RI Columns Chapter 2

The wildlife living in the southern part of Africa is suffering under the pressure of the excessive poaching of the last years. The number of poaching incidents is growing every year and especially the number of rhino casualties is growing exponentially. Last year there were 1215 confirmed rhinos poached, to put this in perspective in 2007 this number was only 13. This all is the result of a…

The basis of this week’s theory was the moral dilemma. A situation in which one has to choose between two different options, but where one of these options can only be done. Of course, for it to be a true dilemma, the two options must be of equal importance. A moral dilemma is described by the following three rules: -          One ought to do A. -          One ought to do B. -          One cannot…

Ethics and technological research and development do not always go hand in hand. In ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, and not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. On the other hand, from a technology perspective, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, where it could be seen as a source of innovation. 1 Situations in which…

Technology has enabled us to share our emotions more than ever (eg. through social media), which in turn increased the way we feel those emotions. Happiness isn’t about being in the moment anymore, happiness is getting likes on the Facebook post that captured said moment. This emotional overload is slowly starting to hinder our thought processes – unfortunately, all of this change happened so…

Once in my life I have heard someone say: I do not care about the wellbeing of others. I did not know what to think of this; the first that came to mind was that it had to be a joke. But it also made me wonder: why was I so surprised by this statement? It is because most people do care, and it is social desirable to care about others. In the current society people are socially pressured into…

Water on mars You might have already heard about it in the news. Lately Nasa made the announcement that they had found strong evidence of flowing water on Mars. What they found was that certain dark streaks had been formed while photographing the same area over a couple of years. These streaks are made out of hydrated salts which flow in the hot season and ebb in the cold season. The water is not…

Haven’t you heard people saying this kind of phrase before? “You are too emotional, think logically”. I am sure you have heard it at least once in your life. There are people who cannot control your emotion and shout or behave violently. Of course this should not happen. However if you use rationality to commit a crime it is also as bad as being emotional. Both emotion and rationality can lead to…

Last week, while scrolling through my Facebook timeline, an event invitation popped up: “10-10: Sound the alarm against TTIP!” Triggered by this title, I clicked on the pop-up and landed on the page of a protest organized by, among others, Greenpeace, FNV (the Dutch labor union) and the political parties SP and GroenLinks. I’d heard about TTIP before, but it definitely got my full attention when…

F ear shouldn’t be what drives our actions. But it does. Do you ever notice that the news on television is always so depressing, negative and scary? And why they never show us the beautiful story’s about cute little adorable puppy’s? Why they always show terrorism, wars and actions of IS nowadays? It’s because the devilish who are committing such awful crimes are smarter than us. They use…

We make decisions by thinking long and hard, looking up every piece of evidence and analyzing all aspects. Science and proof is what we want to see, facts, facts and more facts. Only then can we make a rational well thought out decision, only then do we make the right choice. Emotions on the other hand are not welcome to the decision making table, they are not rational and too subjective. Only…

Values and norms! They are the most basic institutions which run our society. Values and norms have influence how we see things and what decisions we make. It can be everything from religion over a politic view up to how you greet somebody. Values and norms depend on where you from and what experiences you made in your life. Usually those non written rules of society evolve real slowly. Women…

‘Imagine all the people, living without any techniques. No phone to chat on, no car to drive in. A self-made parody of the song Imagine by John Lennon adjusted to our 21 st century. Maybe weird, but nowadays the technique is not PART of our lives, it IS our life. Almost no human being can live without the accessibility to techniques. Actually the technique makes us who we are. Are we aware of…