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Weiye Loh

It's Only A Theory: From the 2010 APA in Boston: Neuropsychology and ethics - 0 views

itisonlyatheory.blogspot.com/...in-boston-neuropsychology.html

Ethics Neuropsychology

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Joshua Greene from Harvard, known for his research on "neuroethics," the neurological underpinnings of ethical decision making in humans. The title of Greene's talk was "Beyond point-and-shoot morality: why cognitive neuroscience matters for ethics."
  • What Greene is interested in is to find out to what factors moral judgment is sensitive to, and whether it is sensitive to the relevant factors. He presented his dual process theory of morality. In this respect, he proposed an analogy with a camera. Cameras have automatic (point and shoot) settings as well as manual controls. The first mode is good enough for most purposes, the second allows the user to fine tune the settings more carefully. The two modes allow for a nice combination of efficiency and flexibility.
  • The idea is that the human brain also has two modes, a set of efficient automatic responses and a manual mode that makes us more flexible in response to non standard situations. The non moral example is our response to potential threats. Here the amygdala is very fast and efficient at focusing on potential threats (e.g., the outline of eyes in the dark), even when there actually is no threat (it's a controlled experiment in a lab, no lurking predator around).
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  • Delayed gratification illustrates the interaction between the two modes. The brain is attracted by immediate rewards, no matter what kind. However, when larger rewards are eventually going to become available, other parts of the brain come into play to override (sometimes) the immediate urge.
  • Greene's research shows that our automatic setting is "Kantian," meaning that our intuitive responses are deontological, rule driven. The manual setting, on the other hand, tends to be more utilitarian / consequentialist. Accordingly, the first mode involves emotional areas of the brain, the second one involves more cognitive areas.
  • The evidence comes from the (in)famous trolley dilemma and it's many variations.
  • when people refuse to intervene in the footbridge (as opposed to the lever) version of the dilemma, they do so because of a strong emotional response, which contradicts the otherwise utilitarian calculus they make when considering the lever version.
  • psychopaths turn out to be more utilitarian than normal subjects - presumably not because consequentialism is inherently pathological, but because their emotional responses are stunted. Mood also affects the results, with people exposed to comedy (to enhance mood), for instance, more likely to say that it is okay to push the guy off the footbridge.
  • In a more recent experiment, subjects were asked to say which action carried the better consequences, which made them feel worse, and which was overall morally acceptable. The idea was to separate the cognitive, emotional and integrative aspects of moral decision making. Predictably, activity in the amygdala correlated with deontological judgment, activity in more cognitive areas was associated with utilitarianism, and different brain regions became involved in integrating the two.
  • Another recent experiment used visual vs. verbal descriptions of moral dilemmas. Turns out that more visual people tend to behave emotionally / deontologically, while more verbal people are more utilitarian.
  • studies show that interfering with moral judgment by engaging subjects with a cognitive task slows down (though it does not reverse) utilitarian judgment, but has no effect on deontological judgment. Again, in agreement with the conclusion that the first type of modality is the result of cognition, the latter of emotion.
  • Nice to know, by the way, that when experimenters controlled for "real world expectations" that people have about trolleys, or when they used more realistic scenarios than trolleys and bridges, the results don't vary. In other words, trolley thought experiments are actually informative, contrary to popular criticisms.
  • What factors affect people's decision making in moral judgment? The main one is proximity, with people feeling much stronger obligations if they are present to the event posing the dilemma, or even relatively near (a disaster happens in a nearby country), as opposed to when they are far (a country on the other side of the world).
  • Greene's general conclusion is that neuroscience matters to ethics because it reveals the hidden mechanisms of human moral decision making. However, he says this is interesting to philosophers because it may lead to question ethical theories that are implicitly or explicitly based on such judgments. But neither philosophical deontology nor consequentialism are in fact based on common moral judgments, seems to me. They are the result of explicit analysis. (Though Greene raises the possibility that some philosophers engage in rationalizing, rather than reason, as in Kant's famously convoluted idea that masturbation is wrong because one is using oneself as a mean to an end...)
  • this is not to say that understanding moral decision making in humans isn't interesting or in fact even helpful in real life cases. An example of the latter is the common moral condemnation of incest, which is an emotional reaction that probably evolved to avoid genetically diseased offspring. It follows that science can tell us that three is nothing morally wrong in cases of incest when precautions have been taken to avoid pregnancy (and assuming psychological reactions are also accounted for). Greene puts this in terms of science helping us to transform difficult ought questions into easier ought questions.
Weiye Loh

"The Particle-Emissions Dilemma" by Henning Rodhe | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...the-particle-emissions-dilemma

