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Who can be trusted with our secrets?

July 12, 2013

The news about government surveillance and secrecy is alarming. But it is not surprising. Governments have always been interested in controlling information. But democratic governments should be limited in their ability to do so.

Managing information is the primary occupation of many people — in social networks, in business, in sports, in religion, and in politics. When information is scarce, the demand for it goes up. That’s why it’s possible to leverage information for profit — which explains blackmail, insider trading and treason.

Social life consists of a complex game of exchanging information. The best players have a knack for obtaining and revealing information in appropriate ways. And governments have an interest in controlling the process.

Secrets are valuable, and there is power in knowing them. We value those who can keep confidences. And we threaten and punish those who disclose them. But the urge to divulge is often as strong as the desire to know. The joy of the tattletale and the blabbermouth is complemented by the curiosity of the eavesdropper and Peeping Tom. Gossip is as much fun to tell as it is to hear.

There is also satisfaction in keeping a secret. We gain a sense of superiority from knowing something that others do not know. Community develops from the loyalty and trust found among those who keep each other’s confidences. There is solidarity among those who share secrets. We like to receive that sly wink or subtle nod from those “in the know.” No one wants to be left out of the loop.

But secretiveness can be dangerous. Cabals and cults indoctrinate members by revealing secret mysteries. Magical power supposedly flows from access to esoteric knowledge. People are often willing to pay dearly to see what is concealed.

The need for secrecy is often a sign of something rotten. Perverts lurk in the shadows. Criminals whisper conspiratorially. Con men and swindlers manipulate information. Delinquents conceal their misdeeds. And cheating lovers arrange clandestine meetings.

The great American philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “there must be some narrowness in the soul that compels one to keep secrets.” Good and virtuous things are not done surreptitiously. If we are proud of what we do and who we are, we should do it publicly.

A virtuous personality has no need to weave the tangled webs of deceit that cramp the soul. And a virtuous person has no need to pry into the private lives of others. Speak your mind. Be yourself. Leave others the privacy they deserve.

So much for individuals. But we often make exceptions for government spying and secrecy because we feel it is necessary for law and order. In order to uncover criminal conspiracies, the government may have to secretly surveil the bad guys. But one always wonders, who is watching the watchers.

The philosopher Plato solved that problem by maintaining that the rulers had to be wise and virtuous. Plato assumed that the majority of people were not virtuous enough to govern themselves. But he hoped that a wise and virtuous ruler could be empowered to manipulate and deceive us, for our own good.

Democrats, in the philosophical sense of that term, reject that idea. Democrats tend to think that governments ought to be transparent, because there is no good reason to believe that the watchers are wiser or more virtuous than we are. Democrats reject the idea that governments should be granted exceptional powers. And they believe that government should respect the liberty and privacy of individuals. As Thoreau put it, “that government is best which governs least.”

Individual privacy matters, from the point of view of democracy, because the freedom to keep and tell secrets is such an essential feature of our social lives. But governments ought not keep secrets. If we don’t know what the government is doing on our behalf, how can we claim to be governing ourselves?

Some fear that bad guys will exploit democratic liberty and transparency. They will want to empower the surveillance state as Plato did, for the good of the whole. But followers of Thoreau may suspect that growing state surveillance and secrecy indicates an undemocratic narrowing of the soul of the nation.

 

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Ethics of Brain Hacking

Brain hackers raise social questions about learning, understanding

June 28, 2013

 

Is it ethical to use “smart drugs” to improve cognitive function?

Legal concoctions of vitamins, herbs and nutrients are advertised as improving memory, focus and mental acuity. Some of these supplements claim they can produce lucid dream states and lessen the need for sleep. And prescription drugs are being used in illegal ways as mental stimulants, aimed at enhancing memory and concentration.

So-called “brain hackers” claim that cognitive function can be enhanced by sending mild electrical current through the brain. At least one company is marketing a trans-cranial electrical current device to video game players as an upgrade for the gamer’s brain.

Assuming that these things really work, one obvious ethical issue is health and safety. But if we assume that neuro-enhancers can be used safely, another ethical issue is fairness. It doesn’t seem fair for people to artificially enhance performance in school or in business, especially if these enhancements are not widely available to everyone.

