Monday, January 28, 2013

Jan 28 Group 2 Discussion

On the first day of discussion group two made introductions and decided on the designated posters. Since the topic of Ray Kurzweil was fresh in mind we decided to begin with a brief discussion of who wants to become immortal (through science). There was also a mention of whether it would be ethical to kill Bigfoot. The consensus is that if he tries to steal your beef jerky then it is fine.

The next period of time was spent talking with people from other groups. These discussions brought us to the topic of correlation vs causation. Some group members speculated that the shallow warnings made by the news scare people into believing that there is a relationship between a certain brand of food stuffs and autism. Josh, from one group, began a discussion about how the scientist mimics God when he studies or alters the human body.

Towards the end of class, the discussion as a whole moved to ethical ideas about life and death. One example of this is the case of Terry Schiavo. If a person has no cognitive abilities, should they still be cared for. Personally I find that this is a subject  that is difficult to make a decision on. Some people wake from comas and others never will. Possibly, when the science is more advanced and we can accurately predict if someone will recover, then it will be easier to make a decision.

1 comment:

  1. I had fun in our group. I think today will be more organized and we will be able to have deeper conversation. But yes, I do think having to deciding whether one should "pull the plug" or not, is difficult...however I do not think that the advancement of science will be able to help us make this decision less difficult emotionally, but maybe it will ease our minds through reasoning.

    ReplyDelete