Particle Energy Climate Change Health

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the cooling effect of white particles may counteract as much as about half of the warming effect of carbon dioxide. So, if all white particles were removed from the atmosphere, global warming would increase considerably.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe dilemma is that all particles, whether white or black, constitute a serious problem for human health. Every year, an estimated two million people worldwide die prematurely, owing to the effects of breathing polluted air. Furthermore, sulfur-rich white particles contribute to the acidification of soil and water.
  • Naturally, measures targeting soot and other short-lived particles must not undermine efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. In the long term, emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases constitute the main problem. But a reduction in emissions of soot (and other short-lived climate pollutants) could alleviate the pressures on the climate in the coming decades.
  • what do we do about white particles? How do we weigh improved health and reduced mortality rates for hundreds of thousands of people against the serious consequences of global warming?CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphIt is difficult to imagine that any country’s officials would knowingly submit their population to higher health risks by not acting to reduce white particles solely because they counteract global warming. On the contrary, sulfur emissions have been reduced over the last few decades in both Europe and North America, owing to a desire to promote health and counter acidification; and China, too, seems to be taking measures to reduce sulfur emissions and improve the country’s terrible air quality. But, in other parts of the world where industrialization is accelerating, sulfur emissions continue to increase.
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  • Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has suggested another solution: manipulate the climate by releasing white sulfur particles high up in the stratosphere, where they would remain for several years, exerting a proven cooling effect on Earth’s climate without affecting human health. In 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines created a haze of sulfur in the higher atmosphere that cooled the entire planet approximately half a degree Celsius for two years afterwards.
  • View/Create comment on this paragraphOther methods of geoengineering – that is, consciously manipulating the climate – include painting the roofs of houses white in order to increase the reflection of sunlight, covering deserts with reflective plastic, and fertilizing the seas with iron in order to increase the absorption of CO2.
  • Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 12
     
    Particle emissions into Earth's atmosphere affect both human health and the climate. So we should limit them, right? For health reasons, yes, we should indeed do that; but, paradoxically, limiting such emissions would cause global warming to increase
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: On ethics, part III: Deontology - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...thics-part-iii-deontology.html

Ethics Deontology

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Plato showed convincingly in his Euthyphro dialogue that even if gods existed they would not help at all settling the question of morality.
  • Broadly speaking, deontological approaches fall into the same category as consequentialism — they are concerned with what we ought to do, as opposed to what sort of persons we ought to be (the latter is, most famously, the concern of virtue ethics). That said, deontology is the chief rival of consequentialism, and the two have distinct advantages and disadvantages that seem so irreducible
  • Here is one way to understand the difference between consequentialism and deontology: for the former the consequences of an action are moral if they increase the Good (which, as we have seen, can be specified in different ways, including increasing happiness and/or decreasing pain). For the latter, the fundamental criterion is conformity to moral duties. You could say that for the deontologist the Right (sometimes) trumps the Good. Of course, as a result consequentialists have to go through the trouble of defining and justifying the Good, while deontologists have to tackle the task of defining and justifying the Right.
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  • two major “modes” of deontology: agent-centered and victim-centered. Agent-centered deontology is concerned with permissions and obligations to act toward other agents, the typical example being parents’ duty to protect and nurture their children. Notice the immediate departure from consequentialism, here, since the latter is an agent-neutral type of ethics (we have seen that it has trouble justifying the idea of special treatment of relatives or friends). Where do such agent-relative obligations come from? From the fact that we make explicit or implicit promises to some agents but not others. By bringing my child into the world, for instance, I make a special promise to that particular individual, a promise that I do not make to anyone else’s children. While this certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t have duties toward other children (like inflicting no intentional harm), it does mean that I have additional duties toward my own children as a result of the simple fact that they are mine.
  • Agent-centered deontology gets into trouble because of its close philosophical association to some doctrines that originated within Catholic theology, like the idea of double effect. (I should immediately clarify that the trouble is not due to the fact that these doctrines are rooted in a religious framework, it’s their intrinsic moral logic that is at issue here.) For instance, for agent-centered deontologists we are morally forbidden from killing innocent others (reasonably enough), but this prohibition extends even to cases when so doing would actually save even more innocents.
  • Those familiar with trolleology will recognize one of the classic forms of the trolley dilemma here: is it right to throw an innocent person in front of the out of control trolley in order to save five others? For consequentialists the answer is a no-brainer: of course yes, you are saving a net of four lives! But for the deontologist you are now using another person (the innocent you are throwing to stop the trolley) as a means to an end, thus violating one of the forms of Kant’s imperative:“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.”
  • The other form, in case you are wondering, is: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”
  • Victim-centered deontologies are right- rather than duty-based, which of course does raise the question of why we think of them as deontological to begin with.
  • The fundamental idea about victim-centered deontology is the right that people have not to be used by others without their consent. This is were we find Robert Nozick-style libertarianism, which I have already criticized on this blog. One of the major implications of this version of deontology is that there is no strong moral duty to help others.
  • contractarian deontological theories. These deal with social contracts of the type, for instance, discussed by John Rawls in his theory of justice. However, I will devote a separate post to contractarianism, in part because it is so important in ethics, and in part because one can argue that contractarianism is really a meta-ethical theory, and therefore does not strictly fall under deontology per se.
  • deontological theories have the advantage over consequentialism in that they account for special concerns for one’s relatives and friends, as we have seen above. Consequentialism, by comparison, comes across as alienating and unreasonably demanding. Another advantage of deontology over consequentialism is that it accounts for the intuition that even if an act is not morally demanded it may still be praiseworthy. For a consequentialist, on the contrary, if something is not morally demanded it is then morally forbidden. (Another way to put this is that consequentialism is a more minimalist approach to ethics than deontology.) Moreover, deontology also deals much better than consequentialism with the idea of rights.
  • deontological theories run into the problem that they seem to give us permission, and sometimes even require, to make things actually morally worse in the world. Indeed, a strict deontologist could actually cause human catastrophes by adhering to Kant’s imperative and still think he acted morally (Kant at one point remarked that it is “better the whole people should perish” than that injustice be done — one wonders injustice to whom, since nobody would be left standing). Deontologists also have trouble dealing with the seemingly contradictory ideas that our duties are categorical (i.e., they do not admit of exceptions), and yet that some duties are more important than others. (Again, Kant famously stated that “a conflict of duties is inconceivable” while forgetting to provide any argument in defense of such a bold statement.)
  • . One famous attempt at this reconciliation was proposed by Thomas Nagel (he of “what is it like to be a bat?” fame). Nagel suggested that perhaps we should be consequentialists when it comes to agent-neutral reasoning, and deontologists when we engage in agent-relative reasoning. He neglected to specify, however, any non-mysterious way to decide what to do in those situations in which the same moral dilemma can be seen from both perspectives.
Weiye Loh