One might also worry that the learning that occurs through brain hacking doesn’t really count. It seems like cheating. Of course, these products won’t do the learning for you. They help you focus and retain information better and faster. But you still have to do the studying. If it is acceptable to drink coffee during a cram session, is it also acceptable to use another, more powerful chemical that can help you focus even better?

If learning is primarily about creating pathways in the brain, resulting in new skills and abilities, then there is nothing inherently wrong with brain upgrades that help build those pathways more quickly. Flashcards help and so might a drug. Result-oriented learning will encourage the use of the most efficient tools. From a result-oriented standpoint, it doesn’t matter that you took a chemical shortcut so long as you actually end up knowing the thing you set out to learn.

But learning and thinking are not only a means to an end. They are also ends in themselves. Aristotle suggested this when he said that learning gives us the liveliest pleasure. One source of the pleasure of learning is the resultant mastery — the ability to perform or do something as a result of learning. But there is also pleasure in the very process of practicing and working at mastery. Is the road of learning enjoyable for its own sake; or is the point to achieve mastery as quickly as possible?

The brain-hackers want to shorten the process, perhaps underestimating the pleasures of practice and study. They are primarily focused on performance and achievement. If a short cut can be found, why not take it?

But Aristotle and others would argue that the road matters as much as the destination. Learning and thinking are also deeply social activities, which build connections with other people through the shared effort of the process. There is no mechanical or pharmaceutical shortcut to building community and developing relationships.

In a culture of high-stakes testing and dog-eat-dog economic struggle, it makes sense that people would want to hack their brains, looking for a competitive advantage.

In our culture, there are tangible rewards for those who can process and recall information quickly and accurately. Quick thinkers get better grades, bigger scholarships, and higher-paying jobs. Slow thinkers are left languishing in the dust.

But quick processing and recall skills are merely mechanical: machines can process and recall information much faster than we can.

Machines cannot, however, evaluate what is worth thinking about. The brain hackers are focused on the question of “how fast?” But they forget to ask “how come?”

There is no quick answer for the deeply human question of what matters and why it matters.

Existential questions require unhurried contemplation. But our caffeinated, video-game culture has no time for ruminating and mulling things over.

We spike our brains, filling them with images and words from dawn to dusk.

We are competitive thinkers, looking for an edge in a world that has little patience for the poets and dreamers who pause to wonder about the point of the hustle.

In the end, we may find that the faster we arrive at our destination, the less we understand why we wanted to get there in the first place.

 

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Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ raises ethical questions

Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ raises ethical questions, reminds us to appreciate the humanities

June 14, 2013

Would you be willing to destroy half of humanity in order to save the human species from going extinct? Would it be acceptable to involuntarily sterilize people in an effort to prevent overpopulation? Those are the central questions of Dan Brown’s new novel, “Inferno.”

Brown’s novel is fun summer reading that poses troubling ethical questions. It is also a reminder of the value of the humanities. The villains in Brown’s novels are zealots. In “The Da Vinci Code” the bad guys were religious fanatics. In this novel, the villains are mad scientists. The hero is a tweedy humanities professor who loves art and poetry.

While “Inferno” isn’t great literature, it inspires appreciation for art, poetry, philosophy and history. It celebrates the skills learned in the humanities: to learn to read carefully, to think broadly and deeply and to understand the symbols and cultural artifacts that surround us.

Brown’s villains are coldly inhumane: They think population control can be justified by simple mathematics. There are too many people, so something must be done. This idea is rooted in Machiavelli, the Renaissance theorist who warned that teeming population would inevitably be purged. Terrorists are often Machiavellian in thinking that the end justifies the means. Machiavellian idealists treat human beings as things to be manipulated and quantities to be calculated rather than as persons to be valued and loved.

Study in the humanities teaches us to be wary of Machiavellian schemes. Philosophers have long warned that nothing straight can be constructed from the crooked timber of humanity. We are not wise enough or virtuous enough to engineer reality or impose final solutions.

The humanities remind us that uncritical certainty is linked to hubris. Human beings achieve moments of profound insight and sparkling beauty. But these moments do not last forever. Indeed, they are often undone by the zealots and idealists who insist that they know how to save humankind from itself.

Brown’s novel is set in Italy. It celebrates the art of the Renaissance. Great art reminds us of the power of human genius. But history warns us against taking ourselves too seriously. Before the Renaissance, the Greeks and Romans also created luminous works of genius. The cycles repeat. Saviors come and go. Civilizations rise and fall. Each generation is plagued by its own narcissism, thinking that its creative genius is unique and unprecedented.

