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Tag Archives: ethics

Should We Save The Tasmanian Devil?

18 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by bwkeller in philosophy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ethics, materialism

Most right-thinking people today consider the preservation of endangered species to be an ethical imperative.  The underlying assumption (correct in the vast majority of cases) is that the endangered species have been brought to the brink as a result of careless human activities.  Habitat destruction, hunting, pollution, and other aspects of the modern industrial age have stressed the biosphere so heavily that some ecologists consider it to be a mass extinction event.  One of the many animal species facing extinction in coming years is the Tasmanian Devil.  However, unlike many others, the Devil is going extinct because of a naturally occurring pathogen: Devil Facial Tumor Disease.  This raises an interesting question:  Should human beings always seek to prevent the extinction of animal species, regardless of the cause of that extinction?

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Astrology is Rubbish

07 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by bwkeller in pseudoscience, scams

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

astronomy, Bulshytt, ethics, science

So, the other week I got into a It really is!minor flame war (more of a potshot skirmish really) with an astrologer on twitter (full disclosure: I started it ;).  It all started over the remarks Brian Cox (scientist, rock star, all-around cool dude) made on his most excellent Wonders of The Solar System television program. Clip after the jump.

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400 Word Essay 3: Computer Models of Cognitive Processes

27 Tuesday Jan 2009

Posted by nfitzgerald in school

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cognitive, ethics, philosophy, science, writing

I seriously considered not posting this one. Two things went wrong: I didn’t get my choice of topic in time, meaning I was assigned the negative side of a topic I would usually argue affirmatively on. Secondly, I was super busy this weekend and didn’t leave myself enough time to do a proper job. But I thought in order to maintain the intellectual honesty of this series I should post the less stellar examples along with the ones I am more proud of. It was an interesting exercise the try and argue a position I am opposed to. It’s something everyone should try at least once; I think if you don’t find it difficult you should question how secure your positions really are. So as a last disclaimer, I’m not sure how effective the following arguments are. You decide!

Topic: Human cognitive processes can be investigated by creating computational models. (CON)

Computer models, though important to the study of cognition itself, are of limited use in studying specifically human cognitive processes.
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Fun With Ethics: 4 Immoral Experiments to Advance the Frontiers of Science

16 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by nfitzgerald in school

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

ethics, experiments, morality, neuroscience, psychology, science, sociology

mad_scientistNow that exams are over, I have time to reflect on the material I’ve covered over the last 4 months. From Cognitive Systems and Philosophy of Perception to Functional Programming, I’ve had an extremely varied curriculum. A strong common theme which ran through all my school work this term was the ethical practices and ramifications of scientific work: from discussions of the bioethics of genetic modification, to more abstract debates over what rights, if any, we should afford to a hypothetical True AI.

As good as this has all been, and as much as I believe that ethics should be given a more prominent place in all undergraduate science programs, one simply cannot escape the fact that when it comes to advancing the frontiers of scientific knowledge, ethics can be a big ol’ wet towel. How much more advanced would our civilization be if we weren’t guided by our silly moral principles? How many more answers would be within our grasp if we didn’t have to give so much thought to the rights or general physical well being of our fellow man?

In order to answer that hypothetical, I’ve compiled a short-list of unethical experiments which would genuinely advance our scientific knowledge:

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Ben’s Tweets

  • RT @OJ_Astro: A blog post by physicist Syksy Räsänen (@SyksyRasanen), who has published with us twice, about why overlay journals are an an… 1 day ago
  • RT @JokesAstro: If the Islands of Hawaii were very massive stars, Kauai would be going supernova soon. https://t.co/NEboP6FRWd 2 days ago
  • RT @AnicaSeelie: @gauravmunjal Imagine if there was a duck but it had human ears 2 days ago
  • RT @jfmclaughlin92: Friendly reminder that if you're at a public university, your institutional email can be searched basically whenever. B… 2 days ago
  • @rcrain_astro Academia has a lot of problems. Precarious employment, massive overworking of junior researchers, poo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 days ago

Nicholas’ Tweet’s

  • RT @michielsdj: New paper! Retrieval-augmented models are expensive. Make them faster by partially pre-computing passage representations. W… 5 days ago
  • RT @michielsdj: New paper! We propose FiDO, an improved version of Fusion-in-Decoder with faster inference and better performance. Work don… 1 month ago
  • @_julianmichael_ @LukeZettlemoyer @emilymbender @nlpnoah @ssshanest Congrats! 5 months ago
  • RT @michielsdj: Now accepted to @iclr_conf! 🎆 1 year ago
  • @mjskay Yeah, I feel a major point people were missing is that an endless spiral into the drain is actually the perfect visual metaphor. 1 year ago

Top Posts

  • Basic Data Plotting with Matplotlib Part 3: Histograms

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Blogs We Read

  • Bad Astronomy
  • Boing Boing
  • Rationally Speaking
  • Terry Project (UBC)

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