(image via nymag.com article “The Trolley Problem Is the Internet’s Most Philosophical Meme” )
Learnt a few things this week about optimisim, ethics origin stories and how to clear students out of a lab.
First up, Professor Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland gave a great talk on “Finding optimism in a time of biodiversity crisis” as part of the CBER seminar series on why it is important to report on the success stories of conservation work and the importance of selling the success stories to bring people on the journey required.
Abstract: Evidence of the loss of nature is everywhere, and biodiversity is higher on the political agenda than it ever has been. On the one hand this is a huge opportunity for conservation but on the other, it is hard to stay positive in the face of overwhelming evidence of ecological crisis. How best can biodiversity scientists respond to these circumstances? Using evidence of how and where conservation works, and with a framing of conservation optimism, I will give my take on how we can work together as a scientific community towards future where people and nature thrive.
Two days later we had the wonderful Alex Deschamp-Sonsino join us again this year on the ESB module getting the students thinking about ethics. I love the trolley problem slide - we could spend half the lecture just talking about this as opinions change in response to the “what if” questions it tends to raise. What I hadn’t realised was that the trolley illustration had originated in a article on abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson.
Lastly, had my first teaching session in the Innovation lab at Marshgate with the CBER students - an excellent facility and makes teaching an intro to Arduino to a large number of students a breeze. Support from the tech staff was also first class and lived that they were jumping in and helping out. They also have a nice way to signal 15 mins from the end of the session (since shared rooms need to be cleared on the dot) with a slowly increasing volume of music.
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As an extra and so that I can find this in the future, I found this interesting from Alistair Campbell on the rest is politics podcast and printed in the new european, this reminded me of some of the challenges of working in Foresight in my previous life:
Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Policy Review
It was written by a US military expert, Lin Wells, for then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was sufficiently taken with it to send on to president George W Bush, under the heading “Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Policy Review.” Like a lot of the best memos, it is reasonably short, though within it are covered issues on which there are entire libraries. Here goes:
If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France.
By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany.
By 1920, world war one would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the US and Japan.
By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said ‘no war for 10 years.
Nine years later world war two had begun.
By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a ‘police action’ was underway in Korea.
Ten years later the political focus was on the ‘missile gap,’ the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam.
By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protege in the Gulf region.
By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our ‘hollow forces’ and a ‘window of vulnerability’, and the US was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen.
By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the US had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet.
Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a Nato nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high-density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting.
All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly.
To note… the memo was dated April 12, 2001. And what happened five months minus one day later? The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, which kind of proved his point.
Alastair Campbell’s diary: Who’s really to blame for populism?