But historical awareness should make us wary of that sort of narcissism. A sense of history should make us modest in assessing the value of our own ideals. It should also inspire skepticism toward those who propound simple technological solutions to complex human problems.

So what can we do about the population problem? A solution requires something more than science and technology. Purely technical solutions — such as forced sterilization — would work on a population of rodents or insects. But human beings are not pests to be controlled. We inhabit a world of spirit and ideas. We hope, we dream; and we create art, literature and philosophy. We also love.

Brown’s “Inferno” borrows its title from Dante Alighieri’s famous poem about hell. Dante was a romantic whose poetry was inspired by Beatrice, a beautiful woman he loved from afar. Dante recounts that his love for Beatrice kindled a flame of charity that moved him to forgive everyone, including his enemies. Love transforms us, making us ethical and inspiring work of creative genius.

The population problem is driven by sex. Machiavellian technologists may argue that sex should be subjected to mathematical control. But the humane solution is to find a way to transform sex into love — to broaden and sublimate the sex drive in ways made possible by art, literature, religion and philosophy.

People need to be educated and empowered to control their own bodies and reproductive lives. But we also need to be reminded that there is more to life than mating and reproducing.

Technology without humanity can easily become heartless. The study of the humanities cures that sort of spiritual sterility. And it reminds us to beware of zealots offering quick fixes for deeply human problems. The humanities won’t save the world. But they remind us about those works of love, genius and beauty that make humankind worth saving.

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Weighing in on the wicked waste of the West

Fiala on ethics: Weighing in on the wicked waste of the West

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, May. 31, 2013 | 06:15 PM

As citizens of Fresno vote on how we manage our garbage, it’s a good time to reflect on the ethics of trash. Our waste-disposal habits have changed and they will evolve further.

My grandparents burned garbage and yard waste in an incinerator. My grandfather also smoked cigars and was fond of dirty language. He would have laughed at recycling. Although filthy language is still around, smoking and burning have given way to recycling bins and smoking bans. We’ve come a long way.

The new frontier in the ethics of garbage is the issue of quantity. Americans generate more than 4 pounds of garbage per person per day — well over 1,200 pounds per person per year. That’s the highest per capita garbage production rate in the world. The World Bank recently predicted that at current rates of development, the global garbage volume will nearly double in 15 years to more than 2 billion tons of garbage per year. Is there an ethical obligation to reduce the amount of garbage we create?

Some reduction would be easy. American trash includes hundreds of billions of disposable cups and plastic bags. Those cups and bags are single-use items; we use them once and throw them away. Plastic bags have been subject to special criticism. They deteriorate into small plastic bits, polluting the oceans. The bags blow loose from garbage bins and landfills, prompting some to call them “urban tumbleweed.” Some cities have banned them. The California Senate just rejected a bill proposing a state-wide ban.

Some may think that we are entitled to produce as much garbage as we can pay for. Is there a right to make garbage? Should the affluent be proud of their profligate trash production? Imagine a rich man gazing smugly at his overflowing garbage bin, thinking that its fullness signifies a life well lived. If that image is absurd, that’s because we’re not proud of waste.

The higher path may be the one strewn with the least amount of garbage. Some books and websites tout zero-waste lifestyles. Advocates of trash-free living brag that they no longer need to take out the garbage. And they view waste production as, well, trashy. Perhaps there is something indecent or tacky about creating lots of garbage. Perhaps in the future, we’ll be ashamed to ask for a single-use cup or a plastic grocery bag. And we’ll proudly display our reusable mugs and cloth shopping bags.

Social norms regarding trash disposal have progressed. Litterbugs and trash burners are subject to fines and social disapprobation. As of yet, there is no social penalty for filling your garbage can to the brim. No one views it as rude, obnoxious or selfish to pile up mass amounts of garbage. But as the population grows and the dumps fill up, we may come to be ashamed of the sheer quantity of our refuse.

One difficulty here is that it is not clear exactly who is harmed if you generate excessive garbage or who is benefited if your bin is empty. The harms and benefits of trash production are abstract, concerning ecological and economic issues. But the ethics of garbage may involve a more personal issue of spiritual hygiene.

