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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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  • I'm pretty sure there was an abused girl who is the closest they've come to actually being able to study this

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  • No it should not be attempted. This is because the person that we do that to is going to be missing out on a whole lifetime for the sake of a stupid experiment. It's already obvious that the isolated individuality probably wouldn't be able to write and that their perception of the world would be extremely narrow. Perhaps nonexistent. I would imagine that they would be mentally unstable from this as well. Why do this to a person when the results are obvious.

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    • [i] [/i]

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      • [quote] 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] there is no reason to believe that no matter how it was performed that the test subject would ever be able to "comprehend anything." so i don't think really anything would be learned if this was a problem in a controlled or uncontrolled experiment. and, no, i don't see any value in the study even if successful, so i certainly don't agree with its proposal.

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        • Truman Show.

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        • SWEG

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        • I don't have much to contribute, but I had a dream where experiments like this took place. It was weird.

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        • Edited by Shpip: 11/5/2014 11:19:47 PM
          We're built to operate in the society we're raised in. Trillions of factors, if not more, shape us. In a way, we form to our environments like water in different containers. Having an experiment to see how we'd act without societal influences will only show someone without societal influences. It wouldn't really be beneficial. It's more of a "what if" question. One that would basically sacrifice a human life. Again, it does not seem as if it's worth it. With each experiment, you must measure cost and effect. What is the benefit we would get out of it? Rather than simply saying we can study human development, what aspects would be under examination?

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          • Edited by Pendulate: 11/6/2014 2:40:32 AM
            Sounds rather pointless. Any potential information that could be obtained from such experiments is already being obtained through methods that aren't so ethically dubious. It's also short-sighted to claim we will never develop a full (or at least satisfactory) understanding of the mind without compromising our ethics; the field of psychology has been making excellent progress in recent years without resorting to outrageous extremes. I get that it's an ethical exercise, but the risk/reward factor isn't high enough to make it compelling.

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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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              • it would be flawed from the start. without a caring mother to nurture and raise the child until it can move and feed itself it will die from a lack of "good touch" there was a similar experiment done with monkeys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow

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                • I think it should be done I think we need to strip ourselves of this all for one bullshit The fact of the matter is that one human life is very insignificant in the long run If we can take a few humans and turn them into something useful for the entire human race, then it should be done As for the child, he/she would not have a childhood so he/she can't possibility know that they're living an empty life

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                  • Edited by The Primarch: 11/5/2014 10:55:52 PM
                    I don't think this experiment should be attempted because it robs the test subjects of the fundamental parts of their humanity. It is highly unethical. We are no longer primitive, yet even the life of our ancestors who hunted for food and did little else would be preferable to this blank life proposed by the experiment. In addition, we don't only have to grow and develop physically, we have to be raised by someone as well in order to develop our minds properly and become fully realized adults.

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                    • Edited by The Fallen Zyzz: 11/5/2014 10:23:13 PM
                      I managed to contain the wall of text. [spoiler]I think that this experiment should be conducted at some point. The moral ramifications are extreme, though. There was a case like this, actually. A kid was locked up in her room from birth. I forgot how old she was when authorities managed to free her, but, she was around 8. Because she was past the point of 'optimal learning' and had never fully learned language during infancy, she was incapable of possessing a full vocabulary even with aid and rehabilitation as her brain hadn't developed properly due to her isolation. She also had an awkward walk and animalistic tendencies. I would imagine that if you carried out such isolation for a period of 15-20 years, the humans that you would produce would be primitive in every way, shape and form. They would be incapable of properly understanding modern language. Their cognitive abilities would be dull and ineffective at problem solving. Granted, they wouldn't be as primitive as our early Homo Sapiens ancestors, but, they would be primitive and unable to integrate into society nonetheless. Such an experiment, while it would offer incredible insight into the role that culture plays into our development, it would be railed against and shut down by the UN and every single left group that you can imagine. I'm all for it, though. Sure, you could say "but you're taking away their right to live! You're dehumanising them!", but, I believe that what makes us 'human' is constructed by our society. We all enter this world as a, more or less, clean slate. Our personality traits are determined by our upbringing and influenced by our genetics. Even though I believe this, I still cringe at the thought of this experiment. Nonetheless, it needs to happen if we're to understand human nature and to move on as a collective species.[/spoiler]

