🔓 Unlocked: How We’re Becoming Bigger Jerks Online

Face-altering images are encouraging selfish behavior. Plus: the top science news—the physics of dancing peanuts in beer; why biomolecules are left- and right-handed; humans changing Earth's axis; and more. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( June 20, 2023   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Good Morning! If you’re reading this, then you’ve registered for our non-member newsletter. Enjoy the top science news—plus this unlocked story, below, on us. And have a great Tuesday! [READ NAUTILUS](   DISCOVERIES The Top Science News This Week   [“Breakthrough” Could Explain Why Life Molecules Are Left- or Right-Handed]( The bias at the bottom of Earth’s biology. [Science→](   [Drift of Earth's Pole Confirms Groundwater Depletion as a Significant Contributor to Global Sea Level Rise 1993–2010]( Humans have managed to shift the pole around which Earth itself rotates—with irrigation. [Geophysical Research Letters→](   [The Physics of Dancing Peanuts in Beer]( “When immersed, peanuts do not sink completely, and instead they present a peculiar behavior: continuous movement up and down.” [Royal Society Open Science→](   [Prospects for the Characterization of Habitable Planets]( Rethinking what makes an alien world livable. [arXiv→](   [The Evolution of Early Hominin Food Production and Sharing]( What drove our primate ancestors to start being generous? [PNAS→](   [Most Advanced Synthetic Human Embryos Yet Spark Controversy]( They’re similar enough to the real thing to be scientifically useful, yet different enough to skirt regulations. [Nature News→](   [His Baby Gene Editing Shocked Ethicists. Now He's in the Lab Again]( What He Jiankui is doing is “a mixture of reckless and absurd.” [NPR→](   [Archaeologists Find a 3,000-Year-Old Sword So Well Preserved It’s Still Gleaming]( The impressively crafted weapon does not appear to be merely ceremonial. [CNN→]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   From The Porthole   [TECHNOLOGY]( [How We’re Becoming Bigger Jerks Online]( Face-altering images are encouraging selfish behavior. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER The disquieting sci-fi show Black Mirror has been on a bit of a hiatus since 2019—but no longer. The latest season, Black Mirror’s sixth, was released last week. If you’re a fan of dystopian depictions of societal decay and social derangement brought on by technology that’s eerily close to being real (or real already) you can rejoice! I’ll be watching the newest episodes with you—and I wouldn’t be surprised if the computer scientist [Iyad Rahwan]( joins us. Rahwan directs the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, where, according to his [website](, he’s focused on understanding “how intelligent machines impact humanity.” Given that avenue of curiosity, it seems inevitable that Rahwan would be inspired by the imaginatively bleak scenarios Black Mirror brings to life. And that’s exactly how his new [paper](, co-authored with social psychologist [Nils Köbis]( and others, came about. The research explores a more benign version of the situation the Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire” dramatizes. As Rahwan and his colleagues describe the episode, “soldiers perceive the world through a real-time AI filter that turns their adversaries into monstrous mutants to overcome their reluctance to kill.” [[ratio]  ]( FILTERING OUT HUMANITY: A clip from Black Mirror mentioning how militaries might alter soldiers’ perception using AI to dampen the hesitation and trauma associated with shooting people. Credit: AnheloSP / YouTube. The researchers take the episode to be a meditation on the impact face-blurring technology could have on us ethically and psychologically. Many of us, they point out, are already desensitized to the routine use of sophisticated image-altering filters on apps like TikTok, where users can, for example, look like their [teenage selves]( or, more controversially, [touch up]( their appearance. “What we do not fully realize yet is that filters could also change the way others see us. In the future, metaverse interactions and offline interactions mediated by augmented reality devices will offer endless possibilities for people to alter the way they see their environment or the way they see other people,” they write. “In this work, we focused on a simple alteration, which is already easily implementable in real-time: blurring the faces of others.” In three experiments, Rahwan and his colleagues had about 200 people play 10 rounds of two games online (specifically the Dictator Game and the Charity Game). In each game, you get to choose how much money ($2, in 10-cent increments) to give away to your partner who keeps the money you offer from one of the rounds as a payoff. In the Dictator Game, you keep what you don’t give away; in the Charity Game, the World Food Program keeps what you don’t give away. In two experiments, the researchers randomly assigned participants to have a picture of themselves their partner could see either blurred or unblurred. And in the third experiment, the subjects played the game while in a video call with each other, again with their faces blurred or unblurred. Rahwan and his colleagues say they came away with a robust effect: People who were playing with a blurred partner in the Dictator Game allocated money more selfishly. “This result aligns with the idea that blur filters enable moral disengagement by depersonalizing the individuals we interact with,” they write. It also supports earlier research on the ways AIs interacting with humans can affect moral decisions. In a 2021 [study](, Köbis and Rahwan found that AIs could act as “enablers of unethical behavior” that “may let people reap unethical benefits while feeling good about themselves, a potentially perilous interaction.” The results from the Charity Game, however, were mixed. In the video experiment, people gave their blurry partners more money than the charity; and in the non-video version, subjects did the opposite, giving more to the charity. What’s going on? “The social interaction with the partner is more pronounced in the video format through the interactive and simultaneous character,” they write, “and could potentially explain the flipped effect.” On Twitter, Rahwan hinted that this is just the beginning of a series of experiments. “This work is part of our ongoing efforts to explore the concept of ‘Science Fiction Science’ (or sci-fi-sci for short):” he said, “to simulate future worlds, then test hypotheses about human behavior in those futures.” Stay tuned. Brian Gallagher is an associate editor at Nautilus. Follow him on Twitter [@bsgallagher](. The Porthole is a new Nautilus section dedicated to bringing you short sharp looks at science. More from The Porthole: • [Does dream inception work?]( • [Why we hallucinate supernatural explanations](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A MEMBER [The Dark Side of Storytelling]( [Issue 49 of Nautilus]( features “The Comet Year,” in which emergency physician Clayton Dalton meditates on the nature of the divergent storytelling around the causes of COVID-19—and what our fractured standards for truth could mean for the future. [GET NAUTILUS IN PRINT]( Thanks for reading. [Tell us](mailto:brian.gallagher@nautil.us) your thoughts on today’s note. Plus, [browse our archive]( of past print issues, and inspire a friend to sign up for [the Nautilus newsletter](. [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2023 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe](.