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Cross Post: Women’s-Only Swimming Hours: Accommodation Is Not Discrimination

Written by Miriam Rosenbaum and Sajda Ouachtouki 

This article was originally published in First Things.

Women’s-only hours at swimming pools are nothing new. Many secular institutions have long hosted separate swim hours for women and girls who, for reasons of faith or personal preference, desire to swim without the presence of men. The list includes Barnard College, Harvard University, Yale University, and swim clubs, JCCs, and YMCAs across the country. Recently, women’s-only swimming hours have become a topic of debate, especially in New York, where promoters of liberal secularist ideology (including the editorial page of the New York Times) are campaigning against women’s-only hours at a public swimming pool on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. They claim that women’s-only swimming hours, even for a small portion of the day, must be abolished in the interest of “general fairness and equal access” and to avoid “discrimination” in favor of certain religions.Read More »Cross Post: Women’s-Only Swimming Hours: Accommodation Is Not Discrimination

Article Announcement: Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a person?

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Professor Julian Savulescu has recently published an article on the treatment of Human-Pig Chimera in the online Aeon Magazine.  To read the full article and join in the conversation please follow this link: http://bit.ly/29NUj1c   Professor Savulescu has written on this topic in the Practical Ethics in the News blog previously: https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2016/06/organ-mules/.

Cross Post: If you can screen for brown eyes, you should be able to edit out genetic disease

Written by Dr Christopher Gyngell, 
This Article was originally published in The Conversation
Not everyone’s choice of scarf. Shutterstock

It has long been known that cognitive diversity is important to collective performance. Diverse groups are more productive, more innovative and better at solving complex problems than less diverse groups. And recent research suggests that cognitive diversity also drives scientific progress.

Such research has direct implications for how we regulate reproductive technologies. Late last year, the London Sperm Bank was criticised for its decision to ban sperm donors who suffer from minor neurological disorders, including dyslexia and Asperger’s syndrome.Read More »Cross Post: If you can screen for brown eyes, you should be able to edit out genetic disease

Cross Post: Next time you ask the doctor for some antibiotics – consider whether you’re being immoral

Written by Alberto Giubilini, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

This article was originally published in The Conversation

Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of microorganisms causing infections to survive exposure to antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics. This is considered by some to be a slowly emerging disaster. According to the recently released Review on Antimicrobial Resistance commissioned by the UK government, by 2050 some 10m lives a year will be at risk because of drug resistant infections.

Read More »Cross Post: Next time you ask the doctor for some antibiotics – consider whether you’re being immoral

Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts

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Location: August 5th to 7th, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract Deadline: July 10th

Contact: researchmeeting@centerforeffectivealtruism.org

Overview

The 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting is an opportunity for Postgraduate students and early stage academics from a variety of disciplines to present research relevant to Effective Altruism. The meeting will take place on August 5th to 7th, 2016 at UC Berkeley alongside the Effective Altruism Global conference. The meeting will consist of two events, an academic poster session and a number of short oral presentations. Presentations will be awarded to the most exceptional submissions. Participants selected for presentations will still have the option to present a poster.

The Effective Altruism movement, which promotes the use of reason and evidence to determine the most effective ways to improve the world, has grown rapidly over the last three years. It is an interdisciplinary movement which has gained traction amongst academics in a wide range of fields, including Philosophy, Economics and Health. Last year’s Effective Altruism Global conference welcomed renowned philosopher Peter Singer and behavioral economist Dan Ariely, as well as 1000 attendees. This year, our speakers include Philip Tetlock (author of Superforecasting), Cass Sunstein (legal scholar and former Administrator of the White House OIRA), Thomas Kalil (Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at the White House OSTP), Jaan Tallinn (Co-Founder of Skype) and Irene Pepperberg (noted animal cognition scientist).  

Effective Altruism Global’s featured topics include discussions of the replication crisis, prediction markets, decision making under uncertainty, CRISPR, our obligations to the global poor, as well as a number of other topics that are important to shaping the future. The Research Meeting will run alongside Effective Altruism Global to give academics access to the large audience of interested attendees, and expose the more than 1,000 expected philanthropists, CEOs, and students to research relevant to Effective Altruism.Read More »Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts

Why is chemical castration being used on offenders in some countries?

Written by Dr Jonathan Pugh
This article was originally published on The Conversation
The answer for some. Shutterstock

Following a horrific act of sexual violence against a 14-year-old girl, the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, recently signed a decree into law, which, among other things, authorised the death penalty for convicted child sex offenders, and also the use of chemical castration of such offenders.

The main justification cited by Widodo was that castration would act as a deterrent. But how do such interventions fit in the criminal justice system? Are they likely to be successful?Read More »Why is chemical castration being used on offenders in some countries?

Three Black Teenagers

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Written by Dr Joshua Shepherd

Yesterday the term ‘three black teenagers’ trended heavily on twitter. (see https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/09/three-black-teenagers-anger-as-google-image-search-shows-police-mugshots) The trend began when @iBeKabir tweeted the results of two Google searches. A search for three white teenagers turned up images of wholesome smiling white teenagers. A search for three black teenagers turned up images of mugshots. (Google images is already going meta over the story, with Google images now turning up images of three black teenagers contrasted with three white teenagers.)Read More »Three Black Teenagers

Event: St Cross Special Ethics Seminar: The role of therapeutic optimism in recruitment to a clinical trial: an empirical study, presented by Dr Nina Hallowell

On Thursday 12 May 2016, Dr Nina Hallowell delivered the first St Cross Special Ethics Seminar of Trinity Term.  The talk is available to listen to here http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/TT16_STX_Hallowell.mp3

Title:  The role of therapeutic optimism in recruitment to a clinical trial: an empirical studyRead More »Event: St Cross Special Ethics Seminar: The role of therapeutic optimism in recruitment to a clinical trial: an empirical study, presented by Dr Nina Hallowell

Cross Post: How psychology can help us solve climate change

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Written byRachel New, researcher University of Oxford,

and  Nadira Faber, Research Fellow University of Oxford.

This article was originally published by The Conversation

 
Time to cooperate. Hands by Shutterstock

 

The Paris agreement on climate change calls for a global responsibility to cooperate. As we are often reminded, we urgently and drastically need to limit our use of one shared resource – fossil fuels – and its effect on another – the climate. But how realistic is this goal, both for national leaders and for us? Well, psychology may hold some answers.

Psychologists and economists have long explored the conflict between short-term individual and long-term collective interests when dealing with shared resources. Think of the commons dilemma: the scenario in which a field for grazing cattle works well when everyone cooperates by sticking to one cow each, but which leads to the so-called “tragedy of the commons” if more selfish drives take over.

It is useful to think about overuse of fossil fuels and its effect on the climate as a similar dilemma. If we were to think of this from a purely economic perspective, we would likely act selfishly. But psychological research should make us more optimistic about cooperation.Read More »Cross Post: How psychology can help us solve climate change