Tag: ethics

Icing my back

Despite taking it easy last night and trying not to aggravate my twinged back, it stiffened up badly overnight. I made an appointment with my physiotherapist, at midday today. The guy I see is really good and loosens up my pelvic joints and realigns things so it feels a lot better. Then it’s just a matter of getting the inflammation down, which in the past has taken a few days. But today he mentioned that if I was an athlete I’d put an ice pack on it for 15 minutes, take it off for half an hour, and repeat that all day, and by tomorrow it’d be completely fine. I never realised I could do something like that! If it helps heal faster, I’m all over it!

So I’ve been icing my back on and off for much of the afternoon. And yeah, it feels a lot better already, so it seems to be working. I’ll see how it is after another night’s sleep.

The other main thing I did today was write up my lesson plan for the new online ethics topic of Food. I included stuff on dumpster diving for discarded food, food waste, healthy and unhealthy food, and some ethical questions about the impact of raising meat on the environment, and also the impact of shipping food around the world just so we can buy peaches in the middle of winter. One kid tonight had a very interesting idea about junk food, suggesting that people should get a maximum quota of junk food per month, “maybe two chocolate bars or something.”

Oh, and the rain is back again… It was very cold today, a maximum of only 13°C in Sydney, which is the second coldest day of the year so far. It’s supposed to be rainy for the whole week. We’re definitely approaching that all-time yearly rain record.

New content today:

History off the rails

This morning I had some spare time, and my golfing friend had suggested we take the opportunity to play a round at the short “par 3” course that we go to sometimes. We had to check the weather this morning, as rain was forecast, but the morning was sunny, so we met at the course and managed to get our game in before the clouds closed in. We played two balls each, and I started well, hitting the ball cleanly in the air and putting decently. But unfortunately my game deteriorated a little as we continued and I ended weakly, posting rounds of 75 and 76 with the two balls, just shy of my best score of 71 on this course.

After the game we went to have lunch at a nearby bakery, where I had a sausage roll and a salted caramel tart as we watched the dark grey clouds roll in.

Later in the afternoon I went to pick up Scully from doggie daycare, just before the rain came down. It’s been raining moderately heavily throughout the evening.

And this evening I had three online ethics classes in a row. The third one went a bit off the rails, as the kids were all keen to interrupt and provide comments about stuff that became increasingly tangential to my lesson plan. I had a question about the Black Death, regarding how we can be sure that such an event actually happened, considering it was almost 700 years ago. But one kid started asking questions about plague doctors and why they had masks with pointy noses, and then two other kids started taking about the various things they had stuffed into the noses to try to filter out the plague, and it kind of took off from there. I don’t mind too much, as long as the kids are enjoying the class and hopefully learning something, but I did try and get it back on track. It was exhausting though, and I understand why school teachers have breaks for recess and lunch – so they don’t have to handle kids for more than 2 hours in a row!

New content today:

Thinking critically about history

It’s Tuesday, start of a new week of online ethics classes. This week the subject is History – which is really more on the critical thinking side of things than ethics.

I start with a story about the Library of Alexandria, mentioning how the huge collection of scrolls has been lost, and ask the students how tragic a loss that is for our understanding of ancient history. Then we go through a series of questions about how we can know that historical records are accurate, and how important it is to know about history. I end with thinking about people in the future considering the present as a part of their history. We are recording more and more of our lives and storing or uploading enormous amounts of information. But imagine if YouTube went out of business and all those videos were lost – and people 100 years from now heard stories about how YouTube contained hundreds of millions of videos, and all of them were lost – how would they feel?

New content today:

The end of Fighting

Highlights of today:

  • I got a package from a Kickstarter I backed in April 2021. I’ve stopped backing new Kickstarters, but the trickle of rewards form old projects continues to flow in.
  • I finished off the Fighting topic in my online ethics classes. It was a good one. Next up for this week is History.
  • I made calzones for dinner. My wife made the pizza dough, and I stuffed them with spinach and ricotta and made a tomato and garlic sauce to spoon on top of the cooked calzones.
  • It rained. of course.
  • I took Scully for a walk for lunch, a bit late since we waited for the storm to pass. We met Bongo, another neighbourhood dog, and had a bit of a walk with him and his owner.
  • I worked on a very special Darths & Droids strip, which took a lot more work than normal. (to be published on Thursday)
  • I forgot about tonight’s Irregular Webcomic! – I hadn’t made it in time and had to rush to make it and upload it before going to bed.

