351 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2020
    1. It was, after all, the digital equivalent of must-see TV. “Have not been this riveted since the final episode of Lost, and this *didn’t* piss me off! Amazing!” wrote one Twitter user in reply to Blair’s thread. “Please @TheEllenShow have a look on it! We need to know more about this happy end,” wrote another. Blair should be credited, if nothing else, with spinning the relatively unremarkable behavior of two strangers into such a simple but compelling story.

      This is a remarkable insight. While I can definitely empathize with the entertainment value of such a livestream type of entertainment, having watched people make fools of themselves online or play video games, the involuntary aspect of it is unsettling. Saying that these happenings didn't piss them off means that the Twitter user came in with an expectation that this unfolding story should be consumable and intriguing while not breaking off or taking a drastic turn for the worse, as many "first-date" type scenarios do. And I wouldn't even consider this a real first date! Then again, I'm not one to speak for the duo involved.

    2. This is the Faustian alchemy of social media: we are all given the opportunity to become celebrities in an instant, sometimes for nonsensical reasons, with or without our input. But we gain virtually none of the benefits of that fame, none of the glamor or the institutional support to help deal with the invasiveness of celebrity and how it can eat away at every boundary you ever took for granted.

      We don't get to control our own coverage online. Sure, with lawyers and copyright strikes, you can control the spread to the extent, but without an overruling power, such as in the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (AKA: North Korea), people are free to access, interpret, and share information mostly at their own discretion. This is a great thing in the context of freedom, but this also can lead the the spread of misinformation, confusion, and untoward feelings.

  2. Jun 2020
  3. May 2020
    1. Unscrupulous providers are incentivized to use inefficient or malicious means to increase break/fix work and thus increase their revenue.
  4. Apr 2020
  5. Mar 2020
    1. he wants to focus on maximizing the health of conversations, and prioritizing people spending their time learning on the site

      Jack Dorsey on Twitter's future

    2. Dorsey doesn’t have all the answers. He’s more like a captain of a ship, wondering aloud how to avoid the many icebergs in his path while continuing ahead at full steam.
    1. le nuove tecnologie sono presenti nella vita di tutti, sia lavorativa sia quotidiana. Spesso non ci rendiamo neanche conto che interagiamo con sistemi automatici o che disseminiamo sulla rete dati che riguardano la nostra identità personale. Per cui si produce una grave asimmetria tra chi li estrae (per i propri interessi) e chi li fornisce (senza saperlo). Per ottenere certi servizi, alcuni siti chiedono a noi di precisare che non siamo un robot, ma in realtà la domanda andrebbe capovolta
    2. «È necessario che l’etica accompagni tutto il ciclo della elaborazione delle tecnologie: dalla scelta delle linee di ricerca fino alla progettazione, la produzione, la distribuzione e l’utente finale. In questo senso papa Francesco ha parlato di “algoretica”»
  6. Feb 2020
    1. Social media research ethics faces a contradiction between big data positivism and research ethics fundamentalism. Big data positivists tend to say, ‘Most social media data is public data. It is like data in a newspaper. I can therefore gather big data without limits. Those talking about privacy want to limit the progress of social science’. This position disregards any engagement with ethics and has a bias towards quantification. The ethical framework Social Media Research: A Guide to Ethics (Townsend and Wallace, 2016) that emerged from an ESRC-funded project tries to avoid both extremes and to take a critical-realist position: It recommends that social scientists neither ignore nor fetishize research ethics when studying digital media.Research ethics fundamentalists in contrast tend to say,You have to get informed consent for every piece of social media data you gather because we cannot assume automatic consent, users tend not to read platform’s privacy policies, they may assume some of their data is private and they may not agree to their data being used in research. Even if you anonymize the users you quote, many can still be identified in the networked online environment.
    2. Research ethics concerns issues, such as privacy, anonymity, informed consent and the sensitivity of data. Given that social media is part of society’s tendency to liquefy and blur the boundaries between the private and the public, labour/leisure, production/consumption (Fuchs, 2015a: Chapter 8), research ethics in social media research is par-ticularly complex.
  7. Jan 2020
    1. Similar to the technical architecture of classic colonialism, digital colonialism is rooted in the design of the tech ecosystem for the purposes of profit and plunder. If the railways and maritime trade routes were the "open veins" of the Global South back then, today, digital infrastructure takes on the same role: Big Tech corporations use proprietary software, corporate clouds, and centralised Internet services to spy on users, process their data, and spit back manufactured services to subjects of their data fiefdoms.

      Yikes

    1. The underlying guiding idea of a “trustworthy AI” is, first and foremost, conceptual nonsense. Machines are not trustworthy; only humans can be trustworthy (or untrustworthy). If, in the future, an untrustworthy corporation or government behaves unethically and possesses good, robust AI technology, this will enable more effective unethical behaviour.

      yikes

  8. Dec 2019
    1. loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination

      Victor recognizes that grave robbing and animal torture are "loathsome activities," but imagining the "great object" of their results overpowers his conscious. Here, Shelley seems to explore the relation between imagination, morality, and convention, and to what extent feelings express what ought to be done morally.

    2. I was surprised that among so many men of genius, who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

      Victor seems to regard himself as godlike in his research. Subsequently, he advances a personal ethics of creation about the specific "raw material" he uses for his experiments, and to the source of the raw material.

    3. Seneca

      Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, moralist, and dramatist. He was forced to commit suicide by Nero after allegedly plotting the Emperor's death.

    4. the gentle ass

      In the fable by Aesop, a donkey becomes jealous of his farmer's lap-dog and tries to imitate it by jumping onto the farmer's lap, angering the farmer who punishes him. The moral is not to try to be something you are not. The Creature's situation inverts this lesson, however, since he is trying to be himself but is still rejected.

