Author moved from mitigating harm of algo systems to the moral standpoint that actively resisting, sabotaging, ending AI with attached political projects are valid reaction to harm. So he's moving from monster adaptation / cultural category adaptation to monster slaying cf [[Monstertheorie 20030725114320]]. I empathise but also wonder, bc of the mention of the political projects / structures attached, about polarisation in response to monster embracers (there are plenty) shifting the [[Overton window 20201024155353]] towards them.

Ameera Kawash (artist, researcher) def of decolonizing AI.

TRSP Desirable Characteristics Data governance should take into account the potential future use and future harm based on ethical frameworks grounded in the values and principles of the relevant Indigenous community. Metadata should acknowledge the provenance and purpose and any limitations or obligations in secondary use inclusive of issues of consent.

TRSP Desirable Characteristics Ethical processes address imbalances in power, resources, and how these affect the expression of Indigenous rights and human rights. Ethical processes must include representation from relevant Indigenous communities

TRSP Desirable Characteristics Indigenous Peoples’ rights and wellbeing should be the primary concern.

Rachel Derr showing how hypothesis can be used to deal with ethical and private issues in nursing care

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avishai_Margalit

West Wing S7 E 11 "Internal Displacement"<br /> http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=145<br /> written by Aaron Sorkin & Bradley Whitford

A powerful quote about what really matters in America

Losing to evil intentions is indeed a big problem in the world. Thanks for your comment, Import Reaction Video.

Philosophy & religion should inherently be taught in education, which would partially solve this problem. Ethics. Morality.

He misses the point of wisdom. Wisdom is about mindset and uplifting each other, to care and empathize... It's not about objective correctness; truth or false, this is science... Nor is it about the correctness of living life, that is ethics and morality...

Wisdom is thus about mindset and empathy.

"SkinMedica founder Dr. Richard Fitzpatrick has previously stated that while an ingredient in the anti-wrinkle cream is derived from foreskin fibroblast, the cells are grown from a single foreskin obtained more than 20 years ago."

https://web.archive.org/web/20240630131807/https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/

Dated June 2024 a set of 'ethical' principles for the web. Curiously it never mentions linking, not even in context of the principle of enabling verification of info.

Some things are handy checklist to run against my own website / web activities though.

TRSP Desirable Characteristics

Donald Trump hat 20 Spitzenmanagern der amerikanischen Ölindustrie angeboten, für Wahlkampfspenden in Höhe von einer Milliarde Dollar alle Regulierungen der Biden-Administration, die die Förderung von Öl und Gas behindern, zu Beginn seiner Amtszeit außer Kraft zu setzen. Die Washington Post berichtet über das Treffen in Mar-a-Lago. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/09/trump-oil-ceo-donation

Bericht der Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/l

T. Herlau, "Moral Reinforcement Learning Using Actual Causation," 2022 2nd International Conference on Computer, Control and Robotics (ICCCR), Shanghai, China, 2022, pp. 179-185, doi: 10.1109/ICCCR54399.2022.9790262. keywords: {Digital control;Ethics;Costs;Philosophical considerations;Toy manufacturing industry;Reinforcement learning;Forestry;Causality;Reinforcement learning;Actual Causation;Ethical reinforcement learning}

Joy, Bill. “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Wired, April 1, 2000. https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/.

Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:753822a812c861180bef23232a806ec0

Annotations: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A753822a812c861180bef23232a806ec0&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true

another suggestion for professional ethics oaths for scientists and engineers...

• for: canonical unit, collaborative commons - missing part - open learning commons, question - process trap - natural capital

• comment

  • in this context, indyweb and Indranet are not the canonical unit, but then, it seems the model is fundamentally missing the functionality provided but the Indyweb and Indranet, which is and open learning system.
  • without such an open learning system that captures the essence of his humans learn, the activity of problem-solving cannot be properly contextualised, along with all of limitations leading to progress traps.
  • The entire approach of posing a problem, then solving it is inherently limited due to the fractal intertwingularity of reality.

