The Vatican knew of a cover-up involving abusive priests, Pennsylvania AG says

Holly Yan
CNN.com
Originally published August 28, 2018

In the latest scathing allegation against the Catholic church, Pennsylvania's attorney general said the Vatican knew about a cover-up involving sex abuse allegations against priests.

"We have evidence that the Vatican had knowledge of the cover-up," Attorney General Josh Shapiro told NBC's "Today" show Tuesday.

He later told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "Once the Vatican learned of it, I do not know if the Pope learned about it or not."

The accusation comes two weeks after the release of a grand jury report saying hundreds of "predator priests" had abused children in six Pennsylvania dioceses over the past seven decades.
Shapiro did not specify Tuesday what evidence he has that would suggest the Vatican knew of a cover-up.

The information is here.

Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain

Ben Yagoda
The Atlantic
September 2018 Issue

Here is an excerpt:

Because biases appear to be so hardwired and inalterable, most of the attention paid to countering them hasn’t dealt with the problematic thoughts, judgments, or predictions themselves. Instead, it has been devoted to changing behavior, in the form of incentives or “nudges.” For example, while present bias has so far proved intractable, employers have been able to nudge employees into contributing to retirement plans by making saving the default option; you have to actively take steps in order to not participate. That is, laziness or inertia can be more powerful than bias. Procedures can also be organized in a way that dissuades or prevents people from acting on biased thoughts. A well-known example: the checklists for doctors and nurses put forward by Atul Gawande in his book The Checklist Manifesto.

Is it really impossible, however, to shed or significantly mitigate one’s biases? Some studies have tentatively answered that question in the affirmative. These experiments are based on the reactions and responses of randomly chosen subjects, many of them college undergraduates: people, that is, who care about the $20 they are being paid to participate, not about modifying or even learning about their behavior and thinking. But what if the person undergoing the de-biasing strategies was highly motivated and self-selected? In other words, what if it was me?

The info is here.

People Are Averse to Machines Making Moral Decisions

Yochanan E. Bigman and Kurt Gray
In press, Cognition

Abstract

Do people want autonomous machines making moral decisions? Nine studies suggest that that
the answer is ‘no’—in part because machines lack a complete mind. Studies 1-6 find that people
are averse to machines making morally-relevant driving, legal, medical, and military decisions,
and that this aversion is mediated by the perception that machines can neither fully think nor
feel. Studies 5-6 find that this aversion exists even when moral decisions have positive outcomes.
Studies 7-9 briefly investigate three potential routes to increasing the acceptability of machine
moral decision-making: limiting the machine to an advisory role (Study 7), increasing machines’
perceived experience (Study 8), and increasing machines’ perceived expertise (Study 9).
Although some of these routes show promise, the aversion to machine moral decision-making is
difficult to eliminate. This aversion may prove challenging for the integration of autonomous
technology in moral domains including medicine, the law, the military, and self-driving vehicles.

The research is here.

Silicon Valley Writes a Playbook to Help Avert Ethical Disasters

Arielle Pardes
www.wired.com
Originally posted August 7, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The first section outlines 14 near-future scenarios, based on contemporary anxieties in the tech world that could threaten companies in the future. What happens, for example, if a company like Facebook purchases a major bank and becomes a social credit provider? What happens if facial-recognition technology becomes a mainstream tool, spawning a new category of apps that integrates the tech into activities like dating and shopping? Teams are encouraged to talk through each scenario, connect them back to the platforms or products they're developing, and discuss strategies to prepare for these possible futures.

Each of these scenarios came from contemporary "signals" identified by the Institute of the Future—the rise of "deep fakes," tools for "predictive justice," and growing concerns about technology addiction.

"We collect things like this that spark our imagination and then we look for patterns, relationships. Then we interview people who are making these technologies, and we start to develop our own theories about where the risks will emerge," says Jane McGonigal, the director of game research at the Institute of the Future and the research lead for the Ethical OS. "The ethical dilemmas are around issues further out than just the next release or next growth cycle, so we felt helping companies develop the imagination and foresight to think a decade out would allow more ethical action today."

The info is here.

Nietzsche and the Death of God

Justin Remhof
1000-Word Philosophy

Here is an excerpt:

1. Nietzsche on Why People Believe in God

What is Nietzsche’s justification for claiming that God is a fiction? The answer lies in the function of the idea of God.

According to Nietzsche, the idea of God was created to help people handle widespread and seemingly senseless suffering. The ancient Israelites, who brought forward the Judeo-Christian God, lived in horrible conditions: for many generations, they were enslaved, beaten, and killed. Under such immense duress, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to find some reason to explain suffering and hope that those responsible for suffering will be punished.

