Week 4/28

                               Made a Change

Perhaps Chapter 18 is the most influential one in the entire book. It addresses a potential problem among my generation of lacking creative thinking in a way that most of us do not challenge legacy thinking. This is exact where (thinking stage) I was before reading this chapter. Along this semester, I always had this great "inertia:" I felt that many of the problems we discussed have been on-going for centuries, and they do not seems to be solvable at all, so I held the opinion that there are no reasons to even expect such problems would be solved in the future. This chapter just enlightened me. As Woodhouse says, " it simply is not true to say that things have to be the way that they are." 

Before reading this chapter, my primary belief is that one is responsible for and should rely on oneself but nobody else. If one has a problem, one solves it; if one is poor, one works harder and gets rich; if one is unlucky, well, other people have their unlucky time as well. Opponents may argue that then what is the whole purpose of education or civilization. Isn't it all about helping each other to live a better life? In fact, the point I am trying convey is that people should absolutely not take other people's benevolence for granted. For sure, in modern society, helping other people is considered as moral and respectful, but apathy is not outlawed (this is a more like a personal belief, specifically, I am always willing to help other people, and if I get into trouble and receive no help, I tend to be introspective rather than blaming others or asking more from others). Under such premise, and with respect to our course content, I used to think that some of the questions raised by Woodhouse to be outlandish and even lack of critical thinking. For example, the struggle for fairness continues for thousands of years, from an engineering perspective, if a problem remains unsolved with 3000 years of endeavoring, then this problem is almost 100% unsolvable. It is impossible to convince people that this problem will be solved in the next, lets' say, 50 years. Thus, originally, I am against Woodhouse's argument in a way that "why would I bother to these problem, I should just work hard and remain in the privileged position or maybe, get even more privilege.

However, after reading this chapter, I realize that there is a innate defect in my original belief. In a word, my original belief is that 

Week 4/14

                                             Human Enhanced Evolution
Chapter 15 talks about human enhancement and conveys several arenas such as gene screening (I am most interested in this one) and also raises a concern about winners and losers. To me, the whole idea of this chapter is evolution being facilitated by human technology.

So, what is evolution? There are many ways to interpret it. The most accepted one is Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which points out the conception of natural selection. The fundamental thread of natural selection is that "how good is an individual at giving babies." Another clearer way to explain it would be that it is a process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in inheritable physical and behavioral traits. Changes that allow organisms to better adapt to environment will help them survive and have more offspring. For example,  if one works out a lot and looks very shaped and muscular, is his kids going to be shaped and muscular? No, because that trait is acquired through exercise, which is not inheritable.

Modern civilization has a complete morality system and a highly developed medical system. Specifically, in such morality systems, people are only allowed to have one spouse ( I'm not trying to say polyandry or polygamy is adorable). Such limits a genetically better individual to have more offspring. Medical system facilitates people to get cured from diseases, which nevertheless hinders Nature to eliminate weak individuals. In a word, the evolution process is somehow handicapped as human civilization establishes. Now, with the development of science, human being, sooner or later, will enter a stage where evolution can be re-processed. As Woodhouse suggesting about genetic screening, I am in favor of it and think it is absolutely promising. Let me bring some examples, sickle cell anemia is a hereditary disease of which patients have abnormal red blood cell shaped like a sickle and it can develop multiple lethal conditions. This disease has a higher frequency among African. Why so? In the old time, malaria is prevalent in west Africa, and people with sickle shaped blood cells are immune to malaria because blood cells shaped so are unable to carry malaria. Thus, although seems harmful today, such trait is adorable in a period in history, and it is because that sickle cell people are more likely to survive from malaria and give birth to more kids. Such traits is passed down and becomes a disease. Nowadays, malaria can be cured easily, wouldn't it be awesome if gene screening can help sickle cell people to identify fetuses with the disease and only give birth to fetuses without disease (from another perspective, few parents want their babies to have inherited disease and suffer lifelong). From a personal experience, I had an intern at a company called Beijing Genomics Institute. At there, both of my mentors have Thalassemia, which is a hereditary disease about blood cells. Just like sickle cell,  it is a trait which inhibit carrying malaria, and it is originated in south-east Asia. The thing is that my mentors are couples, so they utilized the technology to run several pregnancy trial and eventually they have a baby without this disease. It sounds amazing to me: this is a life-changing-story by proper use of technology happened just next to me, and I do believe that with the development of gene screening, more and more inherited disease will be able to be cure or even prevented at embryo stage.