• question: progress trap - natural capital

  • It is important to be aware that there is a real potential for a progress trap to emerge here, as any metric is liable to be abused

• for: AI ethics controversy - citations from Dean please!

• comment

  • Can Dean please provide the missing citations he is referring to?

• for: progress trap -AI, carbon footprint - AI, progress trap - AI - bias, progress trap - AI - situatedness

• for: elephants in the room - financial industry at the heart of the polycrisis, polycrisis - key role of finance industry, Marjorie Kelly, Capitalism crisis, Laura Flanders show, book - Wealth Supremacy - how the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Captialism Drive Today's Crises

• Summary

  • This talk really emphasizes the need for the Stop Reset Go / Deep Humanity Wealth to Wellth program
  • Interviewee Marjorie Kelly started Business Ethics magainze in 1987 to show the positive side of business After 30 years, she found that it was still tinkering at the edges. Why? - because it wasn't addressing the fundamental issue.
  • Why there hasn't been noticeable change in spite of all these progressive efforts is because we avoided questioning the fundamental assumption that maximizing returns to shareholders and gains to shareholder portfolios is good for people and planet.**** It turns out that it isn't. It's fundamentally bad for civilization and has played a major role in shaping today's polycrisis.
  • Why wealth supremacy is entangled with white supremacy
  • Financial assets are the subject
    • Equity and bonds use to be equal to GDP in the 1950s.
    • Now it's 5 times as much
  • Financial assets extracts too much from common people
  • Question: Families are swimming in debt. Who owns all this financial debt? ...The financial elites do.

• meme

  • wealth supremacy and white supremacy are entangled

Not too dissimilar from programmers who add licensing to their work now to prevent it from being misused.

Consent, compensation, control, and credit for creators whose content is used in AI models

https://web.archive.org/web/20231019053547/https://www.careful.industries/a-thousand-cassandras

"Despite being written 18 months ago, it lays out many of the patterns and behaviours that have led to industry capture of "AI Safety"", co-author Rachel Coldicutt ( et Anna Williams, and Mallory Knodel for Open Society Foundations. )

For Open Society Foundations by 'careful industries' which is a research/consultancy, founded 2019, all UK based. Subscribed 2 authors on M, and blog.

A Thousand Cassandras in Zotero.

Another cross-over from paper with Anna

Some implications for the Research Harmonization paper with Anna

Data Sharing and Ethics

• summary
  • can we program AI to give a damn?

• for: bio-buddhism, buddhism - AI, care as the driver of intelligence, Michael Levin, Thomas Doctor, Olaf Witkowski, Elizaveta Solomonova, Bill Duane, care drive, care light cone, multiscale competency architecture of life, nonduality, no-self, self - illusion, self - constructed, self - deconstruction, Bodhisattva vow
• title: Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence
• author: Michael Levin, Thomas Doctor, Olaf Witkowski, Elizaveta Solomonova, Bill Duane, AI - ethics
• date: May 16, 2022

• source: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/5/710/htm

• summary

  • a trans-disciplinary attempt to develop a framework to deal with a diversity of emerging non-traditional intelligence from new bio-engineered species to AI based on the Buddhist conception of care and compassion for the other.
  • very thought-provoking and some of the explanations and comparisons to evolution actually help to cast a new light on old Buddhist ideas.
  • this is a trans-disciplinary paper synthesizing Buddhist concepts with evolutionary biology

We would appeal to his trust and how people would not trust him on the future. Also, he is assuming I would do the same. He thinks I would act in the same way

• for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, bioengineering, novel life form, culturally evolved life, bioethics, progress trap, progress trap - bioengineering, progress trap - genetic engineering
• comment
  • cultural evolution, which itself emerges from biological evolution is acting upon itself to create new life forms that have no evolutionary backstory
  • this is tantamount to playing God
  • progress traps often emerge out of the large speed mismatch between cultural and biological/genetic evolution.
  • Nowhere is this more profound than in bioengineering of new forms of life with no evolutionary history
  • This presents profound ethical challenges

holy shit....bad!!!!!

