Brian Sloan: An ageing workforce should not be viewed as a challenge, but as an opportunity – The Scotsman

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Many people in their forties will have been disappointed by the news that they are going to have to work longer before they can claim their state pension.

The UK Government has announced that 2037, not 2044, will be the year when the state pension age rises to 68. Age Scotland does not agree that this particular move was necessary, with forecasts for increased life expectancy stalling. However it has been clear for many years that as we live longer, with an ageing population and the abolition of the default retirement age, very many of us are going to have to remain in employment longer.

Age Scotland believes strongly that an ageing workforce should not be viewed simply as a challenge, but as an opportunity for our economy and our society.

The economic imperative is clear. Population projections suggest that the number of people above state pension age in Scotland may increase by nearly 30 per cent by 2040, but the working age population by only only per cent.

Already older workers are playing a bigger role in services and businesses across Scotland. More than 90,000 people over 65 are now in employment in Scotland, double the number in 2004. It is also important to recognise that the great majority of these people are not in work out of necessity, but because they want to be. 13 per cent say they do remain in work to pay the bills: that is a concern, and a reason why Age Scotland continues to campaign against pensioner poverty. But more than half of workers over 65 in Scotland say they are not ready to stop working yet.

Reasons given include; wanting to continue to use skills, to boost income, and to stay healthy and active. So the reasons for older people staying in work are far more positive than negative. For those who worry that older people continuing in work will reduce opportunities for younger people, studies dont bear this out. Dave Watson of Unison has written in The Scotsman to highlight research that shows if unemployed older workers returned to the workplace it would add 88 billion to the UKs economy.

The opportunities are tremendous, but there is a lot more to do if we are to enable more people to work longer. Across the UK there are one million people aged 50 to 64 who would like to be in work but are not. Most have left due to poor health, redundancy, or caring responsibilities. There is a rapid fall in employment rates over the age of 50. This means that more employers need to be proactive in providing better working environments for older people, tackling ageism and promoting models of working which support people with caring responsibilities and help workers keep well.

Age Scotland works with employers across the country to ensure more of our workplaces are age-friendly. The charity has developed Planning For Your Future workshops to help workers decide when and how they will make the transition to retirement, and what they can do now to ensure that they can enjoy retirement. These workshops can also be beneficial for employers by opening conversations with employees that enable more informed future workforce planning. Age Scotland also offers employers training on meeting the needs of an ageing workforce. We work with staff to promote age inclusive workplaces, exploring behaviours and opening minds so we challenge stereotypes, prejudice and stigma about older people. Age Scotlands Allied Health Professionals promote healthy active ageing within workplaces, encouraging routines and cultures which help employees keep fit, well and prevent a range of illnesses and conditions. Additionally, with dementia increasingly affecting employers as the workforce ages, we provide dementia aware training for employers and employees.

The Scottish Government has made clear that it wishes to do more to create age-friendly workplaces and help those older people who want to stay in work to do so. We look forward to working with government on this important agenda, and to continuing to work with employers across the country to provide better support for older workers. This is not only good for their staff, but great for their businesses as well as they draw on the skills and commitment of their older employees. If you want to find out how we support employers to take this important work forward you can find out more on http://www.nowandnext.scot

Brian Sloan, Managing Director of Age Scotland

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Brian Sloan: An ageing workforce should not be viewed as a challenge, but as an opportunity - The Scotsman

What Rick’s Cybernetic Enhancements Mean for RICK AND MORTY … – Nerdist

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Last weekend, Rick and Morty took a slight detour when Rick Sanchez took his soon to be ex-son-in-law, Jerry Smith, on an impromptu pity adventure that almost got them both killed. But before they shared an epoch of consciousness and some awkward naked wrestling, Jerry discovered something new about Rick: hes gone full cyborg! Todays Nerdist News is looking into Ricks Class C or above cybernetic augmentations and how they may shape the future of the series!

Join the galaxys most wanted host, Jessica Chobot, as she breaks down the details from Ricks full body scan. And as you can see in the gif posted below, Ricks had a lot of work done. The bones in his arms and legs appear to have been replaced, at least one of his major organs has been upgraded, his left eye has been augmented, and theres an implant in his brain!

How did this happen? Its possible that Rick made these additions off-camera this season after he broke out of the Federation prison. But the theory that were going with is that Rick inherited these implants when he jumped into several different bodies during the third season premiere. Rick C-137 may be the Rickiest of all of the Ricks, but he doesnt have his original body anymore.

Within this episode, we also saw that Rick has an arm gun built into his body, which could potentially be useful for future engagement with his countless enemies across the universe. Thats where the potential problem arises. Have Ricks new upgrades made him too powerful? Is that how he was able to defeat Worldender and his followers while on a black out bender? Were very curious to see if Ricks cyber-enhancements will continue to be explored this season, and whether the shows creative team decides to take them away from him before the finale.

What do you think about Cyber Rick? Lets discuss in the comment section below!

Images: Adult Swim

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What Rick's Cybernetic Enhancements Mean for RICK AND MORTY ... - Nerdist

There’s More To Justice League’s Cyborg Than Trailers Suggest – GameSpot

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DC's Justice League is just a few months away from release, and many are curious about its lesser known hero, Cyborg. Joe Morton, who plays Dr. Silas Stone--the father of the hero--discussed working on the November film, as well introducing Victor Stone, also known as Cyborg, into the ensemble film.

While promoting the theatrical released of Terminator 2: 3D, Joe Morton, who played Cyberdyne Systems employee Miles Dyson, discussed his reoccurring role of Dr. Silas Stone in the upcoming Justice League movie. Morton appeared in 2016's Batman v. Superman during a string of odd scenes in which the audience is shown videos of other metahumans within the DC cinematic universe, like Flash and Aquaman. One of those scenes included Stone, who was trying to figure out a way to save his son, who had not yet become Cyborg.

Many fans have been vocal that it's hard to get excited about Cyborg in Justice League simply because they are unfamiliar with the character and his origin. Morton explained that this will be covered: "With Cyborg and with Silas Stone, you're getting the sort of outside story," Morton told GameSpot. "You'll get to know them through the death of Cyborg's mother. You'll get to know what Silas is in terms of reconstructing his son. You'll get to know the angst between Silas and Victor, his son."

He went on to explain that down the line, Cyborg will get his own solo film because there is more to him than meets the eye: "What I love about what they've done so far--especially because the character is African-American--you get to understand the difficulty of being 'the other.' Cyborg is unlike the other superheroes. He has no alias to hide behind. He is who and what he is, so when he walks down the street, that's who you see, and people are obviously afraid of him."

Because of a family tragedy with Zack Snyder, Morton worked with two different directors on this film, Snyder and Joss Whedon, who each have a few superhero films under their belts: "I enjoyed working with both directors. Joss Whedon was terrific and so was Zack Snyder," explained Morton. "Zack is intense about the work. He knows film inside and out. It's very light-hearted and comic book-ish. I think with comic book films, the guys that do them know the comics so well, they bring that whole attitude with them onto the set. It's delightful. It's great."

Justice League will hit theaters on November 17--that is, as long as there are no delays with digitally removing Superman's mustache. T2: 3D comes to theaters on August 25.

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There's More To Justice League's Cyborg Than Trailers Suggest - GameSpot

Smashing Security #039: Woah – are we talking to a cyborg? – Graham Cluley Security News

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Computer security industry veterans, chatting about computer security and online privacy.

Hackers could change emails in your inbox *after* they are delivered, the web is getting more and more encrypted, and hacked robots can be commanded to umm... stab you.

All this and more is discussed in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by researcher Scott Helme.

Please check out the show notes for this episode of the podcast on the Smashing Security webpage.

Graham Cluley - @gcluley

Carole Theriault - @caroletheriault

Scott Helme - @Scott_Helme

This episode of Smashing Security is made possible by the generous support of Rapid7.

Identifying, prioritizing and managing vulnerabilities all the way through to remediation is not only possible, it can be simple. Right now.

Build a vulnerability management program that works for you with Insight VM, by Rapid7. Get started with your free 30 day trial at http://www.rapid7.com

Follow the show on Twitter at @SmashinSecurity, or visit our website for more episodes.

Remember: Subscribe on iTunes or your favourite podcast app, to catch all of the episodes as they go live. Thanks for listening!

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Smashing Security #039: Woah - are we talking to a cyborg? - Graham Cluley Security News

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Best Cyborg Performance Wasn’t In The Terminator – The New Yorker

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This month, Richard Brody reviews classic action movies from the nineteen-eighties that hes never seen before.

Another slight cheat: I had seen The Terminator, from 1984, but I hadnt really watched it. My recent viewingwith undivided attention, in a single sittingproved revelatory, if in a sidelong way. The experience of watching a movie is a total experience that includes everything that the movie brings to mind, and The Terminator showed me why I havent, in the intervening years, rushed to fill in the blanks on the eighties action films that I missed the first time around: theres something accursed in the action-film genre itself. Unlike other genres, its determined not by its subject matter, not by its setting or historical period, nor by its mode of emotional expressionits determined by a certain kind of scene.

The Terminator is a science-fiction film, and Die Hard is a police movie, but both are known as action films because the filmmakers take a particular approach to their disparate subjects and film their subjects in a particular waywith many large-scale, fast-moving, camera-jarring, quick-cutting, gun-firing, stunt-centered scenes of violence. That kind of scene isnt intrinsically any worse than any other kind (though I think that scenes of gun violence have a special trouble of built-in incoherence that takes an especially imaginative and daring director to overcome), but, in action movies, such scenes are compulsory routines and the entire film must be retrofitted to make room for them. Action scenes, in action films, are the tails that wag the cinematic dogand watching The Terminator made clear the kind of synthetic beast that this obligatory approach brings to the screen.

But, first, a public-service announcement regarding one of the cinematic events of the year: David Lynchs Twin Peaks: The Return. The show is a mixed bag of only intermittent sublimity, but one of its most sublime inventions is the character and attributes of the reprocessed, hermetic, mimetic, and grace-spangled insurance executive Dougie Jones (played by Kyle MacLachlan)and I think that the seedling of Dougies mannerisms is found in Arnold Schwarzeneggers first dramatic scene in The Terminator. A garbage-truck driver is surprised by streaks of blue lightning; from a quick explosion, the Michelangelo-esque nude from the future turns up on the tarmac, unfolding the unnatural perfection of his form. Moments later, the Terminator, still birthday-naked, strides toward a trio of teen punks who mock himNice night for a walk, eh? The Terminator responds robotically: Nice night for a walk. They mock him again: Wash day tomorrow, nothing clean, right? He answers, without inflection, Nothing clean right. That affectless repetition of the last words in a long sentencethats what Dougie does, too. Lynch has taken this tiny nugget of behavioral peculiarity and turned it into a cosmic visiona vision that is embodied as fully in MacLachlans performance as in the majestically laconic manner with which Lynch films MacLachlan, and the series over all (or at least whats best in it).

