From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Why does torture happen? There are a variety of reasons, paramount is the role of torture as a 'shortcut' to investigating crime- many investigators and police have used this from time immemorial, and the efforts to abolish and curb it have been progressing over the years.
These unprecedented floods demand unprecedented assistance.
In times of crisis, whether through conflict or nature, it is not an option for us to assist people but an obligation.
For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware.
Beyond the atrocities of mass murder and rape, ISIS also set out to systematically destroy the Yazidi community by ensuring that we did not have the resources to survive in our homeland. They poisoned wells, burned farms, took out electrical grids, and destroyed schools, homes, temples, and hospitals.
No industry and indeed no activity at all whether commercial or not should act unethically, or immorally and so the relationship of bioethics, or ethics, to anything it studies is the relationship of authority.
We don't trust human beings to do things without being audited, and we're now getting AI to do those very same things without the same checks and balances.
Torture is defined in international law as the pain suffering that is deliberately inflicted on a person for purposes of interrogation, punishment or any other purpose- and that is severe enough to qualify as torture.
Rape is one of the oldest weapons of war and it remains so to this day. For too long, it has been viewed as an 'unfortunate' side effect of war. But really, it is a tactic. The truth is that stable societies are built on the backs of women.
The concept of 'crimes against humanity,' as initially defined for the Nuremberg trial, emerged to address atrocities committed in Germany, particularly against Jewish and other minority groups, including political factions and the disabled. These acts demanded accountability, which the existing legal frameworks, recognizing state sovereignty, couldn't provide.
Cyberspace has had a profoundly positive impact on humanity, but has also been abused, as a playground for criminals already used by some as a battle-space.
[the impact of the internet on liberty and free speech has been] very positive indeed – not so much two steps forward and one step back, as ten steps forward for every step back. By breaking the oligopoly of the established press and letting everyone be a publisher, it has made information much harder for the powerful to control.