We can breathe the air–but can we follow the rules?
Sci-Fi writer Charles Stross speculates on whether alien life could or would choose to inhabit earth. Conclusion? Less likely than you think:
78% of the surface area is seawater. Drop a naked meat puppet there and it’s going to go glug glug glub … tritely, this is Not A Good Start.
Of the remaining 22%, about one third is either mountain ranges, deserts, or ice caps. It’s reasonable to say that, in the absence of protective equipment, the meat probes are going to die of exposure in less than one diurnal period – possibly in as little as an hour if they’re unlucky enough to land in the middle of the Antarctic winter.
We’re down to about 15% of the planetary surface – 15% that isn’t lethal without life support equipment such as boats, tents, and clothing. Our meat probes can breathe the air without their lungs freezing or dessicating. They aren’t going to drown rapidly. And they aren’t going to roll off a cliff. They might get a tad sunburned or hypothermic depending on the weather, and they might be eaten by a mountain lion or bitten by a rattlesnake, but they stand a reasonable chance of making it through 24 hours on the surface without dying.
Whimsical questions such as these tend to leave out another important feature of Earth–our ethical systems. Ethical codes among Earth’s many cultures and peoples are hardly uniform, but there’s a lot that unites us. Would it unite the aliens, too?
One would think we can safely assume they will be rational in some sense. And to make it this far, the aliens would probably have to embrace a lot of our basic rules: some subset would be protected from wanton killing, lying would be limited to inconsequential circumstances, etc.
But maybe not. It’s funny that people like Stross always poke fun at how movies and TV portray Earth as an appetizing place to live. But none question whether it’s the way we live — rather than the place — that would be the real turn-off
-Sam
One flu over the cuckoo’s nest
Nurses say no to vaccine
On Friday, a judge directed New York state health officials to temporarily freeze a mandatory vaccination program for seasonal and swine flu. The order resulted from a lawsuit filed by three nurses who claimed the vaccination order was a violation of their civil rights.
Is it?
Can robots make ethical decisions?
Assembly line robots feel alienated from their work, ponder socialism, still hate hippies.
This piece discusses “Modelling Morality with Prospective Logic,” where Luís Moniz Pereira and Ari Saptawijaya declare that morality is no longer the exclusive realm of human philosophers.
They accomplished this feat by resolving the hidden rules that people use in making moral judgments and then modeling them for the computer using prospective logic programs.
-Jake
Facts, values, and stem cells
Ronald Bailey at Reason Magazine insightfully criticizes Michael Peroski, of the Progressive Bioethics Initiative at the Center for American Progress, and his call for a “data-driven” as opposed to an “ideology-driven” President’s Council on Bioethics. Peroski writes:
Proceeding from ideology-driven inquiry entails starting from an answer: “Research on human embryonic stem cell should be forbidden because embryos are equivalent to human lives” and working backwards to a question: “Is research on human embryonic stem cells ethical?” Proceeding with data-driven inquiry means starting with the question: “Is embryonic stem cell research ethical?” and then taking the time to educate the public, gather information about public sentiment on the topic, carefully analyze the costs and benefits of proceeding with or prohibiting the research, and offering a pragmatic recommendation that takes all of these considerations into account.
Bailey correctly points out that Peroski is “basically begging the most important question rather than answering it,” specifically whether and to what extent embryos are indeed human beings. Data and economists alone are incapable of determining the value of stem cell research. Ethics cannot be about public polls and cost/benefit ratios only, even though those tools are quite useful. I dicussed the limitations of this form of “pragmatism” here.
-Jake
Space: the final frontier of ethics
The New York Times has an interesting interview with Paul Root Wolpe, a medical sociologist and bioethicst at Emory University, who also serves as first chief of bioethics for NASA. Dr. Wolpe states that compared to bioethics on earth,
Ethics in space are more of a balancing act. You need to weigh a series of priorities and figure out which is paramount.
As Sam mentioned in a previous post, space exploration opens the door to a vast array of new ethical questions. Here on earth, societal values and past experience often lead us to make moral decisions out of habit. But as Dr. Wolpe alludes to, space travel presents us with unfamiliar situations in which “common sense” is not always applicable.
–Luke
The military makes a non-moral case for responding to climate change
The New York Times has an article on the the national security threat posed by climate change. While we normally post links to articles on moral issues, what is so interesting about this article is that it is not about a moral case for addressing climate change.
Most people who claim we need to act in response to climate change do so on the basis of moral arguments — about our responsibilities to protect the environment for its own sake or for future generations, or about the unequal consequences of climate change. This article, on the other hand, makes the case for acting on climate change strictly on the basis of its relationship to the national security interests of the United States. Agree or not, its an interesting development in the climate change debate. Moral beliefs can be difficult to argue for; tying something to the national interest is generally a more effective strategy.
-Marc
God, science and morality walk into a bar . . .
For National Institutes of Health director-nominate Francis Collins, it’s no joke
In a New York Times op-ed, Sam Harris, raises concerns about how Francis Collins, who formerly headed the Human Genome Project and has been nomimated by President Obama to direct the National Institutes of Health, attempts to reconcile his religious faith with his devotion to science.
Only a few years removed from intense national debates over “intelligent design” and teaching evolution in school, the tension between American evangelism and scientific evangelism shows no sign of abating. Now that an ardent Christian and accomplished scientist will take over our government’s leading medical research institution, it’s a good moment to revisit this tension.
Of Machines and Men
The New York Times has an interesting article on the potential dangers of technology, and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and the tools they create.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
–Luke
Casey at the battaca
Lame Gattaca reference, I know. It appears that one of the first real tests of genetic discrimination may have emerged in . . . baseball of all places. Due to recurring concerns over identity and age, apparently Major League Baseball has begun using genetic testing. Writes the New York Times:
Many experts in genetics consider such testing a violation of personal privacy. Federal legislation, signed into law last year and scheduled to take effect Nov. 21, prohibits companies based in the United States from asking an employee, a potential employee or a family member of an employee for a sample of their DNA.
Dozens of Latin American prospects in recent years have been caught purporting to be younger than they actually were as a way to make themselves more enticing to major league teams. Last week the Yankees voided the signing of an amateur from the Dominican Republic after a DNA test conducted by Major League Baseball’s department of investigations showed that the player had misrepresented his identity.
This is obviously a “brave new world” kind of issue, but it’s surprising baseball may be the first (if not the final) frontier.
–Sam
Is a public philosophy possible?
The Public Philosopher is premised on the belief that a more lucid discussion of the philosophical foundations of society and politics would make for better policy. In today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof questions just how strong a role reason plays in moral decision making:
The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you’ll have trouble harrumphing.
One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that disgust emerged as a protective mechanism against health risks, like feces, spoiled food or corpses. Later, many societies came to apply the same emotion to social “threats.” Humans appear to be the only species that registers disgust, which is why a dog will wag its tail in puzzlement when its horrified owner yanks it back from eating excrement.
Psychologists have developed a “disgust scale” based on how queasy people would be in 27 situations, such as stepping barefoot on an earthworm or smelling urine in a tunnel. Conservatives systematically register more disgust than liberals. (To see how you weigh factors in moral decisions, take the tests at www.yourmorals.org.)
–Sam
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