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Public Opposition to Biotech Endangers Your Life and Health – Article by Edward Hudgins

Public Opposition to Biotech Endangers Your Life and Health – Article by Edward Hudgins

The New Renaissance HatEdward Hudgins
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Do you want to be smarter, healthier, and live longer? Remarkably, a new Pew survey found that most Americans answer “No!” if it requires using certain new technologies. This is a wakeup call for scientists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, transhumanists, and all of us who value our lives: we must fight for our lives on the battlefield of values.

CRISPRWorries about human enhancement

We all understand how information technology has transformed our world with PCs, smartphones, the Internet, and Google. Nanotech, robotics, artificial intelligence, and, especially, genetic engineering are poised to unleash the next wave of wealth creation and improvements of the human condition.

But a new Pew survey entitled U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to “Enhance” Human Abilities found that “Majorities of U.S. adults say they would be ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about gene editing (68%), brain chips (69%) and synthetic blood (63%),” technologies that in years to come could make us healthier, smarter, and stronger. While some say they “would be both enthusiastic and worried … overall, concern outpaces excitement.” Further, “More say they would not want enhancements of their brains and their blood (66% and 63%, respectively) than say they would want them (32% and 35%).”

Simply a reflection of individuals making decisions about their own lives, as is their right? Not quite. Their concerns about technology are already causing cultural and political pushback from left and right that could derail the advances sought by those of us who want better lives.

The Pew data reveals two ideological sources of opposition to new technologies.

Religion and meddling with nature

brain.chip_.grids_The survey found that 64% of Americans with a high religious commitment say “gene editing giving babies a much reduced disease risk” is “meddling with nature and crosses a line we should not cross.” Are you stunned that anyone could prefer to expose their own babies to debilitating or killer diseases when a prevention is possible?

And 65% with such a commitment have a similar opinion of “brain chip implants for much improved cognitive abilities.” Better to remain ignorant when a way to more knowledge is possible?

Obsession with inequality of abilities

When asked if “gene editing giving babies a much reduced disease risk” is an appropriate use of technology, 54% answered “Yes” if it results in people “always equally healthy as the average person.” But only 42% approved if it results in people “far healthier than any human known to date.” Similarly, 47% approved of synthetic blood if it results in physical improvements in individuals “equal to their own peak ability,” while only 28% approved if it results in improvements “far above that of any human known to date.”

Here we see the ugly side of egalitarianism. Better for everyone to be less healthy than for some to be healthier than others.

synthetic_blood-alamy_SmallThis inequality concern is another aspect of warped values we find in economic discussions. What if everyone enjoys rising levels of prosperity in a free-market system, but some individuals—Steve Jobs? Mark Zuckerberg?—become much wealthier than others through their own productive efforts? It’s win-win! But many would punish and demonize such achievers because they are the “top 1 percent,” even if such treatment means that those achievers produce less and, thus, everyone is less prosperous. Better we’re all poorer but more equal.

A disappearing digital divide

We saw this inequality concern in the 1990s when desktop PCs and the Internet were taking off. Some projected a “digital divide.” There would be more intelligent and advantaged individuals because they could access a universe of information through these technologies. And there would be those with little access who would fall further behind. Of course, what fell was the price of those technologies, which even then were accessible for free at most local libraries and now are in laptops, tablets, and smartphones, and affordable to most low-income individuals. The divide disappeared.

 Computers

There were early adopters prosperous enough to try new information technologies. Similarly, there will be early adopters of biomedical tech, which later will become accessible to all—but only if enough people value it rather than fear it and demand that the government stop it.

The fight for values

In a companion piece to the Pew survey, entitled Human Enhancement: The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Striving for Perfection, Pew senior writer David Masci offers a good overview of serious moral issues raised by biotech and other exponential technologies. And those of us who welcome these technologies must fight for the moral values on which they are based.

We truly value our lives, and the happiness and flourishing that we as individuals can get out of them through our own achievements. We must shake others out of their spiritual lethargy so that they too will not let their precious lives waste away.

We must promote the values of reason and science as the means to better technology and as guides for our individual lives. Misguided dogmas, whether religious or political, lead to social and personal stagnation.