What are all the automated decisions currently be made by AI systems globally? How to get a database/list of these?

Computational != objective! Common idea rests on lots of assumptions

Overview of how tech changes work moral changes. Seems to me a detailing of [[Monstertheorie 20030725114320]] diving into a specific part of it, where cultural categories are adapted to fit new tech in. #openvraag are the sources containing refs to either Monster theory by Smits or the anthropoligical work of Mary Douglas. Checked: it doesn't, but does cite refs by PP Verbeek and Marianne Boenink, so no wonder there's a parallel here.

The first example mentioned points in this direction too: the 70s redefinition of death as brain death, where it used to be heart stopped (now heart failure is a cause of death), was a redefinition of cultural concepts to assimilate tech change. Third example is a direct parallel to my [[Empathie verschuift door Infrastructuur 20080627201224]] [[Hyperconnected individuen en empathie 20100420223511]]

Where Monstertheory is a tool to understand and diagnose discussions of new tech, wherein the assmilation part (both cultural cats and tech get adapted) is the pragmatic route (where the mediation theory of PP Verbeek is located), it doesn't as such provide ways to act / intervene. Does this taxonomy provide agency?

Or is this another way to locate where moral effects might take place, but still the various types of responses to Monsters still may determine the moral effect?

Zotero antilib Mechanisms of Techno-moral Change

Via Stephen Downes https://www.downes.ca/post/75320

While wrongly describing the EU regulation on AI, author rightly points to the geopolitical reality it is creating for the AI sector. AIR is focused on market regulation, risk mitigation wrt protection of civic rights and critical infrastructure, and monopoly-busting/level playing field. Threatening to pull out of the EU is an admission you don't want to be responsible for your tech at all. And it thus belies the ethical concerns voiced through proximate futurising. Also AIR is just one piece of that geopolitical construct, next to GDPR, DMA, DSA, DGA, DA and ODD which all consistently do the same things for different parts of the digital world.

Proximate Future is a future that is 'nearly here' but never quite gets here. Ref posits this is a way to distract from issues around a tech now and thus lets technologists dodge responsibility and accountability for the now, as everyone debates the issues of a tech in the near future. It allows the technologists to set the narrative around the tech they develop. Ref: [[Divining a Digital Future by Paul Dourish Genevieve Bell]] 2010

Vgl the suspicious call for reflection and pause wrt AI by OpenAI's people and other key players. It's a form of [[Ethics futurising dark pattern 20190529071000]]

It may not be a fully intentional bait and switch all the time though: tech predictions, including G hypecycle put future key events a steady 10yrs into the future. And I've noticed when it comes to open data readiness and before that Knowledge management present vs desired [[Gap tussen eigen situatie en verwachting is constant 20071121211040]] It simply seems a measure of human capacity to project themselves into the future has a horizon of about 10yrs.

Contrast with: adjacent possible which is how you make your path through [[Evolutionair vlak van mogelijkheden 20200826185412]]. Proximate Future skips actual adjacent possibles to hypothetical ones a bit further out.

Technology is valuable and empowering, but at what end direct cost? Consumers don't have available data for the actual costs of the options they're choosing in many contexts.

What if that reprocessing costs the equivalent of three glasses of waters? Is it worth it for our environment, especially when the direct costs to the "consumer" are hidden into advertising models.

(via Brenna)

https://www.zotero.org/clhendricksbc/collections/Y39HVMEF

Good point. Worth capturing somewhere.

In 2019, Carthusian monks went back to their values and decided to scale back their production of Chartreuse.

It is unclear what form the "alignment property" would take, and most importantly how such a property would be evaluated especially if there's an arbitrary divide between "dangerous" and "pre-dangerous" levels of capabilities and alignment of the "dangerous" levels cannot actually be measured.

