How Could Commercial Terms of Use and Privacy Policies Undermine Informed Consent in the Age of Mobile Health?

Cynthia E. Schairer, Caryn Kseniya Rubanovich, and Cinnamon S. Bloss
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(9):E864-872.

Abstract

Granular personal data generated by mobile health (mHealth) technologies coupled with the complexity of mHealth systems creates risks to privacy that are difficult to foresee, understand, and communicate, especially for purposes of informed consent. Moreover, commercial terms of use, to which users are almost always required to agree, depart significantly from standards of informed consent. As data use scandals increasingly surface in the news, the field of mHealth must advocate for user-centered privacy and informed consent practices that motivate patients’ and research participants’ trust. We review the challenges and relevance of informed consent and discuss opportunities for creating new standards for user-centered informed consent processes in the age of mHealth.

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‘My death is not my own’: the limits of legal euthanasia

Henk Blanken
The Guardian
Originally posted August 10, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Of the 10,000 Dutch patients with dementia who die each year, roughly half of them will have had an advance euthanasia directive. They believed a doctor would “help” them. After all, this was permitted by law, and it was their express wish. Their naive confidence is shared by four out of 10 Dutch adults, who are convinced that a doctor is bound by an advance directive. In fact, doctors are not obliged to do anything. Euthanasia may be legal, but it is not a right.

As doctors have a monopoly on merciful killing, their ethical standard, and not the law, ultimately determines whether a man like Joop can die. An advance directive is just one factor, among many, that a doctor will consider when deciding on a euthanasia case. And even though the law says it’s legal, almost no doctors are willing to perform euthanasia on patients with severe dementia, since such patients are no longer mentally capable of making a “well-considered request” to die.

This is the catch-22. If your dementia is at such an early stage that you are mentally fit enough to decide that you want to die, then it is probably “too early” to want to die. You still have good years left. And yet, by the time your dementia has deteriorated to the point at which you wished (when your mind was intact) to die, you will no longer be allowed to die, as you are not mentally fit to make that decision. It is now “too late” to die.

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Against mourning

Brian Earp
aeon.com
Originally posted August 21, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

That is what is so different about their intuitions and ours. To put it simply, if you are not a Stoic philosopher – if you have not been training yourself, year in and year out, to calmly face life’s vagaries and inescapables – and you feel no hint of sadness when your child, or spouse, or family member dies, then there probably is something wrong with you. You probably have failed to love or cherish that person appropriately or sufficiently while they were alive, and that would be a mark against you.

You might have been cruel and uncaring, for instance, or emotionally distant, or otherwise aloof. For had you not been those things, you would certainly grieve. This, in turn, can explain why the Stoics were (and are) often thought to be so callous – as though they must have advocated such detachment from one’s kith and kin in order to pre-empt any associated suffering.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. As Epictetus instructs, one should not ‘be unfeeling like a statue’ but rather maintain one’s relations, ‘both natural and acquired, as a pious man, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen’. He also repeatedly emphasises that we are social animals, for whom parental and other forms of love come naturally. ‘Even Epicurus,’ he says, derisively, about a philosopher from a competing school, ‘knows that if once a child is born, it will no longer be in our power not to love it or care for it.’

But is it not part of loving one’s child to feel at least some grief when it suffers or dies (you might ask)? Surely feeling no grief would itself be contrary to Nature! For just as virtue cannot exist without wrongdoing, as some Stoics held, so too might the prospect of grief be in some way bound up in love, so that you cannot have one without the other.

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Motivated misremembering: Selfish decisions are more generous in hindsight

Ryan Carlson, Michel Marechal, Bastiaan Oud, Ernst Fehr, and Molly Crockett
Created on: July 22, 2018 | Last edited: July 22, 2018

Abstract

People often prioritize their own interests, but also like to see themselves as moral. How do individuals resolve this tension? One way to both maximize self-interest and maintain a moral self-image is to misremember the extent of one’s selfishness. Here, we tested this possibility. Across three experiments, participants decided how to split money with anonymous partners, and were later asked to recall their decisions. Participants systematically recalled being more generous in the past than they actually were, even when they were incentivized to recall accurately. Crucially, this effect was driven by individuals who gave less than what they personally believed was fair, independent of how objectively selfish they were. Our findings suggest that when people’s actions fall short of their own personal standards, they may misremember the extent of their selfishness, thereby warding off negative emotions and threats to their moral self-image.

The research is here.

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."

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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.