Provisional: a few weeks ago, the LW magic recommendation feed showed me this EY article about bioethics being stupid, from a while back. I was somewhat persuaded by his point. Your random sample seems to strongly confirm his model/hypothesis:
A doctor treating a patient should not try to be academically original, to come up with a brilliant new theory of bioethics. As I’ve written before, ethics is not supposed to be counterintuitive, and yet academic ethicists are biased to be just exactly counterintuitive enough that people won’t say, “Hey, I could have thought of that.” The purpose of ethics is to shape a well-lived life, not to be impressively complicated. Professional ethicists, to get paid, must transform ethics into something difficult enough to require professional ethicists.
Many of these papers seem to be doing exactly that, or to just be arguing with some other bioethicist who is doing that. The pullquotes you put in the body of your post certainly make it look like a diseased discipline. These people are just writing op/eds at each other, as far as I can tell.
I only got about halfway through your post because it all seemed aggressively uninteresting to anyone who is not an academic bioethicist. And I like reading philosophy of religion!
Finally, I think it’s totally nuts that people assert that nudges are, or even can be, per se unethical. But I think maybe I need to do a full-on post about that after reading up on the issue. Upon reflection, I’m withdrawing this claim because a) it’s not germane to the main post or my comment and b) I’m always complaining in my head about people posting contentious claims on LW without any support, so I shouldn’t do that, either.
[edited to add a link to the Diseased Discipline article.]
I think it’s totally nuts that people assert that nudges are, or even can be, per se unethical.
A nudge is an imposition of cost on the non-nudged action. I think it’s pretty easy to argue that intentional imposition of cost/difficulty is unethical by default. Specific nudges can still be positive, if there is evidence that they provide more moral value in the prevention of error than in the friction they bring.
I agree it’s a nuanced issue to think about, but a nudge isn’t just the imposition of a cost. It’s removing a cost for the nudged action. In the abstract, there’s no reason it should be easier to make A easier than B or vice versa.
So to argue that this is problematic, you’d have to show why based on the specifics of each case.
Finally, I think it’s totally nuts that people assert that nudges are, or even can be, per se unethical. But I think maybe I need to do a full-on post about that after reading up on the issue.
Yep, and I disagree with the “sin” framing in that answer but scratched out my line about nudges in the comment above because it was half-baked. I’ve added the claim to my list of planned posts.
In fairness, some of the papers appear to have been written by doctors/hospital workers who had a problematic situation (patient was insisting on a bad treatment, refused the right treatments) that they reflected on and had an opinion to share. Doctors thinking about these dilemmas afterwards sounds useful, maybe the “achievement unlocked, papers published +1” gamification incentives them to reflect better on these issues. In theory another doctor might read the paper and learn something they later apply to a similar situation, although my suspicion is this is unlikely.
Although the number of papers replying to replies is worrying. If someone publishes a paper that says “X”, then someone else publishes a paper saying “not X”, then the first publishes another paper saying “no, really actually X”, then it really doesn’t look like progress. Especially if the third paper (as appears to be the case) doesn’t bring any new evidence to the table. Maybe if paper 1 was correct, but not as convincing as it should have been paper 3 has a role.
Provisional: a few weeks ago, the LW magic recommendation feed showed me this EY article about bioethics being stupid, from a while back. I was somewhat persuaded by his point. Your random sample seems to strongly confirm his model/hypothesis:
Many of these papers seem to be doing exactly that, or to just be arguing with some other bioethicist who is doing that. The pullquotes you put in the body of your post certainly make it look like a diseased discipline. These people are just writing op/eds at each other, as far as I can tell.
I only got about halfway through your post because it all seemed aggressively uninteresting to anyone who is not an academic bioethicist. And I like reading philosophy of religion!
Finally, I think it’s totally nuts that people assert that nudges are, or even can be, per se unethical. But I think maybe I need to do a full-on post about that after reading up on the issue.Upon reflection, I’m withdrawing this claim because a) it’s not germane to the main post or my comment and b) I’m always complaining in my head about people posting contentious claims on LW without any support, so I shouldn’t do that, either.[edited to add a link to the Diseased Discipline article.]
A nudge is an imposition of cost on the non-nudged action. I think it’s pretty easy to argue that intentional imposition of cost/difficulty is unethical by default. Specific nudges can still be positive, if there is evidence that they provide more moral value in the prevention of error than in the friction they bring.
I agree it’s a nuanced issue to think about, but a nudge isn’t just the imposition of a cost. It’s removing a cost for the nudged action. In the abstract, there’s no reason it should be easier to make A easier than B or vice versa.
So to argue that this is problematic, you’d have to show why based on the specifics of each case.
It’s not that different from what you read in LessWrong in a upvoted comment like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iu4Tkhusazy2xFiFH/why-is-rhetoric-taboo-among-rationalists?commentId=3Gbamb4EufAiTGxmH
Yep, and I disagree with the “sin” framing in that answer but scratched out my line about nudges in the comment above because it was half-baked. I’ve added the claim to my list of planned posts.
I like the edit. Be the person who you want to see in the world. Also visibly model behaviors you want to encourage.
Thanks
In fairness, some of the papers appear to have been written by doctors/hospital workers who had a problematic situation (patient was insisting on a bad treatment, refused the right treatments) that they reflected on and had an opinion to share. Doctors thinking about these dilemmas afterwards sounds useful, maybe the “achievement unlocked, papers published +1” gamification incentives them to reflect better on these issues. In theory another doctor might read the paper and learn something they later apply to a similar situation, although my suspicion is this is unlikely.
Although the number of papers replying to replies is worrying. If someone publishes a paper that says “X”, then someone else publishes a paper saying “not X”, then the first publishes another paper saying “no, really actually X”, then it really doesn’t look like progress. Especially if the third paper (as appears to be the case) doesn’t bring any new evidence to the table. Maybe if paper 1 was correct, but not as convincing as it should have been paper 3 has a role.