2244: Your Brain on Drugs

[dannyhatch]

with Danny Hatch and Rosa – Tickets for all KATG tour venues now available; New England Patriots’ world of cheating; molly, salvia, and camping; 9/11 and the Titanic; Egypt’s military kills 12 innocent tourists; Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the Jewish slaughtering of chickens

Guests:
Danny Hatch


Rosa



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[punk'n]

Please stop getting Kansas and Missouri confused! Kansas is "God hates fags". Missouri is "women who are raped can't get pregnant" (MO State representative Todd Akin) . Get it together, you guys!

And I have my VIP tickets. You guys are coming to my home town on my anniversary, I'm super psyched!

[daemon]

I'll admit I got VIP just to show support for the podcast I've loved since 2005. I never once looked at the VIP section. I can't believe I was missing out on so much amazing content. I had no idea there was video too!

[WittyReference]

I'm not fond of hearing about horrific things because they sometimes get stuck in my brain, usually if I can picture the description. Like that fucking story Keith told about the woman who left her dog in her apartment to die because she couldn't be bothered moving it. Keith described a picture of her apartment after they found the dog, which I pictured in my head and now randomly pops into my memory once every few months. Even typing this has reminded me of the Aussie guy who threw his kid off a bridge while his other kid watched. I don't need to know.

The savagery of our history is easier to understand when you consider these people had no scientific understanding but were 100% committed to their belief. What does it matter what we do to the living when we'll all be in our version of heaven soon anyway? They make modern religious people look like pussies who aren't really committed.

I never think 'Tradition' is a good excuse for anything.

Multiple guests but you forgot to tell us to vote. 1 for Rosa.

[Junkenstein]

Originally Posted by punk'n

Please stop getting Kansas and Missouri confused! Kansas is "God hates fags". Missouri is "women who are raped can't get pregnant" (MO State representative Todd Akin) . Get it together, you guys!

And I have my VIP tickets. You guys are coming to my home town on my anniversary, I'm super psyched!

Hi Punkn! Long time no see <3

[Rosa]

Individual differences in sensitivity to seeing or hearing about horrific things is interesting. some people can't see blood without fainting, while others, say EMTs, can respond to sites of horrific accidents all day long and keep their lunch down no problem (and sleep just fine at night). certainly even folks like EMTs and soldiers end up with some form of PTSD or flashbacks after seeing some truly horrific things, but I'm sure some fare better than others. I'd bet it has to do with the interplay of nature/genetic predispositions (e.g. differences in genes involved in stress response, anxiety, empathy, etc) and nurture/learning (experiences and training that shape cognitive habits, strategies, outlook, perspective, etc). I've never had trouble with blood and guts. I always jumped at the chance to dissect anything in school (and often picked a lab mate who was squeamish so I could do more of the cutting). My parents and teachers thought I'd make a great surgeon (my hand work isn't shabby and I have a few successful animal surgeries under my belt), but I didn't have the discipline for med school. I don't have trouble watching videos of crazy violent shit on the web, I've seen *some* crazy shit IRL, but I don't get flashbacks or lasting anxiety over it. It's not as if I have no empathy, but I do notice my mental experience during those events is very analytical and emotionally distanced. It's a little odd because I will cry at a sentimental MSPCA commercial here and there, and more episodes of grey's anatomy than I'd like to admit. all that aside, the topic got me thinking about a cool finding related to the physiology of moral disgust and it's been a long time since I scienced hard all over the forums...

You know how your stomach turns when you see something horrific (maybe a picture of jews in a concentration camp, a severely abused dog, or an ISIS beheading)? You get nauseous, maybe you even puke? At the very least you make a 'disgusted' facial expression. You may describe the situation as 'nasty' or 'disgusting'. Well, it turns out the human response to morally reprehensible/horrific things is generated by the same brain system that produces our response to things like spoiled food. Our ancestors acquired the rotten food response early on, evolutionarily speaking. In humans, this so-called disgust response automatically triggers our facial muscles to contract in a very particular way (a specific 'disgust' grimace) in response to spoiled food. It also makes us feel nauseous, and when the rot is bad enough, gag or vomit (maybe you actually took a swig of that sour milk before sniffing it). This achieves two things: 1. it prevents us from ingesting rotten food (and gets it out of our system if we did). and 2. it communicates to any on-lookers that the thing we ate/smelled is probably rotten/toxic, so stay away. But the coolest part is that when we went on to evolve a physiologically grounded moral compass (to judge 'good' behavior from 'bad' behavior), the existing disgust system (used to tell 'good' food from 'bad' food) was recruited. Not only is our response to morally rotten things similar to our response to physically rotten things, the same underlying brain structures and circuits support them both. That is, rather than evolving a whole new response system for moral disgust we just piggy backed on an existing system for physical disgust!