Responding to the concern of Woodhouse about "winners and losers," I think it is just fine to have winners and losers. Woodhouse's hidden assumption is that it is unfair to have winners and losers and that winners are very likely to be rich people. In my perspective, his assumption is untenable in a way that all games will have winner and loser. "If Heat defeats Celtics in a basketball game, does this mean that basketball is an unfair game?" Obviously not. Talking about evolution, all organisms are equally involved in this big game held by earth. If there are eliminated organisms, it does not mean that earth is being provincial. The same reasoning applies to human-facilitated-evolution as well. The "game" is unfair only if availability is gated by gender, by race , or by nationality. In my perspective, money should not be considered as an unfair factor. To interpret this attitude, we have to first examine some causes of gaps of income. As I explain previously in this blog, inheritable behavioral traits also count as part of evolution (intelligence definitely matters). It has been proved that some people are more resistant to daily pressure; some people are more focused; some are more determined due to gene expression. These behavioral traits strongly affect one's achievements. Maybe the kid gets A is the one who is willing to studying 3 more hours the night before final. Maybe he has 4 papers, 2 projects and 2 exams due in one week, and he just doesn't give up. It is true that birth lottery goes on. He might inherit such "tough traits" from his parents which might help him earning more in the future. When he is about to have a baby, he will afford genetic screening to make a step further in the process of evolution. To me, this is the default rule set by the Nature. It is unquestionable, and it would be outlandish to break such rule.

Week 4/7 (400 words)

                                        Can/Should Technoscientists Do More to Promote Fairness    
Chapter 14 serves one purpose: that is to ask if people should concern that science might contribute to unfairness. Woodhouse lists four potential reasons that might lead to such concern. As he says, these reasons are "bold or foolish," (no offense)  and I would like to list several arguments against some of  his reasoning.

The first reason he brought up is money issue: the affluent nations that can best afford tech research. Under historical, geographical and cultural reasons, countries cannot be in the same pace. Some are developed country, some are developing country, and some are third world country. It is impossible to stop affluent countries investing R&D. However, affluent countries do help poor countries to perform R&D under certain circumstances. This reason seems to be entirely controlled by the government where scientists can hardly interfere.For example, NATO prohibits selling army technology to Communism country because technologies are top secrets. It is hard to say that scientist should do more to promote fairness in army technology, but they definitely are incapable of doing so (it is all up to the government). Thus, Woodhouse's first reason is somehow deviated from this chapter's argument.      

The second reason he proposes is that the ratio of investment in science has been increasing. and a lot of R&D are conducted in US, so a large proportion of R&D is for relatively affluent customer. This is unconvincing because it is based on a assumption that R&D done in affluent country are focused on relatively affluent customers, which might not be true. As we known, many researches in US are to make vaccine cheaper, to make energy cheaper that third world country can afford them. Also, the directions of R&D are more determined by the market. There are more poor people and less rich people. Some products are designed for low income population, and some are aimed at high income population.  This is like a trade-off between "earn less money in each transaction but do more transaction" versus "earn more money in each transaction with less total amounts of transaction."  For example, Moto X is a cheap phone that sells a lot in Mexico whereas Iphone is not so popular. Therefore, this reason seems not creating a lot of unfairness.

Generally, it is hard to say who is right or wrong since I did not deeply look into government policy about supporting foreign countries' R&D or market size of different income/interest population (I do not think Woodhouse did as well). The point I wish to make in this post is that how reasons can bounce back and forth in these controversy, and it is important to be open-minded and to carefully examine many aspects before making conclusion.

week 3/31

                                                           Privileged Position of Science
Woodhouse delivers the idea of privileged position of science though the example of nanotechnology. Woodhouse suggests that it is incorrect to cede authority to scientists without procedures for holding them accountable. I agree with his point, but I also think that scientists can make a step not abusing their privileges.

Compare to the governments or investors, scientists seems staying in a weaker position because scientists always ask permissions/funding from them. It seems that scientists are employees who listen to their bosses. This is not exactly the fact, however. In many cases, "employers" have to listen to or ask advise from scientists because scientists have the most powerful weapon, which is knowledge. Knowledge is the fundamental factor of the privileged position of science. Why so? For example, if people are facing some issues that they do not know, they cannot make a decision about it. Under such premise, people usually consult others who have specific knowledge and probably follow the advises. In a word, scientists' privilege is that their advises can strongly influence and guide others' decisions. Furthermore, this privilege is even more powerful in USA than any other country. USA is probably the most developed country in many perspectives. It has a mature market, advanced technology and comprehensive infrastructure. Here I am going to compare China to USA. In China, if the government wants to invest something or if a rich person wants to start a new business, there are many options. They can do trades and sells. They can build factories to take orders from foreign companies and manufacture merchandises. They can also build parks, highways, apartments, subways, malls and theaters. However, in USA, all the above fields are mature, and a start-up is not as competitive against some companies which have done businesses for years. Thus, money is driven to innovations, new ideas and new technologies since these are far more promising. Such social background promotes the privileged position of science.