First principles of justice: Rights and wrongs | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displayStory.cfm

wrongs Ethics dilemmas

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Mr Sandel illustrates the old classroom chestnut—is it ever right to kill one innocent person to save the lives of several others?—with a horrifying dilemma from Afghanistan in 2005. A four-man American unit on reconnaissance behind lines stumbled on a shepherd likely, if let go, to betray them to the Taliban. They could not hold him prisoner. Nor, on moral grounds, would the serviceman in charge kill him. Released, the shepherd alerted the Taliban, who surrounded the unit. Three were killed along with 16 Americans in a rescue helicopter. The soldier in command, who lived, called his decision “stupid, lamebrained and southern-fried”. Which was right, his earlier refusal or his later regret?
  • He returns also to an old charge against the late John Rawls. In “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice” (1982) Mr Sandel argued that Rawls’s celebrated account of social justice downplayed the moral weight of family feeling, group loyalties and community attachments. He repeats those “communitarian” charges here.
Weiye Loh

Miracle tale of two babies -  Latest news around the world and developments c... - 0 views

news.sg.msn.com/...article.aspx

Conjoined Twins Medicine Dilemma

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Nov 09 - No Cached
  • Australian surgeons have separated two-year-old twin sisters who were born co-joined at their heads with brains, skulls and network of blood vessels dangerously linked.
  • But here's an uncomfortable issue: Thousands of babies and infants die every day in developing countries from preventable and easily treatable diseases and conditions, like diarrhoea and malnutrition. They do so because of a lack of basic resources and rudimentary care ... in other words not enough money. So what about them? Could the money and effort that saved the twins have been better used to help perhaps thousands of other babies? Then again, is there a truly moral dilemma here? Or is it false to characterise this as an 'either-or' situation?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 19 Nov 09
       
      hmm... It is never a case of the world not having enough to go around, but a case of uneven distribution. So is it ok to maintain this uneven distribution? Inequality to encourage people to work for it and not just be lazy bums... Very Ayn Rand. Or the other extreme whereby everything is equal? Where's the balance? Reminds me of an article on NYT about work/life balance. The author Jay Goltz says that "everyone talks about balance. There is no balance. Balance is perfect. There is nothing perfect in work/life balance. It is about compromise, choices and, often, regret." (source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/an-entrepreneurial-life/) Maybe we can attempt to make this world more ethical, more balance... but ultimately, we just have to live with the compromises, choices, and regrets.
Meenatchi

RIAJ push for mobile phone DRM across Japan - 2 views

Article Summary: http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/riaj-push-for-mobile-phone-drm-across-japan-20090915/ The article talks about the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) attempting t...

Digital Rights DRM

started by Meenatchi on 16 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Jody Poh

Web tools help protect human rights activists - 7 views

1) I think it depends what is being censored. I think things like opinions should not be censored because it is violating the natural rights of a human. However, one can argue that online censors...

"Online censorship" "digital rights" 'Internet privacy tools"

started by Meenatchi on 01 Sep 09 1 follow-up, last by Jody Poh on 01 Sep 09
guanyou chen

Ethically confusing defamation problem - 4 views

Link: http://www.rednano.sg/sfe/pastnews.action?&querystring=online%20defamation&pubid=ST&sort=D Summary: A man who visited and then later robbed a prostitute was chastised a...

defamation online forum

started by guanyou chen on 19 Aug 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

The Dilemma: Science or Bayes? - Less Wrong - 0 views

lesswrong.com/...the_dilemma_science_or_bayes

Science Bayes Probility

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 22 Sep 10
     
    Science or Bayes
Weiye Loh

Titans of science: David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...d-attenborough-richard-dawkins

Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • What is the one bit of science from your field that you think everyone should know?David Attenborough: The unity of life.Richard Dawkins: The unity of life that comes about through evolution, since we're all descended from a single common ancestor. It's almost too good to be true, that on one planet this extraordinary complexity of life should have come about by what is pretty much an intelligible process. And we're the only species capable of understanding it.
  • RD: I know you're working on a programme about Cambrian and pre-Cambrian fossils, David. A lot of people might think, "These are very old animals, at the beginning of evolution; they weren't very good at what they did." I suspect that isn't the case?DA: They were just as good, but as generalists, most were ousted from the competition.RD: So it probably is true there's a progressive element to evolution in the short term but not in the long term – that when a lineage branches out, it gets better for about five million years but not 500 million years. You wouldn't see progressive improvement over that kind of time scale.DA: No, things get more and more specialised. Not necessarily better.RD: The "camera" eyes of any modern animal would be better than what had come before.DA: Certainly... but they don't elaborate beyond function. When I listen to a soprano sing a Handel aria with an astonishing coloratura from that particular larynx, I say to myself, there has to be a biological reason that was useful at some stage. The larynx of a human being did not evolve without having some function. And the only function I can see is sexual attraction.RD: Sexual selection is important and probably underrated.DA: What I like to think is that if I think the male bird of paradise is beautiful, my appreciation of it is precisely the same as a female bird of paradise.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10
       
      Is survivability really all about sex and reproduction of future generation? 
  • People say Richard Feynman had one of these extraordinary minds that could grapple with ideas of which I have no concept. And you hear all the ancillary bits – like he was a good bongo player – that make him human. So I admire this man who could not only deal with string theory but also play the bongos. But he is beyond me. I have no idea what he was talking of.
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  • RD: There does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn't be too surprised about that because we're evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can't cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity.
  • DA: A physicist will tell me that this armchair is made of vibrations and that it's not really here at all. But when Samuel Johnson was asked to prove the material existence of reality, he just went up to a big stone and kicked it. I'm with him.
  • RD: It's intriguing that the chair is mostly empty space and the thing that stops you going through it is vibrations or energy fields. But it's also fascinating that, because we're animals that evolved to survive, what solidity is to most of us is something you can't walk through.
  • the science of the future may be vastly different from the science of today, and you have to have the humility to admit when you don't know. But instead of filling that vacuum with goblins or spirits, I think you should say, "Science is working on it."
  • DA: Yes, there was a letter in the paper [about Stephen Hawking's comments on the nonexistence of God] saying, "It's absolutely clear that the function of the world is to declare the glory of God." I thought, what does that sentence mean?!
  • What is the most difficult ethical dilemma facing science today?DA: How far do you go to preserve individual human life?RD: That's a good one, yes.DA: I mean, what are we to do with the NHS? How can you put a value in pounds, shillings and pence on an individual's life? There was a case with a bowel cancer drug – if you gave that drug, which costs several thousand pounds, it continued life for six weeks on. How can you make that decision?
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10
     
    Of mind and matter: David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins We paired up Britain's most celebrated scientists to chat about the big issues: the unity of life, ethics, energy, Handel - and the joy of riding a snowmobile
Weiye Loh

The X Factor of Economics - People - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17segal.html

Economics Economist

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • generally speaking, economists who thought it was a good idea at the time think it worked, and economists who thought otherwise beg to differ. And both sides make their cases with plenty of hard numbers.
  • Why do economists argue at all? Given that Fed members and economists are looking at the same data, and given the reams of evidence accumulated over decades — not to mention a few centuries of great minds, great theories and thick books that preceded this crisis — why isn’t a right answer self-evident?
  • the limits of economics is a subject that many in the field have been discussing for years, in print, in discussions with each other, and, in the case of Robert Solow, Nobel Prize winner and M.I.T. professor emeritus, with graduate students. “I talk about what it is about economics and economic life that leads to differences of opinion,” Mr. Solow said. “One point I always make to my graduate students is, avoid sound bites. Never sound more certain than you are.”
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  • the world doesn’t offer up clean economic experiments is a common refrain in the discipline
  • It’s not just that there is so little clear signal amid so much noise. It’s that many economists have a unique idea of what signal to listen to and what priority it deserves.
  • another great variable: personal values.
  • Economics, Mr. Mankiw concludes, won’t tell us, definitively, whether Peter or Paula is paying too much, because an answer inevitably leads to matters of values, which inevitably leads to different answers.
  • This is not to suggest that economics is a total free-for-all, lacking a broad consensus on any subject. Polls of economists have found near unanimity on topics like tariffs and import quotas (bad), centralized economies (very bad) and flexible, floating exchange rates (very good).
  • economics will forever have to contend with the biggest X factor of all: people.
  • certain amount of psychological guesswork is part of an economist’s job, which accounts for the rise in popularity of behavioral economics, an effort to account for the slippery, indefinite nexus of money and humans.
  • there’s a good reason that human irrationality isn’t part of the standard economic models, and this gets to the dilemma of economics.
  • Weiye Loh on 20 Oct 10
     
    On why economists disagree: The X Factor of Economics: People
Weiye Loh

Before Assange there was Jayakumar: Context, realpolitik, and the public inte... - 0 views