    1. For now, that will have to be my justification. I’m not ready to give up writing. I’m not ready to take up some high-paid job that I’d hate in order to reduce the world’s suffering. Maybe that will change. For now, call me Net-Positive Man.
  9. Nov 2019
    1. Disinformation in Contemporary U.S. ForeignPolicy: Impacts and Ethics in an Era of Fake News,Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence

      The authors examine the implications of fake news (aka disinformation campaigns). Before we start reading the article, I would like you to go out into the internet (preferably the reliable and credible sources on the net) and find more about American disinformation campaigns abroad. Please share the cases you found here.

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  10. Aug 2019
    1. and that even the values of non-religious people have been absorbed from the religious history around them

      Was interesting to note that some humanists referred to the golden rule as the basis for their morality. I wonder if they realise that came from the New Testament?

    2. if the members are friendly and co-operative than if they are hostile and resentful

      Does this mean that the requirement to be friendly and co-operative only applies to members of the tribe?

  11. Jun 2019
    1. 9. Avoid bringing agenda items to a vote — there is always the next meeting. Even better, leave items until next year when you won’t be chair.

      What do you think Julia Lee would think about this? Check out her article "Doing the Right Thing in the Workplace."

  12. May 2019
    1. virtue of his possession of an immortal soul, he was now seen as being part of the natural order, different from non-human animals only in degree of structural complexity

      Therefore our ethics must be an ethics of increasing complexity.

  13. Apr 2019
    1. That’s why online education is an ethical practice, especially for those who find it nearly impossible to attend on campus.

      online as an ethical issue... access to education

  14. Mar 2019
    1. Worse yet, it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw more unethical people publish data as a strategic communication tool, because they know people tend to believe numbers more than personal stories. That’s why it’s so important to have that training on information literacy and methodology.”

      Like the way unethical people use statistics in general? This should be a concern, especially as government data, long considered the gold standard of data, undergoes attacks that would skew the data toward political ends. (see the census 2020)

  15. Feb 2019
    1. a direct new innovation in one particular capability

      One of the things I appreciate about Engelbart is how central the human person is to this work and the relationship to technology. This work is focused on human capabilities which leaves no room for people abdicating their responsibilities to the consequences of technology, good or ill. This is the antidote to the business-centric approaches of Zuckerberg or a Gates.

    1. But the greatest drawback of our educational methods is that we pay an excessive amount of altention to the natural sciences and not enough to ethics.

      How would society be different if we paid more attention to ethics as opposed to the natural sciences? What would an ethics-oriented society look like?

    1. especially at a time when many (perhaps most) computer technologies appear untethered to any philosophy besides the pursuit of maximum profit

      This is why I am here. As we have become more and more specialized, we have become less capable of understanding the consequences, good or ill, of new technologies. Looking back at foundational documents like this with a critical eye is a first step. We can't divorce science and technology from history, ethics and critical analysis without suffering the consequences. Looking back and understanding how we got here will provide clues in how to fix things. I am Geoff Cain - I started out life as a writer and English teacher and eventually went into elearning. I am VERY interested in projects like this because we need to stop being passive consumers of information. I want to help end the Era of the Guilty By-Stander: shared thought can lead to shared action. I will be blogging my experiences with this project at http://geoffcain.com

  16. Jan 2019
    1. A Patient's Bill of Rights did not arise from the U.S. government but from the medical community itself—it is the medical community that defined its own set of obligations.

      Why is this significant?

    1. This information was not explicitly stated in either article, but the sample and community description makes it clear that the participants of these studies are the same people, though the sample sizes differ slightly (ns = 85 and 86). However, this redundancy did not produce any analysis problems because the correlation matrix in the Grigorenko et al. (2001) article was not positive definite.

      The duplication of data across articles and the non-positive definite dataset have never been fully explained. In light of Sternberg's history of self-plagiarism (see link below), this is troubling.

      https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/the-unbearable-heaviness-of-text-recycling-12389fe9850d

    1. 假设另一种场景,我把它叫“运输机难题”——假设你是一场救灾行动的总指挥,正带着一支小队坐在一架装满物资的运输机中,这是唯一一架运输机,如果没准时到就会有上万灾民饿死病死,如果最终也没到那几十万人都活不成。但此时受恶劣天气影响飞机突然损坏了,承载不了这么大的重量,必须要有一半人跳下飞机(假设不能丢物资),否则可能机毁人亡,要不要让半支队伍跳下去?   这架运输机就是比特大陆,灾区的难民就是现在的币民。比特大陆若是完蛋,对行业造成的冲击又会让一大批币民破产出局。   试想一下,有一天比特大陆真的倒闭了,那么可以预见到,矿机将挥泪大甩卖,矿工将抛售手里的BTC、BCH,BCH奄奄一息,BTC跌到新一轮谷底。虽然还会有“灾后重建工作”,但一大批人都将倒在这场灾难里,看不到明天的太阳。   作为灾民,会不会因为心疼跳下去的半支队伍而甘愿饿死病死?作为币民,会不会因为心疼被裁掉的几百上千人而甘愿看着比特大陆倒闭,忍受自己哪怕只是短期的破产?

      <big>评:</big><br/><br/>「电车难题」曾引起旷日持久的讨论,而它的姊妹版「运输机难题」恐怕也一时难解。对于此类道德两难的选择困境,人们通常倾向于从自己的经验判断出发——主人公「搬动方向杆使车辆撞死一人」的行为,所受到的公众谴责要远小于主人公「站在轨道上方的天桥,为了救五人而故意把桥上的另一个人推下桥以逼停电车」的选择。那么对于「运输机难题」来说呢?还有没有比「一半机组成员跳下飞机」更优的解?<br/><br/>这样的讨论又让人联想到技术主义者在 AI 人工智能领域的意见分野:一派人认为 AI 最终的目的是取代人类,而另一派人的观点则坚信 AI 旨在增强人类(augmentation)。哪一派的话语权更大呢?答案并不重要。重要的是, be nice.

