The Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland

The web page of the Dignitas Clinic, where terminally ill patients can be assisted in dying:  HERE.

Baby Box Ban

Do places designated as safe places to abandon babies encourage, or discourage, mistreatment?
Read about it HERE. 

Technology

Suicide or Martyrdom?

A clip from Lethal Weapon.  Mel Gibson plays a suicidal cop.  HERE

Patriots and Terrorists and Martyrs

A clip from The Patriot:   HERE

First Three Person Baby Born

Check this out.  Is it an on-ramp to something we should worry about?  Or is it a wonderful new way to make it possible for us to avoid defects and diseases?  Or both?  Read about it HERE.

Drugs in Sports

Therapy or Enhancement?  An interesting case HERE.

And about Dolphins

No comment.  It's all HERE.

On Horrible Pandas

A.

An article, British, about scandalous, horrible, Panda rental.  The situation is the same for every country who wants pandas.    HERE


B. 

An article grading different animals.  Pandas:  F         HERE


C.

Seriously.    HERE

On Being Vegetarian

I don't talk about myself in class much, but several of you have asked me about being a vegetarian, so I thought I'd just add a quick note about it here.  This was not a quick transition for me, and it was not simple.  It would be misleading to say that I had one reason or one moment where I made up my mind.  Eating meat is part of my culture and my family traditions.  Also, some of my very favorite meals were meat-based.  Here's how I'd summarize my thinking now:  the taste of meat is not worth the suffering it causes.  Also, even if there were no suffering at all, it still seems to me to be wrong to end the life of a creature with its own aims and desires, solely for my momentary pleasure.  Sentient life seems to be rare in the universe.  I want to respect it as much as I can.  I could say a lot more, but that's the gist of it.

Making Babies without Eggs

No need for eggs.  Somewhere about fifteen years ago, sperm were similarly made superfluous.  Interesting post-human days ahead...?   Read it HERE.

Very Important

This kangaroo was rescued after something happened to its mother.  Now it is being slowly acclimated to the wild, allowed to come and go as it pleases from the rescue center.  It still comes back regularly to hug its teddybear:  HERE

Dignity

I'm in danger of worrying too much about this.  But maybe it's the right kind of thing to worry too much about.  I'm not conservative like Kass or Fukuyama.  But I always worry when someone dismisses a concern without showing that they understand the concern.  And Bostrom does that.

And I don't feel like I know how to invoke a sense of dignity.  So it's frustrating to not know how to shine a light on the problem with Bostrom.

As it turns out, whether or not we want a "posthuman" future, we've got one coming to us.  Medicine will constantly improve.  Technology will become more and more part of our lives, and our lifestyles, and our bodies and minds.  The only thing that will stop it, I think, is some combination of war and environmental destruction that wipes us out (and that's where my bet is, really).

When Copernicus said that we were not at the center of the universe, and Darwin said that we were not at some special center of God's creation, and Nietzsche said that Judeo-Christian morality is really a sign of a dying cultural life-force, Freud said that we are not creatures possessed of a guiding and divine-like rationality, and Marx said that our relationships and values and social structure were all really driven by money....  

All of these kinds of moments displace the human from some specialness.  They disillusion and disenchant us about ourselves.  They move us more toward the animal.

Meanwhile, technology, all along, has been moving us more toward the machine.

Both are happening all the time.  Moving us away from a picture of ourselves as godlike creatures of goodness and freewill.

Now maybe that's just us:  a tool using animal that puts on airs, dreams of itself as godlike.

Maybe, as some of you suggested, there's some new form of specialness, storing itself up even now.  I feel doubtful, but who knows?

Maybe the thing to know is that now, these days, we have it in our power to change, in deep ways, the kind of creature we are, very very rapidly.  It is happening, we are doing it, and we have no overarching vision or plan--or even real comprehension---to guide us.

Should that utter lack of light convince us to slow down?  That's a question.  It will feel like refusing to make progress.  Irrational.  But just as we lower our voices at a funeral, without really knowing why, it may be that we should hit the pause button on some technological advances, to give ourselves a chance to breathe.

OK, dissertation over.  Comments welcome.

Belgian Youth Assisted to End Life

Here's a report on euthanasia in Belgium.  It's one of the first times that a minor was allowed to be assisted to end his life.  You can read about it HERE.

Freedom Overload

Madi suggested this TED Talk to me, and it is quite interesting, all about the effects of having too many choices.  I don't know if I endorse the whole message, but it is very interesting and relevant to our class.    HERE

On Statins

Statins benefits underestimated, review says

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37306736

(Paste the link into your browser window.)

--C

Nicotine and the NOCEBO effect

Interesting article about how what you know can hurt you:  HERE.