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New Podcast: Toby Ord and Harry Shannon on Effective Philanthropy

New Podcast: Toby Ord and Harry Shannon on Effective Philanthropy

On Monday 4th of March, the Centre for Practical Ethics hosted a joint lecture on the evaluation of the effectiveness of charitable organizations, given by Toby Ord and Harry Shannon. Their lectures and ensuing discussion covered a range of different topics, including the numerical methods for assessing the effectiveness of a charity, the philosophical concepts… Read More »New Podcast: Toby Ord and Harry Shannon on Effective Philanthropy

Sexy Indian Costumes on Sale!

Picture taken from California Costume Collection, Inc.

 

I’ve been to Cologne recently, one of Germany’s main Carnival cities. In the window of a shop I passed, I saw some residues of the just ended Carnival season for sale – amongst other things, a Native American costume. Like many others of the sort, it consisted of a brown faux suede suit, a colourful feather hair decoration, and a little fake axe. And – not to my surprise – it showed far more skin that it concealed. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture. However, “Indian” Carnival and Halloween costumes like that can be found all over the internet, may it be in the (sadly unavoidable) “sexy” women’s version like the one I saw, or in the male “warrior / chief” version.

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Well, he did make the trains run on time

 

Well, they say of Mussolini, at least he made the trains run on time.

Actually, that’s disputed, but that’s by-the-by.  While watching the telly, I was struck by a remark of Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, on the resignation of the leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholic community, Cardinal Keith O’Brien following allegation of sexual misconduct.  “It would be a great pity if a lifetime of positive work was lost from comment in the circumstances of his resignation”, said Salmond.Read More »Well, he did make the trains run on time

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? When should we act against disturbing imagination

A British nurse has been arrested for claiming online to have eaten two women, with the police digging up his garden. This is the latest twist on the Gilberto Valle case, where a New York policeman stands accused for plotting to kidnap, rape, murder and cannibalize women. The case hinges upon whether the disturbing online discussions between Valle, the nurse and others are actual evidence of planning crimes, or just vivid shared fantasies. When should we act when encountering disturbing fantasies?

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What social contract?

As I said last time, I’ve been reading Michael Huemer’s book:  The Problem of Political Authority. The problem of political authority is the problem of justifying coercion by the government  when common sense morality rules out the same behaviour done by anyone else. The point here is that government has no special right to command and we have no special duty to obey unless what the government does that goes beyond what we may do can be justified.

Government coercion is commands backed up by the threat of deliberate physical harm up to and including killing. In short, and for example, taxation is demanding money with menaces, morally forbidden to you and me but done by the government. Does the government have any such right and do you have any duty to obey it?

The first kind of justification Huemer considers is the social contract: that you agreed to being coerced by the government. Now I don’t know about you, but I never made any such agreement. So on that basis the government should leave me alone, shouldn’t it?

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Why advertising gay conversion therapy is like advertising make-up

by Rebecca Roache

Various news sources—including The Huffington Post, Gay Star News, and the London Evening Standard—are reporting a High Court case in which a campaigner for gay conversion therapy is fighting Transport for London (TfL) over a ban on its bus adverts that suggest that homosexuality can be ‘cured’.

Dr Mike Davidson is head of Core Issues Trust which, according to its website, is ‘a non-profit Christian ministry supporting men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression’. Davidson, who is married with children, insists that his own gay feelings were removed by therapy. He told The Huffington Post that he had homosexual feelings ‘from the moment [he] opened [his] eyes’. Even so, he believes that ‘gay’ is a ‘late twentieth century political construction’ that people can reject. His adverts read, ‘Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!’—a response to similar posters by lesbian, gay and bisexual charity Stonewall which read, ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’ Davidson’s adverts have been deemed ‘offensive to gays’ by London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is also head of TfL.Read More »Why advertising gay conversion therapy is like advertising make-up

Wall St, Charity, and Saving the World

Today I started writing for Quartz magazine, the Atlantic’s new on-line business magazine.  My first article is on saving the world by funding charities rather than working for charities – a topic that I’ve written on previously for the Practical Ethics blog. The basic idea is that, often, one can do more good by choosing to fund not-for-profits rather than work for them directly – and that a good way to fund them is to ‘earn to give’, that is to deliberately take a high-earning career and donate a large chunk of one’s earnings to the best causes.

