>From self-reports, classify a lot of people as being [a]theist. Randomly select half of the people to be used to generate hypotheses, by putting sensors on neurons in the prefrontal cortex and ask questions that would select for consensus builders vs. breakers, [in]tolerance, [anti-] authoritarianism, and any other personality traits one could imagine to separate personalities preferring [a]theism. Like Hubel and Wiesel did with the visual cortex in cats. If some discriminating neurons are found for certain survey questions, and they are repeated across subjects, then go to the other half of people and measure at what rate the various sorts of neurons can be found in the other half (but don't look at their survey questions before measuring!). Then tabulate the neuron type frequencies vs. the survey questions and see if the neutron type are frequencies are predictive of [a]theism.
One might posit that extreme skepticism takes a toll on imagination and/or motivation, e.g. big networks of neurons that serve to kill "bad" signals. Or maybe the opposite is true and only people that play Devil's Advocate to the bitter end can integrate enough perspectives to be truly creative? Surely someone has at least suggested doing experiments like this? Or maybe the answer is already well-known? (I did not do any searches.) From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 7:16 AM To: [email protected]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] RE: [ SPAM ] Re: Re: clinical diagnosis of [a]theism? On 12/20/14 6:14 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: Suppose you had a device that could read brain waves and determine whether someone believed in [a]theism. Since this wouldn't be a diagnosis based on behavior would it get at what you want? And how would this device be calibrated? It's measurements validated?
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