Friday 27th of November - The Future of the Human Species: Have we outwitted evolution and is idiocracy the price we'll pay for it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6057734.stm
LSE theorist on the future of the human race

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/
A short clip from the movie 'idiocracy'

http://neo-cognoscenti.blogspot.com/2007/09/idiocracy-little-known-american-movie.html

http://xkcd.com/603/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

Friday 20th of November -- WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get

1. Photo manipulation has been regularly used to deceive or persuade viewers, or for improved story-telling and self-expression. Should newspapers be banned from using manipulated images? Is there a need for legislation on this issue?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation#Political_and_ethical_issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Hajj_photographs_controversy

http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/carson/papers/reynolds_cepe2007.pdf

2. Photographers at The New York Times (NYT) recently adopted a new photographic technology called High Dynamic Range (HDR) which provides a representation of reality that differs from the one provided by old technologies. Questions like Which one seems more natural? raise concerns about the use of these technologies in the media. So, should The New York Times and other publications consider allowing news photographers to use this HDR process for giving readers a clearer view of the world?

General discussion on: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/thursday-puzzle-whats-wrong-or-right-with-this-picture/



3. Digital photography is also altering our perception of beauty. In the cover of popular magazines, models are “portrayed” altering their beauty with the use of digital photography. Do you think this is a form of ad-art or this distort the real perception of beauty and might trigger to much pressure on girls to look more beautiful (maybe pushing girls into anorexia)?

http://www.adrants.com/2006/10/dove-illustrates-why-perception-of-beauty.php

http://mashable.com/2009/09/24/photoshop-disclaimer/

4. How does digital photography impact online commerce and retailing in general? In a digital age where a large portion of the retail market takes place before the items are viewed, accurate representation becomes more important and at the same time digital photography makes mis-representation cheap (see abstract in Lewis, G. (2009): Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection and Online Disclosure: The Case of eBay Motors). If sales contracts are entered based on mis-represented information, then a court might be able to decide given both the photo and the item, but might there also be a role for legislation to weight the law against the photographer before the contract is entered? Is the use of digital photography contractible?

Friday 12th of November - Ending violent conflicts: Justice or Peace? The International Criminal Court and the controversial role of amnesties

When working to end violent conflicts, what happens when justice and peace objectives clash? The price of peace can sometimes mean granting impunity to perpetrators of atrocities. What effect does this have on the incentives of potential future perpetrators of atrocities? What is the long-term effect of not being seen to achieve justice for victims? What is the optimal trade-off between peace and justice?

Here are a few short readings.

An excellent setting out of the issues:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5330&l=1

The view from Uganda:
http://www.jurisafrica.org/docs/JusticeDelayedinUganda.doc

The long term costs of granting impunity in El Salvador:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_americas/v059/59.1schmidt.html

Finally, the always tongue in cheek view on the Bashir indictments from the excellent blog wronging rights:
http://wrongingrights.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-can-make-me-write-bashir-arrest.html

Friday 6th of November - Modern Society and Exposure to Tail-End Risks: Lessons from the Financial Crisis.

Has modern social organization unknowingly exposed society to low-probability, high cost risks? To put it another way, are there facets of technology and society that have decreased our exposure to smaller, known risks, but have exposed us to larger low-probability or unknown risks?

The current financial crisis has provided a sobering lesson in humans’ understanding of risk. One way to conceptualize the crisis is to say that financial engineering lulled the sector into a false sense of security. Complex derivatives and hedging strategies made all the known risks appear small and manageable, leading to increased leverage and interdependence. However, this situation set up the system for a harder crash if unperceived negative events (such as the burst of the housing bubble) were to strike the system.

Using this as an analogy, has technology and interconnectedness made modern society more vulnerable to catastrophic tail-end risks? Are we/can we internalize these risks?

Some possible examples:

1. Modern medicine allows us to deal with most contagious diseases, which has allowed unprecedented levels of urbanization. What happens if a virus evolves that is deadly, spreads quickly, and cannot be solved by medicine?

2. Monocultures of modern agriculture have allowed unprecedented levels of food output, leading to huge population growth. What happens if a disease takes out a major strain of wheat or rice?

3. Computers and viruses?

Many of these ideas are explored in ‘The Black Swan’ by Nassim Taleb. You can see links to some of his ideas here:

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/tenprinciples.pdf

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/imbeciles.htm