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The Ethics of Meatballs

In the light of the unfolding horsemeat scandal, it was only a matter of time before some equine entrails were uncovered in an Ikea meatball. This is a shame on many levels, not least for the poor pigs, cows, and horses whose flesh will now end up as landfill. I personally am quite partial to an Ikea meatball, would not object on the mere grounds that it contained horsemeat (I think I would have been hard pressed to identify the ingredients anyway prior to the scandal), and recently enjoyed an Ikea meatball dinner in Budapest with a colleague from the Uehiro Centre, not a million miles from where the offending meatball was uncloaked. But for those who consider eating Ikea meatballs intrinsically good, but eating horsemeat intrinsically bad, how could they be advised?

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Announcement: Student Prize Competition ‘Enhancing Humanity’s Collective Wisdom’

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The Future of Humanity Institute’s second thesis prize competition for students focuses on a “big picture” question with important implications for practical ethics: how can we best prepare humanity to address the global challenges of the coming century?”. First prize £2000.

Humanity has become more and more connected, from the national level to the personal. Yet are we becoming better able to collectively harness our information, goals, and ideas to lead to wise decisions? How could we best enhance humanity’s collective wisdom to help overcome the global challenges of the next century?

There are many possibilities, from familiar ideas or institutions such as freedom of the press, the adversarial legal system, Wikipedia, and global governance, to less well known ones like prediction markets or Aumann agreement. Most valuable would be high-leverage insights: those that could be easily implemented yet could make a global difference.
The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University wants to get young researchers thinking about these big questions. Choosing a PhD thesis topic is one of the big choices affecting the direction of your career, and so deserves a great deal of thought. To encourage this, we are running a slightly unusual prize competition. The format is a two-page ‘thesis proposal’ consisting of a 300 word abstract and an outline plan of a thesis on a topic related to enhancing humanity’s collective wisdom. We will publish the best abstracts on our website and give a prize of £2,000 to the author of the proposal we deem the most promising or original.

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If The Jury System Is The Best Option, Can We Make it Better?

By Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg

Vicky Pryce, wife of disgraced ex-MP Chris Huhne, is back in court this week after  the jury trying her case  was  discharged last week having failed to reach a verdict on her charges of perverting the course of justice. In 2003, Pryce accepted Huhne’s speeding points, but is claiming a defence of marital coercion. In 10 questions to the judge, the first jury showed an alarming and deep lack of understanding. Questions included:

“Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it?”

They also showed the jury had apparently forgotten key concepts which were explained during the trial:

“Does this defence require violence or physical threats?”

“Can you define what is reasonable doubt?”

Following the jury’s discharge, the judge said the jury showed “absolutely fundamental deficits in understanding”, adding that he had never seen this in 30 years of presiding over criminal trials. In Pryce’s trial, the questions the jury asked after several days of deliberations raised alarm bells, but in another  trial where a verdict was reached, we would never know what the standard of jury understanding or deliberation had been. Yet juries are asked to decide (in some countries) on matters of life or death.

The Pryce case may have been unusual, but in any trial, and particularly in complex fraud cases, juries are asked to juggle and compute vast amounts of information, and to retain it throughout the trial in order to make an informed decision at the end. We have argued in “The Memory of Jurors: Enhancing Trial Performance”  and “Cognitive Enhancement in Courts” with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, that cognitive enhancement, particularly memory enhancers should be made available to jurors. If this had been available in the Pryce case, would the jury have spent more time discussing the decision at hand, and less on (mis-)remembering the judge’s instructions on reasonable doubt or the definition of coercion? If we ask people to take on a civic duty we should offer them all the tools we have available to assist them in its completion.

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