I love the idea that (especially in biological evolution) nothing is ever 'lost', but simply modified & added onto so that, as an example, our moral judgements of good and bad are really just higher level cognitive functions and conditioning accreted onto primal judgements that our worm like ancestors (or even single cells) made about 'good to eat', 'bad to eat'? Which is why the sensory reaction to a seeing or doing a 'bad thing' (seeing someone get killed, lying, etc...) is similar to eating spoiled food. Many higher order neuronal functions are likely modifications and elaborations of much more primitive sensory functions, and use overlapping brain regions. And it seems the primitive function of which the higher function is an elaboration can be identified on the basis of the similarity in language, facial expression, and physiological response to both the more primitive and higher function. so cool right??

Refs:
In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust
H. A. Chapman, et al.
Science 323, 1222 (2009);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1165565

This a simple review of the above article (it's more accessible):
From Oral to Moral
Paul Rozin,1 Jonathan Haidt, Katrina Fincher
Science 323, 1179 (2009);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1170492


TL;DR: Moral judgement in humans is an elaboration of the mechanisms for judging 'good' and 'bad' to eat as seen in the most primitive organisms (worms, anemones, single cells, etc..).

[Rosa]

Originally Posted by Apia

I don't have the problem with disgust, I have problems with intrusive thoughts.
its fine now, the last 2,5 years were good, but in my life I had several phases of being bothered with them, last time after child birth.

I read some books about it, it's more common than I knew.

Yea, that sounds more like anxiety and/or a bit of paranoia, likely enhanced by stress. It's something that could be fundamentally part of your makeup since birth (a particular gene variant you carry) or exposure to certain kinds of stress as a child, which can permanently 'scar' your DNA in a way that alters your stress response (epigenetic binding patterns on genes involved in the production of stress response hormones). Or honestly any myriad of other things. It's complicated and we have only just started to scratch the surface of the mind/brain's inner workings.

The disgust response thing has more to do with the immediate impact of seeing something horrific. I just find it fascinating.

[punk'n]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

Hi Punkn! Long time no see <3

I've always been listening and lurking. The KC live show is literally in my neighborhood. I wouldn't miss it for the world!

Good to see you too, Junk!

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Rosa

2. it communicates to any on-lookers that the thing we ate/smelled is probably rotten/toxic, so stay away.

Disgust is one of the 7 facial responses every single culture across the globe is able to instinctually recognize. if i'm not mistaken the others are also attached to basic emotions: Joy, Anger, Contempt, Sadness, Fear, Surprise.

if those look familiar, it's b/c Pixar made a movie about it.

BOOM SCIENCE!!!

EDIT:
i don't have any fancy sources. it's just what i remember about Ekman. correct where necessary.

[FingerLakes]

I often wonder how we, as a culture, can study and make TV shows about ancient Greek/Egyptian peoples worshiping their dead gods with archaic and barbarian rituals and then eat a cracker and pretend we're eating the body of he son of god who died for all the sins that will EVER be committed for all time to come - and who plans to come back when it's time to end the world. Classifying an entire culture to be silly for believing the gods lived on a tall mountain or judged you with a pair of scales, while thinking your god made it rain frogs and blood and killed babies with a cloud if you didn't have sheep's blood on your door is sooo crazy.

I can't imagine what, besides a major war or catastrophe, could end/change the current gang of religions. Historically religions only die when a people are conqured and the winning culture replaces it with their own. Will we ever choose, as a majority, to give it up willingly? I look forward to the Great Scientology War of 2020