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Spying on people for fun and profit
A new company, Internet Eyes, promises to crowdsource monitoring of surveillance cameras by using online users to watch footage and report suspicious activity. They would get rewarded 'up to £1,000' if they press the alarm button to report something useful. Not unexpectedly the anti-CCTV groups really dislike the idea. The Information Commissioner is somewhat sceptical…
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KILLING 100 IS LESS BAD THAN KILLING 10?
Other things being equal, killing two people must be worse than killing one, and killing three people worse than killing two. Right? But a new study by Loran Nordgren and Mary McDonell, published in Social Psychology and Personality Science, suggests people don’t respond in such a rational way to the scope of a criminal act.…
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Why aren’t you a vegetarian?
The article recently published by J. McMahan on The New York Times provoked, quite unsurprisingly, both enthusiastic and polemic reactions. Alexandre Erler wrote an interesting post discussing some of the questions arose by the article and illuminating comments to the post helped to develop some relevant arguments. McMahan proposal is not entirely new to the…
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Incidentally… avoiding the problem of incidental findings
A new study from the Mayo clinic in the United States points to a frequent problem in certain types of medical research. When healthy volunteers or patients with a given condition take part in research studies they may have brain scans, CAT scans, blood tests or genetic tests that they wouldn’t otherwise have had. These…
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Should we rid the world of carnivores if we could?
by Alexandre Erler In a provocative piece for the New York Times, Jeff McMahan remarks that cruelty pervades the natural world: he stresses the vast amount of suffering and the violent deaths inflicted by predators on their innocent victims. He then invites us to consider a daring way of preventing such suffering and deaths: “Suppose…
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An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
In 2009 an article by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy (Volune 17, 2, pp. 202-227). Among other things, the authors argued that governments should engage in ‘cognitive infiltration of groups that produce conspiracy theories’. According to them, this involves governments developing and disseminating arguments against conspiracy theories, governments…
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Procreative liberty
The Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York recently released a report that found that social services are often too quick to return maltreated children to the family home. These children may be better in care, the report claims. Reflecting on this question raises the related matter of the procreative liberty of individuals…
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Religion and Virtue: The Pope’s Truncated Vision
The Pope arrived in Britain today, held out his “hand of friendship” and called on all the British people to remember: Your forefathers’ respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and…
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Robots as companion for human beings, a reflection on the information revolution
At the beginning of this month the NYT reported a highly interesting article on the use of robots in daily practises and activities, including a doctor using a robot to aid her in checking the health condition of a patient or a manager attending an office meeting using a robot avatar, complete with screen, camera,…
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Is the UK’s HPV vaccination programme unethical and/or unlawful?
Questions whether the UK HPV vaccination programme ensures that adequate information is given to girls and their parents. Suggests that failure to mention vaccines other than Cervarix is unethical and possibly unlawful.