  17. Dec 2018
  18. Nov 2018
  19. Oct 2018
  20. Sep 2018
    1. It does not restrict any particular research practice but rather, asks researchers to be transparent and honest about their practices. There is nothing wrong with analyzing data with no a priori hypotheses, but there is something fundamentally corrosive to publishing papers that present post hoc hypotheses as a priori.
  21. Aug 2018
    1. Blair’s posts are a remarkable feat of digital storytelling. She spun the all-in-all rather trivial behavior of two strangers into the social media equivalent of a rom-com and initially the story was heralded as the summer feel-good story we were in desperate in need of. (There also was some speculation that this was all a hoax, which is possible but seems implausible at this point.) But soon questions emerged about the ethics of this modern-day fairy tale, especially when it became clear that the female subject of the story did not welcome the attention and had her social profiles deleted after internet sleuths had figured out her identity. On July 12, she put out a statement through her lawyer in which she claimed to have been “doxxed, shamed, insulted and harassed” and that voyeurs had come looking for her. By that point, the couple responsible for the tweets was slammed online as well.
    2. Earlier, I have criticized Facebook for not anticipating the ethical problems with Facebook live and for its general approach of trying things out without much ethical forethought. But wouldn’t a pragmatist argue that because they are charting into new territory, digital innovators are more likely to make ethical mistakes giving the lack of existing normative framework?  This pragmatic defense only has limited power though, as there are general guiding ethical norms and principles in place already.  It is of course true that (some of) these norms might be subject to change in the digital environment and that sometimes our existing frameworks are ill-equipped to deal with new moral dilemmas. However, this does not excuse some of the more egregious ethical lapses we have seen recently, which were violations of well-known and accepted moral guidelines.
    3. Phillip Kitcher, in the introduction of The Ethical Project describes the project of this pragmatic naturalism as follows: “Ethics emerges as a human phenomenon, permanently unfinished. We, collectively, made it up, and have developed, refined, and distorted it, generation by generation. Ethics should be understood as a project --the ethical project-- in which we have been engaged for most of our history as a species.” This a functionalist view sees ethics as a set of guidelines that make communal living possible. A successful ethical system is one that can fulfill this function.
    1. "As these various commentaries suggest, teaching itself carries a moral dimension. Indeed, Professor Bernard Crick, a member of the UK Government's citizenship advisory group, has identified geography as having a

      potential role to play in teaching political liter- acy and social and moral responsibility (Lambert, 1999)." 489.

    2. "Cloke's solution is for geographers to develop stronger connections between their

      academic and nonacademic lives. His argu- ment echoes Robin Kearns' (2001) earlier call

      for a more 'compassionate geography' (see also Smith, 1998; Gleeson and Kearns, 2001) as

      well as feminist refrains ofthe 'personal is polit- ical and slogans such as 'act local, think global'." 484

    3. Doreen Massey junto A Cloke y a Martin (2001): "Although Doreen Massey (2002) balks at the inference that the only way to be politically or socially relevant is to produce answers for government and inform government policy, she too recognizes the need for geographers to be more engaged

      beyond the academy and to construct popu- lar and political geographical imaginations." 284

    4. "identifies a tension between the ease with which we talk and write about geographies of ethics," 483

    1. If philosophy maybe “divided into three branches, natural philosophy, dialectic, andethics,” Cicero declares in his dialogue de Oratore (On the Orator), “letus relinquish the first two,” but, he continues, rhetoric must lay claim toethics, “which has always been the property of the orator; . . . this area,concerning human life and customs, he must master” (1.68).

      Ethics.

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    1. as boyd and Crawford argue, ‘without taking into account the sample of a data set, the size of the data set is meaningless’ (2012: 669). Furthermore, many tech-niques used by the state and corporations in big data analysis are based on probabilistic prediction which, some experts argue, is alien to, and even incom-prehensible for, human reasoning (Heaven 2013). As Mayer-Schönberger stresses, we should be ‘less worried about privacy and more worried about the abuse of probabilistic prediction’ as these processes confront us with ‘profound ethical dilemmas’ (in Heaven 2013: 35).

      Primary problems to resolve regarding the use of "big data" in humanitarian contexts: dataset size/sample, predictive analytics are contrary to human behavior, and ethical abuses of PII.

    2. There is an uneasy coming together of diverse computational and human intelligences in these intersections, and the ambiguous nature of intelligence – understood, on the one hand, as a capacity for perceiving, learning and under-standing and, on the other, as information obtained for strategic purposes – marks complex relationships between ‘good’ and ‘dark’ aspects of big data, surveil-lance and crisis management.

      The promise and peril of gathering collective intelligence, surveillance, and capturing big data during humanitarian crises.

    1. “Please bear with me,” said one team member at the meeting. “This is incredibly complex.”

      That a group of people would have the skills to create a tool like Twitter by no means assures that those same people will have sufficiently mature moral reasoning to understand or guide the tremendous social forces they have unleashed. The clearest evidence that the creators of Twitter are unequal to the task of guiding its values is simply that they lack the humility to imagine they need help.

  22. May 2018
    1. The question each proxy should ask when making decisions on behalf of others is, who am I truly serving — the patient or myself?

      This article really high lights the potential negatives of the concept of healthcare proxies and provides real life scenarios to help the reader relate.

    2. In situations like this, the proxy (knowingly or unknowingly), is primarily motivated by his own need to have one last opportunity to repair the broken relationship and make amends to redeem himself.

      This last situation suggests that a proxy could have personal motives for keeping a patient alive- in this case, a son was trying to keep his father alive due to his feelings of grief and guilt over the broken relationship. The father was being kept alive in the hospital even though the medical professionals had advised against it.

    3. Here, the role as a dutiful spouse or parent or sibling obligates the proxy to execute decisions for the patient that the proxy would never stomach for himself or herself.

      Another story of a spouse making medical decisions for their partner shows that their values can override any medical professional's suggestion to withdraw life support and end the patient's suffering. This passage also suggests there could be a difference in how other cultures approach death, dying, and medical care.