Some of the most striking elements of The Terminator are purely dramaticnot least, the gradual or even retentive way that the basic elements of the story are dosed out, thanks to the script, written by the films producer, Gale Anne Hurd, and James Cameron, the director. It takes a half hour to find out whos planning to kill whomthat Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), the smaller and less buff naked visitor from the future, has arrived not to kill Sarah J. Connor (Linda Hamilton) but to save her. It takes even longer to find out that he has also arrived to impregnate her. Also, the Terminators mechanical powers arent revealed for half an hourhis data vision, the computer screen in his mind that registers and analyzes information from his camera-eyes, isnt seen until the story arcs are already well established.

Its unfortunate, because theres nothing of any greater interest to watch in all of The Terminator than the inner life of a cyborgand theres nothing more engaging to think about in the whole film than the consciousness of a human from the future who goes back to a past that he knows he has to inflect in several very specific ways. As science fiction with a time-travel and alternate-worlds premise, The Terminator is the start of something interesting that it never engages or developsand thats because the movie is conceived and realized not as a science-fiction film but as an action film. The Terminator blows itself up to distorted proportions, leaving its basic, central, crucial, and finest inspirations far behind.

Cameron and Hurd inscribe political frenzies of the time into the plot, which involves the aftermath, in the year 2029, of nuclear war. That war was caused not by human intention or even human error but by the government computers that have been deployed to insure national defense. In 1983, a year before the movie was filmed, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, soon derided as Star Wars, involving a vast and computer-centralized network of weaponry, some placed in outer space, that would defend against missile attacks. The Terminator, with its story of a resistance movement, led by members of the U.S. armed forces, against a postwar computer-run regime, is a post-Vietnam movie that pits the valorand, most importantly, the judgmentof American military personnel against the machinery that they increasingly were seen to serve and the officials who valued that machinery above their manpower.

That sort of manpower (and, in later iterations of the genre, womanpower as well) is the heart of action films such as The Terminator. The genre, rooted in its bombastic and numbing set pieces of grand-scale violence, is a sort of Stakhanovite cinema of conspicuous exertion in which any conventions of socialist realism are voided in favor of capitalist unrealisman element of fantasy that frames the superheroic efforts and triumphs of Homo americanus as both supercolossal and unexceptional. The brilliance of The Terminator is to make the monster alluring, fascinating, piquantby contrast with Kyle, a regular guy with good training and, above all, good principles, but no charisma. The murderous cyborg with the weird accent is funnier than Kyle, but Kyle has a sense of purpose, and that sense is doubled by Sarah, whose sense of self-preservation and patriotic intention is amplified decisively by love.

For all its earnestly determined virtue, the charm of The Terminator is the charm of Schwarzenegger, whose aura as the taciturn cyborg flowers altogether more volubly and spontaneously in George Butler and Robert Fiores 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which screens tonight at Film Society of Lincoln Center. (Butler will be on hand to introduce the film.) Its about bodybuilders who are training for a pair of competitions, Mr. Universe (for amateurs) and Mr. Olympia (for professionals), held on successive days in 1975 in Pretoria, South Africa. Schwarzenegger, who was twenty-eight at the time, had won the five Mr. Olympia contests from 1970 through 1974, and the movie shows him preparing to compete for his sixth victory (following which, he retires, on-camera, from the sport).

Pumping Iron is, of course, a documentary, but Schwarzenegger isnt merely its subjecthes its star, and his beaming, witty, charismatic presence in the film is among the most ingratiating performances of the time, one thats resoundingly predictive of the acting career that he had long aspired to and that he would, of course, soon achieve. (His first big role was in Bob Rafelsons Stay Hungry, from 1976, alongside Jeff Bridges and Sally Field.) Hes a figure of paradox; he clearly delights in his sport, his training, and his very life. He breezes through the gym with a regal good humor. He talks about the thrill of his muscle-pumping as orgasmic , saying, Its as satisfying to me as coming is, you know? As having sex with a woman and coming. . . . So Im coming day and night; its terrific, right? So, you know, Im in heaven. He delights in the eye of the camera upon him, and that delight is mutual: he beams at it as it radiates his energy.

The movie focusses on other contestants as well, including his closest competitors, Lou Ferrigno and Franco Columbu, and shows Schwarzenegger bad-mouthing both of them, explaining the methods by which he psychs them out prior to competitions. (With Ferrigno, Schwarzenegger says that he will talk him into losing. He calls Columbu a child and explains that Columbu comes to him for advices and that he gives Columbu wrong advices.) Schwarzenegger speaks plainly of the pain period of workouts, explaining that the difference between himself and lesser bodybuilders is his guts, his willingness to endure the pain that bodybuilding requires. Yet, when he talks about his training, he has the self-awareness of an artist, and discusses the sense of proportion and balance with which he builds his musclesa process that he likens to the creation of a sculpture. He says, I trained myself to be cold, and explains that he admits of no distractions, lets no emotional life interfere with his trainingand that, after his father died, he didnt attend the funeral because the timing was bad with respect to his training. Schwarzenegger also talks freely of his lifelong ambitions to move to the United States, to be the greatest, and being different from everybody else. He says, I was always dreaming about very powerful peopledictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, or even, like Jesus, for thousands of years being remembered.

Pumping Iron presents a fascinating, complex, willful, wild, strange person who was turning himself into exactly that sort of a character, a public figure. Its exactly that element of subjectivity, of inner strangeness, that Camerons creations in The Terminator, human and synthetic alike, filter out. Cameron is into the exertion; hes into the single-mindedness of purpose; hes into the breezy charisma. What hes not into is complexity, paradox, unresolved inner differences. This sense of pure and focussed exertion, magnified to a marmoreal simplicity, may be the exemplary trait of Camerons entire career, the secret to his success, and the catnip of the genre that he helped to found and that has come to dominate the industry, even the market, but hardly the art of movies.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's Best Cyborg Performance Wasn't In The Terminator - The New Yorker

Psychological Egoism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Psychological egoism is the thesis that we are always deep down motivated by what we perceive to be in our own self-interest. Psychological altruism, on the other hand, is the view that sometimes we can have ultimately altruistic motives. Suppose, for example, that Pam saves Jim from a burning office building. What ultimately motivated her to do this? It would be odd to suggest that its ultimately her own benefit that Pam is seeking. After all, shes risking her own life in the process. But the psychological egoist holds that Pams apparently altruistic act is ultimately motivated by the goal to benefit herself, whether she is aware of this or not. Pam might have wanted to gain a good feeling from being a hero, or to avoid social reprimand that would follow had she not helped Jim, or something along these lines.

Several other egoistic views are related to, but distinct from psychological egoism. Unlike ethical egoism, psychological egoism is merely an empirical claim about what kinds of motives we have, not what they ought to be. So, while the ethical egoist claims that being self-interested in this way is moral, the psychological egoist merely holds that this is how we are. Similarly, psychological egoism is not identical to what is often called psychological hedonism. Psychological hedonism restricts the range of self-interested motivations to only pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Thus, it is a specific version of psychological egoism.

The story of psychological egoism is rather peculiar. Though it is often discussed, it hasnt been explicitly held by many major figures in the history of philosophy. It is most often attributed to only Thomas Hobbes (1651) and Jeremy Bentham (1781). Most philosophers explicitly reject the view, largely based on famous arguments from Joseph Butler (1726). Nevertheless, psychological egoism can be seen as a background assumption of several other disciplines, such as psychology and economics. Moreover, some biologists have suggested that the thesis can be supported or rejected directly based on evolutionary theory or work in sociobiology.

While psychological egoism is undoubtedly an empirical claim, there hasnt always been a substantial body of experimental data that bears on the debate. However, a great deal of empirical work beginning in the late 20th century has largely filled the void. Evidence from biology, neuroscience, and psychology has stimulated a lively interdisciplinary dialogue. Regardless of whether or not the empirical evidence renders a decisive verdict on the debate, it has certainly enriched discussion of the issue.

Psychological egoism is a thesis about motivation, usually with a focus on the motivation of human (intentional) action. It is exemplified in the kinds of descriptions we sometimes give of peoples actions in terms of hidden, ulterior motives. A famous story involving Abraham Lincoln usefully illustrates this (see Rachels 2003, p. 69). Lincoln was allegedly arguing that we are all ultimately self-interested when he suddenly stopped to save a group of piglets from drowning. His interlocutor seized the moment, attempting to point out that Lincoln is a living counter-example to his own theory; Lincoln seemed to be concerned with something other than what he took to be his own well-being. But Lincoln reportedly replied: I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, dont you see?

The psychological egoist holds that descriptions of our motivation, like Lincolns, apply to all of us in every instance. The story illustrates that there are many subtle moves for the defender of psychological egoism to make. So it is important to get a clear idea of the competing egoistic versus altruistic theories and of the terms of the debate between them.

Egoism is often contrasted with altruism. Although the egoism-altruism debate concerns the possibility of altruism in some sense, the ordinary term "altruism" may not track the issue that is of primary interest here. In at least one ordinary use of the term, for someone to act altruistically depends on her being motivated solely by a concern for the welfare of another, without any ulterior motive to simply benefit herself. Altruism here is a feature of the motivation that underlies the action (Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 199). (Another sense of "altruism"often used in a fairly technical sense in biologyis merely behavioral; see 4a.) To this extent, this ordinary notion of altruism is close to what is of philosophical interest. But there are differences. For instance, ordinarily we seem to only apply the term altruism to fairly atypical actions, such as those of great self-sacrifice or heroism. But the debate about psychological egoism concerns the motivations that underlie all of our actions (Nagel 1970/1978, p. 16, n. 1).

Regardless of ordinary terminology, the view philosophers label psychological egoism has certain key features. Developing a clear and precise account of the egoism-altruism debate is more difficult than it might seem at first. To make the task easier, we may begin with quite bare and schematic definitions of the positions in the debate (May 2011, p. 27; compare also Rosas 2002, p. 98):

We will use the term desire here in a rather broad sense to simply mean a motivational mental statewhat we might ordinarily call a motive or reason in at least one sense of those terms. But what is an ultimate desire, and when is it altruistic rather than egoistic? Answering these and related questions will provide the requisite framework for the debate.

We can begin to add substance to our bare theses by characterizing what it is to have an altruistic versus an egoistic desire. As some philosophers have pointed out, the psychological egoist claims that all of ones ultimate desires concern oneself in some sense. However, we must make clear that an egoistic desire exclusively concerns ones own well-being, benefit, or welfare. A malevolent ultimate desire for the destruction of an enemy does not concern oneself, but it is hardly altruistic (Feinberg 1965/1999, 9, p. 497; Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 229).

Similarly, despite its common use in this context, the term selfish is not appropriate here either. The psychological egoist claims that we ultimately only care about (what we consider to be) our own welfare, but this neednt always amount to selfishness. Consider an ultimate desire to take a nap that is well-deserved and wont negatively affect anyone. While this concerns ones own benefit, there is no sense in which it is selfish (Henson 1988, 7; Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 227). The term self-interest is more fitting.

