Are we born good or evil?

[Jazzy]

Do humans have an innate sense of morality? If so, where does it exist in the brain and how did it get there? BBC’s Horizon shows how scientists looking into the minds of babies and criminals are rewriting our ideas of right and wrong.

Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz – these men were notorious killers. But were they born bad?

In the hunt for morality, Horizon meets the scientists looking inside the minds of criminals to find out what makes their brains different. If you start out life with parts of your moral machinery broken, how likely are you to have a psychotic destiny? Could “defective moral hard-wiring” be used as a defence in court? And what would it take for things to fall out of balance in our “normal” brains? Could we all become natural born killers?

Horizon finds out just how delicately balanced our brains are.

What do you think?

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Could “defective moral hard-wiring” be used as a defence in court?

It already is used but called something else.

I think no matter how a person is "programmed" they can still have a sense of right and wrong based on what they're taught throughout their entire life.

 

[Evil Eye]

Does that video just cut off at 47:05 for anyone else?

 

[DrLeftover]

Nature versus Nurture.

Right now the wind is blowing toward "nature" in homosexuality, and in addictive behavior such as drug use and smoking, and even obesity, regardless of how thin the supporting science is. pun? what pun?

So I wouldn't bet good money either way.

Oh, yeah, there is a 'born that way' thing to gambling now as well.

 

[Evil Eye]

Nature versus Nurture.

Exactly.
With some legal standing even.

I wonder if one could argue against the existence of free will in a court room and win, thereby getting away with any crime committed.

 

[dether]

We were born as a clean sheet, the kind of people we surround ourselves influences who we are.

 

[DrLeftover]

There are a few that are born with the wiring of their brains somehow different from the rest of us, such as the classic psychopath.

Most of those either end up as serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy,

Or politicians

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/the-startling-accuracy-of-referring-to-politicians-as-psychopaths/260517/