How does such privileged position of science become a problem for the society since it is an inevitable product of current social structure? In my opinion, privilege blinds and even corrupts people inevitably. Since everyone is so relied on scientists knowledge about what to do in the future. Scientists might start to use their privilege in their favor -- gets funding and attentions in their research directions. They might exaggerate the advantage of certain technology or present part of the facts in order to skew people's opinions. Such misuse of privilege can be prevented by the people. As Woodhouse suggests: people should not completely cede authority without carefully examining what's been told.

Aside from the responsibility of people, scientists should also realize that the privilege, more or less, is based on people's trust of the correctness of their knowledge and morality that scientists must not, under any circumstances, abuse other people's trust. When scientists present technology (to the public), they should be more cautious about the materials is delivered informatively rather than persuasively, because it is their obligation is to adhere to pure facts but not to advertise or market.

Another factor that also draws my attention is about unintended consequences. It is not because that scientists abuse their privilege, nor that people follow advises blindly. Maybe some materials presented are misunderstood by the people. Maybe certain technology released is deviated from its original design goal. For example, social networking was brought up to bring people closer, but now, sometimes when people are sitting next to each, they don't necessarily talk to each other. Instead, they stare at their phones and text to someone virtually 100 miles away. I still believe that all technologies are designed for good sake even though some of them becomes inappropriate later on.

Week 3/24

                                                                     Over-consumption
Over-consumption is a serious issue nowadays. It contradicts the conception of sustainable development, which basically is acknowledged globally. What I used to hear from my grandpa is that at his time, when something is broken, people fix it; now people just buy new ones. What even worse is that people buy new ones even things are just out-fashioned.

Prof. Woodhouse proposed two reasons to over-consumption: that is the desire of variety and quantity. I totally agree with this. Consumers always have strong momentum to use new fancy stuffs. Such becomes the market and design guideline: replacing old devices with new generation. Also,  Woodhouse suggested that "engineers operate under significant constraints that they are limited in what they can do until their companies function differently." Companies want profits from consumer, so they have to design products that fulfill consumers' needs and desires. Under this premise, companies must hire engineers who are capable of doing so. Now standing in engineers' shoes. engineers have bills to pay and families to feed. They have to do what companies want in order to keep their jobs. Taking this a step further, companies would love to guide their consumer to live in a prodigal way with commercial advertisement bombs. Because this brings even more profits. The entire chain is cycling in a negative direction and it is hard to stop at one point (engineer).

Are engineers completely non-guilty? I would say probably not. First of all, engineers want to design new cool things. This is more of  a self-realization aspect: who would want to repeat things redundantly!? Anecdotally, I am taking a mechanical capstone design course this semester, and my team project is to design a system which uses a phone to assess people's ability to balance themselves. The phone is hung on a belt around the waist, and the belt is completely fine from the previous design, but we change it and come up with a new belt that is a little bit tighter with a transparent pocket to hold the phone more stably. The old one is just being locked up. I think such phenomenon happens in industry as well. When engineers do not know what to use to surprise the market, they will just make some simple updates to the old one that perfectly works fine. An example would be ipad. I have an ipad 2 for 4 years and it works fine, but I forget how many updated versions of it are out there. For Iphone, the company just comes up with several variation in color and sells as a new version, and people buy those. To me, it feels like after Steve Jobs' death, apple lost its creativity. Engineers don't know what to do and start to make unnecessary changes or trivial updates. Then, they belie the consumers through advertisements. Regarding to this situation, engineers are the one should be blamed for lack of creativity and bringing up redundant work.

In conclusion, Woodhouse addressed over-consumption to the population of engineers: what can engineers do to alleviate? He wasn't looking for solution about waking up money diggers among companies' shareholders or general consumers, and I think that what engineers can do is waking up from the fantasy of designing new cool fancy items but truly making milestone changes to existing products and/or designing products which are not to be replace in half a year, which can be fixed rather than dumped (take a look at an old Nokia phone and compare it to an Iphone 5S, it's obvious how fixable things look like.

week 3/17

One of this week's articles talks about politic are all deceptions. Politicians always tell the public about what they will do for the public during the campaign, and during the politicians' serves, they turn to the interest of the rich people. The article proposes a simple and direct solution, which is building a public website where everyone can use it to find out what has been promised and what it is. The article also explained that when such website is setup, people will automatically start to use it, either truth tellers or liars. My attitude towards such solution is highly conservative. I think that the article has idealize the problem, which should not be easily solved. 

Whenever I examine a question, I tend to start from the very fundamental causes. What are the fundamental causes?  