singapore2025.wordpress.com/...olitik-and-the-public-interest

Double Standard Wikileaks Singapore

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman’s remarks in the Wall Street Journal Asia piece, “Leaked cable spooks some U.S. sources” dated 3 Dec 2010. The paragraph in question went like this: “Others laid blame not on working U.S. diplomats, but on Wikileaks. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had “deep concerns about the damaging action of Wikileaks.” It added, ‘it is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence.’” (emphasis my own)
  • on 25 Jan 2003, the then Singapore Minister of Foreign Affairs and current Senior Minister without portfolio, Professor S Jayakumar, in an unprecedented move, unilaterally released all diplomatic and official correspondence relating to confidential discussions on water negotiations between Singapore and Malaysia from the year 2000. In a parliamentary speech that would have had Julian Assange smiling from ear to ear, Jayakumar said, “We therefore have no choice but to set the record straight by releasing these documents for people to judge for themselves the truth of the matter.” The parliamentary reason for the unprecedented release of information was the misrepresentations made by Malaysia over the price of water, amongst others.
  • The then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir’s response to Singapore’s pre-Wikileak wikileak was equally quote-worthy, “I don’t feel nice. You write a letter to your girlfriend. And your girlfriend circulates it to all her boyfriends. I don’t think I’ll get involved with that girl.”
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  • Mahathir did not leave it at that. He foreshadowed the Wikileak-chastised countries of today saying what William, the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US and Iran today, amongst others, must agree with, “It’s very difficult now for us to write letters at all because we might as well negotiate through the media.”
  • I proceeded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs homepage to search for the full press release. As I anticipated, there was a caveat. This is the press release in full: In response to media queries on the WikiLeaks release of confidential and secret-graded US diplomatic correspondence, the MFA Spokesman expressed deep concerns about the damaging action of WikiLeaks. It is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence, which is why Singapore has the Officials Secrets Act. In particular, the selective release of documents, especially when taken out of context, will only serve to sow confusion and fail to provide a complete picture of the important issues that were being discussed amongst leaders in the strictest of confidentiality.
  • The sentence in red seems to posit that the selective release of documents can be legitimised if released documents are not taken out of context. If this interpretation is true, then one can account for the political decision to release confidential correspondence covering the Singapore and Malaysia water talks referred to above. In parallel, one can imagine Assange or his supporters arguing that lies of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the advent of abject two-faced politics today to be sufficient grounds to justify the actions of Wikileaks. As for the arguments about confidentiality and official correspondence, the events in parliament in 2003 tell us no one should underestimate the ability of nation-states to do an Assange if it befits their purpose – be it directly, as Jayakumar did, or indirectly, through the media or some other medium of influence.
  • Timothy Garton Ash put out the dilemma perfectly when he said, “There is a public interest in understanding how the world works and what is done in our name. There is a public interest in the confidential conduct of foreign policy. The two public interests conflict.”
  • the advent of technology will only further blur the lines between these two public interests, if it has not already. Quite apart from technology, the absence of transparent and accountable institutions may also serve to guarantee the prospect of more of such embarrassing leaks in future.
  • In August 2009, there was considerable interest in Singapore about the circumstances behind the departure of Chip Goodyear, former CEO of the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton, from the national sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings. Before that, all the public knew was – in the name of leadership renewal – Chip Goodyear had been carefully chosen and apparently hand-picked to replace Ho Ching as CEO of Temasek Holdings. In response to Chip’s untimely departure, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was quoted, “People do want to know, there is curiosity, it is a matter of public interest. That is not sufficient reason to disclose information. It is not sufficient that there be curiosity and interest that you want to disclose information.”
  • Overly secretive and furtive politicians operating in a parliamentary democracy are unlikely to inspire confidence among an educated citizenry either, only serving to paradoxically fuel public cynicism and conspiracy theories.
  • I believe that government officials and politicians who perform their jobs honourably have nothing to fear from Wikileaks. I would admit that there is an inherent naivety and idealism in this position. But if the lesson from the Wikileaks episode portends a higher standard of ethical conduct, encourages transparency and accountability – all of which promote good governance, realpolitik notwithstanding – then it is perhaps a lesson all politicians and government officials should pay keen attention to.
  • Post-script: “These disclosures are largely of analysis and high-grade gossip. Insofar as they are sensational, it is in showing the corruption and mendacity of those in power, and the mismatch between what they claim and what they do….If American spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director general, he is entitled to hear of it. British voters should know what Afghan leaders thought of British troops. American (and British) taxpayers might question, too, how most of the billions of dollars going in aid to Afghanistan simply exits the country at Kabul airport.” –Simon Jenkins, Guardian
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » Further Thoughts on Atheism - 0 views

