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Anders Sandberg

Polar exploration: small steps towards cheaper, safer, easier IVF?

A new method of screening eggs for IVF has been developed, promising better chances of successful IVF cycles.

Two out of three women fail at each IVF attempt, and a large part of this is believed to be due to abnormalities in the number of chromosomes in the egg. Up to half of the eggs in younger women (and up to 75% in women approaching 40) have abnormalities. In traditional reproduction these failures would not be problematic, since attempts at conception can easily be retried. But in the case of IVF each attempt will be expensive and time-consuming. The new method is a small step towards truly efficient IVF. But does it solve the ethical issues?

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Open source censorship

The struggle against child porn goes on. An Australian judge has ruled that a cartoon showing a character from The Simpsons engaged in sexual activity is child pornography. Australia is also trying to implement Internet filtering for the whole population, although the project has run into serious opposition. Meanwhile Wikipedia ended up 'censored' in the UK due to a page with the controversial cover of an album.

The most interesting aspect of the Wikipedia debacle is that the decision that led to the censorship was not made by any government authority but an industry-sponsored group, the Internet Watch Foundation. The IWF maintains a blacklist certain ISPs subscribe to, and users trying to reach a site on it will be sent a blank page. Is this censorship, and is this bad?

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The perfect cognition enhancer

Nicholas D. Kristof reveals a plan to massively boost intelligence worldwide using a chemical additive.The additive is iodized salt. About 2 billion people worldwide suffer insufficient iodine intake, making it the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide. About 18 million people are mentally impaired each year due to deficiency. Iodized salt is a very cheap way to improve their condition, and the micronutrient initiative is now sponsoring iodization together with partners like UNICEF and the World Food Programme. Is this just restoring people to health, or are we enhancing them?

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Hacking the spammers

Why is there spam? The simple answer is that "there is a sucker born every minute" and email is cheap enough to reach millions of potential suckers who might want to buy Viagra, sure-fire investments and fake Rolexes. A new study has discovered that it is enough with one response to every 12.5 million emails sent is enough to be profitable. The most interesting about the study was how it was done: by hacking the spammers own network. But is it OK to hack in order to understand spam?

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Election ex machina: should voting machines be trusted?

When election of public officials through
public voting was instituted in the US,the framers of the constitution
had no inkling about how large the voting public would one day become. Beside logistical problems that
accidentally enfranchise goldfish and the many issues surrounding voter
registration a growing concern is the reliability of electronic voting
machines. As electronic voting machines are being installed, concerns about their reliability are being raised and legal battles ensue. In a Finnish election the system lost 2% of
all electronic votes. About 60% of American votes are cast on
paper ballots, but it might increase locally after problems with voting machines. The real fear is not that people might misvote due to misunderstandings or that votes might be miscounted, but that the machines themselves might be biased or easily tampered with. Can we trust the machines? Or are elections by their nature too messy for these problems to matter?

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Protectionist deities vs. the economy of fun: ownership of virtual possessions

Do players in online games have a right to their virtual possessions? As discussed by Erin Hoffman in an essay the matter is a legal quagmire. Real money is involved, people have assaulted each other over virtual thefts, China now recognizes people’s right to their virtual property
while the US does not. As virtual worlds become ever bigger business
the legal issues surrounding virtual property will become more important – both directly in court, and indirectly in shaping what kinds of worlds will be profitable or even possible. But from an ethical standpoint, do we have a right to virtual property?

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If evolution grinds to a halt, we move on

According to professor Steve Jones human evolution is grinding to a halt. The reason is, at least in the developed world, we have so good living standards and hence low mortality that we are not suffering any selection. He also argues that the mutation rate has been reduced because changes in reproduction and the larger gene pool. He concludes: "So, if you are worried about what utopia is going to be like, don’t;
at least in the developed world, and at least for the time being, you
are living in it now." As I see it, he has a very modest view of utopia. More seriously, do we have some kind of obligation to evolve?

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