alexlockwood.net

The Kyoto Protocol / human striatum enigma

Here’s an interesting one: quoting from an article in Science from October 2007 that I just got round to reading:

neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the striatum tracks a social partner’s decision to reciprocate or not reciprocate cooperation, appearing to encode abstract rewards such as the positive feeling garnered by mutual cooperation. (600)

The striatum provides a common-reward metric for decisions that offer rewards/outcomes in different modalities. That is, it offers a base equivalent, a converter, to measure the different, abstract, rewards. Particularly for social reciprocity.

Now, from the Kyoto Protocol:

The Parties included in Annex I shall, individually or jointly, ensure that their aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in Annex A do not exceed their assigned amounts… [etc.]

Now I know this is back of the beer mat theorizing, but all ideas start somewhere. So. The Kyoto Protocol is, if anything, a contract for reciprocity - we will cut emissions if you will. And not only are the different greenhouse gases made into carbon dioxide ‘equivalents’ (e.g. methane, nitrous oxide, all measured up against the CO2 factor), what is fascinating is that the rewards for reciprocity have also been, at some level, turned into their financial equivalent: hence, carbon trading.

I believe that what we do at the global, international, mass multitude level, can be thought through not just the metaphors that neuroscience brings us, but the actual science: that what happens when countries come together to agree the equivalents and reciprocation of an international agreement is no different, or an amplified record, of what is going on in the human brain for the same factors.

There is a way that neuroscience can illiuminate the abstract social processes of not only people but the structures of people: countries, governments, international agreements. It is this which fascinates me so much about the study of neuroscience and its application to the meta-narratives of our society. More on this as I develop the thoughts and do my research.