skepticblog.org/...further-thoughts-on-atheism

Religion Evolution Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Even before I started writing Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be I knew that it would very briefly mention religion, make a mild assertion that religious questions are out of scope for science, and move on. I knew this was likely to provoke blow-back from some in the atheist community, and I knew mentioning that blow-back in my recent post “The Standard Pablum — Science and Atheism” would generate more.
  • Still, I was surprised by the quantity of the responses to the blog post (208 comments as of this moment, many of them substantial letters), and also by the fierceness of some of those responses. For example, according to one poster, “you not only pandered, you lied. And even if you weren’t lying, you lied.” (Several took up this “lying” theme.) Another, disappointed that my children’s book does not tell a general youth audience to look to “secular humanism for guidance,” declared  that “I’d have to tear out that page if I bought the book.”
  • I don’t mean to suggest that there are not points of legitimate disagreement in the mix — there are, many of them stated powerfully. There are also statements of support, vigorous debate, and (for me at least) a good deal of food for thought. I invite anyone to browse the thread, although I’d urge you to skim some of it. (The internet is after all a hyperbole-generating machine.)
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  • I lack any belief in any deity. More than that, I am persuaded (by philosophical argument, not scientific evidence) to a high degree of confidence that gods and an afterlife do not exist.
  • do try to distinguish between my work as a science writer and skeptical activist on the one hand, and my personal opinions about religion and humanism on the other.
  • Atheism is a practical handicap for science outreach. I’m not naive about this, but I’m not cynical either. I’m a writer. I’m in the business of communicating ideas about science, not throwing up roadblocks and distractions. It’s good communication to keep things as clear, focused, and on-topic as possible.
  • Atheism is divisive for the skeptical community, and it distracts us from our core mandate. I was blunt about this in my 2007 essay “Where Do We Go From Here?”, writing, I’m both an atheist and a secular humanist, but it is clear to me that atheism is an albatross for the skeptical movement. It divides us, it distracts us, and it marginalizes us. Frankly, we can’t afford that. We need all the help we can get.
  • In What Do I Do Next? I urged skeptics to remember that there are many other skeptics who do hold or identify with some religion. Indeed, the modern skeptical movement is built partly on the work of people of faith (including giants like Harry Houdini and Martin Gardner). You don’t, after all, have to be against god to be against fraud.
  • In my Skeptical Inquirer article “The Paradoxical Future of Skepticism” I argued that skeptics must set aside the conceit that our goal is a cultural revolution or the dawning of a new Enlightenment. … When we focus on that distant, receding, and perhaps illusory goal, we fail to see the practical good we can do, the harm-reduction opportunities right in front of us. The long view subverts our understanding of the scale and hazard of paranormal beliefs, leading to sentiments that the paranormal is “trivial” or “played out.” By contrast, the immediate, local, human view — the view that asks “Will this help someone?” — sees obvious opportunities for every local group and grassroots skeptic to make a meaningful difference.
  • This practical argument, that skepticism can get more done if we keep our mandate tight and avoid alienating our best friends, seems to me an important one. Even so, it is not my main reason for arguing that atheism and skepticism are different projects.
  • In my opinion, Metaphysics and ethics are out of scope for science — and therefore out of scope for skepticism. This is by far the most important reason I set aside my own atheism when I put on my “skeptic” hat. It’s not that I don’t think atheism is rational — I do. That’s why I’m an atheist. But I know that I cannot claim scientific authority for a conclusion that science cannot test, confirm, or disprove. And so, I restrict myself as much as possible, in my role as a skeptic and science writer, to investigable claims. I’ve become a cheerleader for this “testable claims” criterion (and I’ll discuss it further in future posts) but it’s not a new or radical constriction of the scope of skepticism. It’s the traditional position occupied by skeptical organizations for decades.
  • In much of the commentary, I see an assumption that I must not really believe that testable paranormal and pseudoscientific claims (“I can read minds”) are different in kind from the untestable claims we often find at the core of religion (“god exists”). I acknowledge that many smart people disagree on this point, but I assure you that this is indeed what I think.
  • I’d like to call out one blogger’s response to my “Standard Pablum” post. The author certainly disagrees with me (we’ve discussed the topic often on Twitter), but I thank him for describing my position fairly: From what I’ve read of Daniel’s writings before, this seems to be a very consistent position that he has always maintained, not a new one he adopted for the book release. It appears to me that when Daniel says that science has nothing to say about religion, he really means it. I have nothing to say to that. It also appears to me that when he says skepticism is a “different project than atheism” he also means it.
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 10
     
    FURTHER THOUGHTS ON ATHEISM by DANIEL LOXTON, Mar 05 2010
Weiye Loh

To Die of Having Lived: an article by Richard Rapport | The American Scholar - 0 views

www.theamericanscholar.org/to-die-of-having-lived

Bioethics Death Technology

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Although it may be a form of arrogance to attempt the management of one’s own death, is it better to surrender that management to the arrogance of someone else? We know we can’t avoid dying, but perhaps we can avoid dying badly.
  • Dodging a bad death has become more complicated over the past 30 or 40 years. Before the advent of technological creations that permit vital functions to be sustained so well artificially, medical ethics were less obstructed by abstract definitions of death.
  • generally agreed upon criteria for brain death have simplified some of these confusions, but they have not solved them. The broad middle ground between our usual health and consciousness as the expected norm on the one hand, and clear death of the brain on the other, lacks certainty.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 17 Mar 10
       
      Isn't it always the case? That dichotomous relationships aren't clearly and equally demarcated but some how we attempt to split them up... through polemical discourses and rhetorics...
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Doctors and other health-care workers can provide patients and families with probabilities for improvement or recovery, but statistics are hardly what is wanted. Even after profound injury or the diagnosis of an illness that statistically is nearly certain to be fatal, what people hear is the word nearly. How do we not allow the death of someone who might be saved? How do we avoid the equally intolerable salvation of a clinically dead person?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 17 Mar 10
       
