Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Is Ethics Suddenly White-Hot, Front-Burner? 1
1 Redesigning Humans 13
The Ethics of New Sex 13
Radically Redesigning Humans 30
Renovating Our Brains? 42
Pathologically Sick … and Imprisoned 48
2 Exponential Technologies: Today's Ethical Quicksand 57
So … You Warmed Up the Planet Just a Touch? 57
Renewing Capitalism's License? 65
You Used Do What to Animals?! 79
Deliberate Extinctions: Gene Drives 84
Technology, Truthiness, and the Demise of Institutions 89
3 Caught on the Wrong Side of History 99
Just Who Is Supposed to Teach Us Right and Wrong? 100
More Recent Ethical Quicksand: Lgbtqia 118
Endangered and Extinct Religions 125
4 The Immortality of Today's Mistakes 139
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Are Electronic Tattoos 139
And Then There Are Dating Sites … 151
5 Why Don't We Fix It? 159
Baumol's Cost Disease 160
Mass Incarceration 174
Everything's Disposable … 180
6 Dead Wrong: We Still Do It; We Will Be Judged 185
Papers, Borders, and Ethics 185
War Profiteering 194
Can Being Precautionary Kill? 199
7 Conclusion? 209
Ethics 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 … 209
Postscript: Game Changers 223
Universal Ethics? China … 223
Artificial Intelligence 227
Pandemics Have a Way of Focusing Your Ethics, Don't They? 234
Seti: First Contact 242
Acknowledgments 247
Notes 249
Index 279