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The Prindle Institute for Ethics •

Do You Need to Morally Offset Your Guilty Pleasures?

I don’t use AI often, but when I do it’s usually to make dumb pictures to share with friends and coworkers. While it’s amusing to see what AI programs come up with, I also realize that they cause harm in terms of the skyrocketing amount of energy they require to operate, not to mention the unlicensed use of artists’ work that is required to train their models. While a single person using AI to generate a small number of images is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the harms AI programs create...

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Psyche •

The antidote to fake news is to nourish our epistemic wellbeing | Ideas

We typically think about ‘wellbeing’ in terms of physical and mental health. To improve your physical wellbeing, it might be best to exercise; to increase your mental wellbeing, consider putting your phone down once in a while. There is another, less noted way in which we should think about our wellbeing: in terms of knowledge. Knowledge is good for us not only because we generally want to know the truth, but because knowledge dramatically affects our ability to navigate the world and accomplish
IAI TV - Changing how the world thinks •

Dangerous beliefs | Kenneth Boyd

Our beliefs about the world guide our actions in it. Likewise, our actions reveal our beliefs. But are there beliefs we hold in theory, but would never act on? Such a distinction can be dangerous and irresponsible, writes Kenneth Boyd.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be ripe source material for those looking to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories throughout social media and elsewhere online. One does not have to look far before finding people defending beliefs that the virus was m

Ethics of AI

Trust and Expertise

The Prindle Post •

Twitter Bots and Trust

Twitter has once again been in the news lately, which you know can’t be a good thing. The platform recently made two sets of headlines: in the first, news broke that a number of Twitter accounts were making identical tweets in support of Mike Bloomberg and his presidential campaign, and in the second, reports came out of a significant number of bots making tweets denying the reality of human-made climate change.

While these incidents are different in a number of ways, they both illustrate one o
The Prindle Post •

Expertise and the “Building Distrust” of Public Health Agencies

If you want to know something about science, and you don’t know much about science, it seems that the best course of action would be to ask the experts. It’s not always obvious who these experts are, but there are often some pretty easy ways to identify them: if they have a lot of experience, are recognized in their field, do things like publish important papers and win grant money, etc., then there’s a good chance they know what they’re talking about. Listening to the experts requires a certain

Health and Wellbeing

Prindle Institute •

Why Be Productive?

Whenever I go online, I am inundated with productivity advice. It may be because it’s still the early days of a new year, and with a new year comes a fresh market for those who made resolutions to get more done. Or it may be that the algorithms serving me content have learned that I can’t help but hate-read articles with titles like “Nine CEOs reveal their favorite productivity hacks” and thus shovel more and more productivity articles onto my various feeds, greedy for my clicks and indifferent
The Prindle Post •

Workers' Well-Being and Employers' Duties of Care

If you’ve been working from home during the pandemic then there’s a good chance your employer has sent you an email expressing their concern about your well-being and general level of happiness. Perhaps they’ve suggested some activities you could perform from the comfort of your own home working space, or offered Zoom classes or workshops on things like meditation, exercise, and mindfulness. While most likely well-intentioned, these kinds of emails have become notorious for being out of touch wi

Arts and Culture

The Prindle Post •

Informed Consent and the Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast was again the subject of controversy when a recent episode was criticized by scientific experts for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations. It was not the first time this has happened: Rogan has frequently been on the hot seat for espousing views on COVID-19 that contradict the advice of scientific experts, and for entertaining guests who provided similar views.
The Prindle Post •

The Higher and Lower Pleasures of the French Culture Pass

French president Emmanuel Macron recently introduced a “culture pass,” what amounts to €300 for each 18-year-old in France to spend on cultural activities – like going to the movies, seeing a play, or going to a museum – or for buying items that are of cultural or artistic value – such as books, art materials, membership in classes, etc. The French youth need only download an app, and then they have 2 years to spend the funds on whichever of the above they see fit. Some have praised the initiati
The Prindle Post •

It’s Just a Game: The Ethics of Tom Clancy’s Not-So-Elite Squad

Video game company Ubisoft has recently received a fresh wave of backlash, this time for its latest mobile game app: Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad. The mechanics of the game are nothing revolutionary – tap here to make person X shoot person Y – and has received a number of poor reviews for its heavy-handed monetization and boring gameplay. The problem is not so much the style of game, as it is the backstory. Here is how the plot is described in the game’s introduction:

“The world is in an alarming s

Everything

Prindle Institute •

Why Be Productive?

Whenever I go online, I am inundated with productivity advice. It may be because it’s still the early days of a new year, and with a new year comes a fresh market for those who made resolutions to get more done. Or it may be that the algorithms serving me content have learned that I can’t help but hate-read articles with titles like “Nine CEOs reveal their favorite productivity hacks” and thus shovel more and more productivity articles onto my various feeds, greedy for my clicks and indifferent
Prindle Institute •

Corporate Responsibilities after Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has raised numerous legal and moral questions. Making access to abortion an issue to be decided by individual states has already become a complicated legal matter, as some state courts have challenged so-called “trigger laws” – laws meant to make abortion illegal the second the Supreme Court decision came into effect. Many states had already made their intentions clear with regard to access to abortions when the draft Supreme Court memo was in
The Prindle Post •

Are Politicians Obligated to Debate?

In the leadup to the provincial election in Ontario, many members of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party have been avoiding the debates taking place in their respective ridings. In fact, 22 out of 34 Conservatives have recently failed to show up to debates in which members of their rival parties were participating, a number that greatly exceeds the absences from all other parties combined. Do these absences represent a failure of politicians to fulfil a democratic duty?
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