      In what situations do we hear the word "nearly" and in what situations do we hear the word "certain"? When we're dealing with a person's life, we hear "nearly", but when we're dealing with climate science we hear "certain"? 
  • Injecting political agendas into these end-of-life complexities only confuses the problem without providing a solution.
  • The questions are how, when, and on whose terms we depart. It is curious that people might be convinced to avoid confronting death while they are healthy, and that society tolerates ad hominem arguments that obstruct rational debate over an authentic problem of ethics in an uncertain world.
  • Any seriously ill older person who winds up in a modern CCU immediately yields his autonomy. Even if the doctors, nurses, and staff caring for him are intelligent, properly educated, humanistically motivated, and correct in the diagnosis, they are manipulated not only by the tyranny of technology but also by the rules established in their hospital. In addition, regulations of local and state licensing agencies and the federal government dictate the parameters of what the hospital workers do and how they do it, and every action taken is heavily influenced by legal experts committed to their client’s best interest—values frequently different from the patient’s. Once an acutely ill patient finds himself in this situation, everything possible will be done to save him; he is in no position to offer an opinion.
  • Eventually, after hours or days (depending on the illness and who is involved in the care), the wisdom of continuing treatment may come into question. But by then the patient will likely have been intubated and placed on a ventilator, a feeding tube may have been inserted, a catheter placed in the bladder, IVs started in peripheral veins or threaded through a major blood vessel near the heart, and monitors attached to record an EKG, arterial blood pressure, temperature, respirations, oxygen saturation, even pressure inside the skull. Sequential pressure devices will have been wrapped around the legs. All the digital marvels have alarms, so if one isn’t working properly, an annoying beep, like the sound of a backing truck, will fill the patient’s room. Vigilant nurses will add drugs by the dozens to the IV or push them into ports. Families will hover uncertainly. Meanwhile, tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars will have been transferred from one large corporation—an insurer of some kind—to another large corporation—a health care delivery system of some kind.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 17 Mar 10
       
      Perhaps then, the value of life is not so much life in itself per se, but rather the transactive amount it generates. 
  • While the expense of the drugs, manpower, and technology required to make a diagnosis and deliver therapy does sop up resources and thereby deny treatment that might be more fruitful for others, including the 46.3 million Americans who, according to the Census Bureau, have no health insurance, that isn’t the real dilemma of the critical care unit.
  • the problem isn’t getting into or out of a CCU; the predicament is in knowing who should be there in the first place.
  • Before we become ill, we tend to assume that everything can be treated and treated successfully. The prelate in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop was wiser. Approaching the end, he said to a younger priest, “I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.”
  • best way to avoid unwanted admission to a critical care unit at or near the end of life is to write an advance directive (a living will or durable power of attorney for health care) when healthy.
  • , not many people do this and, more regrettably, often the document is not included in the patient’s chart or it goes unnoticed.
  • Since we are sure to die of having lived, we should prepare for death before the last minute. Entire corporations are dedicated to teaching people how to retire well. All of their written materials, Web sites, and seminars begin with the same advice: start planning early. Shouldn’t we at least occasionally think about how we want to leave our lives?
  • Flannery O’Connor, who died young of systemic lupus, wrote, “Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don’t have it miss one of God’s mercies.”
  • Because we understand the metaphor of conflict so well, we are easily sold on the idea that we must resolutely fight against our afflictions (although there was once an article in The Onion titled “Man Loses Cowardly Battle With Cancer”). And there is a place to contest an abnormal metabolism, a mutation, a trauma, or an infection. But there is also a place to surrender. When the organs have failed, when the mind has dissolved, when the body that has faithfully housed us for our lifetime has abandoned us, what’s wrong with giving up?
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Mar 10
     
    Spring 2010 To Die of Having Lived A neurological surgeon reflects on what patients and their families should and should not do when the end draws near
Satveer

Why I hate stem-cell technologies & Regenerative Therapies - 5 views

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8314442.stm This article is another one of those regenerative therapies article that use of stem-cell technology to reverse aging because first world countries ar...

stem cell regenerative first world third

started by Satveer on 21 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
yongernn teo

Ethics and Values Case Study- Mercy Killing, Euthanasia - 8 views

www.brainmass.com/...86151

Euthanasia

shared by yongernn teo on 21 Oct 09 - Cached
  • yongernn teo on 21 Oct 09
     
    THE ETHICAL PROBLEM: Allowing someone to die, mercy death, and mercy killing, Euthanasia: A 24-year-old man named Robert who has a wife and child is paralyzed from the neck down in a motorcycle accident. He has always been very active and hates the idea of being paralyzed. He also is in a great deal of pain, an he has asked his doctors and other members of his family to "put him out of his misery." After several days of such pleading, his brother comes into Robert's hospital ward and asks him if he is sure he still wants to be put out of his misery. Robert says yes and pleads with his brother to kill him. The brother kisses and blesses Robert, then takes out a gun and shoots him, killing him instantly. The brother later is tried for murder and acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. Was what Robert's brother did moral? Do you think he should have been brought to trial at all? Do you think he should have been acquitted? Would you do the same for a loved one if you were asked? THE DISCUSSION: In my opinion, the most dubious part about the case would be the part on Robert pleading with his brother, asking his brother to kill him. This could be his brother's own account of the incident and could/could not have been a plea by Robert. 1) With assumption that Robert indeed pleaded with his brother to kill him, an ethical analysis as such could be derived: That Robert's brother was only respecting Robert's choice and killed him because he wanted to relieve him from his misery. This could be argued to be ethical using a teleoloigical framework where the focus is on the end-result and the consequences that entails the action. Here, although the act of killing per se may be wrong and illegal, Robert was able to relieved of his pain and suffering. 2) With an assumption that Robert did not plea with his brother to kill him and that it was his brother's own decision to relieve Robert of all-suffering: In this case, the b
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Elaine Ong on 22 Oct 09
     