With these points in mind, we can characterize egoistic and altruistic desires in the following way:

Its important that the desire in some sense represents the person as oneself (or, as the case may be, as another). For example, suppose that John wants to help put out a fire in the hair of a man who appears to be in front of him, but he doesnt know that hes actually looking into a mirror, and its his own hair thats ablaze. If Johns desire is ultimate and is simply to help the man with his hair in flames, then it is necessary to count his desire as concerning someone other than himself, even though he is in fact the man with his hair on fire (Oldenquist 1980, pp. 27-8; Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 214).

The reason for the focus on ultimate desires is that psychological egoists dont deny that we often have desires that are altruistic. They do claim, however, that all such altruistic desires ultimately depend on an egoistic desire that is more basic. In other words, we have an ulterior motive when we help othersone that likely tends to fly below the radar of consciousness or introspection.

Thus, we must draw a common philosophical distinction between desires that are for a means to an end and desires for an end in itself. Instrumental desires are those desires one has for something as a means for something else; ultimate desires are those desires one has for something as an end in itself, not as a means to something else (see Sober & Wilson 1998, pp. 217-222). The former are often called extrinsic desires and the latter intrinsic desires (see e.g. Mele 2003 Ch. 1.8.). Desires for pleasure and the avoidance of pain are paradigmatic ultimate desires, since people often desire these as ends in themselves, not as a mere means to anything else. But the class of ultimate desires may include much more than this.

There are two important aspects to highlight regarding how psychological egoism and altruism relate to one another. First, psychological egoism makes a stronger, universal claim that all of our ultimate desires are egoistic, while psychological altruism merely makes the weaker claim that some of our ultimate desires are altruistic. Thus, the former is a monistic thesis, while the latter is a pluralistic thesis (Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 228). Consequently, psychological egoism is easier to refute than the opposing view. If one were to successfully demonstrate that someeven just oneof a persons ultimate desires are altruistic, then we can safely reject psychological egoism. For example, if Thomas removes his heel from anothers gouty toe because he has an ultimate desire that the person benefit from it, then psychological egoism is false.

Second, the positions in the debate are not exactly the denial of one another, provided there are desires that are neither altruistic nor egoistic (Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010, sect. 2). To take an example from Bernard Williams, a madman might have an ultimate desire for a chimpanzees tea party to be held in the cathedral (1973, p. 263). He does not desire this as a means to some other end, such as enjoyment at the sight of such a spectacle (he might, for example, secure this in his will for after his death). Assuming the desire for such a tea party is neither altruistic nor egoistic (because it doesnt have to do with anyones well-being), would it settle the egoism-altruism debate? Not entirely. It would show that psychological egoism is false, since it would demonstrate that some of our ultimate desires are not egoistic. However, it would not show that psychological altruism is true, since it does not show that some of our ultimate desires are altruistic. Likewise, suppose that psychological altruism is false because none of our ultimate desires concern the benefit of others. If that is true, psychological egoism is not thereby true. It too could be false if we sometimes have ultimate desires that are not egoistic, like the madmans. The point is that the theses are contraries: they cannot both be true, but they can both be false.

Philosophers dont have much sympathy for psychological egoism. Indeed, the only major figures in the history of philosophy to endorse the view explicitly are arguably Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham. Some might also include Aristotle (compare Feinberg 1965/1999, p. 501) and John Stuart Mill (compare Sidgwick 1874/1907, 1.4.2.1), but there is some room for interpreting them otherwise. Hobbes explicitly states in Leviathan (1651/1991):

no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help. (Ch. XV, p. 47)

In a similar vein, Bentham famously opens his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781/1991) with this:

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. (p. 313)

Here Bentham appears to endorse a specific version of psychological egoism, namely psychological hedonism. This view restricts the kind of self-interest we can ultimately desire to pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Unfortunately, Hobbes and Bentham dont offer much in the way of arguments for these views; they tend to just assume them.

One tempting argument for psychological egoism is based on what seem to be conceptual truths about (intentional) action. For example, many hold that all of ones actions are motivated by ones own desires. This might seem to directly support psychological egoism because it shows that we are all out to satisfy our own desires (compare Hobbes). In his famous Fifteen Sermons, Bishop Butler (1726/1991) anticipates such an argument for the universality of egoistic desires (or self-love) in the following manner:

[B]ecause every particular affection is a mans own, and the pleasure arising from its gratification his own pleasure, or pleasure to himself, such particular affection must be called self-love; according to this way of speaking, no creature whatever can possibly act but merely from self-love. (Sermon XI, p. 366)

However, as Butler goes on to say, this line of argument rests on a mistake or at least a play on words. Many philosophers have subsequently reinforced Butlers objection, often pointing to two intertwined confusions: one based on our desires being ours, another based on equivocation on the word satisfaction. On the former confusion, C. D. Broad says it is true that all impulses belong to a self but it is not true that the object of any of them is the general happiness of the self who owns them (1930/2000, p. 65).

Similarly, the second confusion fails to distinguish between what Bernard Williams calls desiring the satisfaction of ones desire and desiring ones own satisfaction (1973, p. 261). The word satisfaction in the latter case is the more ordinary use involving ones own pleasure or happiness. If all actions are motivated by a desire for this, then psychological egoism is indeed established. But the basic consideration from the theory of action we began with was merely that all actions are motivated by a desire of ones own, which is meant to be satisfied. However, this employs a different notion of satisfaction, which merely means that the person got what she wanted (Feinberg 1965/1999, p. 496). The claim that everyone is out to satisfy their own desires is a fairly uninteresting one, since it doesnt show that we are motivated by self-interest. If Mother Teresa did have an altruistic desire for the benefit of another, it is no count against her that she sought to satisfy itthat is, bring about the benefit of another. This argument for psychological egoism, then, seems to rely on an obviously false view of self-interest as desire-satisfaction.

A major theoretical attraction of psychological egoism is parsimony. It provides a simple account of human motivation and offers a unified explanation of all our actions. Although actions may vary in content, the ultimate source is self-interest: doing well at ones job is merely to gain the favor of ones boss; returning a wallet is merely to avoid the pang of guilt that would follow keeping it; saying thank you for a meal is merely to avoid social reprimand for failing to conform to etiquette; and so on.

One might dispute whether psychological egoism is any more parsimonious than psychological altruism (Sober & Wilson 1998, pp. 292-3). More importantly, however, it is no argument for a view that it is simpler than its competitors. Perhaps we might employ Ockhams Razor as a sort of tie-breaker to adjudicate between two theories when they are equal in all other respects, but this involves more than just simplicity (Sober & Wilson 1998, pp. 293-5). As David Hume puts it, psychological egoism shouldnt be based solely on that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy (1751/1998, p. 166). The heart of the debate then is whether there are other reasons to prefer one view over the other.

Perhaps the psychological egoist neednt appeal to parsimony or erroneous conceptions of self-interest. Bentham, after all, suggests that ordinary experience shows that we are ultimately motivated to gain pleasure or avoid pain (1781/1991, Ch. 3). Perhaps one could extrapolate an argument on behalf of psychological egoism along the following lines (Feinberg 1965/1999, sect. 4, p. 495). Experience shows that people must be taught to care for others with carrots and stickswith reward and punishment. So seemingly altruistic ultimate desires are merely instrumental to egoistic ones; we come to believe that we must be concerned with the interests of others in order to gain rewards and avoid punishment for ourselves (compare the argument in 5a).

This line of reasoning is rather difficult to evaluate given that it rests on an empirical claim about moral development and learning. Ordinary experience does show that sometimes its necessary to impose sanctions on children for them to be nice and caring. But even if this occurs often, it doesn't support a universal claim that it always does. Moreover, there is a growing body of evidence gathered by developmental psychologists indicating that young children have a natural, unlearned concern for others. There is some evidence, for example, that children as young as 14-months will spontaneously help a person they believe is in need (Warneken & Tomasello 2007). It seems implausible that children have learned at such a young agethat this behavior will be benefit themselves. On the other hand, such empirical results do not necessarily show that the ultimate motivation behind such action is altruistic. The psychological egoist could argue that we still possess ultimately egoistic desires (perhaps we are simply born believing that concern for others will benefit oneself). However, the developmental evidence still undermines the moral education argument by indicating that our concern for the welfare others is not universally learned from birth by sanctions of reward and punishment.

Another argument for psychological egoism relies on the idea that we often blur our conception of ourselves and others when we are benevolent. Consider the paradigm of apparently selfless motivation: concern for family, especially ones children. Francis Hutcheson anticipates the objection when he imagines a psychological egoist proclaiming: Children are not only made of our bodies, but resemble us in body and mind; they are rational agents as we are, and we only love our own likeness in them (1725/1991, p. 279, Raphael sect. 327). And this might seem to be supported by recent empirical research. After all, social psychologists have discovered that we tend to feel more empathy for others we perceive to be in need when they are similar to us in various respects and when we take on their perspective (Batson 1991; see 5b). In fact, some psychologists have endorsed precisely this sort of self-other merging argument for an egoistic view (for example, Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, and Neuberg 1997).

One might doubt, however, whether a self-other merging account is able to explain helping behavior in an egoistic way. For example, it would be quite implausible to say that we literally believe we exist in two different bodies when feeling empathy for someone. The most credible reading of the proposal is that we conceptually blur the distinction between ourselves and others in the relevant cases. Yet this would seem to require, contrary to fact, that our behavior reflects this blurring. If we think of the boundary between ourselves and another as indeterminate, presumably our helping behavior would reflect such indeterminacy. (For further discussion, see Hutcheson 1725/1991, pp. 279-80; Batson 2011, ch. 6; May 2011.)

Considering the arguments, the case for psychological egoism seems rather weak. But is there anything to be said directly against it? This section examines some of the most famous arguments philosophers have proposed against the view.

Bishop Joseph Butler provides a famous argument against psychological egoism (focusing on hedonism) in his Fifteen Sermons. The key passage is the following:

That all particular appetites and passions are towards external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence; that there could not be this pleasure, were it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion: there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than from swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another. (1726/1991, Sermon XI, p. 365)

Many philosophers have championed this argument, whichElliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson (1998) have dubbed Butlers stone. Broad (1930/2000), for example, writes that Butler killed the theory [of psychological egoism] so thoroughly that he sometimes seems to the modern reader to be flogging dead horses (p. 55).

Butlers idea is that the experience of pleasure upon attaining something presupposes (or at least strongly indicates) a desire for the thing attained, not the pleasure itself. After all, we typically do not experience pleasure upon getting something (like food) unless we want it.The pleasure that accompanies the fulfillment of our desires is often a mere byproduct of our prior desire for the thing that gave us pleasure. Often we feel pleasure upon getting what we want precisely because we wanted what gave us pleasure. Consider, for example, getting second place in a race. This would make a runner happy if she wants to get second place; but it would not if she doesn't want this at all (e.g. she only wants first place).

