkers -- will now be a great new read by the name of . . . Neuroethics!

(Not really, 'cause I'll read it online at Springer!)

The latest issue contains a pair of germane articles on your good friend and mine . . . the empathy-less psychopath:

"There has been considerable debate among psychologists, philosophers, legal theorists, and neuroscientists about whether or to what extent psychopaths are responsible for their behavior," begins a paper by Walter Glannon of the University of Calgary. 

Yes, Walter, this is the million dollar Q, no? What do you think?

Walter: "Although psychopaths may act impulsively and without empathy or remorse, they are not coerced or compelled to act by their mental states and are not ignorant of the circumstances  in which they act."

Aha! So, they can help it!

Walter: "Moral responsibility requires that agents have control over their motivational states and actions that affect others...The correlation between the noted brain abnormalities and the behavior of psychopaths suggests that they lack the requisite cognitive and affective control over their motivational states and actions to be morally responsible for them."

Aha, so they can't help it!

Walter: "[A]lthough psychopaths are impaired in their capacity to respond to moral reasons and conform to social norms, there is no decisive evidence that they lack this capacity altogether. They should not be held fully responsible for their actions; but they should not be exonerated either. The cognitive and affective impairment in psychopaths is enough to justify mitigated responsibility, but not excuse."

Oh. So the jury's still . . . confused.

He goes on to discuss the existing evidence for amygdala and mirror neuron abnormalities in these guys.

In the other piece, Carleton U.'s Heidi L. Maibom argues more emphatically that just because psychopaths are deficient -- though not necessarily completely lacking in -- empathy doesn't mean they should be excused from understanding why harming other people is wrong. 

Empathy is not the be all end all of legal reasoning, in other words; there are other ways of divining proper behavior. Psychopaths are not crazy, she says, only morally disordered. They should therefore NOT be able to use an insanity defense. 

She leaves the door open that further brain imaging, genetic and behavioral research could one day prove that the boy (or girl) can't help it, but for now, the evidence in favor of excusing these folk doesn't exist. 

She also touches on clinical trials for anti-psychopath drugs ("such as the alpha2-adrenergic agonist guanfacine") and the ethics of giving them to children with these traits.

Remind me to get some of that stuff to slip into "certain people's" sodas.

Over My Head

O.K., I'm an English major. I do my best with the hard data, but let's face it, I'm a tad out of my league. 

So, does that mean I can't think about the brain? Must my neuroscience muse be silenced? 

No way!  Just don't count on me for the last word. 

Then again, you can't count on scientific research either. The papers I site here are findings, not facts; results, not rules. Science is made of hypotheses that are framed by human beings, subject to the same foibles and errors of any human endeavor.

Oh, you get what I mean. Just use your head.

The Nerds Made Me Do It!

I personally don't think being nerdy -- what little I know about it, ahem -- is tied to not having empathy. 

Go to any prison and you're sure to find some distinctly non-nerdy types with biceps like bread loaves who lack empathy. And I've known several considerate, sweet, pocket-protecting people. You can be nice and nerdy or sociopathic and nerdy; I don't think they're related.

So, I'm not sure about some undeniably provocative observations contained in this new book, American Nerd. Over at Powell's, it's nerd-identified author, Benjamin Nugent, ties a reckless lack of empathy to Poindexterism:

"Sometimes nerds can be dangerous and/or cruel because of obsession with technology and disinclination toward empathy. The horror of Victor Frankenstein, one of the earliest nerds in literature, is that he's able to make another being but he's not able to think, what would it be like to be this manufactured being, composed of animated corpse parts and terrifying to all who see him? A lot of real-life horrors of modernity were/are created by nerds."

Maybe he's just trying to sex-up nerds by making 'em seem all dangerous and whatnot.

Oxydental

I've written about Oxytocin and emotional bonding before.

A nice post at All Men Are Liars ponders the hormone and the rather troubling triple nature of amore: lust, love and attachment.

Oxy is also getting a lot of play in the news with talk of devoloping a "shyness pill" to treat various social disorders.

Mirror Cracked

Some more evidence of a link between mirror neurons and empathy:

Some Aussies have done a study showing your brain's ability to map others' physical actions (mirror neuron territory) correlates with your ability to interpret others' facial expressions. 

Polar Excess

Here's ethics prof Ed Kent over at Blogger News Net:

"The bottom line...is that we humans are divided along a spectrum between those who feel great empathy for others at one extreme and those who actually enjoy killing and torturing...the other."

(And most people are somewhere in between, no?)

Then Ed gets a little wacky with a polar bear reference. But I say bring on da bears -- whatever gets this moral relativity party going!

"[Polar bears] are one of our notorious predator species. Yet we look to be giving them more empathy than our own human children -- denied proper medical care in too many instance [sic] as well as adequate nutrition and educational opportunities!!"

Contemplate This

I'm not very New Agey, more like Old Agey, or Middle Agey. I'm also biased regarding meditation. Some of the worst people I know meditate. There, I said it.

But here goes: Apparently they MRI-ed some Tibetan monks (Can we just say "monks"? Where are the other monks from?) and found that, yup, they are way empathic 'cause meditation can dramatically alter your mind, making you nicer, more compassionate, activating empathy centers in your brain, etc.

I don't know. This sounds like a 'which came first the chicken or the om' kind of thing to me.