3 ms·

I know you don't care, but making people feel bad on purpose is bad.

wang_li 3y ago
We have no way to control how someone feels. As such we have no obligation to change how we act because someone says it will make them feel bad.
memefrog 3y ago
They aren't making people feel bad on purpose. Their purpose is to study the brains. It happens that to do that, a side effect is someone gets hurt feelings.
LatteLazy 3y ago
Why do you think the Smithsonian is doing this to make people feel bad? !
- burkaman 3y ago
  I don't think making people feel bad was the primary purpose, but I do think the people who collected these brains knew the families of the dead wouldn't like it, and did it anyway because they didn't care. That's what I mean by "on purpose". I'm also referring to the people who did this 100 years ago. I don't have much of a problem with the Smithsonian of today based on the information in the article.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    The problem with this is that anyone (or their relatives) can dislike anything. I don't like pesto, so I don't think anyone else should eat it because that would make me feel bad...
    - burkaman 3y ago
      We have cultural values about respecting the dead and respecting bodily autonomy. If you asked me not to eat pesto at your relative's funeral, or not to use the corpse's hand to stir my pesto pot, I wouldn't, even though I know nobody would be harmed and it's just about your feelings. If you asked me not to eat pesto on a normal day in your house, again I wouldn't, because that's a small sacrifice to make you feel better, and I value being a nice person. If you asked me not to do it in my own home when you aren't around, I would, because that crosses a boundary where doing what you ask is no longer worth sacrificing my own freedom. In this particular case, the doctors and anthropologists want to research brains. They know that if they ask "may I harvest your relative's brain in order to prove its inferiority to the white race" the answer will be "no". Taking the brain anyway is therefore wrong - but does the utility of this research outweigh the moral issue of non-consent? No, it doesn't. There are some hypothetical scenarios where taking brains without consent would be worth it, maybe during a prion pandemic or something, but this is not one of them. It's not like you'll never get consent - plenty of people are willing to happily donate their bodies for research, I probably would be if anyone asked.
bonoboTP 3y ago
-removed by author-
- burkaman 3y ago
  The concrete danger of taking brains without consent is that it upsets the family of the deceased, and the rights of bodily autonomy and respect for the deceased outweigh the rights of an unrelated person to have a specific body part in their collection. A second danger in this particular case is that a brain may be used as evidence for a political program to restrict the rights of some population. It is totally legitimate to deny access to your body or your family's body if you don't want it to be used for this purpose. Scientists are human beings and not objective, and just calling something "research" does not magically make it objective. In this case, the research program was a political tool of no scientific value. I'm sorry for my short reply before, I thought the article made both of these points very clear.

We have no way to control how someone feels. As such we have no obligation to change how we act because someone says it will make them feel bad.

memefrog 3y ago

They aren't making people feel bad on purpose. Their purpose is to study the brains. It happens that to do that, a side effect is someone gets hurt feelings.

LatteLazy 3y ago

Why do you think the Smithsonian is doing this to make people feel bad? !

burkaman 3y ago
I don't think making people feel bad was the primary purpose, but I do think the people who collected these brains knew the families of the dead wouldn't like it, and did it anyway because they didn't care. That's what I mean by "on purpose". I'm also referring to the people who did this 100 years ago. I don't have much of a problem with the Smithsonian of today based on the information in the article.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  The problem with this is that anyone (or their relatives) can dislike anything. I don't like pesto, so I don't think anyone else should eat it because that would make me feel bad...
  - burkaman 3y ago
    We have cultural values about respecting the dead and respecting bodily autonomy. If you asked me not to eat pesto at your relative's funeral, or not to use the corpse's hand to stir my pesto pot, I wouldn't, even though I know nobody would be harmed and it's just about your feelings. If you asked me not to eat pesto on a normal day in your house, again I wouldn't, because that's a small sacrifice to make you feel better, and I value being a nice person. If you asked me not to do it in my own home when you aren't around, I would, because that crosses a boundary where doing what you ask is no longer worth sacrificing my own freedom. In this particular case, the doctors and anthropologists want to research brains. They know that if they ask "may I harvest your relative's brain in order to prove its inferiority to the white race" the answer will be "no". Taking the brain anyway is therefore wrong - but does the utility of this research outweigh the moral issue of non-consent? No, it doesn't. There are some hypothetical scenarios where taking brains without consent would be worth it, maybe during a prion pandemic or something, but this is not one of them. It's not like you'll never get consent - plenty of people are willing to happily donate their bodies for research, I probably would be if anyone asked.

bonoboTP 3y ago

-removed by author-

burkaman 3y ago
The concrete danger of taking brains without consent is that it upsets the family of the deceased, and the rights of bodily autonomy and respect for the deceased outweigh the rights of an unrelated person to have a specific body part in their collection. A second danger in this particular case is that a brain may be used as evidence for a political program to restrict the rights of some population. It is totally legitimate to deny access to your body or your family's body if you don't want it to be used for this purpose. Scientists are human beings and not objective, and just calling something "research" does not magically make it objective. In this case, the research program was a political tool of no scientific value. I'm sorry for my short reply before, I thought the article made both of these points very clear.