Hacking the spammers

by Anders Sandberg
November 10, 2008

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?

The Great Botox Experiment in Mood Enhancement

by Guy Kahane
November 7, 2008

Suppose that the people around repeatedly smile or shake their heads. Although you may not notice it, it is very likely that soon you too will begin to smile or shake your heard. And it is likely that this will affect how you feel and what you think. Or at least this is what social psychology tells us.

In one experiment that demonstrated this ‘chameleon effect’, subjects were recorded unconsciously imitating the movements of an experimenter. In another experiment, when subjects contorted their faces in a way that paralleled smiling, they felt happier. And when subjects were told to engage in tasks that required them to move their heads as if they nodding or shaking it, this affected how easy it was to persuade them of something—it was easier to persuade them if they were nodding their head, harder if they were shaking it! (though only if the argument was good—see here for details.) What’s all this got to do with botox?

Top hats and top-ups: better health for the better off

by Dominic Wilkinson
November 4, 2008

The health secretary announced today that patients in the UK who choose to buy medicines not funded by the national health service, will no longer be excluded from receiving public health care. This announcement follows controversy about expensive cancer drugs that are available in other countries, but may not be available under the NHS.

Given that private healthcare is available in the UK (and overseas) for those who are able to pay for it, it seems unreasonable to punish patients who choose to spend their money on cancer drugs by denying them access to the public health system for part of their care. (See here, and here for previous blogs on this topic).

Re-creating mammoths and the family dog: two different cases

by Alexandre Erler
November 4, 2008

The idea of reproductive cloning can easily be perceived as offensive, as a practice that constitutes the dark side of cloning and should be prohibited under all circumstances, by contrast with therapeutic cloning, the benefits of which are increasingly acknowledged. However, such reactions typically assume that it is human cloning we are talking about. Regardless of how we should assess this latter practice, it seems difficult to make a plausible case for a complete ban on reproductive cloning of nonhuman animals. On the contrary, such a technique appears to open up exciting prospects. A group of Japanese scientists, as recently reported in the press (by the BBC and the Guardian, among other sources) have thus managed to produce clones from dead mice that had been frozen for 16 years. According to the aforesaid scientists, this achievement raises the possibility of re-creating extinct species such as mammoths from their frozen remains – a bit like what happens in Steven Spielberg’s movie Jurassic Park.

Election ex machina: should voting machines be trusted?

by Anders Sandberg
November 3, 2008

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?

Should We Be Erasing Memories?

by S. Matthew Liao, New York University
November 3, 2008

By S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu

Scientists from the Medical College of Georgia in the US recently claimed to be able selectively to wipe out traumatic memories. These scientists experimented with mice and found that a particular protein plays a crucial role in the formation of memories. When they made the mice produce an excess of this protein, memories of painful events were completely eliminated. Such research raises hope for treating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which painful memories become intrusive and damage an individual’s ability to live an ordinary life. In theory, such memories could either have their emotional strength reduced or be blotted out altogether. In practice we are still some distance away from being able to achieve this, but it does not seem unreasonable to think that within the next decade we will be able to control the erasing of memory.

From doomed lamb to potential phoenix – the story of a modern sacrifice

by Barbro Bjorkman
November 3, 2008

‘Is there a place for sacrifice in the modern world?’ a colleague asked during a conference in Oxford this weekend. To an extent the answer appears to depend on what we mean by sacrifice. The traditional religious version is arguably in demise in a secular and increasingly individualistic society, but could it be that another version is on the rise? It has become almost standard procedure that when a politician, business leader or other public person is caught doing something they really shouldn’t do, they go for the public apology. In this grovelling mea culpa parade they offer themselves up in tasty little morsels intended to satisfy the public appetite. Sometimes the outrage is such that, for all their efforts, they are still sent packing. Yet all is not lost, after a while out in the cold a surprising number resurface to take on new posts involving big responsibilities presumably requiring both a strong character and sound judgement. But do we really have good reason to think that time out of the lime light equals time spent on moral contemplation?

The Morality of Suicide Bombing

by Roger Crisp
October 31, 2008

Since the 1980s, the popularity of suicide attacks – primarily bombing – has grown rapidly. There are now hundreds every year. As I write, the BBC is reporting a suicide bombing which appears to have killed eight people in Pakistan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7701435.stm The motivation of suicide bombers has been widely discussed by sociologists, historians, psychologists, and others. My topic, however, is not their motivation, but their moral status.

Euthanasia and Perverse Incentives

by Toby Ord
October 30, 2008

Debbie Purdy is a British woman suffering from multiple sclerosis. Worried about her degenerating condition, she has planned to end her life at the Swiss clinic, Dignitas, which practices euthanasia for people with crippling medical conditions. The story entered the media when she challenged the British High Court to specify whether or not they would prosecute her husband if he went with her to Switzerland. Yesterday the High Court ruled that they would not provide any special advice about the likelihood of prosecution.

A key feature of this case is that the current law is creating a perverse incentive. Debbie Purdy has said that she is not prepared to risk the prosecution of her husband and thus in the absence of an advisory indicating he would not be prosecuted, she would travel to Dignitas by herself. However, since her condition is debilitating, she would have to undergo the travel and euthanasia at an earlier stage of the illness if she was to do it all by herself. The law would thus make things worse for her, as she would die while her life was still bearable and furthermore, she would die away from her husband. It would also be worse from the British Government’s point of view as presumably if they see euthanasia as bad, then premature euthanasia would be worse.

Travelling for Treatment

by Mark Sheehan
October 29, 2008

A BBC report today suggests that “many” UK couples are going overseas to choose the sex of their children. What seems most odd about this is that in some cases they go to places where sex selection is illegal.

What is interesting here is the fascination with what people do when they go overseas or why they go overseas. There are a whole range of stories about Britons going overseas to get things that they cannot get in the UK – or cannot get in the UK as cheaply. The obvious examples are sex selection, assisted suicide or treatments not available on the NHS.