While Butler's version of the argument may be overly ambitious in various respects (Sidgwick1874/1907, 1.4.2.3;Sober and Wilson 1998, p. 278), the best version is probably something like the following (compare the"disinterested benevolence" argument in Feinberg1965/1999, c8):

The basic idea is that pleasure (or self-interest generally) cant be our universal concern because having it sometimespresupposes a desire for something other than pleasure itself.Many philosophers have endorsed this sort of argument, not only against hedonism but more generally against egoism (Hume 1751/1998, App. 2.12; Broad 1950/1952; Nagel 1970/1978, p. 80, n. 1; Feinberg 1965/1999).

Sober and Wilson, however, make the case that such arguments are seriously flawed at least because the conclusion does not follow from the premises (1998, p. 278).That is, the premises, even if true, fail to establish the conclusion. The main problem is that such arguments tell us nothing about which desires are ultimate. Even if the experience of pleasure sometimes presupposes a desire for the pleasurable object, it is still left open whether the desire for what generated the pleasure is merely instrumental to a desire for pleasure (or some other form of self-interest). Consider the following causal chain, using to mean caused (see Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 278):

Desire for food Eating Pleasure

According to Butler, the experience of pleasure upon eating some food allows us to infer the existence of a desire for food. This is all the argument gets us. Yet Butler's opponent, the egoist, maintains that the desire for food is subsequent to and dependent on an ultimate desire for pleasure (or some other form of self-interest):

Ultimate desire for pleasure Desire for food Eating Pleasure

This egoistic picture is entirely compatible with Butler's claims about presupposition. So, even if the premises are true, it does not follow that egoism is false.

Butler would need a stronger premise, such as: pleasurepresupposes an ultimate desire for what generated it, not for the resulting benefit. But this revision would plausibly make the argument question-begging. The new premise seems to amount to nothing more than the denial of psychological egoism: sometimes people havean ultimate desire for something other than self-interest. At the very least, the argument is dialectically unhelpfulit offers premises in support of the conclusion that are as controversial as the conclusion is, and for similar reasons.

Still, a general lesson can clearly be gained from arguments like Butler's. Psychological egoists cannot establish their view simply by pointing to the pleasure or self-benefit that accompanies so many actions. After all, often self-benefit only seems to be what we ultimately desire, though a closer look reveals benefits like pleasure are likely justbyproducts while the proximate desire is for that which generates them. As Hume puts it, sometimes "we are impelled immediately to seek particular objects, such as fame or power, or vengeance without any regard to interest; and when these objects are attained a pleasing enjoyment ensues, as the consequence of our indulged affections" (1751/1998, App. 2.12, emphasis added). Perhaps Butler's point is best seen as a formidable objection to a certain kind of argument for egoism, rather than a positive argument against the theory.

A simple argument against psychological egoism is that it seems obviously false. As Francis Hutcheson proclaims: An honest farmer will tell you, that he studies the preservation and happiness of his children, and loves them without any design of good to himself (1725/1991, p. 277, Raphael sect. 327). Likewise, Hume rhetorically asks, What interest can a fond mother have in view, who loses her health by assiduous attendance on her sick child, and afterwards languishes and dies of grief, when freed, by its death, from the slavery of that attendance? (1751/1998, App. 2.9, p. 167). Building on this observation, Hume takes the most obvious objection to psychological egoism to be that:

as it is contrary to common feeling and our most unprejudiced notions, there is required the highest stretch of philosophy to establish so extraordinary a paradox. To the most careless observer there appear to be such dispositions as benevolence and generosity; such affections as love, friendship, compassion, gratitude. [] And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. (1751/1998, App. 2.6, p. 166)

Here Hume is offering a burden-shifting argument. The idea is that psychological egoism is implausible on its face, offering strained accounts of apparently altruistic actions. So the burden of proof is on the egoist to show us why we should believe the view; yet the attempts so far have hitherto proved fruitless, according to Hume (1751/1998, App. 2.6, p. 166). Similarly, C. D. Broad (1950/1952) and Bernard Williams (1973, pp. 262-3) consider various examples of actions that seem implausible to characterize as ultimately motivated by self-interest.

Given the arguments, it is still unclear why we should consider psychological egoism to be obviously untrue. One might appeal to introspection or common sense; but neither is particularly powerful. First, the consensus among psychologists is that a great number of our mental states, even our motives, are not accessible to consciousness or cannot reliably be reported on through the use of introspection (see, for example, Nisbett and Wilson 1977). While introspection, to some extent, may be a decent source of knowledge of our own minds, it is fairly suspect to reject an empirical claim about potentially unconscious motivations. Besides, one might report universally egoistic motives based on introspection (e.g. Mercer 2001, pp. 229-30). Second, shifting the burden of proof based on common sense is rather limited. Sober and Wilson (1998, p. 288) go so far as to say that we have no business taking common sense at face value in the context of an empirical hypothesis. Even if we disagree with their claim and allow a larger role for shifting burdens of proof via common sense, it still may have limited use, especially when the common sense view might be reasonably cast as supporting either position in the egoism-altruism debate. Here, instead of appeals to common sense, it would be of greater use to employ more secure philosophical arguments and rigorous empirical evidence.

Another popular complaint about psychological egoism is that it seems to be immune to empirical refutation; it is unfalsifiable. And this is often taken to be a criterion for an empirical theory: any view that isnt falsifiable isnt a genuine, credible scientific theory (see Karl Poppers Falsificationism). The worry for psychological egoism is that it will fail to meet this criterion if any commonly accepted altruistic action can be explained away as motivated by some sort of self-interest. Joel Feinberg, for example, writes:

Until we know what they [psychological egoists] would count as unselfish behavior, we cant very well know what they mean when they say that all voluntary behavior is selfish. And at this point we may suspect that they are holding their theory in a privileged positionthat of immunity to evidence, that they would allow no conceivable behavior to count as evidence against it. What they say then, if true, must be true in virtue of the way they defineor redefinethe word selfish. And in that case, it cannot be an empirical hypothesis. (1965/1999, 18, p. 503; see also 14-19)

As we have seen (1b), psychological egoism neednt hold that all our ultimate desires are selfish. But Feinbergs point is that we need to know what would count as empirical evidence against the existence of an egoistic ultimate desire.

This objection to psychological egoism has three substantial problems. First, falsification criteria for empirical theories are problematic and have come under heavy attack. In addition its unclear why we should think the view is false. Perhaps it is a bad scientific theory or a view we shouldnt care much about, but it is not thereby false. Second, any problems that afflict psychological egoism on this front will also apply to the opposing view (Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 290). After all, psychological altruism is a pluralistic thesis that includes both egoistic and altruistic motives. Third, and most importantly, a charitable construal of psychological egoism renders it falsifiable. As we have seen, psychological egoists have a clear account of what would falsify it: an ultimate desire that is not egoistic. While it may be difficult to detect the ultimate motives of people, the view is in principle falsifiable. In fact, it is empirically testable, as we shall see below.

Another popular objection to various forms of psychological egoism is often called the paradox of hedonism, which was primarily popularized by Henry Sidgwick (1874/1907, 2.3.2.3). It is usually directed at psychological hedonism, but the problem can be extended to psychological egoism generally.

When the target is only hedonism, the paradox is that we tend to attain more pleasure by focusing on things other than pleasure. Likewise, when directed at egoism generally, the idea is that we will tend not to benefit ourselves by focusing on our own benefit. Consider someone, Jones, who is ultimately concerned with his own well-being, not the interests of others (the example is adapted from Feinberg 1965/1999, p. 498, sect. 11). Two things will seemingly hold: (a) such a person would eventually lack friends, close relationships, etc. and (b) this will lead to much unhappiness. This seems problematic for a theory that says all of our ultimate desires are for our own well-being.

Despite its popularity, this sort of objection to psychological egoism is quite questionable. There are several worries about the premises of the argument, such as the claim that ultimate concern for oneself diminishes ones own well-being (see Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 280). Most importantly, the paradox is only potentially an issue for a version of egoism that prescribes ultimate concern for oneself, such as normative egoism (Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 280). The futility of ultimate concern for oneself can only undermine claims such as We should only ultimately care about our own well-being since this allegedly would not lead to happiness. But psychological egoism is a descriptive thesis. Even if egoistic ultimate desires lead to unhappiness, that would only show that egoistically motivated people will find this unfortunate.

Despite its widespread rejection among philosophers, philosophical arguments against psychological egoism arent overwhelmingly powerful. However, the theses in this debate are ultimately empirical claims about human motivation. So we can also look to more empirical disciplines, such as biology and psychology, to advance the debate. Biology in particular contains an abundance of literature on altruism. But, as we will see, much of it is rather tangential to the thesis of psychological altruism.

The ordinary (psychological) sense of altruism is different from altruism as discussed in biology. For example, sociobiologists, such as E. O. Wilson, often theorize about the biological basis of altruism by focusing on the behavior of non-human animals. But this is altruism only in the sense of helpful behavior that seems to be at some cost to the helper. It says nothing about the motivations for such behavior, which is of interest to us here. Similarly, altruism is a label commonly used in a technical sense as a problem for evolutionary theory (see Altruism and Group Selection). What we might separately label evolutionary altruism occurs whenever an organism reduces its own fitness and augments the fitness of others regardless of the motivation behind it (Sober & Wilson 1998, p. 199). Distinguishing the psychological sense of altruism from other uses of the term is crucial if we are to look to biology to contribute to the debate on ultimate desires.

Given the multiple uses of terms, discussion of altruism and self-interest in evolutionary theory can often seem directly relevant to the psychological egoism-altruism debate. One might think, for example, that basic facts about evolution show were motivated by self-interest. Consider our desire for water. We have this perhaps solely because it enhanced the evolutionary fitness of our ancestors, by helping them stay alive and thus to propagate their genes. And evolutionary theory plausibly uncovers this sort of gene-centered story for many features of organisms. Richard Dawkins offers us some ideas of this sort. Although he emphasizes that the term selfish, as he applies it to genes, is merely metaphorical, he says we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth let us try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish (1976/2006, p. 3).

But we should be careful not to let the self-centered origin of our traits overshadow the traits themselves. Even if all of our desires are due to evolutionary adaptations (which is a strong claim), this is only the origin of them. Consider again the desire for water. It might exist only because it can help propagate ones genes, but the desire is still for water, not to propagate ones genes (compare the Genetic Fallacy). As Simon Blackburn points out, Dawkins is following a long tradition in implying that biology carries simple messages for understanding the sociology and psychology of human beings (1998, p. 146). To be fair, in a later edition of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins recognizes his folly and asks the reader to ignore such rogue sentences (p. ix). In any event, we must avoid what Blackburn polemically calls the biologists fallacy of inferring the true psychology of the person from the fact that his or her genes have proved good at replicating over time (p. 147). The point is that we must avoid simple leaps from biology to psychology without substantial argument (see also Stich et al. 2010, sect. 3).

Philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson (1998) have made careful and sophisticated arguments for the falsity of psychological egoism directly from considerations in evolutionary biology. Their contention is the following: Natural selection is unlikely to have given us purely egoistic motives (p. 12). To establish this, they focus on parental care, an other-regarding behavior in humans, whose mechanism is plausibly due to natural selection. Assuming such behavior is mediated by what the organism believes and desires, we can inquire into the kinds of mental mechanisms that could have evolved. The crucial question becomes: Is it more likely that such a mechanism for parental care would, as psychological egoism holds, involve only egoistic ultimate desires? To answer this question, Sober and Wilson focus on just one version of egoism, and what they take to be the most difficult to refute: psychological hedonism (p. 297). The hedonistic mechanism always begins with the ultimate desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The mechanism consistent with psychological altruism, however, is pluralistic: some ultimate desires are hedonistic, but others are altruistic.

According to Sober and Wilson, there are three main factors that could affect the likelihood that a mechanism evolved: availability, reliability, and energetic efficiency (pp. 305-8). First, the genes that give rise to the mechanism must be available in the pool for selection. Second, the mechanism mustnt conflict with the organisms reproductive fitness; they must reliably produce the relevant fitness-enhancing outcome (such as viability of offspring). And third, they must do this efficiently, without yielding a significant cost to the organisms own fitness-enhancing resources. Sober and Wilson find no reason to believe that a hedonistic mechanism would be more or less available or energetically efficient. The key difference, they contend, is reliability: Pluralism was just as available as hedonism, it was more reliable, and hedonism provides no advantage in terms of energetic efficiency (p. 323).

Sober and Wilson make several arguments for the claim that the pluralistic mechanism is more reliable. But one key disadvantage of a hedonistic mechanism, they argue, is that its heavily mediated by beliefs (p. 314). For example, in order to produce parental care given the ultimate desire for pleasure, one must believe that helping ones child will provide one with sufficient pleasure over competing alternative courses of action:

(Ultimate) Desire for Pleasure Believe Helping Provides Most Pleasure Desire to Help

Moreover, such beliefs must be true, otherwise it's likely the instrumental desire to help will eventually extinguish, and then the fitness-enhancing outcome of parental care wont occur. The pluralistic model, however, is comparatively less complicated since it can just deploy an ultimate desire to help:

(Ultimate) Desire to Help

Since the pluralistic mechanism doesnt rely on as many beliefs, it is less susceptible to lack of available evidence for maintaining them. So yielding the fitness-enhancing outcome of parental care will be less vulnerable to disruption. Sober and Wilson (p. 314) liken the hedonistic mechanism to a Rube Goldberg machine, partly because it accomplishes its goal through overly complex means. Each link in the chain is susceptible to error, which makes the mechanism less reliable at yielding the relevant outcome.

Such arguments have not gone undisputed (see, for example, Stich et al. 2010, sect. 3). Yet they still provide a sophisticated way to connect evolutionary considerations with psychological egoism. In the next section well consider more direct ways for addressing the egoism-altruism debate empirically.

Psychological egoism is an empirical claim; however, considerations from biology provide only one route to addressing the egoism-altruism debate empirically. Another, perhaps more direct, approach is to examine empirical work on the mind itself.

In the 20th century, one of the earliest philosophical discussions of egoism as it relates to research in psychology comes from Michael Slote (1964). He argues that there is at least potentially a basis for psychological egoism in behavioristic theories of learning, championed especially by psychologists such as B. F. Skinner. Slote writes that such theories posit a certain number of basically selfish, unlearned primary drives or motives (like hunger, thirst, sleep, elimination, and sex), and explain all other, higher-order drives or motives as derived genetically from the primary ones via certain laws of reinforcement (p. 530). This theory importantly makes the additional claim that the higher-order motives, including altruistic ones, are not functionally autonomous. That is, they are merely instrumental to (functionally dependent on) the egoistic ultimate desires. According to Slote, the basic support for functional dependence is the following: If we cut off all reinforcement of [the instrumental desire] by primary rewards (rewards of primary [egoistic] drives), then the altruistic desire actually does extinguish (p. 531). Thus, all altruistic desires are merely instrumental to ultimately egoistic ones; we have merely learned through conditioning that benefiting others benefits ourselves. That, according to Slote, is what the behavioristic learning theory maintains.

Like the moral education argument, Slote's is vulnerable to work in developmental psychology indicating that some prosocial behavior is not conditioned (see 2c). Moreover, behavioristic approaches throughout psychology have been widely rejected in the wake of the cognitive revolution. Learning theorists now recognize mechanisms that go quite beyond the tools of behaviorism (beyond mere classical and operant conditioning). Slote does only claim to have established the following highly qualified thesis: It would seem, then, that, as psychology stands today, there is at least some reason to think that the psychological theory we have been discussing may be true (p. 537); and he appears to reject psychological egoism in his later work. In any event, more recent empirical research is more apt and informative to this debate.

Philosopher Carolyn Morillo (1990) has defended a version of psychological hedonism based on more recent neuroscientific work primarily done on rats. Morillo argues for a strongly monistic theory of motivation that is grounded in internal reward events, which holds that we [ultimately] desire these reward events because we find them to be intrinsically satisfying (p. 173). The support for her claim is primarily evidence that the reward center of the brain, which is the spring of motivation, is the same as the pleasure center, which indicates that the basic reward driving action is pleasure.

Morillo admits though that the idea is "highly speculative" and based on "empirical straws in the wind." Furthermore, philosopher Timothy Schroeder (2004) argues that later work in neuroscience casts serious doubt on the identification of the reward event with pleasure.In short, by manipulating rats' brains, neuroscientist Kent Berridge and colleagues have provided substantial evidence thatbeing motivated to get something is entirely separable from "liking" it (that is, from its generating pleasure). Against Morillo, Schroeder concludes that the data are better explained by the hypothesis that the reward center of the brain can indirectly activate the pleasure center than by the hypothesis that either is such a center (p. 81, emphasis added; see also Schroeder, Roskies, and Nichols 2010, pp. 105-6.)

Other empirical work that bears on the existence of altruistic motives can be found in the study of empathy-induced helping behavior. Beginning around the 1980s, C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists addressed the debate head on by examining such phenomena.Batson (1991; 2011), in particular, argues that the experiments conducted provide evidence for an altruistic model, the empathy-altruism hypothesis, which holds that as empathic feeling for a person in need increases, altruistic motivation to have that persons need relieved increases (1991, p. 72). In other words, the hypothesis states that empathy tends to induce in us ultimate desires for the well-being of someone other than ourselves. If true, this entails that psychological egoism is false.

Batson comes to this conclusion by concentrating on a robust effect of empathy on helping behavior discovered in the 1970s.The empathy-helping relationship is the finding that the experience of relatively high empathy for another perceived to be in need causes people to help the other more than relatively low empathy. However, as Batson recognizes, this doesnt establish psychological altruism, because it doesnt specify whether the ultimate desire is altruistic or egoistic. Given that there can be both egoistic and altruistic explanations of the empathy-helping relationship, Batson and others have devised experiments to test them.

The general experimental approach involves placing ordinary people in situations in which they have an opportunity to help someone they think is in need while manipulating other variables in the situation. The purpose is to provide circumstances in which egoistic versus altruistic explanations of empathy-induced helping behavior make different predictions about what people will do. Different hypotheses then provide either egoistic or altruistic explanations of why the subjects ultimately chose to help or offer to help. (For detailed discussions of the background assumptions involved here, see Batson 1991, pp. 64-67; Sober & Wilson 1998, Ch. 6; Stich, Doris, and Roedder 2010.)

Several egoistic explanations of the empathy-helping relationship are in competition with the empathy-altruism hypothesis.Each one claims that experiences of relatively high empathy (empathic arousal) causes subjects to help simply because it induces an egoistic ultimate desire; the desire to help the other is solely instrumental to the ultimate desire to benefit oneself. However, the experiments seem to rule out all the plausible (and some rather implausible) egoistic explanations. For example, if those feeling higher amounts of empathy help only because they want to reduce the discomfort of the situation, then they should help less frequently when they know their task is over and they can simply leave the experiment without helping. Yet this prediction has been repeatedly disconfirmed (Batson 1991, ch. 8). A host of experiments have similarly disconfirmed a range of egoistic hypotheses. The cumulative results evidently show that the empathy-helping relationship is not put in place by egoistic ultimate desires to either:

Furthermore, according to Batson, the data all conform to the empathy-altruism hypothesis, which claims that empathic arousal induces an ultimate desire for the person in need to be helped (see Batson 1991; for a relatively brief review, see Batson & Shaw 1991).

Some have argued against Batson that there are plausible egoistic explanations not ruled out by the data collected thus far (e.g. Cialdini et al. 1997; Sober & Wilson 1998, Ch. 8; Stich, Doris, and Roedder 2010). However, many egoistic explanations have been tested along similar lines and appear to be disconfirmed. While Batson admits that more studies can and should be done on this topic, he ultimately concludes that we are at least tentatively justified in believing that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is true. Thus, he contends that psychological egoism is false:"Contrary to the beliefs of Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, and virtually all psychologists, altruistic concern for the welfare of others is within the human repertoire" (1991, p. 174).

It seems philosophical arguments against psychological egoism arent quite as powerful as we might expect given the widespread rejection of the theory among philosophers. So the theory is arguably more difficult to refute than many have tended to suppose. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the theory makes a rather strong, universal claim that all of our ultimate desires are egoistic, making it easy to cast doubt on such a view given that it takes only one counter-example to refute it.

Another important conclusion is that empirical work can contribute to the egoism-altruism debate. There is now a wealth of data emerging in various disciplines that addresses this fascinating and important debate about the nature of human motivation. While some have argued that the jury is still out, it is clear that the rising interdisciplinary dialogue is both welcome and constructive. Perhaps with the philosophical and empirical arguments taken together we can declare substantial progress.

Joshua May Email: joshmay@uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham U. S. A.

