Skip to content

Trouble Brewing? The Ethical Significance of Synthetic Yeast

Trouble Brewing? The Ethical Significance of Synthetic Yeast

Back in 2010, I blogged about Craig Venter’s creation of the first synthetic organism, Synthia, a bacteria.

Now, in 2014, the next step has been made by a team at John Hopkins University, the use of synthetic biology in yeast, which, whilst still a simple organism, has a similar cell structure to humans (and other more complex organisms): a nuclei, chromosomes and organelles. The engineered yeast has been reproduced to over 100 generations, passing on its new DNA.

The pace is breathtaking. Moore’s law describes a phenomenon in computing, where computer capacity (so far) doubles every two years. Kurzweil uses Moore’s law to predict the ‘singularity’: a state where humans no longer control, or even comprehend, the progress that technology continues to make.

It’s difficult to measure scientific progress in the same way as computer power, but it’s clear that leaps in progress are now measured in years, not decades. Yet still we wait until technology is upon us before we act.

Read More »Trouble Brewing? The Ethical Significance of Synthetic Yeast

Neil Levy on Addiction

In a fascinating paper presented at the St Cross Ethics Seminar in Oxford, on 27 March 2014, Professor Neil Levy (Oxford and Melbourne) sought to solve the following puzzle about addicts: on the one hand, addicts are thought to lack control, but on the other they appear to engage in the kind of reason-responsive behaviour typical of rational agents (for example, many addicts for a small financial incentive will avoid the objects to which they are addicted).

Levy’s central claim was that addicts do lack control, but that this lack of control consists in a lack of control over belief-formation, leading to a change of mind – or ‘judgement-shift’. So addicts are rational in so far as they are acting on the basis of their current beliefs about what is best for them. Read More »Neil Levy on Addiction

The automated boycott

The dating site OKCupid displays a message to visitors using the web browser Firefox asking them to change browser, since “Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples”. The reason is that Eich donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8 (a California ban on same sex marriages) six years ago. He, on the other hand, blogs that he is committed to make Mozilla an inclusive place and that he will try to “show, not tell” in making it so. The company at large is pretty firmly on the equality side in any case.

Will the technologisation of boycotting lead to consumer pressure being applied in a better way?

Read More »The automated boycott

Giving alcohol to alcoholics: not as controversial as it seems

A Dutch program pays chronic alcoholics in beer for cleaning the streets and parks. A Canadian homeless shelter provides their alcohol clients with six ounces of white wine every 90 minutes. Giving alcohol to alcoholics, it seems counterproductive from a ‘just say no’ perspective, but I would like to argue that it makes sense on many levels.
The strongest case for giving alcohol to people with chronic alcohol dependence is based on the principle of ‘harm reduction’. Canadian ‘wet-shelter’ programs have emerged for two main reasons. The first is that many homeless shelters are abstinence based which means inveterate drinks would continue to sleep rough, even in freezing winter months, resulting in tragic deaths. The second reason is that chronic inebriates often consume non-beverage alcohol like hand sanitizer, mouth wash and aftershave thereby exacerbating already severe health problems. A recent study by the Centre for Addictions Research found that a “managed alcohol program” approach reduced emergency hospital visits and arrests among participants at the Kwae Kii Win Centre Managed Alcohol Centre by 40-80%. Significant changes among program participants included an improvement in accommodation renewed contact with their families, and better diet. Whilst participants still receive their alcohol throughout the day the alcohol is given by staff in controlled doses at fixed intervals. The dose is enough to prevent withdrawal symptoms, but not high enough to cause intoxication. Although there are many formal harm reduction programs for heroin users, it is less common for people who are alcohol dependent, despite the fact that withdrawing from alcohol can be lethal.Read More »Giving alcohol to alcoholics: not as controversial as it seems

Computer vision and emotional privacy

A study published last week (and summarized here and here) demonstrated that a computer could be trained to detect real versus faked facial expressions of pain significantly better than humans. Participants were shown video clips of the faces of people actually in pain (elicited by submerging their arms in icy water) and clips of people simulating pain (with their arms in warm water). The participants had to indicate for each clip whether the expression of pain was genuine or faked.