    4. Proxy decision-makers are often unprepared, and many may not be cognizant of the patient’s values and wishes

      While the creation of health care proxies is seen as progressive responsible, there is also a questionable element when it comes to ethics. Many health care proxies are not prepared to make such big decisions or aren't making the decisions that the client would have wanted.

  23. Mar 2018
    1. For the past 100 years we have been chasing visions of data with a singular passion. Many of the best minds of each new generation have devoted themselves to delivering on the inspired data science promises of their day: intelligence testing, building the computer, cracking the genetic code, creating the internet, and now this. We have in the course of a single century built an entire society, economy and culture that runs on information. Yet we have hardly begun to engineer data ethics appropriate for our extraordinary information carnival. If we do not do so soon, data will drive democracy, and we may well lose our chance to do anything about it.

      We have hardly begun to engineer data ethincs approriate for our extraordinary information carnival.

  24. Jan 2018
    1. 9. Does Editors Canada have a code of ethics? No. Editors Canada does not have a code of ethics, but it has adopted general principles of professional editing. You can download Professional Editorial Standards from  Editors Canada for a list of these principles.

      Not having a code of ethics seems to be a big miss!

  25. Nov 2017
    1. “The practical implications of this positive feedback loop could be that engaging in one kind deed (e.g., taking your mom to lunch) would make you happier, and the happier you feel, the more likely you are to do another kind act,”
    1. Slote begins by observing that discussions of moral development and methods of teaching children to be moral tend to assume that the children have been loved, with (usually tacit) acknowledgment that children who aren't loved may not respond to the methods in question. He points out that unloved children often have psychopathic tendencies, and if this is the result of their being unloved, then love in very early childhood is a condition for moral development
    2. (1) the importance of early upbringing for the future development of virtue, (2) the central place of action in learning virtue, and (3) the indispensability of community for both cultivating and maintaining virtue, which is an ongoing activity.
    1. A behavioral route can be taken instead to these simulations, side-stepping direct reference to the rule. In some ways it is more revealing of our simulation. Here we engage in repetitive behaviors that conform to a reciprocity convention that conforms to the rule. We do not act out of adherence to the rule, but only out or imitation of its applications or illustrations. This again was the Aristotelian approach to learning virtues and also the Confucian approach for starting out. In Japan, this sort of approach extended from the Samurai tea ceremony to the Suzuki method of learning the violin (See Gardner 1993). Such programming is akin to behavioral shaping in behaviorist psychology though it rests primarily on principles of competence motivation, not positive and negative reinforcement. Social psychology has discovered that the single best way to create or change inner attitudes and motivations is to act as if one already possessed them. Over time, through the psychology of cognitive dissonance reduction, aided by an apparent consistency process in the brain, the mind supplies the motivation needed (Festinger 1957, Van Veen, and others, 2009).  These processes contradict common opinion on how motivations are developed, or at least it does so long as our resolve does. Unless one keeps the behavior going, by whatever means, our psychology will extinguish the behavior for its lack of a motivational correlate. Here, as elsewhere, the golden rule can act as a conceptual test of whether the group reciprocity conventions of a society are ethically up to snuff. As a means to more morally direct simulation, those interested in the golden rule can try alternative psychological regimens—role-taking is one, empathy might be another. And these can be combined. Those who assume that exemplars must have taken these routes in their socialization may prefer such practices to conventional repetition. However, each is discretionary and but one practical means to it. Each has pros and cons: some routes serve certain personality types or learning styles, others not so well.  In certain cultures, mentoring, mimicking and emulating exemplars will be the way to go.
    2. The golden rule displays one algorithm for programming exemplary fair behavior, which can be habituated by repetition and even raised to an art by practice. Virtue ethics (habits) and deliberation ethics (normative ethics) fall here. What we are simulating are side-effects of a moral condition. We are trying to be good, by imitating symptoms of being good.
    3. The fourth way, is more a simulation than a “way.” It is not a form of embodiment at all, and therefore does not generate golden rule effect as a spontaneous offshoot. We learn to act, in some respects, as a master or exemplar would, but without embodying the character being expressed, or being truly self-expressive in our actions. What we call ethics as a whole—the ethics of duties, fulfilling obligations, adhering to responsibilities, and respecting rights can be seen as this sort of partial simulation. We develop moral habits, of course, some of which link together in patterns and proclivities. And we can  “engage” these. But we would not continue to carry around a sense of ethical assembly instructions or recipes needing sometimes to refer to them directly—if we were ethics, if we embodied ethics. We don’t retain rules and instructions when we are friends or parents. (Those who read parenting books are either looking for improvements or fearing that they aren’t true parents yet.)
    1. One possibility is the American preoccupation with fame. Studies have found that Americans are more interested in fame than people of other nationalities are. A 2007 Pew Research survey of 18- to 25-year-olds found that about half said that getting famous was a top priority for their peers. Television shows increasingly promote fame as a value, research has found, and pop lyrics are becoming more narcissistic. A 2010 review of research studies found that modern college students display less empathy than students of the late 1970s. These studies fit a general pattern of research showing that narcissism is on the rise. Simultaneously, Lankford said, the line between being famous and infamous is blurring. Scientists looked at the covers of People magazine issues dating from 1974 to 1998, and found that cover stars were increasingly featured for bad behavior — cheating, arrests, crime — rather than good acts (though there was a slight shift toward positivity after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks), according to their 2005 report.
  26. Oct 2017
    1. Why is all the focus on teaching lay people how to code, and not teaching computer scientists and people who work in tech companies to center empathy and humanity in their work?

      . . .

      I think there should be an element of infusing discussions of ethics, humanity and social consequences into computer science curricula, and I believe that even human-centered design does not go far enough; I suggest that designers of tech consider more “empathetic and participatory design” where there is some degree of involving people who are not in the tech company as autonomous persons in product design decisions, and not just using them as research/testing subjects.

