Lynne Kiesling
Randall Parker has one of his typically lucid and informative posts on the oxytocin and trust research to which I pointed yesterday. Note also that his focus, and the focus of his commenters, is unlike mine in that it’s much more on how to use this research to come up with new drugs, whereas I think it’s more valuable to use this research to inform our understanding of why and how we can overcome our innate distrust of strangers to ever even achieve impersonal exchange.
I sense a new date rape drug coming along. This was one of my problems with Star Wars at a practical level: how could you ever trust a Jedi? And especially in a singles bar? One gets the impression that the Empire’s evilness has been oversold, and that in fact it is the self-appointed, uncontrollable Jedi who are the real menace. That would be an interesting movie.