IEET Rights News

Andrea Kuszewski Autism And Vaccines: Why People Still Believe The Hype

2010-03-19T14:41:37+00:00

Early last month, the now-famous paper by Dr Andrew Wakefield that supposedly linked vaccines to the onset of autism, was formally retracted by the Lancet, the journal that published it back in 1998. This was a monumental decision, considering it was the conclusions drawn from this paper that launched the firestorm of debate around the safety of vaccines, and likely the cause of the current vaccine crisis.

Mining Space

2010-03-19T14:17:18+00:00

IEET Fellow David Brin proposes economic incentives for exploring space. Can space exploration pay for itself?

Design Outside the Box

2010-03-19T02:02:47+00:00

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jesse Schell offers a funny, fast-paced, enlightening presentation on the strange new world of online interactive gaming.

DS Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

John Robb Online Games, Super Empowerment, and a Better World

2010-03-18T20:11:09+00:00

For active online gamers, real life is broken. It doesn’t make any sense. Effort isn’t connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there’s a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure. So why play it?

Kyle Munkittrick Are You There, Dog? It’s Me, Gordon.

2010-03-18T15:12:25+00:00

One of the biggest letdowns for me about the film Wall-E was that all of the robots, save the evil navigator, were in some way visually anthropomorphic. They had hands, eyes, voices, that were unmistakably humanish. Pixar’s great mascot, Luxo Jr., managed to be lovable without these traits. There is a certain extra level of magic involved in making a great character that is utterly unrecognizable as human.

Ben Goertzel Compassion

2010-03-17T12:06:40+00:00

We tend think about compassion on the level of individual selves and minds: Bob feels compassionate toward Jim because Jim lost his wife, or his wallet, etc. Bob sympathizes with Jim because he can internally, to a certain extent, “feel what Jim feels.”

George Grant and Transhumanism

2010-03-15T02:31:45+00:00

Dr. J. chats with Janna Rosales about her 2009 doctoral dissertation for the University of Toronto, When the “Twilight of Justice” Meets the “Dawn of Nanotechnology”: A Critique of Transhumanism and the Technological Imperative in the Light of George Grant’s Moral Philosophy.

What’s Wrong With Transhumanism?

2010-03-14T02:35:57+00:00

IEET Managing Director Mike Treder and CUNY Professor Massimo Pigliucci debate the pros and cons of the transhumanist agenda.

Is transhumanism fatally optimistic? (06:10)
Massimo’s ethical qualms with life extension (12:21)
The dangers of rapid technological advance (03:21)
Massimo vs. Mike on whether it’s possible to upload your mind (10:44)
Is the Turing Test a behaviorist blunder? (15:44)
Pesky limitations imposed by human biology (07:15)

Linda MacDonald Glenn Love’s Labour Lost: An act of desperation leads to a bad law

2010-03-11T20:07:50+00:00

There is a saying in the law that “hard cases make bad law.” This tragic story is one of those hard cases.

Mike Treder Health Care Good, System Bad

2010-03-11T18:26:06+00:00

You can make an argument that the quality of health care in the United States is as good as anywhere in the world (if you can afford it)—but the system we use to allocate and pay for that care is obviously broken and needs to be fixed.