On the Brink

The days of decision making for Treasury Secretary Paulson were very well written. Assuming that his portrayal is accurate it was very interesting to read about the stress of the situation and the way the group worked together to solve the puzzles.

Dirty work, clean hands: The moral psychology of indirect agency: Greene, et al

Yeah, interesting stuff; however, I don't see the questions as being quite so black and white. Although, my answers would have been in line with the normal folk.

Did you get a candy bar or $3 for taking your retard quiz?

Cognition: Greene, et al

Interesting point of the experiment:
The instructions acknowledged that the dilemmas were not necessarily realistic and requested that subjects "suspend disbelief." Data from 31 (of 664) subjects who reported being unable/unwilling to suspend disbelief ("conscious realists") were excluded form the analysis, as were data from 10 subjects reporting confusion.
First of all "form" should have been from - that's just to clarify the next point, being that there are more of us out there than just you and me who take these test and are confused.

So, this pertains to the trolley deal where you have the choice of pitching somebody in front of the trolley killing one to save five. I feel very good about my situation because being confused by the time I made a decision it would have been over.

Also interesting is that the test subjects were 271 females, 337 males and 12 genders unknown. Does that have something to do with the retardation issue. How is a gender unknown, and if they can't discern their gender how valid is their response - or were ten of those the confused folk?

Patterns of neural activity associated with honest and dishonest moral decisions

Greene and Paxton

Yep, this was new territory for me - honest moral decisions - I can do honest and I can do moral, but the combination is a stretch.