The Icepick Surgeon: Tales of Scientists Gone Rogue (or Worse)
Author Sam Kean follows the long trail of amoral scientists, and their justifications.
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Artificial Intelligence Wants You (and Your Job)
Yves here. Two things about increased automation frost me. One is its stealth or main purpose as forcing planned obsolescence. So irrespective of the impact on job/labor content, any savings won’t necessarily accrue to users. Two is automation/AI serving as an excuse to shift costs and tasks onto consumers. How many times do customer service […]
Read more...DoJ Bankruptcy Trustee Lambastes Provisions to Protect Sacklers in Purdue Bankruptcy Exit Plan as “Illegal”
Feds weigh in on Purdue bankruptcy plan, raising possibility that Sacklers won’t get off more or less scot-free for their role in the opioids crisis.
Read more...How Monopoly Was Invented to Demonstrate the Evils of Capitalism
Monopoly iencourages its players to celebrate exactly the opposite values to those its inventor intended to champion.
Read more...Mindfulness Meditation Can Make Some Americans More Selfish and Less Generous
Why mindfulness practices don’t move seamlessly across cultures.
Read more...Understanding the Opioid Epidemic: When Innovation Fails, or Rather Works Too Well
The opioid crisis provides a deadly example of why innovation often is simply a new-fangled form of predation.
Read more...Far More Adults Don’t Want Children Than Previously Thought
Probling why more people arent interested in having children.
Read more...The Climate Emergency Calls for a New Approach to Mental Health
Disasters and disruptions brought on by climate change could produce collective mental health traumas at scales never before seen.
Read more...Supreme Court Rules 9-0 Against NCAA, Opening Door to Further Antitrust Challenges of Student-Athlete Compensation Bans
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday NCAA antitrust decision opens the door to further more sweeping challenges of the organization’s business model.
Read more...‘Managed Retreat’ from Climate Disasters Can Reinvent Cities So They’re Better for Everyone – and Avoid More Flooding, Heat and Fires
Managed retreat is a promising way to deal with rising seas…except it requires things we’re bad at, like planning and cooperation.
Read more...Summer Rerun: The Victory of Privilege
Privilege went from an idea discussed by a few activists to a mainstream concept. How does the idea work in practice? What is its history?
Read more...Why the Neoliberal Drive to Privatize Everything Is Running Out of Gas
A look at the current acceptance of neoliberal policies.
Read more...Standard Inflation Theory Leaves Out Social Conflict and Costs
What That Means For Biden’s Inflation Policy Trilemma
Read more...A Nation that Runs on Bribes: Civics Lessons from our Vaccine Rollout
If we start bribing citizens to get vaccinated, what else are we going to end up needing to bribe them to do?
Read more...Head Start’s Long-Run Impacts on Human Capital and Labor-Market Outcomes
A large-scale preschool program – even one with less per-child expenditures than model preschools – can deliver long-run benefits to students.
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