    I find euthanasia to be a very interesting ethical dilemma. Even I myself am caught in the middle. Euthanasia has been termed as 'mercy killing' and even 'happy death'. Others may simply just term it as being 'evil'. Is it right to end someone's life even when he or she pleads you to do so? In the first place, is it even right to commit suicide? Once someone pulls off the main support that's keeping the person alive, such as the feeding tube, there is no turning back. Hmm..Come to think of it, technology is kind of unethical by being made available, for in the past, when someone is dying, they had the right to die naturally. Now, scientific technology is 'forcing' us to stay alive and cling on to a life that may be deemed being worthless if we were standing outside our bodies looking at our comatose selves. Then again, this may just be MY personal standpoint. But I have to argue, who gave technology the right to make me a worthless vegetable!(and here I am, attaching a value/judgement onto an immobile human being..) Hence, being incompetent in making decisions for my unconscious self (or perhaps even brain dead), who should take responsibility for my life, for my existence? And on what basis are they allowed to help me out? Taking the other side of the argument, against euthanasia, we can say that the act of ending someone else's life is the act of destroying societal respect for life. Based on the utilitarian perspective, we are not thinking of the overall beneficence for society and disregarding the moral considerations encompassed within the state's interest to preserve the sanctity of all life. It has been said that life in itself takes priority over all other values. We should let the person live so as to give him/her a chance to wake up or hope for recovery (think comatose patients). But then again we can also argue that life is not the top of the hierarchy! A life without rights is as if not living a life at all? By removing the patient
  • juliet huang on 28 Oct 09
     
    as a human being, you supposedly have a right to live, whether you are mobile or immobile. however, i think that, in the case of euthanasia, you 'give up' your rights when you "show" that you are no longer able to serve the pre-requisites of having the right. for example, if "living" rights are equate to you being able to talk, walk, etc etc, then, obviously the opposite means you no longer are able to perform up to the expectations of that right. then again, it is very subjective as to who gets to make that criteria!
  • Magdaleine on 02 Nov 09
     
    hmm interesting.. however, a question i have is who and when can this "right" be "given up"? when i am a victim in a car accident, and i lost the ability to breathe, walk and may need months to recover. i am unconscious and the doctor is unable to determine when am i gonna regain consciousness. when should my parents decide i can no longer be able to have any living rights? and taking elaine's point into consideration, is committing suicide even 'right'? if it is legally not right, when i ask someone to take my life and wrote a letter that it was cus i wanted to die, does that make it committing suicide only in the hands of others?
  • Low Yunying on 04 Nov 09
     
    Similarly, I question the 'rights' that you have to 'give up' when you no longer 'serve the pre-requisites of having the right'. If the living rights means being able to talk and walk, then where does it leave infants? Where does it leave people who may be handicapped? Have their lost their rights to living?
lee weiting

should we develop nanotechnology? - 1 views

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610192431.htm This articles discuss about the possible health risk of nanotechnology. on one hand, the use of nanoparticles may be promising for di...

nanotechnology

started by lee weiting on 28 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

The Great Organ Bazaar - Susanne Lundin - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

Organ Transplant Trade Internet Bioethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • All of this Internet activity is but the tip of the iceberg of a new and growing global human-tissue economy. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that about 10% of organ transplants around the world stem from purely commercial transactions.
  • Trade in organs follows a clear, geographically linked pattern: people from rich countries buy the organs, and people in poor countries sell them. In my research on organ trafficking, I have entered some of these shadow markets, where body parts from the poor, war victims, and prisoners are commodities, bought or stolen for transplant into affluent ill people.
  • Organ trafficking depends on several factors. One is people in distress. They are economically or socially disadvantaged, or live in war-torn societies with prevalent crime and a thriving black market. On the demand side are people who are in danger of dying unless they receive an organ transplant. Additionally, there are organ brokers who arrange the deals between sellers and buyers.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Trade in humans and their bodies is not a new phenomenon, but today’s businesses are historically unique, because they require advanced biomedicine, as well as ideas and values that enhance the trade in organs. Western medicine starts from the view that human illness and death are failures to be combated. It is within this conceptual climate – the dream of the regenerative body – that transplantation technology develops and demand for biological replacement parts grows.
  • In an era of transplants on demand, there is no way around this dilemma. The biological imperatives that guide the priority system of transplant waiting lists are easily transformed into economic values. As always where demand exceeds supply, people may not accept waiting their turn – and other countries and other peoples’ bodies give them the alternative they seek.
  • Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 11
     
    The Web site 88DB.com Philippines is an active online portal that allows service providers and consumers to find and interact with each other. Naoval, an Indonesian man with "AB blood type, no drugs and no alcohol," wants to sell his kidney. Another man says, "I am a Filipino. I am willing to sell my kidney for my wife. She has breast cancer and I can't afford her medications." Then there is Enrique, who is "willing to donate my kidney for an exchange. 21 years old and healthy." Other offers of this type could, just a few years ago, be found at www.liver4you.org, which promised kidneys for $80,000-$110,000. The costs of the operation, including the fees of the surgeons - licensed in the United States, Great Britain, or the Philippines - would be included in the price.
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