Wednesday, August 03, 2005

You are getting very, very nauseous

So apparently you can brainwash people into disliking food. This brings us some ethical issues that I never would have thought of if not for this guy:
"How would the child feel later on once you told them how you had manipulated them into eating their vegetables?" he said. "If you're going that far, why not use Photoshop to doctor their childhood photos to show them having problematic experiences with junk food?"

For that matter, Stock added, "it would be much simpler to give kids the offending food — a McDonald's burger, a pizza, whatever — and put a little something on it that makes them harmlessly sick … then you would really affect their eating."

I never thought of that -- what a great idea! Every time your kid wants ice cream, pour syrup of ipecac all over it. Voila! No more sharing with that ungrateful brat!

Actually, what really stunned me about this article was not the whole make-you-like-asparagus thing (though I would eat it just for the nifty side effect). I was shocked that "scientists" were "implanting false memories." That scenario has bad scifi written all over it.

P.S. The LA Times has the Worst. Registration. Process. Ever. Use bugmenot.

2 comments:

Thrillhous said...

Hold on there. You're telling me that scientists implanting false memories sounds like a bad story? You're saying you didn't like Bladerunner?

I think you just got put on DragonCon's enemies list.

Mrs_Thrillhous said...

So anyone who lies to their kid about Santa would be OK making them "harmlessly sick"? What is that anyway? Just a little puking? a couple of heaves with only a few chunks?

Days of Our Lives recently had a multi-year dragged-out storyline about a bad guy (Stefano) who implanted memories into people. I can attest to it being a bad bad BAD idea!