I think these types of tests can only result in showing human failing at them. Because the test is reduced to judging only the single artefact as a thing in itself, no context etc. That's the basic element of all cons: make you focus narrowly on something, where the facade is, and not where you would find out it's fake. Turing isn't about whether something's human, but whether we can be made to believe it is human. And humans can be made to believe a lot. Turing needs to keep you from looking behind the curtain / in the room to make the test work, even in its shape as a thought experiment. The study (judging by the sentences here) is a Turing test in the real world. Why would you not look behind the curtain? This is the equivalent of MIT's tedious trolley problem fixation and calling it ethics of technology, without ever realising that the way out of their false dilemma's is acknowledging nothing is ever a di-lemma but always a multi-lemma, there are always myriad options to go for.

I think this is yet to be seen. Although it is true that the computer always gives the same output given the same input code, a biased network with oppressive ideologies could simply transform, instead of change, our current human judiciary enforcement of the law.

not just trained with, also trained by. is it fully transparent though? Perhaps from the trainers/tools standpoint, but users are likely to fall for the tool abstracting its origins away, ELIZA style, and project agency and thus morality on it.

Recommended Source

Under the "More on Philosophies of Copyright" section, I recommended adding the scholarly article by Chinese scholar Peter K. Yu that explains how Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang can address the contradictions in effecting or eliminating intellectual property laws. One of the contradictions is in intellectual property laws protecting individual rights while challenging sustainability efforts for future generations (as climate change destroys more natural resources.

Yu, Peter K., Intellectual Property, Asian Philosophy and the Yin-Yang School (November 19, 2015). WIPO Journal, Vol. 7, pp. 1-15, 2015, Texas A&M University School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 16-70, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2693420

Below is a short excerpt from the article that details Chinese philosophical thought on IP and sustainability:

"Another area of intellectual property law and policy that has made intergenerational equity questions salient concerns the debates involving intellectual property and sustainable development. Although this mode of development did not garner major international attention until after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Yin-Yang school of philosophy—which “offers a normative model with balance, harmony, and sustainability as ideals”—provides important insight into sustainable development."

Being crap at doing harm doesn't allow you to claim innocence of doing harm.

Ganguli, Deep, Askell, Amanda, Schiefer, Nicholas, Liao, Thomas I., Lukošiūtė, Kamilė, Chen, Anna, Goldie, Anna et al. "The Capacity for Moral Self-Correction in Large Language Models." arXiv, (2023). https://doi.org/https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.07459v2.

Abstract

We test the hypothesis that language models trained with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) have the capability to "morally self-correct" -- to avoid producing harmful outputs -- if instructed to do so. We find strong evidence in support of this hypothesis across three different experiments, each of which reveal different facets of moral self-correction. We find that the capability for moral self-correction emerges at 22B model parameters, and typically improves with increasing model size and RLHF training. We believe that at this level of scale, language models obtain two capabilities that they can use for moral self-correction: (1) they can follow instructions and (2) they can learn complex normative concepts of harm like stereotyping, bias, and discrimination. As such, they can follow instructions to avoid certain kinds of morally harmful outputs. We believe our results are cause for cautious optimism regarding the ability to train language models to abide by ethical principles.

A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?<br /> by Steven Johnson, art by Nikita Iziev

Johnson does a good job of looking at the basic state of artificial intelligence and the history of large language models and specifically ChatGPT and asks some interesting ethical questions, but in a way which may not prompt any actual change.

When we write about technology and the benefits and wealth it might bring, do we do too much ethics washing to help paper over the problems to help bring the bad things too easily to pass?

ethics washing!

