Is this some trick to distract us from the super fun racism fight we're having in Jonah's post?

How old are you again Charles? I am reminded of correcting waaay too many freshman thesis papers with this basic concept arrived at presumably by smoking some joints for inspiration a few hours before the paper was due.

Oh and the research that addresses this concept does NOT have subjects stroking nipples (surprise dear readers!)

Interesting demo, Chuck.

I think you're crazy.

Mudede said nipple!

And, uh, bullshit. You're referencing some interesting neurobiology, but there are additional sensory neurons that fire with actual touch, and all of the mental richness of watching a reaction that you know you caused. . . basically, "This means the inside is no different from the outside. How you experience your own body is also how you see another human experience their own body" is a totally dumbshit thing to say because it's just so obviously false.

What would we have to do to make you stop?

It has occurred to me that perhaps everything, absolutely everything, that he ever posts is satire.

Gawd, I hope so.

And the brain works on an holistic scheme, so it's even more hoopy than you think it is, Charles.

Unless you're McCain, in which case some of them kind of wander off to do unrelated things - or don't even get there.

so, you're willing to be celibate the rest of your life, as long as you get to watch somebody else go at it?

@16: Yes.

Hence the internet. A vast repository of mirror neuron stimuli allowing nerds to experience sex.

yeah and how do you really know anything like, really exists, dude?
{phhhhhhhhhhhh...}

yeah like in this one book I read? The world was run by giant corporations and they just gave every drugs that made them think that it was all like this land of milk and honey? And you know? Like the reality was it was all this horrible rusty nuked out asphalt wasteland and stuff? But like people didn't know because they were on these drugs and didn't even know it? {phhhhhhhhhhhh...sssssssssssssssssss}

{hey gimme dat}

You mean like they got all the drugs they wanted, and didn't have to pay for them?

Yeah dude.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Heh heh heh hehh.

Hee hee hee hee."

titled: Dickensian Platonists discuss a Philosophy of Aesthetics, 2008 by:

Let's not get carried away here. Yes, mirror neurons are the biological basis for human feelings like empathy. When a human sees someone crying, spreading distribution in neurons activates other neurons that are commonly active at the same time:


other person crying(-->*)you crying-->you cry when sad-->other person is sad

* mirror neuron link

At the same time, mirror neurons are not nerve endings. They have their own synaptic links that are separately from those that fire when we actually experience tactile sensation. They are linked to those nerve ending neurons, but it's not (entirely) bi-directional. Watching someone bump their shin may make you wince, but it's not the same. Get over The Matrix, you potheads. =)