The immorality of public consolation in the face of ageing
In case you didn’t know: The EU is currently celebrating the “European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations”. The paramount aim of this initiative is to increase the well-being of the elderly by raising awareness that they can still contribute to society by ageing actively, that is, utilising their abilities for their own good and the good of society. In the best case, according to this initiative, not only older people will benefit from ageing actively but also younger ones who do not have the experience and wisdom of earlier generations. Although this is a noble aim, the answer to the question why there should be such a European Year is a gross and seriously immoral distortion of reality: “Because, too often, getting old is perceived as a threat instead of an achievement, both for individuals and for societies. [...] Staying active as we grow older is key to tackling the challenge of ageing.” Continue reading
How will the future change your politics?
Your politics are determined by your values, your opinions about the facts of the world, and, let’s be honest, just a little bit of tribalism. But the future is approaching, as it often does, and great transformations may be in the cards. Transformations that could dramatically affect the facts of the world. So whatever your values are, there is a chance that you may soon be arguing for the opposite of your usual policies. For instance, what if the future were necessarily…
Communist: one of the easiest ones to conceive of. Here it turns out that as barriers to trade are removed and transaction costs go to zero, the natural state of the economy is one of perpetual crashes. Celebrity and fame feed upon themselves: everyone demands the best, and the definition of the best is shared widely: niche markets don’t exist. Incomes follow such a sharp power law that only a few percent of the population have any wealth at all. Automation means that most people can’t earn enough to sustain themselves: their income drops below the costs of keeping them alive. Hence a large, bloated, over-regulating government becomes a matter of survival.
Ultra-capitalist: as barriers to trade are removed and transaction costs go to zero, the whole market segments into small niches. Everyone can find some buyer for their work, as new demands and new suppliers spring up immediately, connected by new technologies. Technology solves known externalities (like global warming), so there is little need for a centralised controlling authority. Change happens so rapidly that any governmental intervention is counterproductive: by the time the change is implemented, the benefits and costs the government was trying to influence are things of the past. The efficient market, the only thing fast enough to keep up with itself, flows like a river around any blundering governmental efforts, rendering them moot.
Bold Private John Smith, VC, modified ‘t’ allele of TPH1 SNP rs2108977
By Charles Foster
There’s a significant association of PTSD symptoms with a particular allele, according to a recently published study from UCLA and Duke. Some of the ethical consequences are already being discussed. One consequence might be military. One might be able to detect and filter out PTSD-vulnerable recruits. Perhaps that’s a kindness. It would certainly seem militarily prudent. There might be legitimate qualms about creating a biologically callous warrior-class, but you’re not creating its components – you’re just collecting them together. You might not want to go to their parties, and you might wonder about the mutually brutalizing effect of corralling them in a barracks, but the exercise is really only a scientifically more informed version of the selection that goes on in any event. It’s not very interesting ethically.
But what if a gene for PTSD-resistance could be inserted or artificially switched on? It doesn’t seem fanciful. Should the military be permitted (or perhaps even required) to PTSD-proof their personnel? Continue reading
Psychiatric drugs to enhance conformity to religious norms, and conscientious objection
An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports on the (alleged) frequent use of psychiatric drugs within the Haredi community, at the request of the religious leaders, in order to help members conform with religious norms. Haredi Judaism is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. It is sometimes referred to by outsiders as ultra-Orthodox. Haredim typically live in communities that have limited contact with the outside world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and family.
In December 2011, the Israel Psychiatric Association held a symposium entitled “The Haredi Community as a Consumer of Mental-Health Services”. One of the speakers was Professor Omer Bonne, director of the psychiatry department at Hadassah University Hospital. Professor Bonne is claimed to have said that sometimes yeshiva students (yeshiva is a religious school) and married men should be given antidepressants even if they do not suffer from depression, because these drugs also suppress sex drive.
Nudge Drugs: should the social side-effects of medications weigh into public health?
You are a public health official responsible for the purchasing of medications for the hospitals within your catchment area in the NHS. Your policies significantly affect which, out of the serpentine lists of heart disease medications, for example, are available to your patients. Today, you must choose between purchasing one of three heart disease medications: Drug A, Drug B, and Drug C. They are pretty similar in efficacy, and all three have been being used for many years. Drug B is slightly less expensive than Drug A and Drug C, but there is emerging evidence that it increases the likelihood that patients will take “bad bets,” i.e. make large gambles when the chance of winning is low (and thus might contribute to large social costs). Drug C costs a tiny bit more than Drug A, but there is some evidence that Drug C may help decrease implicit racial bias. You have been briefed on the research suggesting that implicit racial bias can lead to people making choices that consistently and unintentionally limit the opportunities of certain groups, even when all the involved parties show explicit commitments to social equality. Finally, there is emerging evidence that drug A both helps people abstain from alcohol and dissociates negative emotional content from memories.