The idea of God plays that role. The idea of God emerges to provide light in a dark world. From antiquity to today most people turn to God when awful tragedies happen – for example, when loved ones are gunned down by active shooters, trapped in cities bombarded by hurricanes, or diagnosed with cancer. For many, belief in God provides strength to endure such misery. Belief in God also provides hope that when our loved ones pass away we can live with them again for eternity. Belief in God ensures that no loss is inconsolable, no injustice unrequited, and that we can finally have everlasting peace, no matter the misery gone through to get there.

For Nietzsche, then, there is a natural explanation for belief in God. God is a psychological fabrication created to soothe distress, ease trauma, and provide companionship in the face of suffering.

The info is here.

23andMe's Pharma Deals Have Been the Plan All Along

Megan Molteni
www.wired.com
Originally posted August 3, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

So last week’s announcement that one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, GlaxoSmithKline, is gaining exclusive rights to mine 23andMe’s customer data for drug targets should come as no surprise. (Neither should GSK’s $300 million investment in the company). 23andMe has been sharing insights gleaned from consented customer data with GSK and at least six other pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms for the past three and a half years. And offering access to customer information in the service of science has been 23andMe’s business plan all along, as WIRED noted when it first began covering the company more than a decade ago.

But some customers were still surprised and angry, unaware of what they had already signed (and spat) away. GSK will receive the same kind of data pharma partners have generally received—summary level statistics that 23andMe scientists gather from analyses on de-identified, aggregate customer information—though it will have four years of exclusive rights to run analyses to discover new drug targets. Supporting this kind of translational work is why some customers signed up in the first place. But it’s clear the days of blind trust in the optimistic altruism of technology companies are coming to a close.

“I think we’re just operating now in a much more untrusting environment,” says Megan Allyse, a health policy researcher at the Mayo Clinic who studies emerging genetic technologies. “It’s no longer enough for companies to promise to make people healthy through the power of big data.”

The info is here.

Building An Ethics-First Employee Culture Is Crucial For All Leaders

Patrick Quinlan
Forbes.com
Originally posted July 25, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

These issues — harassment, bias, sexism — are nothing new in the tech sector but, now more than ever before, employees are taking matters into their own hands to make sure ethical business practices and values are upheld, even when leadership fails to do so.

In the last few years, we have seen the entire employer-employee paradigm shift, from offices embracing open floor plans to leaders encouraging team bonding activities. Underlying this massive business transformation is a stronger emphasis on the people who make up organizations, their values and their opinions. What we’ve borne witness to is the rise of empowered employees.

For leaders, shifting gears to focus on people first may feel scary. No one wants their employees to point out something is wrong at the company. But if instilling core ethical values is truly your objective, openness to criticism is part of the job description. Your commitment to promoting a safe, empowering space is not only beneficial for your employees — it ultimately strengthens your company’s culture, values, ethics — and therefore your company’s success long-term.

When leaders lead proactively, encouraging employees to come forward with an opinion or idea, employees feel safe, heard and ready to improve their company culture from the inside out. Whether you’re running a technology giant or a small startup, it’s no overnight shift. But you can start small by asking questions, taking feedback seriously and celebrating your team’s autonomy.

The information is here.

When Doctors Struggle With Suicide, Their Profession Often Fails Them

Blake Farmer
NPR.org
Originally posted July 31, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

A particular danger for doctors trying to fend off suicidal urges is that they know exactly how to end their own lives and often have easy access to the means.

Wenger remembers his friend and colleague as the confident professional with whom he had worked in emergency rooms all over Knoxville — including the one where she died. That day three years ago still makes no sense to him.

"She was very strong-willed, strong-minded, an independent, young, female physician," says emergency doctor Betsy Hull, a close friend. "I don't think any of us had any idea that she was struggling as much personally as she was for those several months."

That day she became part of a grim set of statistics.

A harsh reality

An estimated 300 to 400 doctors kill themselves each year, a rate of 28 to 40 per 100,000 or more than double that of general population. That is according to a review of 10 years of literature on the subject presented at the American Psychiatry Association annual meeting in May.

The information is here.

Are embryos people? The answer will determine the future of reproductive medicine

Eric Forman
Statnews.com
Originally posted July 24, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The goal of this process is to achieve a healthy child, which now occurs at a remarkably high rate. For specific genetic disorders, preimplantation genetic testing can reduce the odds of having a child with a lethal disorder from 25 to 50 percent to less than 1 percent.

Medicine’s ability to culture embryos and select healthy ones has improved dramatically in the last few years. A clinical trial that I led several years ago showed that transferring a single genetically tested normal embryo resulted in the same delivery rate as transferring multiple untested embryos. When genetic testing is performed, it is now standard of care to transfer just a single embryo at a time — gone are the days of risky triplet and high-order multiples after IVF. Actual babies, not embryos, are being spared from dying from the complications of genetic diseases and severe prematurity thanks to the increased use of single-embryo transfer afforded by preimplantation genetic testing.

The information is here.