The old saying that cleanliness is next to godliness points toward the need to minimize waste. The goal of reducing trash may be part of a broader ascetic discipline, which wants to eliminate spiritual garbage. A trash-free lifestyle might also condemn filthy language, scummy thoughts and dirty jokes. It might also warn against wasteful extravagance.

But you can’t live without generating a bit of waste. And sometimes a dirty word is the right word. The key is balance and moderation: to produce the right amount of garbage at the right time. The ancient Greeks revered Hygeia, the goddess of sanitation and hygiene. Hygeia also represented harmony and health.

Garbage-free abstinence is extreme. A devotee of moderation may still wonder, however, whether our prodigious garbage production isn’t a sign of imbalance and dis-ease. As our trash bins bulge, are we happy, healthy and harmonious?

Perhaps saintly beings can live purely, without trash. The rest of us struggle every day to keep our language clean, our minds out of the gutter and our garbage cans from overflowing.

 

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Is college becoming mass-produced?

Fiala on ethics: Is college becoming mass-produced?

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, May. 17, 2013 | 05:44 PM

Soon enough, everyone will have access to the latest classes coming out of Harvard or Stanford. Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, can provide students around the world with lectures delivered by leading scholars at top universities. The democratic promise of Ivy League education for everyone is enticing.

But there has been some backlash. Last week, professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State wrote an open letter opposing MOOCs. They worry that administrators “are beginning a process of replacing faculty with cheap online education.” No doubt it would be cheaper to use prefabricated mass-produced courses than to hire real professors.

Some critics worry that online education in general is the problem. Face-to-face communication is important in the Internet age. Something mysterious happens in classrooms as students and teachers think together. Face-to-face encounters give students good practice at listening, talking and thinking in community with others. And caring relationships between teachers and students develop best in a face-to-face world.

But computer technology is not all bad. Videotaped lectures, like textbooks, are useful tools for disseminating information. And serious thinking can happen in online discussion forums. Online discussions are especially useful for shy or disabled students.

The bigger problem with MOOCs is the idea that college education is another commodity to be mass-produced. MOOCs are “massive.” A recent New Yorker article reports that a humanities MOOC at Harvard has more than 30,000 “students.” A MOOC on artificial intelligence had 160,000 “students.”

The issue of scale is significant. At some point the “student” becomes an anonymous unit to be processed, a number rather than a person with a name. Mass education treats students as spectators and consumers rather than as participants in a community of inquiry.

Mass-production generally centralizes authority and standardizes its products. But education should focus on cultivating human persons and celebrating their individuality. It should not be a mechanical process of stamping out graduates.

Decades ago, social critics such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno warned that “the culture industry” would create standardization and monopoly. They worried that centralized production of films, music, literature and art would turn culture into a product to be marketed and sold.

MOOCs represent another step in the mass production of culture. Mass produced culture makes all kinds of stuff easily available. Mass quantities of consumer goods can be purchased at big box stores. We can attend mega-churches and read mass media news stories. And now the sages on stages at the big universities are coming to the masses.

Mass culture is fast and efficient. It requires little effort to fill our minds with the latest stuff. Our tastes, our behaviors, even our thoughts are standardized and homogenized, assisted by search engine algorithms, which help us find what we want from among the available products.

Mostly, we like it that way. Standardized mass culture creates regularity, predictability and comfortable conformity. We can order the same food in the same restaurant chain in any city in America. We can watch the same TV shows or read the same news, while sitting in standardized hotel rooms across the country.

Everyone discusses the same celebrity gossip, reads the same bestselling novels and watches the same blockbuster films. We are all concerned about the same scandals and crises. The more of us there are, the more alike we all become. Massive online education appears as an inevitable part of the cultural matrix.

The downside is the loss of idiosyncratic points of view, local differences and diversity of perspectives. There are no more sages hiding on mountaintops, waiting to deliver wisdom to intrepid explorers. Instead, the sage appears to everyone who can click a mouse.

MOOCs bring those mountaintop gurus down to the people. But the mass production of education carries the risk of destroying the mysterious human connection between teachers and students. The most meaningful moments in education often occur when the sage becomes a caring mentor, asking how things appear from the perspective of the student. Can a MOOC do that?

Mass education can effectively disseminate information. But no Harvard genius can replace a responsive and responsible teacher, who is present on campus and in the community and who cares about students enough to learn their names.