Those poor little animals :-(

Recent thoughts that ended up being a one-page paper for my class ...

***

Life forms, particularly those of the animal kingdom, come into existence without an understanding of the world around them. However, although an organism needs to learn about the world in which it lives in order to survive, it does not need to learn how to sense, to feel, and to suffer. Such experience is inherently granted to those with a nervous system capable of such biopsychological computations.

More than any other, the human species has an intellect capable of learning about world in which it lives. With this intellect and their senses, humans use scientific methods to understand and manipulate this world. Thus, it is through the research process that humans learn how to take control of their experiences in effort to live a better life. In biomedical research, humans take control of treatment and prevention of a major source of their suffering: disease.

Thus, because of their intellect, humans have been granted the capacity to investigate how to relieve suffering. A problem arises, however, in the means by which humans carry out these biomedical investigations. In order to learn how to cure a disease, experiments must be performed on individuals with the disease, and these experiments may, and often do, cause suffering in themselves.  Thus, “more suffering” becomes the means to the end of “less suffering”.  Humans have found this means to an end unacceptable, and, not wanting to suffer more, have replaced their role in biomedical questions with those who can provide somewhat equivalent answers – with animals.

Although humans have resolved their problem of suffering, they have created a new problem: the suffering of animals. In the process of biomedical research, animals of diverse species are subject to manipulation, pain, neglect, and death: all experience humans want to avoid. It is at the cost of animal suffering that humans gain life without (or with less) suffering. Of course, efforts could be made to minimize cruel and unnecessary harm to animals, a maxim currently emphasized in biomedical research. Nonetheless, the human must ask herself, would I be willing to undergo the same experience as my research animals? If not, then how am I justified in carrying out my experiments on them?

One could argue that animals, due to their simpler nervous system, do not have the as great of a capacity for suffering as do humans. In the sense that animals may not have hopes, dreams, and future goals, this may be a valid argument. There is no evidence that animals have such capacities. Thus, to use animals in research would not rob them of such experiences, whereas to use humans would rob them of such experiences. However, there is behavioral evidence that animals show signs of and avoid pain, and neuroscientific evidence that animals have very similar brain capacities to experience pain, stress, fear, and anger as do humans.¹ Therefore, animals do suffer to an comparable extent when subject to biomedical research as would humans.

Despite the notion that animals suffer in the research process, those who support the use of animals often maintain the mentality that “it’s better them than us”. Humans are, after all, the greatest of all species; they have higher intelligence and more control of their environment than any other species. From this perspective, these advocates presume that humans have a greater inherent value than animals. However, arguing for such a position makes one, in the words of Richard Ryder, a ‘speciesist’. The speciesist argues humans are greater than animals in the same way that the racists argues black people are greater than white people and in the same way that the sexist argues women are greater than men. In the context of the use of animals in biomedical research, speciesism is a problem because both humans and animals share the capacity to suffer, and to choose to make animals suffer instead of humans does not reduce the total suffering caused by the research process.

If the goal of biomedical research is to reduce suffering, humans fail to achieve this goal when they use animals in their investigation. By subjecting animals to experimental manipulations, humans cause an alternative source of the suffering they are trying to eliminate. For this reason, animals should not be used in biomedical research.

1. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990, pp. 10-12, 14-15.  

***

... the funny thing is, I don't actually buy my own argument. If you do, feel free to puff it up and elaborate. If you don't, feel free to tear it to shreds. It's a pretty interesting debate.

Ciao.

Can I Buy an Engineer?

I was recently watching a rerun of Real Time with Bill Maher, and I was reminded of a very interesting point made by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson during that episode. Tyson, a prominent astrophysicist, questioned the wisdom of a political system that contains a disproportionate number of lawyers - 57% of the Senate and 38% of the House by his count. His main points can be summed up quite succinctly: In our legal system, what is "right" is determined by who argues best. Does that sort of thinking result in the best solutions when applied to government? Does the presence of so many lawyers foster the kind of combative partisanship that pervades our politics today? (Tyson's remarks can be found here)

It's obviously an overstatement to blame lawyers for all of the partisan bickering we see coming from Congress these days. In fact, Congress has been composed of mostly lawyers since its inception, so one should be wary of drawing a direct connection between political polarization and the shape of our legal system. But this line of thinking does prompt some interesting discussion. What would our government look like if it were filled with engineers and scientists rather than attorneys and "career politicians"?

At this point, I'd like to direct your attention to some examples in the 112th Congress to illustrate my point. Unfortunately, the few scientists and engineers currently serving in the legislature of our great country are fairly obscure and haven't made enough waves to even be worth mentioning, making this little more than an intriguing thought experiment. But when it comes down to it, isn't that a reflection of why there aren't more engineers and scientists in Congress in the first place? Lawyers know how to put on a show. They know how to yell and wave their hands, and they sure know how to tell people what they want to hear. So when it comes time for "The People" to choose their leaders, the guys from MIT are left staring at their shoes while the Harvard Law grads clean house.

We don't have much evidence to know whether some technical folks would be able to turn the ship around. But it's probably a safe assumption that they couldn't make things more dysfunctional than they already are. So the next time you're contemplating your choices at the ballot box, give some thought to the candidates who've spent some time in a clean room instead of a court room.