First of all, technically, politicians do not lie. Lying will absolutely terminate politicians' career. To the public, some politicians seem not fulfilling their promises. This is because they do not make clear promise. Politicians are so so so good at throwing nebulous words. During campaign, they address to the public that they will run certain programs, and during their serves, they do propose "promised" programs, but many times they do not finish it and leave it to their successors. The ability of giving nebulous talk is actually very important to survive even thrive in this world. For example, "do you know how fast you were driving?" "I do not know." "Do you know when you can finish your part? "I probably have some time to work on it tonight." Well, the purpose of this post is not to teach readers how to be tricky. 

The second question is that why politician "lie" to the public. I think the major one is to balance the benefit of different social classes. Throughout this world, there are more poor people and less rich people. Poor people have more votes, and rich people have more resources. If a politician only follows the vote, the interests of the rich people will never be satisfied, plus that A.I would be able to follow whatever decision is voted. "Politicians must be the card dealers to balance all the players on the table."

"Is is possible that rich people and poor people share the same interests so that politicians can satisfy everyone?" No. From a widely believed theory -- Maslow's hierarchy of needs, rich people are on the top of the pyramid, they are looking for self-actualization, whereas some poor people are looking for safety, for love, or for esteem. With different fundamental goals, how would one expect the rich and the poor share the same interests. 

As a matter of fact, such struggles between two different social classes are on-going for millenniums, on every continent, among every races, and under every governmental structure. Anyway, it is always worthy to try to solve this struggle by all efforts. The proposed website is absolutely good, but I am afraid things are not as easy as the article suggests.

week 3/2

Are We in Control of Our Decisions?

During the guest lecture, a topic covered was drone killing innocent people. The situation, the feeling, and the decision making process vary with respect to different people, and thousands of debating topics can be dug out from this. The lady (I forgot her name) started from a victim’s perspective, which makes the story full of sorrow. I have to admit that I feel very sad about those people, but remorse cannot help solving or settling down the problem. I would like to start from the commander’s perspective to ravel out the decision making process.

The biggest question is that “are we in control of our decision?” This is a study proposed by Professor Dan Ariely, and after years of research, he gave a conclusion that under most situation, people are not in control of their decision for unfamiliar issues, regardless of their gender, age, education level, or cultural background.  Here is an example provided by Prof. Ariely to support his study (which is the best to demonstrate the commander’s situation), which he refers as cognitive illusion. In figure 1, it shows the percentage people who would donate their organ in different country in Europe. Obviously, the countries on the right side seem to be willing to give a lot, whereas the countries in the left seems giving little or much less. The question is what causes such difference. Taken for granted, some people think this is likely to be caused by culture difference, or possibly, religion based factor. Typically, how much do you care about other people? However, if we dig into the plot, we can see that some countries with very similar cultural background are exhibit strikingly different interest.  Austria and Germany, Belgium and Netherland would be examples. Then, what did the countries on the right do? The trick is on the DMV form that needs to be filled upon renewing driver’s license.

For the country on the left, the form has a question as “check the box if you want to participate in organ donor program,” for the country on the right, the question is “check the box if you don’t want to participate.” The interesting part is that when left countries’ people receive the form, they do not check the box, so they do not donate; when right countries’ people get the form, they do not check as well, and they join the donor program.

                                    Figure 1: Percentage people who would give donate their organ

Now let’s think about this interesting phenomenon. Most people agrees that they have full control of their decisions, such as deciding what to eat for lunch. This is not true. Decisions are easily manipulated, even though, intuitively, it is hard to accept that an illusion decision has been made while facing designed form like above. The fact is that when a question is so complex that people do not know what to do, people tend to pick whatever is given ( I guess this is probably because humans’ innate laziness).

Return to the scenario where a commander who is controlling a drone, and the drone has detected several suspicious targets. This must be discussed in two different directions:

1.     If it is the commander who discovered the suspicious targets through the image/sound or other information provided by the drone, then the drone is not the right one to blame, and neither the commander in my opinion. The commander must make a decision of firing or not because in the next few minutes the targets will be gone. This was a really complex question, and the decision must be made within a short time. From different points of view, the judgments about the commander are different. The decision made by the commander might seems irrational: “He killed innocent people” or “he let criminals go and innocent people were killed by those ‘should-be-dead-criminals.’” It is hard to judge the commander, but one thing is clear that due to the complexity of the situation, it is extremely difficult for the commander to make a perfect decision within limited amount of time.

2.      If it is the drone reported suspicious targets due to algorithm by A.I, then the commander probably made an illusion decision by picking whatever is given; that is, killing the suspicious targets. Moreover, if the A.I. is wrong about the targets, the commander is unlikely to find out because the complex situation has deceived the commander (referring to Figure 1, almost 100% people were choosing the given option, some of these people are possibly commanders).