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                      • It has already been tried. The subject didn't survive, and the scientist in question was almost sent to prison. The subject wouldn't learn to read, how would they know where to 'excrete' and how would they learn to read? Without external stimuli humans develop mania or depression, and this creates a loop which eventually degrades what little processing power they have until the brain rage quits and the body dies. Humans are reactive creatures. We REQUIRE stimuli, just like every. Single. Life. Form. Ever. On a side note, sadism is unbecoming. An intellectual self exam of the question would be better than to ask an opinion of the masses. A third note- To all who think it should be done, assume it was done to you. Just ponder that. You wouldn't have the processing power to write that post, the motivation to respond (you would probably go into mental shock if it was your first outside interaction) and at the very least you may not even have the physical strength to type it. Hells! You wouldn't even be able to read the thing!

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                      • I'm pretty sure they would come out bereft of many necessary functions such as language, which are essential in the analysis of the world.

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                        • Edited by Jphn_33: 11/5/2014 7:09:52 PM
                          [spoiler]This experiment should not be tried, because there is no morally 'blank slate'. Even if someone is influenced from a very young age, it is ultimately up to that person to decide if they agree with what they've been taught or not. Everyone starts out with a different personality, and different thoughts. This is evidenced by children that turn out to be very different from their parents, even being polar opposites. Not to mention the person in isolation would have no knowledge of how to speak or interact with others, and would be just as imprintable because they know nothing about the new world they are introduced to. If I wanted, I could also find some studies on people with amnesia, because they'd be very much in the same place as someone in the proposed experiment.[/spoiler] Saving the world from one more wall of text.

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                          • So their going to ruin kids life because they want to do a "experiment"? How is this legal?

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                            • Maybe, but what purpose would it serve besides answering a hypothetical question? Would we make scientific advances from this, and if so, would those advances be worth the time and money required to perform and effective longitudinal experiment?

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                              • I want to see it done

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                                • Thank you for the tl;dr. You are a true hero. As for the experiment, I've always wanted to see it done. It would prove hundreds of theories. One would be if being gay is effective at birth. Maybe they would be homosexual, but definitely not [i]heeeyyyy giiirrrlll[/i] and rainbow makeup feathers gay. All human traits are adaptive, because they want to fit in. Not a single person I've seen is a product of their own imagination. Instead, they just do what they are told is cool.

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                                  • Thought this would be a sexual position I'll be going now ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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                                  • do you think genie was really retarded at birth or was her isolation a major factor in her underdeveloped skills?

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                                    • Wow, that was a terrible short story.

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                                    • Edited by DesticularCancer: 11/5/2014 4:35:25 PM
                                      Your 'experiment' and your argument, seems more about expressing your own cruel fantasies in a creative way so as to disassociate yourself from them, while still actively engaging in the fantasy, than science. I'd say the entire post is designed in such a way that it completely invalidates your experiment and goes off into a mad ramble using the word "controversy" as a justification for again, wait for it. Expressing your power fantasy in a way that you might feel is cleverly masked but is in fact blatantly obvious, I'd be surprised if you aren't semi erect at this point because you're also displaying overt exhibitionist tendencies by posting this here, most likely in the false belief that nobody knows what you're actually doing. Which also secretly gets you off a little. Here's hoping you don't have any pets in the house.

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                                        I find this experiment fascinating, however believe it should not be attempted because I think the first outcome you mentioned will occur and it would be a waste of time and money. Also the addition of writing utensils would probably prove nothing as I would bet the subject would at most use them to draw their surroundings.

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