Philosophy & Ethics

As Lenin's Birthday Earth Day approaches, all of media are pillaged by public relations flaks being paid by 'green' companies who are using capitalism to promote their financial form of environmental socialism. One thing they have in common; they claim whatever they are selling is more ethical than what everyone else is selling, and using their sticker will also make you part of the 1%. Literally. A claim promoted by an organization that sells certification stickers, 1% For The Planet, is that companies 'certified' by them or similar groups have a 70% chance of better growth than companies…

Misinformation scholarship is not new, it just got more attention due to Brexit and Trump - and that's due to the left finally focusing on an issue when it's happening on the other side. Prior to 2021 there was little concern among the left about the anti-vax movement - because it was dominated by their tribe. Academic progressive waved away overwhelming CDC data showing a clear apolitical demarcation by trotting out surveys showing the denial was not that small.Yet if you asked who's more likely to deny evolution, the right or left, the left reflexively declared it was Republicans. Except…

When I was young, conservatives and liberals had equally high levels of trust in science. And it was high. Only progressives thought science was not a force for public good. In the 1980s, President Reagan wanted to fund a lot more of it, while Democrats in Congress wanted student loans to be unlimited. What happened next was unexpected to Republicans. Armed with basically unlimited funding, formerly moribund colleges suddenly had a giant pool of wealth. New buildings and larger salaries followed. The demographics shifted and were no longer representative of America. What was once a kind of '…

In the 19th century, charlatans traveled around selling magic potions, tonics, and salves but to stop them no one decided to ban actual medical research. The issue facing "AI", which is short for Artificial Intelligence, is that the only people who will feel bound by top-down control were never going to be a problem in the first place. Large Language Models, termed Generative AI, can be a huge positive in health care, but because it is misunderstood and there is a lot of exploitative media coverage there are ongoing efforts to kill it before it really gets going. Large Language Models are…

The anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety says someone is fatally shot or injured in a road rage incident every 16 hours.  Is that number real? Yes and no. The Gun Violence Archive they drew their claim from lumps criminals doing drive-by shootings and criminals being shot by police committing violent acts in with innocent victims. Even if it's only over half of the 500 they claim that is still over 300 per year. Which means it could also be considered less than one-in-a-million risk and not really worth worrying about. If it is about to happen to you, of course, absolute and relative…

As technology continues to advance, it will one day be possible to grow organs and even faces from a patient's own stem cells. Until then there are transplants from donors. Such donors are often anonymous but in the case of Belgium's first facial transplant, that isn't really possible. A recent "interpretive phenomenological analysis" of the experience of family members of the deceased tissue donor may provide insight for what to expect in the future and how to prepare.  A phenomenological analysis of one family is really just an anecdote but may inform what families can expect in the…

Imagine that a soldier has a tiny computer device injected into their bloodstream that can be guided with a magnet to specific regions of their brain. With training, the soldier could then control weapon systems thousands of miles away using their thoughts alone. Embedding a similar type of computer in a soldier’s brain could suppress their fear and anxiety, allowing them to carry out combat missions more efficiently. Going one step further, a device equipped with an artificial intelligence system could directly control a soldier’s behavior by predicting what options they would choose in…

It used to be common for physicians to give common-sense advice to patients; lose weight, drink less alcohol, stop smoking. Such shaming may reflect an unequal power relationship, according to a paper in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications which also argues that such shame may create a barrier to accessing services, a fear of being judged, circumstances, coping behaviors, body, illnesses, along with other vulnerabilities. The humanities scholars that medical professionals should also be trained to have “shame competence” and teach a theoretical and practical understanding of…

Few researchers would commit half of each day to science if they were doing it for free but they are no different than other occupations in believing that economic necessity is a bubble surrounding...themselves.(1) Publishing is not exempt from the double standard. Two generations ago being "peer-reviewed" in a top journal didn't mean much. Krebs, of the famous Krebs cycle, was rejected by Nature because they already had too many articles so he went elsewhere. He still got a Nobel prize for his work. In the 1980s all that changed, and it was due to arguably the greatest proponent of science…

Happy the elephant’s story is a sad one. She is currently a resident of the Bronx Zoo in the US, where the Nonhuman Rights Project (a civil rights organization) claims she is subject to unlawful detention. The campaigners sought a writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf to request that she be transferred to an elephant sanctuary. Historically, this ancient right which offers recourse to someone being detained illegally had been limited to humans. A New York court previously decided that it excluded non-human animals. So if the courts wanted to find in Happy’s favor, they would first have to…