5) You're a Big Mo.

Okay. I simplified things a little.

Purely in the interests of humor.

Anyway, what's really fascinating are the implications of this study. Jonah Lehrer, editor at large for Seed Magazine and, along with Chris Mooney, another candidate for the "Hottest Guys in Science Blogging" calendar that Seed needs to do, argues that this changes our understanding of how porn works.

At first glance, the answer seems obvious: watching porn triggers an idea (we start thinking about sex), which then triggers a change in our behavior (we become sexually aroused). This is how most of us think about thinking: sensations cause thoughts which cause physical responses. Porn is a quintessential example of how such a thought process might work.

But this straightforward answer is entirely wrong. Porn does not cause us to think about sex. Rather, porn causes to think we are having sex. From the perspective of the brain, the act of arousal is not preceded by a separate idea, which we absorb via the television screen. The act itself is the idea. In other words, porn works by convincing us that we are not watching porn. We think we are inside the screen, doing the deed.

Since I'm running a high-brow site here (no snickering, please,) this also suggests that films, books, fiction in general, isn't pleasing because it creates a representational world but on some level creates a real one for the mind to in habit.

Boom. Interesting, huh?

No? Well, fancy this: if this finding and interpretation continues to play out, consider for a moment the argument that censors make, that seeing disconcerting images is damaging to people, causing them to engage in anti-social or illegal behaviors. Bad logic, right? Well, since mirror neurons are being triggered here, and since those same mirror neurons play a large role in allowing us to do things in the real world as well, are we not teaching/normalizing/encouraging anti-social or illegal behaviors the more people see such imagery? Since the mind can't differentiate between the real and virtual, aren't the censors then right, and we should greatly curtail what is experienced, in the interests of making a better world?

Boom-boom.

Now consider this. Obviously, when watching a movie, a play or even a porno, while we can get carried away with what is going on, we are still quite capable of differentiating between what's real and what is unreal. We may identify with Superman on the screen, but we are quite aware that we are watching a movie, that bullets won't bounce off our chests, and that leaping into the air will only send us crashing to the ground. What else is at work in our brains, what else keeps us grounded as it were? What makes even the most absorbing novel or movie "only a movie," with our sense of the Real still left in tact? Why is it that, much to the consternation of Censors, we pretty much are capable of reading "objectionable" material, and still remain unaffected by it?

Boom-boom-boom.