Which drug should you purchase?
Let us begin to think about this question through the lens of the idea of the “Nudge,” which has exploded onto the public sphere (and blogosphere) since Thaler and Sunstein’s published their book, “Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness.” (see the blog here). I briefly and incompletely introduce nudges here, in hopes that we may soon move on to discuss the kind of ”nudge drugs” our thought experiment considers.
Is it OK to have an affair if your partner is asexual?
I am desperate to start a sexual relationship with an old acquaintance but his wife, who has no interest in sex, would be appalled if she knew. Does that matter?
I read this in the Guardian’s ‘Life & Style’ section. Every week, a reader can present a dilemma she/he is faced with in her/his ‘private’ life and ask other readers for advice.
The full story goes like this:
I recently reconnected with an old classmate from my teens, and we fell in love almost immediately. We are in our early 50s and both in long marriages to good people whom we love. Leaving our spouses is not an option [....] Despite our desire for each other and the fact that his wife and my husband may be asexual, my friend and I have not slept with each other. My husband has given me permission to have a lover, but my friend’s wife would be appalled if he asked for the same set-up. Shouldn’t someone with no interest in sex and minimal romantic attachment to their spouse (they are like roommates) allow that spouse to fulfil her or his needs for stimulation and affection (discreetly) elsewhere without calling it “cheating”? My friend and I are moral people, but life is short.
Some of the readers’ replies are:
Whose word do we have for it that his wife is asexual?…Oh, only his… What a surprise.
Of course it is ok! Go and fuck with everyone in sight and don’t bother!
Fortunately, other replies are more sophisticated. Most people seem to acknowledge the dilemma is real. None of the proposed options are ideal. For example, those who suggest asexual married couples should never have extramarital sexual relationships at the same time acknowledge that this solution is not ideal as sexual frustration may build up and may have devastating effects on the marriage. Those who suggest the individuals who are attracted to each other (henceforth ‘sexual’ individuals) should be honest about it to their partners, and that the ‘affair’ (consented to by all parties concerned) may be justified, realise this will make their ‘asexual’ partners unhappy, with potentially devastating effects for both marriages. Perhaps some will find it obvious that one of these alternatives is better than the other, but surely we must except that whichever option one chooses, there is some harm, or risk of harm.
Could what Savulescu and Sandberg, in their 2008 paper, have called ‘love drugs’ help resolve the dilemma?
Love and other drugs, or why parents should chemically enhance their marriages
By Brian Earp
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Love and other drugs, or why parents should chemically enhance their marriages
Valentine’s day has passed, and along with it the usual rush of articles on “the neuroscience of love” – such as this one from Parade magazine. The penner of this particular piece, Judith Newman, sums up the relevant research like this:
It turns out that love truly is a chemical reaction. Researchers using MRIs to look at the brain activity of the smitten have found that an interplay of hormones and neurotransmitters create the state we call love.
My humble reckoning is that there’s more to “the state we call love” than hormones and neurotransmitters, but it’s true that brain chemistry is heavily involved in shaping our experience of amour. In fact, we’re beginning to understand quite a bit about the cerebral circuitry involved in love, lust, and human attachment—so much so that a couple of Oxford philosophers have been inspired to suggest something pretty radical.
They think that it’s time we shifted from merely describing this circuitry, and actually intervened in it directly—by altering our brains pharmacologically, through the use of what they call “love drugs.”
Go for Bronze!
Written by Roman Gaehwiler
Within research of happiness sports incorporates a scientifically approved instrument in order to fight mental depression. Therefore, the excretion of endorphines during physical exercise is capable to generate what a frog might experience when birth-rates decrease – pure delightment! Hence, frogs do not believe in princesses, but in storks.
Nevertheless, the general increase of average Body-Mass-Index (BMI) implies that many people tend to prefer the phlegmatic state of unhappiness and ignore the psychological effect of sports. As a matter of fact, in terms of public happiness in sports we might better take on an utilitaristic standpoint. Therefore, it might be legal to question our single-winner orientation like Hans Lenk used to in his piece „Dopium fürs Volk“ (Denkperlen 06, 2007 merus Verlag). With regard to the sporting performance of a marathon-runner for instance, thousands of participants experience rushes of satisfaction, although they did not perform world-record time. Consequently, it is not the athletic result which makes us happy or unhappy rather it is about the assessement. This might also be the reason why a bronze-medallist tend to be happier than his/her component at the other end of the podium. Additionally, targeting the maximation of happiness could be identified as „friends“, because in order to gain more individual happiness you have to share it. Friends are those people who like you, although, they know you. Applied to sports such derivation would suggest to engage in team-sports.