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Director of The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health earns doctorate in nursing practice – Mountain Xpress (blog)

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Park Ridge Health is celebrating the success of Beth Cassidy, DNP, MSN, RNC-OB, NE-BC, Director of The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health who recently earned her Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree.Cassidy has been the director of The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health since 2011. In her time as director, The Baby Place has earned national recognition for its exemplary care for mothers and babies across Western North Carolina, including the Womens Choice Award as one of Americas Best Hospitals for Obstetrics.Cassidy says she embarked on the journey to earn her doctorate because of her love of learning and her love for empowering her team. As a unit director in a small facility, which I prefer, you have to be an educator, said Cassidy. My team supported me through the two full years of doctorate work in anticipation of how we would turn it around to be directly applicable to each of them and their goals of expanding their skills.Park Ridge Health makes it a priority to discover the goals each of our employees may have for their lives and then encourages and empowers them to achieve those goals, said Jimm Bunch, Park Ridge Health President and CEO. Beths determination and drive to expand her skills as a caregiver and as a nursing leader are an inspiration, not only to her team, but to the entire Park Ridge Health family.The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health has become the labor and delivery center of choice for hundreds of families across Western North Carolina. Cassidy works as part of a caring team of Physicians, Nurses, Midwives, Lactation Consultants, Childbirth Educators and other support personnel to bring families the best possible care, so they can focus on one of the most important experiences of their lives. The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health cares for women through their choices which range from traditional delivery, to natural labor, to midwifery. In 2016, Cassidy and her team helped welcome nearly 650 babies into the world. To learn more about The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health, call 855.PRH.LIFE (855.774.5433) or visit myPRH.com.About Park Ridge Health: Founded in 1910, Park Ridge Health is dedicated to meeting the health care needs of our growing communities, providing high-quality, compassionate care in a Christian environment. In 1984, Park Ridge Health became a member of Adventist Health System, a family of 45 exceptional, faith-based hospitals across the country that operate independently to deliver care and services that best meet the needs of their communities. Leading the way in many medical firsts for the region, Park Ridge Health is the first hospital in Western North Carolina to offer nanomedicine in the operating room with the Nanolock Spinal technology and the only hospital in the region with the Pro-Axis Spine Surgery table. Park Ridge Health provides personalized care at more than 30 locations, offering a dedicated network of more than 250 physicians and providers, cardiac care & rehabilitation, emergency services, nationally awarded cancer care, state-of-the-art surgical care, full-service orthopedic care, an award-winning labor & delivery experience, and a full range of imaging services. For more information about Park Ridge Health or to find a physician, please visit parkridgehealthor call 855.PRH.LIFE (855.774.5433).

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Director of The Baby Place at Park Ridge Health earns doctorate in nursing practice - Mountain Xpress (blog)

Longevity Fund raises cash to back anti-aging startups | FierceBiotech – FierceBiotech

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Longevity Fund has raised $22 million to make a fresh wave of investments in companies working to treat age-related diseases. The financing positions Laura Deming,who started work on the fund before turning 18, to follow up on the bets she has already placed on companies such as Unity Biotechnology.

The new fund is small in size compared to many of todays biotech investment vehicles. But the track record of Demings first, $4 million fund suggests the MIT dropout and her team will use the money to make investments in companies worth keeping tabs on.

Longevity Fund has invested in five companies to date. The portfolio includes Unity, an anti-aging startup that extended its series B round last week to bring the total up to $151 million. Longevity Fund also participated in a $25.6 million series A in Precision BioSciences, which went on to pen an immuno-oncology pact with Baxalta and committed cash to Metacrine before Novo Nordisk took up an option on its FGF1 program. 2014 Fierce 15 company Navitor is also in the portfolio.

Deming plans to use the new money to invest in eight to 10 companies, suggesting the fund will continue to place relatively small bets. That partly reflects the funds desire to act as much as a bridge to other investors as a source of capital itself. And, when it comes to drumming up interest in anti-aging startups, Deming thinks things will be easier than back when the first fund got going in 2011.

Earlier, our biggest challenge was getting other investors on board and convincing them that aging has become a place to play. Now thats a nonissue, which is great. Our job is to help the companies get other investors on board, so its wonderful to see excitement in the space begin to build, Deming told TechCrunch.

Deming was years ahead of the uptick in interest in anti-aging research. More than a decade ago, aged 11, Deming wrote to Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D., the molecular biologist (and one of FierceBiotech's "Top women in biopharma 2015") who was one of the first people Art Levinson, Ph.D., and Hal Barron, M.D., hired to work at Googles anti-aging offshoot Calico. Deming asked to visit Kenyons lab at UCSF. A year later, Deming was working at the lab on research into how genetic and environmental changes alter lifespans.

That led Deming, via a spell at MIT, to a fellowship program set up by Peter Thiel that gave her the chance to found Longevity Fund. Six years later, Demings interest in anti-aging looks prescient and the fund is equipped to step up its activities.

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Longevity Fund raises cash to back anti-aging startups | FierceBiotech - FierceBiotech

The Search for Truth, Part 2: There Are No Agnostics – Patheos

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In the previous article, we discussed the sad fact that most people aren't bothering to take a step back from their societal influences to ask real questions and go on a quest for truth; that the masses blindly take upon themselves the assumptions about life and reality inherent in the society that raised them.

For example, in our time and place, there are certain in-born assumptions, and to claim anything contrary to them in a modern-day so-called "progressive" institution will result in people looking at you like you fell off of Mars and will get you branded as "uneducated" or "radical." One so-called natural and obvious given of our time is that truth is relative"You have your truth; I have my truth. And if I don't believe your truth, then your truth is not truth for me."

However, there is an obvious response to this: "So are you saying that's the truth?"

When you get down to it, the 'truth is relative' claim is making the same claim of objective reality and truth as all other claims. It is saying 'I am absolutely right about truth being relative, and anyone who believes anything contrary to what I believe is wrong'. Ironically, we find that despite the fact that such "liberal open-mindedness" is associated with free-spirited all-inclusiveness, it is the bearers of this message and belief system who seem to take charge on every social issue, thereby making the by-default claim of 'I'm right. You're wrong. And I'm going to do my best to force you to change'.

This cowardly hiding behind the guise of open neutrality while making a non-stated built-in claim and assumption of objective correctness brings to mind the all-too common response that I confront to the belief-in-God question.

Approximately 50 percent of the students I meet claim they are agnostic, unsure about whether or not there is a God. Out of that 50 percent, guess how many observe any kind of religious practice (other than the occasional prayer and charity sponsorship of a "Brovember" moustache).

That's right, 0 percent.

I have yet to meet the individual who tells me, "I am not sure whether or not there is a God who gave the Torah so I am keeping the commandments just in case." (No, in this case being a nice guy does not count as religious practice. No agnostic is nice simply because the Torah says "Love thy neighbor." They are nice because of societal norms and conditioning. Show me something this agnostic does that his society isn't also preaching.)

Hiding behind the neutrality of agnosticism works in theory, but in practice there are only two options: believer or denier. Either there is a God who gave the Torah or there is not a God who gave the Torah. Just as whether or not you are aware of gravity, the effects of smoking, or the fact that 2+2=4 does not change those realities and their effects, whether or not you are aware of any reality does not change that reality and its effects.

Any realist knows this.

In fact, if we were to gather together a believing member of every belief system on Eartha Jew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, Nazi, etc.you might think there is nothing you can find that they would all agree on. However, if they are all realists, there is one thing they will all see eye-to-eye on, and that is that there is nothing more important than to figure out who (if any of them) is right. There is nothing more paramount than to clarify what is truth and correct in the world. After all, given that we are looking to get the most out of life, it is of utmost importance to uncover what is reality in order to make the most in-tune, educated, and best decisions possible regarding all aspects of life.

Similarly, when we are approached by a lost Jewish soul giving Judaism one last chance before he leaves it for good, we must begin by showing the depths of what Judaism really has to offer the individual, to explain the "whys" of Judaism, to break false stereotypes and stigmas, and to bring meaning and understanding to the seemingly hollowed "traditions" and "rituals" of Judaism.

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The Search for Truth, Part 2: There Are No Agnostics - Patheos

Taylor Swift, After A Cryptic Week, Announces New Record – NPR

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Taylor Swift's new album is called Reputation, which... a bit on the nose, right? Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Taylor Swift's new album is called Reputation, which... a bit on the nose, right?

Taylor Swift has announced Reputation, her sixth album. After a cryptic, drip-drop, nearly weeklong lead-up complete with easter-eggs like putting "ivegotablankspace" in a website's source code designed to stoke theorizing by superfans, Swift confirmed via social media that the album Reputation will arrive Nov. 10, and fans should expect its first single Thursday night.

It was five days ago now that the country-superstar-turned-pop-superstar wiped clean her social media accounts, erasing many happy squad memories in the process, to begin the sniper-like (viper-like?) calibration of Reputation's unveiling. Beginning this week, three cryptic videos were posted exquisite corpse-style, gradually revealing the body of a snake. (Not for nothing, the first came in the hours leading up to the eclipse at 2:44 p.m. on Monday, almost exactly when her fellow New York residents turned their eyes skyward, leading some to speculate she was about to try and eclipse an actual eclipse. )

The graphomaniacal cover art, revealed today, reads as a not-so-subtle allusion to the controversies and mini-backlashes Swift has had since the release of 1989. For every publicity win, there have been accusations of pettiness or political agnosticism.

The timing is notable, too. Swift's album releases are normally like clockwork: every two years, in mid-autumn, since 2006. The addition of an extra year to that marketing algorithm intensified anticipation, and expectation, around the new music, especially considering Swift's exponential growth in profile around the world since shucking her country roots on her last album. Crucially, and savvily, the release date is after the cutoff for 2018 Grammy consideration, extending its lifespan into the following year like Swift albums before it.

As for that weird snake is it a little for shade Calvin Harris and Kim Kardashian? We can't keep up with all of the Insta-drama.

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Taylor Swift, After A Cryptic Week, Announces New Record - NPR

Diverse programming and experiential learning top of mind for SEHHB Interim Dean Paul Rose – RiverBender.com

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EDWARDSVILLE - The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Education, Health and Human Behaviors (SEHHB) diverse programming offers students powerful learning opportunities that are not readily available elsewhere, according to Interim Dean Paul Rose, PhD.

In his interim role as leader of the School, Rose is focused on working collectively with faculty and staff to orient academic programs around student needs. A key component in fostering student success, he says, is the infusion of experiential learning opportunities into the programming which covers education, health sciences and behavioral science.

Students in the School of Education, Health and Human Behavior get a diversity of experiences from our wide range of disciplines, Rose said. We continue to expand opportunities for students through new programming and innovative learning environments.

Were particularly excited about the imminent launch of a public health graduate program. This will add to our health science offerings and allow us to contribute public health leaders to the region. Additionally, our new nutrition laboratory is providing applied learning experiences for students in our growing nutrition program.

The School also prides itself on community engagement activities and outreach clinics that not only create hands-on experiences for students, but also provide tremendous value to members of the community.

Were grateful for the partners we have throughout the region and want to continue to build on those relationships, said Rose. These partnerships allow our students to become involved in the community and apply their knowledge in the field.

Also contributing to student success, is the Schools unique emphasis on student mentoring through faculty and professional advising, as well as research supervision.

Through strong mentorships, students are able to get the advice they need to be highly effective in achieving their goals, Rose explained. Were enthusiastic about educating citizens who will contribute to their communities and become highly effective employees within the diversity of disciplines that our School represents.