    1. If this last view is correct, then moral education is an extremely subtle and context-sensitive task, more like teaching an appreciation for literature than teaching someone how to follow a set of rules. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Confucians such as Mengzi have emphasised the importance of studying poetry and history in educating a person’s moral sense.
    2. What is ethical deliberation like? Two paradigms have dominated modern Western accounts of moral reasoning: the application of rules, and the weighing of consequences. Both paradigms treat moral thinking as analogous to scientific reasoning, either in being law-like or in being quantitative. The former is most commonly associated with Kantian ethics and the latter with utilitarianism. However, Mengzi’s view of moral reasoning seems closer to that of Aristotle, who warned that it is wrong to seek the same level of precision in ethics that one expects in physics or mathematics. A rival philosopher asked Mengzi whether propriety requires that unmarried men and women not touch hands. When Mengzi acknowledged that it does, his interlocutor triumphantly asked: ‘If your sister-in-law were drowning, would you pull her out with your hand?!’ Mengzi’s opponent obviously thought that he had Mengzi trapped, but Mengzi replied: ‘Only a beast would not use his hand to pull out his sister-in-law. It is propriety that men and women not touch hands, but to pull her out when she is drowning is discretion.’ This is representative of Mengzi’s approach to ethics, which emphasises the cultivation of virtues that allow one to respond flexibly and appropriately to fluid and complex situations.
    1. He calls for more thoughtful engagement with the notion not so much of making things, but of fixing them, repurposing them in their diminishment and dismantlement—not of making new, but of making do, and of thereby engaging what he calls ‘an ethics of mutual care’—with each other, the world around us, and with the (quite literal) objects of our affection (Jackson, 2013, p. 231). This is a source, he says, of ‘resilience and hope’ and it’s a way of being in space and time that has deep feminist roots (Jackson, 2013, p. 237).

      My initial thoughts were: sustainability, repurposing, upcycling. And yes, I agree that there is a resilience and hope in that. How Jackson made the leap to 'feminist roots' is not clear to me. Page 11 of this PDF goes into more detail: https://sjackson.infosci.cornell.edu/RethinkingRepairPROOFS(reduced)Aug2013.pdf.

      After reading this PDF, I think he is saying that this idea of sustainability and repurposing or 'an ethics of mutual care' can be sourced back to feminist scholarship that came about in the '70s through the '90s'. Unfortunately, I can't see any deeper meaning than that or why this must be feminist in nature and not simply human nature. Why gender comes into this, I do not know. But then again, perhaps my understanding of what it is to be feminist is flawed?

    1. Ethics

      I would be curious to see how the founders would have pictured and wanted an 'ethics' class to be like. It would be interesting to compare how they would be taught today and see concepts like democracy that are held equally but human rights and equality possibly have a large discrepancy.

    2. virtue & order

      It is ironic that two of the main values the authors wanted to instill in UVA students were "virtue and order." Early UVA students certainly were not virtuous. They drank and gambled constantly. Prostitution was rampant. They often engaged in physical fights and duels over the pettiest matters. Nor did they value order. They were known to assemble late at night on the lawn to shoot their guns, bang on drums, set off fireworks and sing dirty songs. This lack of order and virtue came to an apex when a rioting student killed a professor outside of Pavilion X. Information on these early students can be found in the book Rot, Riot and Rebellion by Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos, which I've been reading for my COLA. These instances show that while Jefferson's vision for his university was revolutionary, it was also very idealistic. What we see in this text does not always reflect what ultimately came to be.

    3. healthiness & fertility. It was the degree of centrality to the white population of the state which alone then constituted

      According to this line, the only important characteristics of a piece of land are "healthiness & fertility" and "degree of centrality to the white population." This portion of the text provides important insight into the ethical lens of Jefferson and his peers: something is only worth consideration if it bolsters health, agriculture or white males. The authors presented their guidelines for land consideration as clear-cut, failing to mention the fact that Jefferson was especially inclined towards Charlottesville because of its proximity to Monticello. While the text operates under the assumption that health, fertility, and convenience for white people were the only important considerations (which is a skewed set of principles in the first place), Jefferson's personal bias was a major, albeit hidden, factor as well.

    1. OxTREC Reference: 593-16

      Kudos for listing the identifier. I googled that, which brought me to http://researchsupport.admin.ox.ac.uk/governance/ethics/committees/oxtrec , and under "Approved studies 2016", I found the entry

      593-16 Elizabeth Pisani What makes data sharing work? WWARN case study Minimal Risk N/A 16/5/16

      which is way more transparent than most ethics statements in published papers.

      Also kudos to the Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC) for the decision highlighted under the "Approved studies 2016" headline:

      It was agreed by CUREC in early 2016 that, in the interest of transparency, OxTREC should make publicly available a list of studies that it has approved. The list below sets out those studies that have been approved by OxTREC since January 2016.

  27. Sep 2017
    1. To harmonize & promote the interests of agriculture, manufactures & commerce and by well informed views of political economy to give a free scope to the public industry.

      The election of 1800 marks a pivotal change in American economic policy that parallels this quote above. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America's economic policy shifted from heavily regulated (Federalists) to more laissez faire (Jeffersonians). Jefferson's objective was to promote freedom for pursuit of individual self-interest, which would stimulate economic growth. Jefferson's policy mirrored the invisible hand theory Adam Smith presented in "The Wealth of Nations." Economies operate best when self-interest is not governmentally limited. Jefferson prioritized lenience on agricultural and manufacturing regulation. However, UVa curriculum has a holistic approach, in which students will have "well informed views of political economy." This is evidence that Jefferson didn't allow for personal bias to influence the curriculum.

    2. and tho rather, as the proofs of the being of a god, the creator, preserver, & supreme ruler of the universe, the author of all the relations of morality, & of the laws & obligations these infer, will be within the province of the professor of ethics;

      It is noteworthy that the authors of the report choose to place these matters of religion under the jurisdiction of the department of ethics. It sets up an interesting relationship between religion and ethics. The document suggests that it is more responsible to think in terms of ethics than in terms of religion. This reminds me of Jefferson's personal Bible, in which he omitted anything miraculous or scientifically problematic. I think we see strong traces of his influence in this paragraph.