We must develop and implement strategies to promote human achievement, including enhancement of our capacities, as a value in our culture through our institutions—schools, media—and our aesthetics—movies, art, music.

We must offer an exciting and compelling vision of a fantastic, nonfiction future, of a world as it can be and should be, especially to young people who thirst for a future that will be worth living.

The values on which this future is based will not sell themselves. We must not only create the technology that will allow us to live healthier, smarter and stronger. We must also create the culture that will encourage and celebrate the creation and use of such technology.

Edward Hudgins is the director of advocacy for The Atlas Society and the editor and author of several books on politics and government policy.

Copyright The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.

The Best Novels and Plays about Business: Results of a Survey – Article by Edward W. Younkins

The Best Novels and Plays about Business: Results of a Survey – Article by Edward W. Younkins

The New Renaissance Hat
Edward W. Younkins
May 10, 2013
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My Koch Research Fellows, Jomana Krupinski and Kaitlyn Pytlak, and I conducted a survey of 250 Business and Economics professors and 250 English and Literature professors. Colleges and universities were randomly selected and then professors from the relevant departments were also randomly selected to receive our email survey. They were asked to list and rank from 1 to 10 what they considered to be the best novels and plays about business. We did not attempt to define the word “best”,  leaving that decision to each respondent. We obtained sixty-nine usable responses from Business and Economics professors and fifty-one from English and Literature professors. A list of fifty choices was given to each respondent and an opportunity was presented to vote for works not on the list. When tabulating the results, ten points were given to a novel or play in a respondent’s first position, nine points were assigned to a work in the second position, and so on, down to the tenth listed work, which was allotted one point. The table below presents the top twenty-five novels and plays for each group of professors. Interestingly, fifteen works made both top-25 lists. These are noted in bold type.
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The Best Novels and Plays about Business

Business and Economics Professors
Points
English and Literature Professors
Points
1.   Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
457
1.   Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
282
2.   The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
297
2.   Bartleby: The Scrivener, Herman Melville
259
3.   The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
216
3.   The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
231
4.   Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
164
4.   The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
143
5.   Time Will Run Back, Henry Hazlitt
145
5.   Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
126
6.   The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
136
6.   Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
121
7.   The Gilded Age, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
95
7.   The Rise of Silas Lapham, William Dean Howells
98
8.   Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
89
8.   American Pastoral, Philip Roth
85
9.   God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
57
9.   The Confidence Man, Herman Melville
75
10. Other People’s Money, Jerry Sterner
57
10. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
75
11. Bartleby: The Scrivener, Herman Melville
55
11. A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells
66
12. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe
48
12. The Octopus, Frank Norris
65
13. Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
47
13. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
62
14. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Sloan Wilson
43
14. Nice Work, David Lodge
62
15. Rabbit is Rich, John Updike
41
15. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
59
16. Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw
39
16. The Gilded Age, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Marner
58
17. Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens
33
17. Rabbit is Rich, John Updike
55
18. The Goal, Eliyahu M. Goldratt
33
18. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
55
19. The Driver, Garet Garrett
32
19. Mildred Pierce, James M. Gain
54
20. Executive Suite, Cameron Hawley
32
20. The Financier, Theodore Dreiser
53
21. The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
32
21. Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens
51
22. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
29
22. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
45
23. The Octopus, Frank Norris
29
23. The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald
44
24. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
28
24. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
43
25. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
27
25. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
39

 

Dr. Edward W. Younkins is Professor of Accountancy at Wheeling Jesuit University. He is the author of Capitalism and Commerce: Conceptual Foundations of Free Enterprise [Lexington Books, 2002], Philosophers of Capitalism: Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond [Lexington Books, 2005] (See Mr. Stolyarov’s review of this book.), and Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society: Toward a Synthesis of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism [Rowman & Littlefield Pub Incorporated, 2011] (See Mr. Stolyarov’s review of this book.). Many of Dr. Younkins’s essays can be found online at his web page at www.quebecoislibre.org. You can contact Dr. Younkins at younkins@wju.edu