Whilst human observers could not discriminate real expressions of pain from faked expression better than chance, a computer vision system that automatically measured facial movements and performed pattern recognition on those movements attained 85% accuracy. Even when the human participants practiced, accuracy only increased to 55%.

The authors explain that the system could also be trained to recognize other potentially deceptive actions involving a facial component. They say:

In addition to detecting pain malingering, our computer vision approach maybe used to detect other real-world deceptive actions in the realm of homeland security, psychopathology, job screening, medicine, and law. Like pain, these scenarios also generate strong emotions, along with attempts to minimize, mask, and fake such emotions, which may involve dual control of the face. In addition, our computer vision system can be applied to detect states in which the human face may provide important clues about health, physiology, emotion, or thought, such as drivers’ expressions of sleepiness and students’ expressions of attention and comprehension of lectures, or to track response to treatment of affective disorders.

The possibility of using this technology to detect when someone’s emotional expressions are genuine or not raises interesting ethical questions. I will outline and give preliminary comments on a few of the issues:Read More »Computer vision and emotional privacy

The future of punishment: a clarification

By Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

I’m working on a paper entitled ‘Cyborg justice: punishment in the age of transformative technology’ with my colleagues Anders Sandberg and Hannah Maslen. In it, we consider how punishment practices might change as technology advances, and what ethical issues might arise. The paper grew out of a blog post I wrote last year at Practical Ethics, a version of which was published as an article in Slate. A few months ago, Ross Andersen from the brilliant online magazine Aeon interviewed Anders, Hannah, and me, and the interview was published earlier this month. Versions of the story quickly appeared in various sources, beginning with a predictably inept effort in the Daily Mail, and followed by articles in The Telegraph, Huffington Post, Gawker, Boing Boing, and elsewhere. The interview also sparked debate in the blogosphere, including posts by Daily Nous, Polaris Koi, The Good Men Project, Filip Spagnoli, Brian Leiter, Rogue Priest, Luke Davies, and Ari Kohen, and comments and questions on Twitter and on my website. I’ve also received, by email, many comments, questions, and requests for further interviews and media appearances. These arrived at a time when I was travelling and lacked regular email access, and I’m yet to get around to replying to most of them. Apologies if you’re one of the people waiting for a reply.
I’m very happy to have started a debate on this topic, although less happy to have received a lot of negative attention based on a misunderstanding of my views on punishment and my reasons for being interested in this topic. I respond to the most common questions and concerns below. Feel free to leave a comment if there’s something important that I haven’t covered.Read More »The future of punishment: a clarification

Can solitary confinement be justified?

This month an article published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) outlined the results of a study on self-harm amongst jail inmates in New York City. Data on all jail admissions between January 2010 and October 2012 was analysed and the authors noted the following: “We found that acts of self-harm were strongly associated with assignment of inmates to solitary confinement. Inmates punished by solitary confinement were approximately 6.9 times as likely to commit acts of self-harm after we controlled for length of jail stay, SMI [serious mental illness], age, and race/ethnicity.”

This research provides an interesting springboard for a discussion. Can solitary confinement ever be justified, and if so, in what circumstances?Read More »Can solitary confinement be justified?

Brain training in schools?

Neurofeedback works like this: you are hooked up to instruments that measure your brain activity (usually via electroencephalography or functional magnetic resonance imaging) and feed it back to you via auditory or visual feedback. The feedback represents the brain activity, and gives you a chance to modulate it, much as you might modulate the movements of your hand given visual or haptic feedback about its activity. What is interesting about the use of neurofeedback is it appears to train people to exercise some control over brain activity related to cognitive and mood-related processes. In other words, neurofeedback might potentially allow agents to modify the activity in their brains such that mood, attentional capacity, and other mental functions improve.Read More »Brain training in schools?