New content today:

International ethics of fighting

First though: there was no rain today! 😃

The ground outside was very soggy though. I took Scully for a big walk at lunch. It was good to get out and into the fresh air after being cooped up against the elements for so long.

This morning I had my first lesson on the current ethics topic of “Fighting” with kids in American time zones. Most of my classes are in the afternoon or early evening, and attended by kids from Australia or Asia (in similar time zones) or Europe (where it’s morning there). Those classes are in the middle of the night in American time zones. My opening story is about the Burr-Hamilton duel, and the first question I ask is: “Is it okay for two people to agree to have a fight?” (I don’t specify with or without weapons – those are follow-up questions.) The kids from Australia and Asia and Europe have almost all said it’s not okay; people can get hurt or killed, and it’s better to solve an argument by talking.

This morning I had a class at 9am, which is afternoon/early evening in American time zones, and so I had my first batch of kids from the USA in this class for this topic, three of them. I was slightly taken aback when every single one said that it was fine if two people agreed to fight one another. And when I pressed and asked if it was okay if they fought with weapons, they all continued to say it was okay; they agreed, they knew what they were getting into and the dangers, there was nothing wrong with that.

It’s small number statistics, but I’m amazed by the clean split in opinions between non-American and American kids on this question.

The theme continues with other questions: “Is it okay to defend yourself if you get attacked? To try to hurt your attacker to get them to stop?” Almost all the kids so far said yes. But when I asked: “Is it okay to defend yourself with a deadly weapon, like a knife or a gun?” all of the Aus/Asian/European kids said either outright no, or yes but you shouldn’t try to kill them – you could shoot in the air to scare them off, or shoot a limb, but not shoot to kill. However, all of the American kids said if you’re attacked it’s absolutely fine to shoot and kill your attacker. One went so far as to add that you should be praised as a hero for doing so.

So yeah… this theme continued throughout the whole class. The American kids were much more comfortable with the idea of fighting, and of solving things with violence. Again, small numbers, but there are obvious statements that could be made about this. I’ll be interested to see what happens when I have more American kids in this class on Monday morning.

New content today:

Not so rainy day

The rain eased off a bit today and we had intermittent showers, although it rained heavily overnight. Sydney is well on track to record its wettest year since rainfall records began. We’ve recorded 1768.6 mm since the start of 2022, and the wettest year ever recorded was 2194 mm in 1950. We’re barely halfway through the year, so if the second half is similar to the first we could potentially end up with over 3000 mm.

A new week of ethics classes started today. I wrote up the new topic: Fighting. I’m asking the kids questions such as:

  • Is getting into a fight ever justified?
  • If two people agree to have a fight, should it be allowed? With fists? With weapons?
  • Is it okay to carry a dangerous weapon, for the sole reason of self defence?
  • Are combat sports like boxing or mixed martial arts, where the goal is to actually hurt your opponent, okay or not?

I think this is a good topic, as it’s generated some interesting and diverse answers in the first three classes tonight!

New content today:

Back to ethics and games

I got a bit more sleep last night, but didn’t sleep through, waking up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. I think one more night should reset my body clock to the right time zone.

So I was still quite tired today. But I had the first two ethics classes, restarting my teaching after my trip. It was little a bit of a struggle against yawning, but not too bad once I got into the material.

And tonight was face-to-face games night with friends. We did COVID tests before going there – all negative. I picked up some Thai green curry chicken from the Thai place near where we used to work, since the hots lives near there. It’s the best Thai place I know, and I seldom get to eat there any more, so it’s a special treat when I can.

Four of us played some casual Apples to Apples while waiting for the fifth player to arrive. Then we played a new game: Nusfjord.

Nusfjord

This is a worker placement/action selection game played over 7 rounds of 3 actions for each player. There are several actions you can select, involving gaining various resources: fish, wood, gold; building ships or buildings; recruiting village elders; and issuing shares in your fishing business or buying shares in others people’s fishing businesses. The buildings, ships, and gold are worth points at the end of the game.

Unfortunately I made a critical mistake in interpreting the rules and wasted about a dozen fish on one turn that I thought I had planned out, which set me back a lot. Another player also made a similar mistake, and we ended up on significantly fewer points than the other three players. Oh well… first game is always a learning game! It was fun – I’d definitely try it again.