To come to a conclusion, it is easy to be happy, but it is hard to be easy. Some day in life you will be the pigeon and another one maybe the historical monument or statue. But, with the aid of sports you will learn to fly no matter what you are.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Thanks a lot to Dr. med. Eckart von Hirschhausen for creative inspiration and essential insights.
References: Dr. med. Eckart von Hirschhausen; Glück kommt selten allein…, Rowohlt Verlag, Juni 2009
Gender Competition Preserves Natural Traits of Competitive Sports
Written by Roman Gaehwiler
In western communities the degree of gender equality and emancipation represents an important indicator to level sophistication and liberalism. In sports, however, sexual discrimination is taken for granted. As a result of strict sex segregation, there’s no opportunity for women to measure their abilities with male opponents. Consequently, either sport seems to lack social development or the emancipation of female athletes is not an issue worth considering. Tamburrini and Tännsjö declare this state as “strange” arguing as follows: “The best response to this argument may be to offer women the possibility of genetically becoming as strong as men”. In fact, this would mean to genetically alter the natural female hormone-balance in order to increase testosterone serum-concentration. Finally, that may result in transforming women into men rather than providing equality. In fact, such an act would undermine the ideology of emancipation and therefore foster the issue about gender distinction more acutely. Additionally, Susan Sherwin and Meredith Schwartz respond that “this solution misses the fact the problem of oppression for women is not that men are ‘naturally’ superior and women are struggling to ‘catch up’ to the male ideal.” Furthermore, the problem may have origin in the masculanization of society and “the construction what is ‘best’ reflects male talents, and those activities that are perceived as female are systematically undervalued.” Apparently, this discussion and the tolerance of gender distinction in sports prove the pleasant fact that the acceptance of natural differences and individual traits are still welcome, even in times of “levelling the playing field” and genetic enhancement debates. As a matter of fact, the nature of competitive sports is about the measurement of differences. Hence, when artificial performance enhancing substances tend to level the playing-field the existence of sexes is able to preserve some natural traits of competitive sports.
Are Dopers better Sports(wo-)men?
by Roman Gaehwiler
The crusade against artificial performance enhancement in sports is varicoloured and almost exhaustively debated. Nevertheless, there are still several approaches from the athlete’s perspective which are worth to consider. On the one hand, there is the noble and doubtlessly essential pedagogic approach fostering the educative aspect implying that the misapplication of pharmaceuticals and psychotropic drugs is medically and morally intolerable. In this respect, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency such behavior is also ment to represent a prohibitive action against the «ethos of sports». On the other hand, we probably have to reflect that ingesting specific pharmaceutical performance enhancers displays one possible interpretation of the «ethos of sports». Admittedly, this is a polarising thesis which may be highly challenging at first sight. However, the intrinsic motivation to do everything within your repertoire of opportunities in order to achieve your individual goals demonstrates a typical trait of the so-called ethos of sports. As a matter of fact, doing this during competition as a mean to improve your punctual ability to perform could be interpreted as a dubious performance enhancing practice. In contrast, it is believed that a significant part of athletes help themselves with banned substances exclusively in order to increase their amount of training. In this reference, sports(wo-)men inject peptidehormones such as erythropoietin (EPO) to extend their individual endurance training or ingest anabolic steroids to shorten the interval between the different training-sessions and improve recovery. Concerning this, it might be appropriate to re-evaluate the term «ethos of sports» within an anti-doping framework. On behalf of definition-oriented coherence athletes might meet this specific aspect of the ethos while taking performance enhancing substances for training purposes.
As a result : Indeed, athletes using performance enhancing substances may be (by definition) better sportsmen in the sense of the ethos of sports because they (are able to) train more in order to reach their goals compared to «clean» combatants.
However, another serious ethical issue emerges some steps further in the process. As a matter of fact, unphysiologically elevated training quantities result in musculo-skeletal detrition at least in the long-term perspective. Consequently, athletes get treated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in order to fight the pain caused by chronic tissue-overstress. Unfortunately, NSAIDs do not imply any preventive characteristics. Hence, as long as the individual athlete is obliged to continue regular competitions tissue damage is going to aggravate silently. To come to a conclusion, in short notice official bodies engage intensively to keep up the athlete’s capacity in order to participate for the benefit of an entertaining sport event. As a consequence, while adhering to such kind of inconsistent anti-doping practice governing bodies indirectly encourage professional athletes to undergoe illegal artificial performance enhancement. Hence, solely fighting the symptoms is not equal to disease-eradication. Thus, merely antagonizing the outcome (-> pain due to overstress) is somehow close to diplomatic ignorance of a basic complex of problems (-> doping).
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