Synthetic human behavior as AI bright line

Quote from Bender

One reason why software engineering isn't "real" engineering: no ethical obligation to "the public good".

https://web.archive.org/web//https://www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl/bestuur-en-organisatie/io-research/morele-vragen-rijksambtenaren-vaak-onvoldoende-opgevolgd

#nieuw reden:: Verschillende soorten morele dilemma's volgens I&O bij (rijks)ambtenaren. Let wel, alleen rondom beleidsproces, niet om digitale / data dingen. #openvraag is er een kwalitatief verschil tussen die 2 soorten vragen, of zijn het verschillende verschijningsvormen van dezelfde vragen? Verhouden zich de vragen tot de 7 normen van openbaar bestuur? Waarom is dat niet de indeling dan? #2022/06/30

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WpCeTyiWCPQ9MNCsFeKMDQLSTsg1oKfNIH6MzoSFXqQ/preview<br /> Policies related to ChatGPT and other AI Tools

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Hypothesis</span> in Liquid Margins 38: The rise of ChatGPT and how to work with and around it : Hypothesis (<time class='dt-published'>02/09/2023 16:11:54</time>)</cite></small>

Educator considerations for ChatGPT<br /> https://platform.openai.com/docs/chatgpt-education

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Hypothesis</span> in Liquid Margins 38: The rise of ChatGPT and how to work with and around it : Hypothesis (<time class='dt-published'>02/09/2023 16:11:54</time>)</cite></small>

Ghosting is only a problem for the ghosted if the ghosted values the opinion/support/endorsement of the ghoster.

So the real questions are: Why does one value the ghoster? Is that valuation warranted?

This is a really interesting point about all kinds of self-disclosure in the classroom, but especially disclosing what third-parties think about you.

Assuming the facts are correct and complete here, it's surprisingly naive of Thunberg to take this view. One unknown is whether the displaced villagers were suitably compensated for being evicted. Still, taking 8 years off the deadline to end coal use - that's a pretty massive win and could set the stage for even more in the future.

Excellent article on the complex nature of rape. The key point for me is that too many people think it's always a black-and-white matter. In fact, the boundary between rape and not-rape is not that crisp. There is a boundary layer here. I think that if more people realized every boundary is really a boundary layer, there would be fewer conflicts about such matters.

https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/grace/announcement/view/8

Video: https://stanford.zoom.us/rec/play/UekZ6yqC5vBZYl6OaxLLX7Vj-jTFITg0fko6ajh2Ep7z9ubA5pAA0nZ-TKsvi-Etyb9LXQxndyqv59gO.E7hQl3aJ7jmGoFFc?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=Y8gSDRJMQFigVdA9ETLRLw.1670081959153.6e53db911256d27d5172fb8866a7bc65&_x_zm_rhtaid=429

I had RSVPd to this, but the organizers totally blew it on sending out the proper zoom link.

Original event page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/envisioning-paths-individual-collective-action-for-ethical-technology-tickets-466438639527

Description: https://events.stanford.edu/event/envisioning_paths_individual_and_collective_action_for_ethical_technology

Love this response

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/the-ethics-of-syndicating-comments-using-webmentions/

Not an answer to the dilemma, though I generally take the position of keeping everything unless someone asks me to take it down or that I might know that it's been otherwise deleted. Often I choose not to delete my copy, but simply make it private and only viewable to me.

On the deadnaming and related issues, it would be interesting to create a webmention mechanism for the h-card portions so that users might update these across networks. To some extent Automattic's Gravatar system does this in a centralized manner, but it would be interesting to see it separately. Certainly not as big an issue as deadnaming, but there's a similar problem on some platforms like Twitter where people will change their display name regularly for either holidays, or lately because they're indicating they'd rather be found on Mastodon or other websites.

The webmention spec does contain details for both editing/deleting content and resending webmentions to edit and/or remove the original. Ideally this would be more broadly adopted and used in the future to eliminate the need for making these choices by leaving the choice up to the original publisher.