The SIUE School of Education, Health and Human Behavior prepares students in a wide range of fields including public health, exercise science, nutrition, instructional technology, psychology, speech-language pathology and audiology, educational administration, and teaching. Faculty members engage in leading-edge research, which enhances teaching and enriches the educational experience. The School supports the community through on-campus clinics, outreach to children and families, and a focused commitment to enhancing individual lives across the region.

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Sylvia Sims Bolton appointed new Waukegan 1st Ward alderman – Chicago Tribune

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A clinical therapeutic counselor with the Gateway Foundation and anger management educator at the Lake County jail has been named Waukegan's new 1st Ward alderman.

The City Council voted unanimously this week to approve Sylvia Sims Bolton to fill the seat left vacant when Sam Cunningham, who had served as the ward's alderman for 18 years, was elected the city's next mayor in April.

"She is a long-time resident and an incredibly capable individual and, most important, she's a wonderful person," Cunningham said ahead of Monday's vote.

As a child, Bolton moved to Waukegan where she attended what was then Carman Elementary School, Webster Junior High School and Waukegan West High School, according to a biography provided by the city.

She moved back into the 1st Ward 19 years ago when she was selected as a Habitat for Humanity partner, and helped volunteers renovate the house that would become her home, she said.

"I just wanted to improve my life for myself and my children," Bolton said. "I was a single parent. I wanted to own my own home."

The move happened while she was pursuing her undergraduate work, said Bolton, who has three grown children and seven grandchildren. She recently married David Bolton.

Emily K. Coleman/News-Sun

Sylvia Sims Bolton has an associate's degree from the College of Lake County in counseling, a bachelor's degree in behavioral science from National Lewis University, a master's degree in organizational leadership from Dominican University and an honorary doctorate degree in practical counseling from Open Arms Bible College and Seminary.

According to a biography provided by Bolton, she currently works as a therapeutic clinical addiction counselor for Gateway Foundation in Lake Villa and as a chaplain and educator at the Lake County jail with Nicasa, formerly known as the Northern Illinois Council Against Substance Abuse.

She's never served in an elected position before, but has volunteered as an local elections judge in the past, she said.

Bolton, who plans on running for the seat when it's up for eleciton in April 2019, said she thinks the skills she's learned through her work, her "people person" personality and her connections to the community will help make her a good alderman.

"I'm interested in the residents and empowering them for one thing helping my community improve," she said. "I'd like to see better communication between residents and city officials. I'd to improve safety, less violence, less drug activity, less prostitution. I'd like to see the businesses collaborate together in supporting the community, and I'd definitely like to see the church community to come together and support the residents there."

Her plan is to get businesses and churches working together and playing a more visible role in the community through block parties and events designed to help residents come together, she said.

"I think if we could get everyone on the same page instead of reinventing the wheel, that would build us a stronger community," Bolton said. "We won't be so divided."

emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman

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Sylvia Sims Bolton appointed new Waukegan 1st Ward alderman - Chicago Tribune

Ripple Price Forecast and Analysis – August 23, 2017

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Victory laps are obnoxious, but sometimes they are needed for posterity. Since our Ripple price prediction explicitly forecast the current surge in XRP prices, we believe this situation certainly qualifies.

Ripple prices jumped 60% yesterday as more than $2.0 billion worth of XRP tokens changed hands. It was a dramatic turnaround from the previous week, in which prices were sliding into double-digit losses.

The XRP/USD exchange rate nearly doubled, from $0.154259 a week ago to $0.286997.

The XRP/BTC rate, which is composed of money already in the crypto.

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Ripple Price Forecast and Analysis – August 23, 2017

Science and Society on the Vineyard – Martha's Vineyard Times

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Betty Burton is the coordinator of the Adult Lecture Series at the VHPL.

Marthas Vineyard is proud of how it preserves tradition: We cherish life in the slow lane. But this is 2017 and we are part of the modern world, and the latest scientific advancements affect us as much as they do anyone.To explore how science touches all of us in our everyday lives, the Vineyard Haven Public Library, funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is in the middle of an ambitious summer program on the themes of science and society, science, and everyday life. The grant, administered by a program called Rural Gateways, with the theme of Pushing the Limits, also funds similar programs in 110 other rural libraries. It allows us to participate in a nationwide reading, viewing, and discussion series. Since the beginning of time, humans have imagined and achieved ways to push the boundaries of the physical world.We want to be stronger, smarter, more aware; with great new advances in science and technology, we are finding ways in which all of us are able to push the limits every day. The Pushing the Limits program will explore these ideas in discussions that will include recommended popular books and feature film-quality videos with authors, scientists, and everyday people who thrive on exploring the natural world.Rural Gateways, Pushing the Limits, is funded not only by NSF but also was created through a collaboration of Dartmouth College, the Califa Library Group, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, Dawson Media Group, and the Institute for Learning Innovation. The speaker series sponsored by this grant will feature programs both this summer and next winter. A science reading group is also meeting on Mondays at 3 pm every three weeks until Sept. 11.Some of the programs so far:Jonathan White presented our very first program, Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean. Mr. White a lifelong mariner traveled the globe for 20 years to examine one of the most primal forces on the planet. The result is a gorgeous exploration of the science, mystery, and history of earths oceanic tides.

In July, Dr. Daniel Goleman presented Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Transforms Mind, Body, and Brain. Dr. Goleman is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For 12 years, he wrote for the New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. He is probably best known for his books on emotional intelligence. He has recently written a book with the Dalai Lama, A Force for Good.

On August 10, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen, presented his new book, The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and our Quest to Understand Earths Past Mass Extinctions. As new, groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planets history, Peter took us on a wild ride through the planets five mass extinctions and, in the process, offered us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future.

On August 17, Donald Berwick, MD, MPP FRCP, president emeritus and senior fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke about Health Care as it Should Be. A pediatrician, Dr. Berwick has served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staff of Bostons Childrens Hospital Medical Center.

On Thursday, August 24, at 7 pm, Dr. Henry Kriegsteins subject will be Digging for Dinosaurs in the Badlands. Dr. Kriegstein will describe his passion for paleontology, organizing private digs in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana, and collecting dinosaur fossils. One fossil, which Dr. Kriegstein bought from a collector in Tucson, turned out to be a completely new, previously undiscovered mini T.rex, now named Raptorex kriegsteini. Every summer, Dr. Kriegstein returns to the Badlands and continues his search for fossils. He considers it a philosophical perspective on the mystery of life and the beauty of the mineral-laced fossils.

On Wednesday, August 30, at 7 pm at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, the library will host a panel CRISPR and Genetic Editing: Uncharted Waters. Leading scientists and bioethicists from Harvard, MIT, Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will discuss the astounding new techniques that make editing DNA nearly as easy as editing an email (well, that is if you have a degree in molecular genetics). Along with vast potential for curing disease, feeding the world, and eliminating pollution come vexing issues of fairness, safety and morality.

Included on this panel will be Dr. Sheila Jasanoff from Harvards Kennedy School. She is one of the worlds leading bioethicists. Simply put, her job is to think and talk about the ethics of the work being done with gene editing. Professor Kevin Esvelt from the MIT Media Lab is director of the Sculpting Evolution group, which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. His current project is developing mice that are immune to Lyme disease and releasing them on Nantucket. Professor Neel Aluru, of the Biological Labs at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is in the field of environmental epigenetics, which involves studying how environmental factors interact with DNA, turning genes on or off. WHOI is one of the premiere institutions in the world for this kind of research. Professor Jeantine Lunshof, is an assistant professor at the Department of Genetics, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, and currently a visiting professor at Harvard. She is a philosopher and bioethicist, based in the synthetic biology laboratory of Dr. George Church. As an embedded ethicist, Dr. Lunshof works with scientists at all stages of their research to help identify potential areas of concern. MV Times science columnist, Professor Emeritus Paul Levine from Stanford, will open with introductory remarks about the short history of genetic engineering from the 70s. John Sundman will moderate the panel. His background includes writing and speaking at various institutions about CRISPR. This presentation is funded in part by a grant from National Science Foundation and Califa Library Groups.

As part of this grant, we have started a Science Book Club. So far we have read When the Killings Done by T. C. Boyle and Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. For each meeting we have viewed interviews by the authors, who discuss their take on the science in their stories. On Monday, August 28, at 3 pm we will discuss Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler. The topic of this section is Survival and how it fits into our worlds of science. On Monday, Sept. 11, at 3 pm we will discuss Land of the Painted Caves by Jean Auel and our subject will be Knowledge.

The series will continue into 2018 with more books and speakers to come.

Im happy to say that getting this grant has prompted me to re-establish our connection to the Woods Hole Marine Biological Lab and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, both world-class research institutions that you can almost see with the naked eye from Vineyard Haven.

This series has special importance to me. Long before moving to the Vineyard I was a research scientist in molecular biology labs in Indiana, North Carolina, and Boston. A lot of the work I did was pure research on viral DNA, with no immediate real-world impact. But in North Carolina I was part of a research team that worked on a vaccine for Haemophilus influenza Type B. Before the vaccine, it was the leading cause of meningitis and other invasive bacterial diseases among children younger than 5. But my biggest thrill came when I was a graduate student. I was invited to present my research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1978. That was the mecca for all DNA researchers then. I was in the middle of giving my talk when I looked up and saw Francis Crick at the back of the room, standing next to James Watson [geneticists who won the Nobel Prize for solvin
g the structure of DNA], both of them looking right at me. I nearly fainted.

For more information and schedules in one place, visit vhlibrary.org.

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Science and Society on the Vineyard - Martha's Vineyard Times

Observer Explores the Scary Side Of Cyberpunk – Kotaku

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GIF

The image above is that of a woman trapped at the moment before her violent death, endlessly repeating the combination to a secret door shell never reach. Its just one small sliver of the sci-fi mind-fuckery that awaits in the Rutger Hauer-voiced cyberpunk horror game Observer.

Developed by Bloober Team, the studio behind Layers of Fear, Observer is a psychological cyber-horror game set in a dark, dystopian vision of 2084 Poland. Between war and the nanophage, a deadly virus that targets the cybernetically-enhanced, humanity is pretty much broken. The survivors have submitted to the rule of a shadowy corporation that controls where and how they live.

Veteran Dutch actor Rutger Hauer plays Daniel Lazarski, a corporate-funded cybernetic Observer, a neural detective with the ability to interface with the minds of others and explore their oft-fractured psyches.

Lazarskis own mind isnt perfect. He suffers from a condition that requires he take frequent doses of a special medicine or risk desynchronization. The more stressed he becomes the lower his medication levels drop, causing glitches in his perception. He may be an elite cop, but he has the same vulnerable, electronically-accessible mind as most of the remaining humans in 2084. He cant even trust himself.