New content today:

Starting ethics of employment

Today I started my new ethics topic: Employment. I made the following diagram, showing how many hours Alice, Bob, and Carol work at the same travel agency, and how many customer bookings they make in a typical week:

Alice, Bob, and Carol's work

Alice gets paid $1000 a week for her work. I asked the kids in the first three classes tonight how much Bob and Carol should be paid.

Most kids said Bob should be paid $500, since he’s only doing half the work (despite the fact he’s working the same hours). A couple said a bit more than $500, two said $750. Exactly one said that he should be paid $1000, as long as he’s actually working the whole time and not just goofing off. Maybe he’s just a slower worker, but if he’s putting the time in he deserves the same pay.

Most kids thought Carol should be paid $1000. Two of them actually argued she should be paid more than that, because she’s doing the same work as Alice, but doing it more efficiently so she deserves more.

This is kind of a very simple toy example, but it was enough to get the kids thinking. I pointed out afterwards that there’s no one “right” answer, and in real employment situations things are more complex because people are doing different mixes of different tasks and they will all have different skills. So deciding what’s fair pay for everyone is not easy.

In trip preparation, today we got the suitcases out of storage. We’re starting to put aside things we know we want to pack. We’ll be packing bags on Thursday, because Friday morning will be busy dropping Scully off at a friend’s place for petsitting, before we return home and then head straight to the airport.

And also today I’ve been churning through generating enough comics and annotations to last through the trip.

New content today:

Ending ethics of ghosts

I finished the Ghosts topic with my online ethics classes today. It was a very interesting and fun topic to discuss with the kids. When asked if people’s spirits should go on to the afterlife or whatever happens after we die as is natural, or if it’s okay for a spirit to hang around on Earth as a ghost, about half thought being a ghost was okay, while half thought it was unnatural and people should just do the normal, expected thing when they die. But when I turned the question around and asked what they would prefer to do if they died, nearly all of them said they’d like to stay on Earth as a ghost.

A surprising question to me was when I asked them the following scenario: You’re a police detective investigating a murder, but you have no clues or evidence or suspects. It looks like you’re not going to find the killer. But then the victim’s ghost appears to you one night in your home, and tells you they saw the person who murdered them. They tell you the name of the murderer. What do you do with this information?

A few kids said they’d arrest the named person, a few said they’d start looking for evidence, maybe search that person’s home. But what surprised me was that most of the kids said the ghost’s testimony was essentially worthless, because they could be lying.

A divisive question was about people who claim to be clairvoyants, and “pass messages” from dead loved ones to people – people who pay the clairvoyant money to contact them. If the client believes that the clairvoyant is contacting their dead loved ones, and so gains comfort from this, is it ethical for the clairvoyant to pretend to be able to do this? And charge money for it?

Most of the kids had a tough time thinking about this one. Most eventually concluded that helping the client was a good thing, even if it was done through deception. But if the clairvoyant charged money for this, then they were taking advantage. Essentially it was okay to do it for free, but not to charge money for it. Although a good fraction of the kids thought it was outright bad to lie to people about this, even if it made them feel better.

New content today:

Ethics of human rights

It’s Tuesday, which means a new topic in my online ethics classes. This week we started on human rights. I spent this morning writing the lesson. I’m using a summarised version of Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas as the introductory story to set up the discussion. (You kind of need to know the story to understand the following, so if you don’t know it, either go spoil yourself at the linked Wikipedia article, or ignore the next paragraph.)

After summarising the story, I asked: Is the city of Omelas fair to everyone? Most of the kids this evening gave the predictable, expected answer (“No”), after which I ask them to explain why they think so. But one kid said: “Well, it depends how they pick the kid. If someone just walks down the street and picks a kid they see, then that’s not fair. But if it’s done by spinning a wheel or something, then that’s fair.” I pursued this further by asking if it was fair in the sense that everyone is treated the same? The kid said, “Well… you could make it fair if the kid was released after a month or so, and they used a different kid. So everyone would have a turn being the one who has to suffer.”

The weather here has taken a very wintry turn. Yesterday evening we had a storm front come through with 110 km/h winds, causing some minor damage across the city. Today has been very windy and bone-chillingly cold. Tomorrow is expected to be even colder and with stronger winds. Across parts of south-east Australia we’ve had snow down to altitudes as low as 600 metres, which is unusual. The good news is that there hasn’t been much rain.

In other news, our electric kettle seems to have broken. That’ll be annoying until we can get a new one. We’ll have to boil water to make tea on the stove, like savages…

New content today: