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11/5/2014 4:19:08 PM
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The Forbidden Experiment?

Well you may have seen my previous controversial topic on whether or not to abort a mentally retarded fetus, which went over extremely well; through all the hilarious shitposting on the flood, some very intelligent responses came about for both sides. So now I'm upping the controversy factor heheh. I'll add a TL;DR, but I recommend you read this in it's entirety to fully understand the proposal. [b]The Forbidden Experiment:[/b] (paraphrased in my own words) [quote] Every individual in modern society is psychologically "tainted" (in other words, affected) by influential experiences and teachings that alter their perception of reality. This spreads from tribal peoples to persons in highly developed societies. When being raised, every interpretation we make is being told from a perspective, which may or may not change our own perspective, however nothing is original, as any interpretations made after the point of teaching or experience is in turn influenced by said events. A good example of how this works is the "Allegory of The Cave" in book 7 of Plato's "Republic", where prisoners chained up in a cave do not accept an unchained prisoner's perception of what their surroundings look like, because the chained prisoners have never been able to see it for themselves and it simply does not make sense to them. It has been proposed that raising an individual or individuals in complete isolation would remove this affect their perspective. For ease of understanding, let's say that the individual(s) is/are in a windowless, soundproof area that is restocked with food and water and any health needs are tended to when the test subjects are unconscious. They have an unlimited access to writing materials that are without any logo, or anything to say that they came from an outside source. The food they are given is specifically made to give the optimal nutrition each day. A specific place is indicated for excretion (waste), which is also tended to while they are unconscious. They are to have ABSOLUTELY NO interaction with anything from the outside world, and as such will not know that one exists. They will be what is known as "wild" child(ren). This experiment will start as soon as they are viable to live, however before conscious thought begins to happen. After they have fully matured in this environment they will be analyzed, and eventually introduced to the outside world. There are multiple possible outcomes to this, but these are two that have been previously proposed: -the individual(s) perspectives are unable to be analyzed because they are mentally nothing more than a primitive animal and have not used the human conscious and analytical properties of the brain because of the lack of a need to. - the individuals are able to be analyzed and we are able to compose massive improvements in the field on human psychology and how the brain, perceptions, and consciousness work. This has been labeled as a "taboo" experiment, which scientists have attempted and been pursued by the law because of the in-humane aspect of this proposal. You are effectively removing the possibility of a life from this individual, possibly mentally disabling them for the rest of their life, and destroying the social aspects that make humans, human. Analyzing of children who have been raised in the wild has been done previously, however it was not a controlled experiment and suffered from the inability of the test subject to comprehend anything.[/quote] [b]TL;DR: an experiment where an individual or individuals would be raised in complete isolation and possibly given writing materials (this isn't part of the experiment's proposal, however it may prove to be an effective addition if the individual(s) are able to create a communication system). And then analyzing these test subjects after they have fully matured in complete isolation. They would be without a predisposed perspective that every individual raised in society is subject to. [/b] My question to the flood is, what are your thoughts about this experiment? Should it be attempted in this controlled way? And why do you feel either way? Also, if yes, what are some problems that could occur? If no, how can we ever attain a full grasp on human conscious and psychology without doing this? This is a very morbid proposal, so if you don't wish to share an intelligent opinion on this and rather be funny, at least be politically incorrect when doing so, so I can experience lulz.

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  • Edited by Mabian: 11/5/2014 11:36:56 PM
    The experiment is not simply unethical (which is of course a given, so such a statement is rather pointless), but useless. It presumes, for one, that perceptual thought is something imposed on humans socially, rather than biologically. Take, for example, the metaphor of the Cave: the chained individuals do not merely reject the philosopher's claims of reality because they are familiar with the shadows and unfamiliar with the things outside the cave, but are limited by their own cognitive powers, such that they cannot be raised beyond looking at shadows. Perception is not something that is imposed by society, rather society imposes something because the alternative is chaos, where individuals are in such fundamental disagreement about their perceptions that they are unable to cooperate. So all such an experiment does is remove the original ideas. It does not eliminate the perceptions themselves, and so either we get the outcome that the tools for analysis are atrophied, or else we get an individual who has the same mental powers, but merely lacks these grander narratives placed by society. In either case, we don't get anything. As an additional thought, I wanted to bring up a story provided by Herodotus. I paraphrase it (from my memory, and thus with some flaws) below: [quote]The King of Egypt wanted to know what was man's natural language, so he proposed an experiment: a child was raised in an isolated cottage by two people who were forbidden from speaking, and the child was not allowed to interact with any other person. When the child was brought to the King, it embraced him and said the word "[i]bekos[/i]." When the King asked what the word meant, an attendant said that it was the Phrygian word for bread. The King concluded that the first race of men must have been the Phrygians, and all civilizations were derivations of that race.[/quote] The problem that is alluded to in Herodotus is that the experiment is inherently flawed: it is impossible to raise a child in a fully artificial environment and get at its natural workings, because the artificial environment must impart something upon the child that is unintended by the researchers and interpreted as something meaningful. In Herodotus's example, the child was given to a shepherd, and the word is likely a corruption of the sheep's bleat ("baaa"), that was then assumed to be a real word. In this example, there is no reason that the child could not notice some aspects of the experiment, and in doing so attempt to discern what is happening, thus pushing the child towards some knowledge of the outside world despite the efforts of the researchers.

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