Suggested readings, 7th March 2021

Here are some interesting articles I've read over the past week I think are worth checking out.

Zeynep Tufekci, “5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating.” 26 Feb, The Atlantic.

"Despite all these good intentions, much of the public-health messaging has been profoundly counterproductive."

Yuval Noah Harari, “Lessons from a year.” 26 Feb, Financial Times.

"Information technology has made us more resilient in the face of organic viruses, but it has also made us far more vulnerable to malware and cyber warfare."

Thomas Douglas, “There is no fundamental ethical objection to vaccine passports.” 27 Feb, Brussels Times.

"[T]he case for vaccine passports is clear: they could allow us to end some lockdown and distancing measures for vaccinated individuals sooner than it would be safe to end them for everyone."

James Conca, “Irrational Nuclear Fear Puts Sweden In Danger Of Succumbing To Stupidity.” 28 Feb, Forbes.

"An early phase-out of nuclear would add over 2 billion tons of CO2 emissions, cause the loss of $120 billion in taxes and undermine their grid reliability in an area of the world that gets really cold."

Tom Chivers, “Don’t worry about your sperm count.” 3 Mar, UnHerd.

Review of Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperilling the Future of the Human Race by Shanna Swan and Stacey Colino.

Hannah Ritchie, “If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares.” 4 Mar, Our World in Data.

"Research suggests that if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops."

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Should We Use Neuroenhancement Drugs to Improve Relationships?

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , July-August, Vol. 147 (2014) L ove, it is fair to say, is probably the strongest emotion we can experience. It can come in many different forms: love of one’s parent, sibling, or child. Though most people consider romantic relationships—which include companionship, sexual passion, intimacy, warmth, procreation and child-rearing—as the most significant component of one’s life; and it is probably the thing we find discussed more than anything else in novels, films and music. Committed romantic relationships tend to occur within the institution of marriage—something that is ubiquitous to most, if not all, cultures. Indeed, relationships today, which are primarily love-driven, are not just confined to marriages, as many couples sustain relationships outside of wedlock. Being in a love-driven relationship is considered important for most people, as it contributes to happiness—something we a...

Is Adult Incest Wrong?

An version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , March-April, Vol. 151 (2015) Incest is something most people find morally objectionable and it's one of the most common of all cultural taboos. The British Medical Association’s Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia (1990) defines incest as “ intercourse between close relatives,” that usually includes “intercourse with a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a grandparent or grandchild.” The Oxford English Dictionary ’s definition is a little broader: it doesn’t confine incest to just intercourse, but to “sexual relations between people classified as being too closely related to marry each other.” Most countries have some kind of law against incest—though consensual adult incest is not a crime in France, Spain, Russia the Netherlands, and a host of countries in South America. In England and Wales, however, t he Sexual Offences Act 2003 ...

Intuitions and Ethics

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 146 (2014) The notion that our moral intuitions possess epistemic authority has been associated with a number of philosophers within the canon of Western thought. Roughly speaking, these thinkers have argued that our intuitions have recourse to a unique authority of perception that yields special access to a sphere of moral legitimacy. Others, however, have claimed that our intuitions are incredibly diverse and often conflict with each other—for example, your intuition says assisted suicide is morally permissible and my intuition says it’s wrong. But it seems the two contrasting intuitions cannot both be right. At the same time, most of us think our own moral intuitions are right : they do not seem inconsistent to us, and we have a strong sense to believe them. Accordingly, they strike us as correct. Undoubtedly, moral intuitions can be shaped by our particular culture, environment or co...

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