Serotonin may affect our sense of fairness... hmmm.

Many folks I talk with believe a sense of fairness must come from either the genes or the home -- the old nature vs. nurture argument. Some argue that wherever it comes from -- we like to attribute to childhood -- humans just grow out of it.

Now Science, the the peer-reviewed journal , is reporting that "the neurotransmitter serotonin, which acts as a chemical messenger between nerve cells, plays a critical role in regulating emotions such as aggression during social decision-making," based on new research by scientists at England's University of Cambridge and UCLA: http://www.physorg.com/news132055144.html

The experimentation involved a money game which I've played at an Esalen workshop where the subjects were as to give and receive 'fair' offers for the win-win receipt, exchange, or rejection of 'insulting" offers. Interesting enough to see yourself play a game with no real cost to yourself financially but some perceived costs socially or for self-esteem -- and sometimes still be stingy!

The scientists in these games then added or subtracted 'happy' seratonin-replacement drugs to the game's baseline results and found that insecure, depressed and pissed off people are less willing to be fair - in fact, are more likely to be downright aggressive. Prozac Nation R US!

Perhaps we should just add seratonin to the drinking water like floride here. In Failed States like Darfur, Somalia, DRCongo, maybe adding it into the rice, tobacco or ganga would help.

What do you think?

Who Do WE Execute? Why Them? Fair?

Folks often have a dim view of lawyers, unless you don't have one when you're in trouble. And look at who most often does not have any, adequate, consistent public defenders: poor people get lousy lawyers. Then, they die. Talk about making a difference!

Successful Death Penalty appeals showed that the problem with the sentencing was not the method of execution — the issue ruled on by the Supreme Court last month — but instead bad legal help.

“All these states are gearing up to start executing people again, and nobody seems to be concerned about the systemic problems like lousy lawyers,” was the recent ACLU winning argument.

See more about this ongoing unfairness at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/us/07execute.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

And let me know what we can do about it?

What's a fair price for one life?

Given the rash of natural disasters in the last few years, and the generous outpouring of donations to victims in New Orleans, Indonesia, Burma and China, its remarkable to see economists attempt to parce the value of one life.

One method, say the authors of Freakonomics, is to look at the amount of money donated to support those causes, and how it has diminished per capita over time. See the NYTimes article here:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/how-pure-is-your-altruism/

There's also another, more direct "price point" set for one human life as a result of insurance claims for those disasters and others like the Lockerbee airplane bombing settlement.

I'll look for more info on those to seed this economic / valuation of life, and to question if it's fair or not.