I attended a meeting with a local Taiwanese discussion group the other day. We watched a documentary on the life of three rice farmers in Tainan, Taiwan. This was followed with a discussion on the economic factors leading to the extinction of the occupation in Taiwan. These came up - ideas of economic comparative advantage, realities of sociopolitical structure, and philosophies behind robust personal happiness. It was a good discussion.

People are evidently willing to get together to talk about important issues. In fact, a few hours of dedicated time is easier to get than trying to get people to write to a forum with their ideas. Talking is easier than writing.

The transient nature of the discussion is regrettable though. I'm working on a format for generating web-publishable content from these very meaningful discussions.

Article

They used a burst of magnetic pulses called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – produced by coils held over the scalp – to temporarily shut off activity in the DLPFC. Now, when faced with the opportunity to spitefully reject a cheeky low cash offer, subjects were actually more likely to take the money.

Erm. Hold on there. Influencing thoughts using ElectroMagnetic fields? Asimov's mentalic robots are closer than we think.

"I would also really like to caution against the type of logic that "I don't think they understand the ... enough to make such suggestions." exemplifies. By saying that, one is evaluating the validity of a statement purely on the basis of who said it, and not on what was said.

The idea that people should be restricted only to comments within their own specialties, and leave the thinking to the "experts", is a very dangerous one. If that statement is accepted, the discussion might end right here, since it isn't clear that any of us 'understand enough'.

Discussion still continues though, because there is more to words than authority - there is reason."