Transcript MIT271: Technology & Human Values

MIT271:
Technology & Human Values
January 29
Privacy and the Commons:
Computers and Population
Administration:

Final study question:
What sorts of harm may pornography cause
that makes criminal the production and
distribution of materials classified as
obscene? Why, in addition, is the possession
of child pornography criminal? Why is
possession especially a problem with the
growth of the internet?
 Webpage is up and has everything you need
for the test:
http://instruct.uwo.ca/mit/271b-001
Computers and privacy
Major ethical conflict is between:
 Privacy: personal data,
communications, ideas, errors
 Publicity: concerning the need to limit
“the digital divide”: computer access
and literacy increase existing social
divisions
Garrett Hardin:
The Tragedy of the Commons
Endless increase in human population
 Cannot be solved by technology
 Can be solved only by relinquishing the
freedom to breed
Technical solution requires:
 “a
change only in the techniques of the
natural sciences”
 “little or nothing n the way of change in
human values or morality”
(page 285)
The population problem
 Population
grows
exponentially/geometrically
 Finite world can support a finite
population. So, population growth must
eventually by zero.
The moral problem:
maximizing utility
 Utilitarianism:
Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill
 Utility =df the greatest happiness for the
greatest number of people
Zero population growth
≠ maximum utility
1.
If the optimum level of population is
the maximum population.
®
®
(a) Not mathematically possible to
maximize for two independent variables.
(b) Maximizing population requires bare
maintenance of human life, and limiting
activities that provide people pleasure
Evaluating population size
2.
What else might determine the
optimum level of population?
(a)
(b)
(c)
For other species: natural selection
No examples of stable and prosperous
human populations
The “invisible hand” (nature?) is merely
an article of faith, not a reasonable
expectation; and is rebutted by …
The tragedy of the commons

In general:




Each individual seeks to maximize self-interest
People share limited resources in common
People tend to maximize individual utility at the
expense of general utility
In the case of population: pollution [ecology?]
leads to need for new property rights [
negative freedom]
Options for achieving
moderation
Education / propaganda
1.
•
•
Must be universal, or individual populations will
eliminate themselves
Tendency to produce pathological anxiety
Mutual coercion mutually agreed upon
2.
•
•
•
E.g., taxes
Private property: enclosed farmland, hunting and
fishing areas, sewage, … other pollution?
“injustice is preferable to total ruin”
What is the greatest problem
with Hardin’s position?
 Are
his assumptions warranted?
 Are his assumptions adequate to
support his claims about the limits of
technology?
 Are his assumptions adequate to
support the limitation of human freedom
to breed?
Frankenfood

Biotechnology might
serve to expand our
food supply (almost)
indefinitely?
 Opposition to GM
foods may be
motivated by:


Fear?
Anti-capitalist
sympathies?