Super-healing plants and stuff

Suppose, hypothetically, a medicinal plant is discovered on a remote island in the pacific that would cure any disease known to man. When ingested, all conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, would no longer exist. The plant is readily available and easy to grow to the extent that it became virtually free. This would undoubtedly be approved by all societies and considered one of the most remarkable discoveries in mankind.

While this discovery may seem certainly good, there’s another side to consider. The health care industry in the United States employs roughly 15 million people and is considered one of the highest growing industries. The new medicinal plant would be so effective that it will nearly eliminate the health care industry by 95% (not entirely assuming injuries and other conditions still occurred). Additionally, companies, such as Pfizer, would be completely out of business because there would not be any need to invent or manufacture drugs. Health insurance companies would become extinguished. Even the FDA would be reduced. In essence, we now have more than 15 million additional people unemployed.

Not good. This means the entire wealth of the country would drop, GDP would fall, and economic growth would falter.  We could clearly be worse economically.

The point to understand is that the well-being of individuals in a society may not correlate with economic success. In fact, in can be the exact opposite as in this case. What we consider as a “strong” nation actually means more sick and dying people. We really need to reassess what we value and organize our societies in such a manner.  The notion of creating jobs actually has no bearing if people are happy or not. This also can be said about the condition of the environment. The more people there are employed in health care the sicker we are. The question becomes why we are in an economic system that is counter to what we actually need to value and what we can do about it. It’s something to think about.

The more the merrier?

Good afternoon everyone,


I’ve been running into quite a bit of information on human population over last week so my first post is going to be geared in that direction.

While we are generally living longer and healthier than ever in human history I’ve never given much thought of how many people can actually exist on earth at a given time. The first piece of information that brought me some insight was a graph I found depicting population over the last several hundred years.  Give it a look (it’s the white rectangle on the page).

Surprised? You should be. Population has been growing linearly until the last hundred years or so we’ve seen an exponential increase. So what’s the cause of this? The advances in medicine, cheap and abundant energy (coal, fossil fuel), and transportation technology have allowed for communities to flourish unlike ever before. Cities like Las Vegas, which is built in a desert, have been completely constructed and sustained due to modern technology. This may seem for the better on the surface but if you dig a bit deeper there is an impending problem. How do we feed billions of more people in areas where we can’t even feed them now?

The problem with the graph isn’t necessarily that we are multiplying so rapidly but rather the steeper the slope the sooner it will peak. There will be a time where the death rate surpasses the birth rate. However, with the way we can control food production and where people live, it may be a good idea to organize where and how many people we can sustain.

The point is to start thinking about how to manage populations and find what a sustainable amount of children to have is in places where food supplies are low. This is going to happen sooner or later regardless of technological utilization. Until then starvation and nutrition related deaths will become even more prevalent. There is a finite amount of resources on the planet and to allow people to have as many children as they want is foolish and dangerous.


Leave some thoughts.
Cheers.

When we don't know what we don't know ...

"One of people's biggest problems in life is that they don't know what they don't know."

About a month ago this was my status on Facebook, to which my cousin appropriately replied: Is there any other way it could be, could you not know what you do know? That's a really good question, because this 'not knowing' business can seem a bit confusing at first.

If you don't know what you do know you more or less are just forgetting. Perhaps you could say, deep down you actually know it (whatever), but superficially you have forgotten it and you think you don't know it. Alternatively, you could be suppressing it (an undesirable memory, a traumatic event). On the other hand, if you do know what you don't know, you're probably making something up (fabricating, confabulating). You essentially have a false belief.

Of course there's more to say about all that above, but that's not the point of this post. My point concerns when you don't know what you don't know. Put simply, this is when you are ignorant (lacking knowledge or information) about something, and you aren't even aware of your ignorance. Let me illustrate:

Two groups of student are prepping for a test that has two review sessions the day before. Group Win studies well but still hasn't figured everything out. The students come to their review session, and when the teacher asks for questions, all delighted people raise their hands! On the other hand, students of Group Lose don't study at all, hoping to learn everything at their review session (funny how common this actually is). And, when the teacher asks for questions, they all just sit there and twiddle their thumbs. Now, would the teacher be correct to assume Group Lose students must know everything? No way. In fact, they know so little they can't even formulate a question! They can't ask about the things they need to learn, because they don't know what they don't know.

I think this ignorance of igorance perpetuates so many problems because it fosters a false sense of security and psychologically traps us in complacency. We think we understand, when in fact, we may not. And with this attitude, we're self-restrained from the opportunity to grow and develop. We first must realize what more we have to learn. Then we need to learn it.

So ...

Simply, learn.

Learn about anything.

And everything.

Expand our minuscule world.

Just begin somewhere.

That may be the essence of this blog.

"I am the wisest man on Earth, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."  -- Socrates

Just a few thoughts.

Peace.

From Osman and Jon:

Good news everyone! We’ve been doing a lot of thinking, reading, and documentary-watching lately, and feel like sharing with others (i.e. you) some of the issues we’ve run across. In this blog, we plan to write on topics related to psychology, philosophy, social sciences, technology, and/or anything else that seems interesting. The point is to share ideas and opinions, with rational substance and a personal flavor. Feel free to contribute with your own thoughts; the only thing we ask for is an open mind and an intention to promote the mental well-being of others.

Posts coming soon!