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Dehumanization and terrorism
Most people would agree that terrorism is no good. The word itself is rich with moralized connotations. It is true that some have argued that terrorism might sometimes be justified, but in popular discourse, terrorism is typically deemed obviously horrible. What are the consequences of branding some action an act of terrorism, or of branding…
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Supermarkets, Spending, and Influences on Choice
Something of a twitter storm erupted last week over a poster placed in a supermarket window. The poster, placed in a branch of Sainsbury’s, issued a “50p Challenge”, urging employees to encourage every customer to “spend an additional 50p during each shopping trip between now and the year’s-end”. After a passer-by named Chris Dodd took…
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How Much Freedom Should We Give Up To Avoid the Spread of Infectious Diseases?
The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola outside of West Africa has been reported. He is now in the US, receiving treatment. He arrived from Liberia via Brussels before reporting symptoms, which were initially mis-diagnosed and treated with antibiotics. If I were in West Africa and I had reason to fear I had been…
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Iterated in vitro reproduction and genetic orphans
In an article soon to be published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Rob Sparrow imagines a procedure via which multiple generations of human embryos might be created in the laboratory. Egg and sperm cells would first be generated from existing or new human pluripotent stem cell lines. The resulting eggs would be fertilised using…
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People and charitable causes are importantly different things
Like Prot – the lovable character played by Kevin Spacey in the underrated movie K-PAX – you’re an intelligent benevolent extraterrestrial who has just been beamed to Earth. Sadly, unlike Prot, you have no return ticket. The good news for you is that just moments after hopping off of your beam of light, you found…
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A German MP on meth: Enhancement or not?
German MP Michael Hartmann was recently in the news because of his crystal meth use. The media was quick to compare Hartmann to other politicians who use other substances: the past marijuana use of Clinton and Obama, and the recent scandal around the crack addiction of Canadian mayor Rob Ford. The media also stresses that…
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Bad news for “intelligence-genes”
Intelligence and its heritability has been a popular topic in scientific communities and public discussions for long. Recent findings give new insight to the debate: one of the largest studies on genetic influence to intelligence and other behavioral traits turned up inconclusive findings, as Nature News reports in a recent article “Smart genes” prove elusive.…
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Petrov Day
Today, 31 years ago, the human species nearly came to an end. Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty in bunker Serpukhov-15 near Moscow, monitoring the Soviet Union early warning satellite network. If notification was received that it had detected approaching missiles the official strategy was launch on warning: an immediate counter-attack against the United…
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Framing the Ebola epidemic
“CDC estimates Ebola epidemic could be over in Liberia and Sierra Leone by January!” So ran the headline of exactly no news outlets. Instead, a typical headline ran the following sort of dire prediction: “Ebola cases could reach 1.4 million within four months, CDC estimates.” Only a few went with what is arguably the fairest…