“Some of the disagreements arose from the stated definition of a lie I used. A lie is saying something that one believes to be false with the intention of getting someone else to believe it is true. Some people challenged the definition; others accepted it but claimed that, according to it, some of my lies were not lies.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/how-you-justified-10-lies-or-didnt/
Is it ethical to hunt endangered species?
What if allowing legal hunting creates economic incentives for their preservation? What if
What if the “effective” way of conserving animal populations is morally abhorrent? What if the only ethical way to treat these animals (banning hunting) proves ineffective at protecting their numbers?
Below are some links discussing the issue from different perspectives.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/19/opinions/trophy-hunting-not-conservation-flocken/
2. “The Heavy Price of Trophy Hunting”
http://www.endangered.org/the-heavy-price-of-trophy-hunting/
3. “Save the Animals by Hunting Them”
http://www.ozy.com/immodest-proposal/save-the-animals-by-hunting-them/39349
4. “The Ultimate Pursuit in Hunting: Sheep”
“Permits to hunt bighorn sheep are auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars — and that money has helped revive wild sheep populations and expand their territory.”
5. The Fish and Wildlife Service said we have to kill elephants to help save them. The data says otherwise.
6. Why Can’t We Protect Elephants?
“What could justify the commercial hunting of threatened animals? The general answer is that the proceeds from the hunt — the huge fees people in search of these trophies fork over — can go to conservation.
“Whether or not such an argument is morally persuasive, the implementation of such a system requires a stable host country where corruption is kept in check and conservation programs are effective.”
“In the 1950s, a group of scientists spoke out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. Should cryptographers take on the surveillance state?”
“But computer science has quite a bit to do with reality. Its practitioners devise the surveillance systems that watch over nearly every space, public or otherwise—and they design the tools that allow for privacy in the digital realm. Computer science is political, by its very nature.”
Interesting article on the ethics of government intervention in people’s lives. Much public debate centers around questions discussed in this article: Should governments intervene in people’s personal decisions? If so when? If governments can make a positive impact, does that make it right?
“Residents in some public-housing units in Worcester, Massachusetts, must now get a job or go back to school. If they don’t, they’ll be evicted.”
“Is this the role government ought to be playing in people’s lives? John Stuart Mill condemned such efforts, writing, ‘The only purpose for which power may be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/paternalism/420210/?utm_source=yahoo
“Most of us believe that lying is wrong. We teach our children that it is wrong, and hope or expect that value judgment is shared by our friends and family. In public, we decry politicians and public officials when they lie, which we have frequent occasion to do these days. But the truth about lying is more complicated.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/can-you-justify-these-lies/
“What motivates someone to be violent? This is a question many people are asking in the wake of the recent mass shootings in California. Most explanations tend to revolve around the core assumption that violence is wrong. If someone is violent, something must be broken in their moral psychology—they are intrinsically evil, they lack self-control, they are selfish, or they fail to understand the pain they cause. However, it turns out that this fundamental assumption is mistaken. It is not the breakdown of their morality at all, but rather the working of their moral psychology. Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments.”
http://qz.com/566579/most-violence-in-the-world-is-motivated-by-personal-morality/
“The official statement, which says work altering human germ lines should remain only in the lab, caps a three-day summit on using technology to alter the human genome”
And a second article on the subject
“Improving” Humans with Customized Genes Sparks Debate among Scientists”
“What we really confront here, then, is a kind of difference which is not a disagreement. We come to see that we are each right to live by our respective moral beliefs, due to the way in which they speak to our respective circumstances, and the specific moral issues that arise within them.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/moral-dispute-or-cultural-difference/
“Nudges, small design changes that can markedly affect individual behavior, have been catching on. These techniques rely on insights from behavioral science, and when used ethically, they can be very helpful. But we need to be sure that they aren’t being employed to sway people to make bad decisions that they will later regret.”
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