    3. we have proposed no professor of Divinity;

      This segment of the report is an affirmation of the rejection of a national religion in the constitution. The University is choosing to not have an official religion and placing the issue of religion in the department of ethics. This is representative of Jefferson's views on the relationship between religion and the state. Although religion is discussed in the declaration of independence, Jefferson did not want to include it.

      This represents a shift towards a more rationalist style of education by placing the authority of education in the hands of humans instead of God. Instead of being based on faith and belief, education would focus more on logic and facts.

  28. Mar 2017
    1. the expert isn’t always right

      There are issues of ethics that are not discussed here. Experts may have conflicts of interest. Experts may mislead or deceive, if they see a benefit to doing so. It seems to me that this behavior is becoming more acceptable, or at least that it has fewer consequences. The distrust then is less of expertise than of the expert.

  29. Feb 2017
    1. When dealing with technology, there are two dominant discourses that permeate research and practice: determinism and non-determinism. For the former discourse, ethics is only an issue for the designers of technology, because they determine what users should do; for the latter, ethics is only an issue for users, because they ultimately define what to do with technology. Both

      So determinism makes the designer responsible/hold accountable assuming they "determine" what users "should" do,

      while non-determinism absolves the designer leaving the burden of responsibility of the consequence of interactions, on the user. So non determinism assums that the embedded characteristics don't work on the user, or that he is able to resist their encouragement or discouragement. That he can shape the aspects of those certain characteristics than the other way around, thereby ultimately defining what to do with the technology.

    2. nteraction designers try to impose structures upon human action by shaping coercive environments where people are punished if they do things the “wrong way” and by hiding or not providing options for changing artifact adaptations. Interaction design mediates human agency and power, but if it does not provide choices for action, there is no room for ethics: people act based on conditions, not on considerations of what should be done.

      Point on reward & punishment feedback is a really good point, darkpatterns comes to mind.

      If IxD does not provide choices for action, there is no room for ethics: People act based on conditions, not on considerations of what should be done

      This reactive behaviour is what UX practioners of gamification feel proud to do. It's disgusting to see them feel proud doing it, how come they feel no remorse doing it?. I too will have to do it in the near future, but I won't fucking have a glitter in my eye and a wide smile across my face doing it.

    3. We argue that artifacts support human behavior by providing adaptations, but these adaptations can expand or restrict human actions.

      Those adaptations are also framed under the guise of fulfilling the prime objective of fulfilling the business needs, i.e to compete for market share, increase profit margins or simply, "Will this make "them" give "us" more money?. This objective is constrained to view humans in the identity of consumer. It is through this identity we derive the canvas of needs which our bosses and their bosses let us create adaptations.

      Many designers are limited to designing a set of adaptations in their artifacts by what markets signals as profitable. Those who are fortunate enough to work in non-profits or worker coops may have more freedom to resist the unethical demands of the market forces.

    1. If an individual opts out, this should mean that their name appears nowhere on the social network diagram (even if they are identified by another individual as being part of their social network). For instance, in the sample map, you can see that the map would be very disjointed if John and Holly opted out of the SNA.

      Are we allowed to include nodes for John and Holly if they are identified by others, but without using their name? For example, we would refer to John as Anonymous 1 and Holly as Anonymous 2. Or would we have to exclude any data that involves them, regardless of anonymity?

    2. it may be possible to guess the names of individuals by virtue of their location in the network

      While I know this is possible in some situations, I wonder how often it actually occurs.

    1. It is possible to use data collected from Twitter to discern the identities of tweet authors, which can then be used to find and collect additional information from additional sources.

      This brings up the question of generational use and regard for privacy: the 13-19 age group, the 20-26 age group and those in the older age sets all have a different regard for what is or should be private. What could be an effective approach to a solution to this research and ethical challenge?

    1. Mengele conducted medical experiments on twins. He also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how different "races" withstood various contagious diseases. The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish racial inferiority."

      There is no ethical thing about this "Jewish racial inferiority" because with the resilience of some races to different diseases, they established the "inferiority" at where they were researching. It causes problems because it makes it cloudy to the minds if they were helping or not.

    2. Other gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals were a series of sterilization experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck.

      This also is unethical, because people have basic rights to make children or offspring. This is unethical because it is was given without consent which in this time and place was not unusual. This shows that with mass sterilization was uncalled for and that with the after effects made it ethical and had to have consent for the procedure.

    3. Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories.

      By unethical, doctors and scientists experimented on people without supervision or ethics. This shows that in the Nazi Germany that the experiments could be anything and it can have no ethics, this helped with the code of ethics we follow today.

  30. Nov 2016
  31. Sep 2016
    1. the risk of re-identification increases by virtue of having more data points on students from multiple contexts

      Very important to keep in mind. Not only do we realise that re-identification is a risk, but this risk is exacerbated by the increase in “triangulation”. Hence some discussions about Differential Privacy.

    2. the automatic collection of students’ data through interactions with educational technologies as a part of their established and expected learning experiences raises new questions about the timing and content of student consent that were not relevant when such data collection required special procedures that extended beyond students’ regular educational experiences of students

      Useful reminder. Sounds a bit like “now that we have easier access to data, we have to be particularly careful”. Probably not the first reflex of most researchers before they start sending forms to their IRBs. Important for this to be explicitly designated as a concern, in IRBs.

    3. Responsible Use

      Again, this is probably a more felicitous wording than “privacy protection”. Sure, it takes as a given that some use of data is desirable. And the preceding section makes it sound like Learning Analytics advocates mostly need ammun… arguments to push their agenda. Still, the notion that we want to advocate for responsible use is more likely to find common ground than this notion that there’s a “data faucet” that should be switched on or off depending on certain stakeholders’ needs. After all, there exists a set of data use practices which are either uncontroversial or, at least, accepted as “par for the course” (no pun intended). For instance, we probably all assume that a registrar should receive the grade data needed to grant degrees and we understand that such data would come from other sources (say, a learning management system or a student information system).