Beyond this, often on platforms that don't have character limits (Reddit for example), I'll post at the bottom of my syndicated copy of content that it was originally published on my site (along with the permalink) and explicitly state that I aggregate the replies from various locations which also helps to let people know that they might find addition context or conversation at the original post should they be interested. Doing this on Twitter, Mastodon, et al is much harder due to space requirements obviously.

While most responses I send would fall under fair use for copying, I also have a Creative Commons license on my text in an effort to help others feel more comfortable with having copies of my content on their sites.

Another ethical layer to this is interactions between sites which both have webmentions enabled. To some extent this creates an implicit bi-directional relationship which says, I'm aware that this sort of communication exists and approve of your parsing and displaying my responses.

The public norms and ethics in this area will undoubtedly evolve over time, so it's also worth revisiting and re-evaluating the issue over time.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1589700721121058817.html

virtue ethics and virtue theory are somewhat distinct, where the latter deals with virtue from the perspectives of deontology and utilitarianism

Urbina, F., Lentzos, F., Invernizzi, C. et al. Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery. Nat Mach Intell (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00465-9

Vgl [[Networked Agency 20160818213155]] wrt having a specific issue to address that is shared by the user group wielding a tech / tool, in their own context.

Vgl [[Open data begint buiten 20200808162905]] wrt the only yardstick for open data stems from its role as policy instrument: impact achieved outside in the aimed for policy domains through the increased agency of the open data users.

Tech impact is not to be measured in eyeballs, usage, revenue etc. That's (understandably) the corporation's singular and limited view, the rest of us should not adopt it as the only possible one.

In my opinion, data science is a huge field with a lot of unresolved issues. I believe that critics of data science must be able to understand all the analytics that data scientists use to truly have a valid critique. I also believe that the critical writing about data science doesn't do much justice as actually understanding the analytics would. How would analytics play a role in critical writing?

Teodorescu, K., Plonsky, O., Ayal, S., & Barkan, R. (2021). Enforcement policies: Frequency of inspection is more important than the severity of punishment. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pbvzr

This is the wrong approach, because it imposes modern norms on past times. It's illogical and superficial.

It would be appropriate, though, to carefully review the histories of past logicians and to document more fully the roles that others played in their work, with a clinical and factual dispassion, and with the intention of being accurate and attributing progress to whoever actually did the work.

Nerd, G. M.-K. H. (2021, December 22). Of Course Unvaccinated People Should Get Medical Care. Medium. https://gidmk.medium.com/of-course-unvaccinated-people-should-get-medical-care-34b26ae7eaa4

Brey (2012) - Anticipatory Ethics for Emerging Technologies - https://is.gd/k8we0n - urn:x-pdf:4b26acaa6eacf534aa5a7694618c5abd

The human-in-the-loop was a key breakpoint between the model's findings as concepts and the physical instantiation of the model's findings. As the article goes on to say, unwanted outcomes come from both taking the human out of the loop and replacing the human in the loop with someone with a different moral or ethical driver.

What's missing when we frame ethics in terms of IP, plagiarism and academic integrity is an ethical duty to pursue truth.

In my opinion this struggle needs to play out. Data science can always be streamlined to remove the bias that everyone has. the conflict this article speaks of is just the natural progression of what has been happening already. The only way this will get better is through constant struggle, just like everything else.

The paper did not seem to have consent from participants for: (a) Agreeing to participate in the different types of interventions (which have the potential of hurting the health of citizens and could even lead to their death.); (b) using their personal health data to publish a research paper.

Given that the authors are government actors who can easily access millions of citizens and put them in the study groups they desire, without even telling citizens that they are in a study, I worry that this practice will be popularized by governments in Latin America and put citizens in danger.

I also want to note that this is a new type of disinformation where government actors can post content on these repositories and given that most citizens do NOT know it is NOT peer reviewed it can help the government actors to validate their public policy. The research paper becomes political propaganda and the international repository helps to promotes the propaganda.

Αντι να παραδεχτει την ανιδιοτέλεια σας μακροπρόθεσμη στρατηγική ιδιοτέλειας, καταργει κυνικα την έννοια, και κρατάει μονο την ιδιοτέλεια,ωστε να ταιρίαζει με το νοεφιλελευθερισμό - κυκλικό επιχείρημα που φτωχαίνει τη λέξη και το μυαλο.

Is mandatory COVID vaccination legal? Here’s what Canada’s charter says. (n.d.). Calgaryherald. Retrieved January 14, 2022, from https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/is-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-constitutional

Too broad of a spectrum here. And why should students not fear recrimination? This is coddling, pure and simple.

People being told they don't matter and don't have intrinsic worth is a hallmark of colonialism. It's also been an ethical issue in the study of anthropology for the past 150 years.

Anthropologist Tim Ingold in Anthropology: Why It Matters touches on some of this issue of comparing one group of people with another rather than looking at and appreciating the value of each separately.

The question of potential addiction to self-induced states that activate the dopamine (and/or other neurochemical) reward system(s) is important. From a more philosophical angle, should we welcome beneficial addictions that, if cultivated, might significantly improve individual and group quality of life? Isn't this related to our high regard for replacing detrimental with positive habits? Habit formation and maintenance also depends on activation of neural reward systems (see Nir Eyal's book, Hooked).

https://thedispatch.com/p/a-note-to-our-readers-from-steve

Center-right journalists Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch have severed ties with Fox News over a misinformation campaign from Tucker Carlson based on the January 6 events.

Kudos to them for drawing a line on this issue.

How can restorative justice work in a broader sense when public apologies aren't more carefully considered by the public-at-large? If the accuser accepts an apology, shouldn't that be enough? Society-at-large can still be leery of the person and watch their behavior, but do we need to continue ostracizing them?

An interesting example to look at is that of Monica Lewinsky who in producing a version of her story 20+ years later is finally able to get her own story and framing out. Surely there will be political adherents who will fault her, but has she finally gotten some sort of justice and reprieve from a society that utterly shunned her for far too long for an indiscretion which happens nearly every day in our society? Compare her with Hester Prynne.

Are we moving into a realm in which everyone is a public figure on a national if not international stage? How do we as a society handle these cases? What are the third and higher order effects besides the potential for authoritarianism which Applebaum mentions?

Boulton, G. (2021, October). Science as a Global Public Good. International Science Council. https://council.science/publications/science-as-a-global-public-good/

This is a nice introduction to some issues of concern to me. For instance, the absence of pain is good - but why is it good? The empirical reason for this is that it satisfies evolved instinct. So again, what is good tracks to what is natural. But the naturalistic fallacy undermines that. And most importantly, there is no known scientific connection between evolution and instinct on the one hand, and "good" on the other. My answer is: morality is not natural, it is an artifice of humanity. And since it's an artifice, we can make it whatever we want.

As a student in the new generation of UX designers i've been more sensible to these matters but i do see signs of alternative behaviors emerging (the right to repair, for example) which could benefit hugely from our discipline methods and learnings.

Should the Unvaccinated Get Priority for Monoclonal Antibodies? (2021, October 8). https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/94937

Victor Papanek’s book includes an introduction written by R. Buckminster Fuller, Carbondale, Illinois. (Sadly, the Thames & Hudson 2019 Third Edition does not include this introduction. Monoskop has preserved this text as a PDF file of images. I have transcribed a portion here.)

The big difference between the paranoiac's conspiracy theories and the real ones is that in the fake ones the conspirators are "in it together" and form a like-minded group. In reality, the billionaires would be very happy to through each other under the bus if they could.

So it's not so much that there are real conspiracies as there are a known set of methods and tools - known to everyone, everywhere - that allow this gross power imbalance to be created. These methods and tools are known to all but can only be used by the rich because they are themselves very costly.

The Evidence - Coronavirus: The Evidence - To boost or not to boost? - BBC Sounds. (n.d.). Retrieved 8 October 2021, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2yqg