The game opens with Lazarski receiving a call from the son he hasnt seen in years. Adam Lazarski gives his father a warning: You are not in control. Then the call drops. Tracing the call to a run-down apartment building out in the sticks, Lazarski rushes off to find his son. When he arrives he finds a decapitated body that may or may not be Adam. As he investigates the crime scene a nanophage alert sends the entire building into lockdown. Lazarski is trapped inside with a murderer, but also something much worsehumanitys leftovers.

With most of the buildings tenants sealed inside their homes for their own protection, much of Lazarskis interactions with the living involve conversations with small static viewscreens. Hauers voice warbles like hes got a mouthful of moist pebbles, his inflection occasionally shifting erratically, as if glitched. The people he talks with range from the oddly friendly and upbeat to violent and angry. All of them are lost and broken.

While not learning horrible things about horrible people, Lazarski uses his special cybernetic enhancements to try to solve the murder and find his son. A sort of electronic vision allows him to see and interact with wires, bits of technology and electrical components, even those buried deep inside human bodies. His biological vision allows him to scan for DNA and analyze blood.

His greatest tool, however, is the ability to jack into the brains of other people and explore their thoughts, hopes and fears. Mostly fears. In the extended clip below, Lazarski enters the mind of a dying murder victim in order to glean information about his attacker. Its one seriously fucked-up trip.

Developer Bloober Team has earned a reputation for creating creepy horror games. Theyve mastered the use of off-putting sound and visual cues to layer on the fear. The difference in Observer is theyve got multiple realities to play with. Theres the real world, which isnt always real to begin with, and then theres the mindscape, where anything can happen. These digital mental constructs are packed with horrifying imagery, inventive puzzles and the odd deadly creature relentlessly hunting for interlopers. Nowhere is safe. As Adam warns at the beginning of the game, Lazarski is not in control.

Im about five or six hours into Observer, having had to stop playing early this morning because I needed sleep and certainly not because I was frightened. Between the main investigation and the side missions Ive discovered exploring the futures most horrible tenement, Ive got many more hours to go. Im looking forward to it.

Observer is now available on Playstation 4, PC and Xbox One.

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11 Cyberpunk-Inspired Photos of Shenzhen and Hong Kong – That’s Online (registration)

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Unable to sleep due to jetlag, British photographer Marcus Wendt found himself hazily wandering the neon-soaked streets of Hong Kong and Shenzhen during a recent trip to Asia. With camera in hand, he set about capturing deeply intimate moments, in settings ranging from quiet alleyways and unused football pitches to bustling city streets.

The resulting photo series, Ultraviolet Break of Day, offers a different perspective of these well-known metropolises, lending a sense of disorientation and confusion to the nighttime scenes.

Wendts work celebrates this sensation, as the collections introduction notes: Plunged into a foreign dark I found a new way of seeing, strange and alien.

His images sometimes have a cyberpunk atmosphere reminiscent of films likeBlade Runner, and vary in mood from serenely tranquil to feverishly active.

The endless expanse of shopping stalls in Hong Kongs Kowloon, lit up late into the night to entice customers, for instance, contrasts with vacant areas in Shenzhens usually-bustling Central Business District.

To finish off, the London-based photographer leaves a solitary image from the next installment of his series, set in Seoul, along with the words to be continued

[Images viaMarcus Wendt]

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Retro cyberpunk adventure Technobabylon is out now on iOS … – Eurogamer.net

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Dragon Age: Inquisition director calls it "an exceptional point and click with a killer story."

By Jeffrey Matulef Published 17/08/2017

Wadjet Eye Games' sci-fi point-and-click adventure Technobabylon has just launched on iOS.

Set in 2087, Technobabylon tells the tale of two detectives, Charlie Regis and Max Lao, who are hot on the trail of a "Mindjacker" who hacks into others' brains, steals their knowledge, then leaves them for dead. They believe the next target is an agoraphobe named Latha Sesame, who is addicted to a cyberspace realm called the Trance, and she must contend with the outside world for the first time in years.

Developer Technocrat Games has described Technobabylon as "Blade Runner meets Police Quest," which is certainly the vibe I'm getting from its original launch trailer.

Technobabylon has been out on Steam for over two years now. In that time Dragon Age: Inquisition's senior creative director Mike Laidlaw raved about the game's sharp writing. "This game is an exceptional point and click with a killer story. Recommended on any platform," he tweeted upon this mobile port's launch.

The iOS version of Technobabylon goes for 4.99 / $4.99, a pretty big savings over its 10.99 / $14.99 PC release.

If you'd like to try it out before buying, there's a free demo on Steam.

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Retro cyberpunk adventure Technobabylon is out now on iOS ... - Eurogamer.net

Needle Action Activity Spotted in Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) – Morgan Research

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Shares of Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) have seen the needle move -12.50% or -0.005 in the most recent session. The TSXV listed companysaw a recent bid of 0.035 on 36000 volume.

When dealing with the equity markets, investors are often tasked with trying to find stocks that are bound for glory. Every investor dreams of finding those stocks that were overlooked but are poised to pick up momentum. New investors are often instructed to set goals before starting to invest. Creating attainable, realistic goals can be a good starting point before digging into the investment trenches. After setting up goals considering financial status, objectives, timeframes and risk appetite, the next step may involve creating an actionable plan. Once the plan is in place, it may be extremely important to routinely monitor the performance of the portfolio. There are often many well crafted investment plans that for whatever reason dont seem to be working out properly. Being able to evaluate and adjust the plan based on market activity may end up being the difference between a winning or losing portfolio. Being able to adapt to the fast paced and often times tumultuous market landscape can be a gigantic benefit for long-term portfolio health.

Now letstake a look at how the fundamentals are stacking up for Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V). Fundamental analysis takes into consideration market, industry and stock conditions to help determine if the shares are correctly valued. Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. currently has a yearly EPS of -0.11. This number is derived from the total net income divided by shares outstanding. In other words, EPS reveals how profitable a company is on a share owner basis.

Another key indicator that can help investors determine if a stock might be a quality investment is the Return on Equity or ROE. Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) currently has Return on Equity of -124.73. ROE is a ratio that measures profits generated from the investments received from shareholders. In other words, the ratio reveals how effective the firm is at turning shareholder investment into company profits. A company with high ROE typically reflects well on management and how well a company is run at a high level. A firm with a lower ROE might encourage potential investors to dig further to see why profits arent being generated from shareholder money.

Another ratio we can look at is the Return on Invested Capital or more commonly referred to as ROIC. Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) has a current ROIC of -108.54. ROIC is calculated by dividing Net Income Dividends by Total Capital Invested.

Similar to ROE, ROIC measures how effectively company management is using invested capital to generate company income. A high ROIC number typically reflects positively on company management while a low number typically reflects the opposite.

Turning to Return on Assets or ROA, Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) has a current ROA of -95.05. This is a profitability ratio that measures net income generated from total company assets during a given period. This ratio reveals how quick a company can turn its assets into profits. In other words, the ratio provides insight into the profitability of a firms assets. The ratio is calculated by dividing total net income by the average total assets. A higher ROA compared to peers in the same industry, would suggest that company management is able to effectively generate profits from their assets. Similar to the other ratios, a lower number might raise red flags about managements ability when compared to other companies in a similar sector.

Investors may be trying to define which trends will prevail in the second half of the year. As the markets continue to chug along, investors may be trying to maximize gains and become better positioned for success. Technical analysts may be studying different historical price and volume data in order to help uncover where the momentum is headed. Coming up with a solid strategy may take some time, but it might be well worth it in the long run. As we move deeper into the year, investors will be closely tracking the next few earnings periods. They may be trying to project which companies will post positive surprises.

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Needle Action Activity Spotted in Targeted Microwave Solutions Inc. (TMS.V) - Morgan Research

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TMW Adds Real-Time Freight Tracking to TMS Solutions – TopNews … – Heavy Duty Trucking

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August 16, 2017

Fleets using TMW Systems Innovative IES, Access, or AccessPlus transportation management solutions can now extend real-time order and shipping information to their customers with the IES Freight Tracker portal, an integrated customer service and dispatch.

Replacing TMWs Pressurize platforms, the new visibility portal enables carriers to improve customer satisfaction through accurate, transparent and timely order updates.

More than ever before, transportation and logistics providers are facing pressure to provide customers with transparency into every step of the delivery process, said Ray West, senior vice president and general manager of TMS solutions for TMW. With the launch of the IES Freight Tracker portal, we are enabling Innovative IES users to meet these heightened expectations by giving them a way to provide customers with accurate, up-to-date load status whenever and wherever they want to access them.

The IES Freight Tracker portal is designed to be a scalable and cost-effective customer support tool that integrates into a users existing Innovative IES platform. The web-based solution allows carriers to view shipments from multiple customer codes and utilize drag-and-drop functionality to reposition shipment details.

Users can offer their customers configurable, secure access to real-time delivery details. Transportation providers can easily customize settings for each customer, allowing them to view orders based on type and to sort and filter shipment details. In addition, customers can use the portal to access shipment documents and related images, export shipment data to Excel, and create up to seven hyperlinks to important documents indexed by order number.

Implementation of the IES Freight Tracker portal requires the use of Innovative IES, Access, or Access Plus solutions in version R9.7 or later along with the Innovative Web Edition module. Other requirements include an internet-connected device with a web browser and business-quality internet bandwidth.

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TMW Adds Real-Time Freight Tracking to TMS Solutions - TopNews ... - Heavy Duty Trucking

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Geoffrey Boycott to continue on TMS after apologising for ‘unacceptable’ comment – The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter

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Geoffrey Boycott will continue as a BBC Test Match Special pundit after offering an unreserved apology for an alleged racist comment.

The 76-year-old former England and Yorkshire batsman suggested he would have a better chance of being knighted if he blacked up, the Daily Mirror reported on Tuesday.

And Boycott responded on Twitter, accepting his comments were unacceptable and clearly wrong.

Boycott will remain an outspoken expert on BBC Radio 4s TMS, the BBCs flagship cricket programme, a spokesman for the corporation said.

A BBC spokesperson said: He has rightly apologised unreservedly for these clearly unacceptable comments. He will be part of the team for the West Indies Tests.

The Mirror reported that Boycott was speaking at a question and answer session during a break in play of the England v West Indies day-night Test at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

Boycott was alleged to have said knighthoods were handed out like confetti to West Indies cricketers, including Sir Viv Richards, Sir Garfield Sobers and Sir Curtly Ambrose.

The Mirror reported Boycott said: Mines been turned down twice. Id better black me face.

Boycott wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: Speaking at an informal gathering I was asked a question and I realise my answer was unacceptable.

I meant no offence but what I said was clearly wrong and I apologise unreservedly. I have loved West Indian cricket my whole life and have the utmost respect for its players.

Boycott played 108 Tests for England, scoring 8114 runs at an average of 47.72. He hit 22 Test centuries and 42 half centuries.

He was renowned for his defensive play, but more recently Boycott has become known for his at times scathing punditry on television and radio.

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Geoffrey Boycott to continue on TMS after apologising for 'unacceptable' comment - The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter

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