    1. the use of data in scholarly research about student learning; the use of data in systems like the admissions process or predictive-analytics programs that colleges use to spot students who should be referred to an academic counselor; and the ways colleges should treat nontraditional transcript data, alternative credentials, and other forms of documentation about students’ activities, such as badges, that recognize them for nonacademic skills.

      Useful breakdown. Research, predictive models, and recognition are quite distinct from one another and the approaches to data that they imply are quite different. In a way, the “personalized learning” model at the core of the second topic is close to the Big Data attitude (collect all the things and sense will come through eventually) with corresponding ethical problems. Through projects vary greatly, research has a much more solid base in both ethics and epistemology than the kind of Big Data approach used by technocentric outlets. The part about recognition, though, opens the most interesting door. Microcredentials and badges are a part of a broader picture. The data shared in those cases need not be so comprehensive and learners have a lot of agency in the matter. In fact, when then-Ashoka Charles Tsai interviewed Mozilla executive director Mark Surman about badges, the message was quite clear: badges are a way to rethink education as a learner-driven “create your own path” adventure. The contrast between the three models reveals a lot. From the abstract world of research, to the top-down models of Minority Report-style predictive educating, all the way to a form of heutagogy. Lots to chew on.

  32. Jul 2016
    1. the results remain compelling nonetheless

      At least, they’ve become unavoidable in class discussions even tangentially related to social psychology. In intro sociology, they lead to some interesting thoughts about lab vs. field experiments.

  33. Jun 2016
    1. demanding that technologies designed for a group of people be designed and built, in part, by those people

      Despite some differences, it sounds a bit like the standard by which risks and benefits of research are measured in terms of a given population. Since the troublesome Tuskegee syphilis experiments, it has led to the evaluation of “fair or just distribution of risks and benefits to eligible participants” (WP). The connection may be a little bit strained, especially since Zuckerman is talking about pragmatic issues instead of ethical ones. But there’s some insight in this line of thought, IMHO.

    1. Nevertheless, there were a few who questioned that definition of fairness and challenged the assumption that it was wrong for reviewers to take institutional affiliation and history into consider- ation. "We consider a result from a scientist who has never before been wrong much more seriously than a similar report from a scientist who has never before been right. . . . It is neither unnatural nor wrong that the work of scientists who have achieved eminence through a long record of important and suc- cessful research is accepted with fewer reservations than the work of less eminent scientists" (196). "A reviewer may be justified in assuming at the outset that [well-known] people know what they are do- ing" (211). "Those of us who publish establish some kind of track record. If our papers stand the test of time . . . it can be expected that we have acquired expertise in scientific methodology" (244). (This last respondent is a woman and a Nobel laureate.)

      Fish reporting on the minority in response to Peters and Ceci who argued that track records should count in peer review of science

    1. Zen Faulkes, an invertebrate neuroethologist at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, questions on his blog whether every person made enough of a contribution to be credited as an author.

      Faulkes questions whether every other has made "enough" of a contribution to be credited as an author.

    1. In rare cases, a questionable, published paper may acquire“orphan” status (Rennie & Flanagin, 1994, p. 469), as allconcerned try to wash their hands of it, invoking hyperlaborspecialization as grounds for exoneration. Such a scenario isinconceivable under the standard model, where authorshipand accountability are isomorphic. But when authorship/ownership of a study is distributed across multiple contrib-utors, many of whom may have zero or weak relation-ships—whether personal or institutional—with their myriadcoworkers (Katz & Martin, 1997), the practical (i.e., en-forceable) allocation of accountability may pose intractableproblems

      orphan papers: where everybody washes hand of poor results by saying it wasn't their specialisation. [[Why is this a problem, actually? The point is that we catch fraudulent or wrong papers, not that we have somebody to blame.

    2. eceiving credit under false pretenses,are cause for grave concern (Anderson, 1991).

      on receiving credit under false pretences

    3. ow, for instance, should a promotion andtenure committee view the contribution of the 99th listedauthor on a particle physics paper or the 36th author on agenome sequencing study? What may seem to constitute aminiscule portion of a single journal article may, in fact,have consumed a significant amount of that individual’sprofessional time and energy. T

      what is value of middle authorship?

    4. owever, multipleauthorship and hyperauthorship are not problematized byphysicists as they are by the biomedical community.

      Multiple authorship is not problematised in the HEP community as it has in biomedicine.

    5. ennieand Yank (1998, p. 829), when “the number of collaboratorsgrows arithmetically, it becomes exponentially harder toaffix responsibility.”

      responsibility and authorship

    6. he practice of promiscuous coauthor-ship puts considerable stress on this tried and tested model.

      The practice of promiscuous coauthorship calls model into question

    7. e need toconsider how multiple authorship, in extremis—what I havechosen to term ‘hyperauthorship’— undermines commonlyheld assumptions about the nature and ethical entailments ofauthorship, and how, in exceptional cases, it can lead tofundamental questions about the integrity of the researchcommunity as a whole. Unfortunately, little effort is madein the biomedical literature to distinguish systematicallybetween what might be termed acceptable levels of multipleauthorship and unacceptable levels of hyperauthorship.Studies of coauthorship trends, as will become clear,

      makes distinction between "acceptable levels of multiple authorship and unacceptable levels of hyperauthorship.

    8. scaleofthephenomenonandassociatedethicalabuseshaveprovedtobesingularlyproblematicinthebiomedicaldo-main(e.g.,Houston&Moher,1996

      Bibliography on how medical area is where ethical abuses have occurred.

  34. May 2016
    1. any respect unethical.

      The courts are not responsible for finding a behavior ethical or un-ethical. Their purpose is to determine legal or illegal

  35. Apr 2016
    1. Doug Muder points out that "freedom" is often invoked by people who want to deny rights to others. He says "big government" is often required to enforce rights. A strong example is the southern states during the century following the Civil War -- and even still today.

      I agree. But it is also true that our big government has some serious problems. It is too often an abuser of rights, rather than a defender. As usual, these abuses fall mainly on minorities and the poor. But they affect almost everyone.

      http://www.spectacle.org/0400/natural.html<br> Jonathan Wallace gives a strong argument that "natural rights" don't exist. Rights are determined by the consensus of a society. They do not have or need any stronger justification.

  36. Mar 2016
    1. We strived to make our work as participant-researchers transparent and dialogic by sharing tentative findings and engaging in dialogue about our inquiries into learning in CLMOOC online, as well as offline in conferences with CLMOOC participants in attendance.

      Being open about what we are doing as participant researchers is vital - always give opportunities for opt out and remind folk that conversations might be used.

    2. “moderate disguise”

      Noting this phrasing for my own proposal

    3. Responding participants either requested to have their online identities remain connected to their professional learning artifacts by affirming the use of their first names, or indicated they would like a pseudonym used.

      I think this is important. Creators have a right not to be anonymised in research if they wish

  37. Feb 2016
    1. Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics

      • Seek truth and report it
      • Minimize harm
      • Act independently
      • Be accountable and transparent
  38. Dec 2015
    1. The idea was to pinpoint the doctors prescribing the most pain medication and target them for the company’s marketing onslaught. That the databases couldn’t distinguish between doctors who were prescribing more pain meds because they were seeing more patients with chronic pain or were simply looser with their signatures didn’t matter to Purdue.
  39. Nov 2015
    1. Bureaucratic cultures tend to discourage people from speaking candidly. Lack of candor can be a deterrent to success, before it ever reaches the level of outright lies. Lack of candor means:

      • outright lies (saying something you know to be false)
      • self-deception (believing what you want to believe)
      • deliberate omissions of facts
      • thinking one thing, but saying something different
      • having an idea that may be of value, but saying nothing
      • being called upon to give an honest opinion, but deciding to say what is easier, or what you think others want to hear
      • obscure jargon, or meaningless platitudes that give the impression everything is going fine or great. (This is a big red flag when it appears in corporate reports.)

      "Investing Between the Lines: How to Make Smarter Decisions by Decoding CEO Communications", L.J. Rittenhouse (recommended by Warren Buffet in his 2012 Shareholder Letter)

      Truth-Telling: Confronting the Reality of the Lack of Candor Inside Organizations We need to build cultures where "opposing views are debated and more effective solutions and innovations are created." -- Lynn Harris

    1. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion.

      This is Glaucon's primary argument in a sentence. He says that justice is not intrinsically good; it's merely a requirement for living in society. People don't want to be just. They need to be just according to law and to prevent people from hating them.

  40. Oct 2015
    1. This predicament, which is entirely unavoidable, refigures ethics as something beyond individual choice. Yes, I make decisions about who or what might enter my home, who or what has access to my Twitter feed, but this only happens in the face of an ever-present exposedness to others. Prior to the large-scale availability of networked computational devices, Levinas described the relation that defines networked life. Levinas likens this predicament to that of the hostage, and he suggests that if “we” as humans share anything at all, it is this experience of being held hostage by another that resists representation, that arrives over and beyond our attempts to make sense of that other.

      The basis for a networked ethics...the fact that we are all always and already connected to others.

  41. Sep 2015
    1. . Psychologists have thought about morality primarily as a system of rules that prevents people from hurting each other and taking their possessions. But I believe that morality is much richer and more balanced. Most people don’t want to rape, steal, and kill. What they really want is to live in a moral community where people treat each other well, and in which they can satisfy their needs for love, productive work, and a sense of belonging to groups of which they are proud. We get a visceral sense that we do not live in such a moral world when we see people behave in petty, cruel, or selfish ways. But when we see a stranger perform a simple act of kindness for another stranger, it gives us a thrilling sense that maybe we do live in such a world.
    1. We rely more on what we feel than what we think when solving moral dilemmas. It’s not that religion and culture don’t have a role to play, but the building blocks of morality clearly predate humanity. We recognize them in our primate relatives, with empathy being most conspicuous in the bonobo ape and reciprocity in the chimpanzee. Moral rules tell us when and how to apply our empathic tendencies, but the tendencies themselves have been in existence since time immemorial.
  42. Aug 2015
  43. Jun 2015
  44. Sep 2014
    1. After all, don’t we tend to examine our motivations for doing something only when we have reason to doubt that we are doing the right thing?

      change:

      'only'

      to:

      'primarily'

    2. It also doesn’t lessen the value and the potential power of the example one sets for others.

      Add:

      'need to'

      Between:

      'doesn't' and 'lessen'

  45. Sep 2013
    1. Hence rhetoric may be regarded as an offshoot of dialectic, and also of ethical (or political) studies.

      of philosophical and of ethical or political studies

    1. It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity -- one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it.
    1. Much as it is not the criminal defense lawyer's place to judge their client regardless of how guilty they are, it is not the doctor's place to force experimental treatment upon a patient regardless of how badly the research is needed, and it is not the priest's place to pass worldly judgement on their flock, it is not the programmer's place to try and decide whether the user is using the software in a "good" way or not.

      Taking this to heart / putting it on my wall.

    1. neglected all the good things which this study affords, and became nothing more than professors of meddlesomeness and greed
    1. For they taught their art for a good purpose, to be used against enemies and evil-doers, in self-defence not in aggression, and others have perverted their instructions, and turned to a bad use their own strength and skill. But not on this account are the teachers bad, neither is the art in fault, or bad in itself; I should rather say that those who make a bad use of the art are to blame. And the same argument holds good of rhetoric; for the rhetorician can speak against all men and upon any subject,—in short, he can persuade the multitude better than any other man of anything which he pleases, but he should not therefore seek to defraud the physician or any other artist of his reputation merely because he has the power; he ought to use rhetoric fairly, as he would also use his athletic powers.

      Ethics of rhetoric.