Expert answer:Analyzing a logical Fallacy
Solved by verified expert:In this paper we should analyze a logical fallacy and write an essay about it. In the attachment below, 4 articles that has different fallacies. We should only choose one fallacy from only one article and analyze it. Also, the paper prompt is attached and includes all the requirements.
unit_2_supplemental_readings.pdf
124_fall_2017_writing_project_2.pdf
Unformatted Attachment Preview
identity crisis. In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a
sort of time warp.
[ARTICLE 1] Is Facebook
Really Causing an Identity
Crisis?
It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis
will not result in brains, or rather minds, different
from those of previous generations. I often wonder
whether real conversation in real time may
eventually give way to these sanitised and easier
screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing,
skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been
replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on
the supermarket shelf.
By Shea Bennett
August 5, 2011
This week I read with interest
the various news reports surrounding comments
made by Baroness Greenfield, noted professor of
synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford,
about how social media is causing what she refers
to as an “identity crisis” among its users.
The Baroness was, of course, speaking to The Daily
Mail, that veritable bastion of British newspaper
journalism. She made similar remarks to the
paper back in 2009, where she shared her horror
about what social networking was doing to the
nation’s precious children.
The Baroness, who sits in the House of Lords
within the British Parliament, and is a life peer of
Ot Moor in the county of Oxfordshire, has claimed
that the increased focus on the development of
Internet friendships has the potential to ‘rewire’ the
brain, leaving people craving instant gratification
and nullifying their ability to concentrate for long
periods of time.
Before making these proclamations, the Baroness
spent several years immersed in all aspects of social
media, building up thousands of likes on her
Facebook page and an army of followers on
Twitter. She used the platforms to share and digest
information, and was mindful that, in the interest of
balance, she positioned herself in such a way that
her research and findings would be both accurate
and fair.
She suggested that some Facebook users feel
obliged to act like mini celebrities in an effort to
attract attention, and only do things in their lives
that are “Facebook worthy.”
“It’s almost as if people are living in a world that’s
not a real world, but a world where what counts is
what people think of you or (if they) can click on
you,” she said. “Think of the implications for
society if people worry more about what other
people think about them than what they think about
themselves.”
Oh, wait. Sorry. She didn’t do any of that. In fact,
the Baroness didn’t do anything, except regurgitate
the same biased and largely unfounded claptrap to
the same downmarket rag. She doesn’t have a
Twitter profile and the only presence she has on
Facebook is to be found in one of the bog-standard
(and, I have to say, eternally irritating) Wikipedialooting community pages.
Quite. The Baroness had a few choice words to say
about that other social network, too:
There’s no new research. I’m not convinced there
was any old research. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise
me if the Baroness hadn’t actually spoken to
the Mail at all, and they’d simply re-written the
original story from a slightly different angle.
What concerns me is the banality of so much that
goes out on Twitter. Why should someone be
interested in what someone else has had for
breakfast?
It reminds me of a small child, “Look at me
Mummy, I’m doing this. Look at me Mummy I’m
doing that.” It’s almost as if they’re in some kind of
In the past Greenfield has been heavily criticised for
this line of thinking, notably by British science
writer Ben Goldacre, who observed that the
Baroness’s pronouncements are never supported by
1
accompanying evidence, and that she shows
alarming naivety by not being able to predict “that
her ‘speculations’ and ‘hypotheses’ will inevitably
result in scare stories in the press.”
We no longer have to read The New Yorker to read
the best, because the best is anywhere and
everywhere. Indeed, there’s every chance that the
best won’t be found in The New Yorker. Sure,
Gladwell’s critique received a ton of attention, but
most of that was generated by Twitter. And that’s
the oldest trick in the book – if you want to benefit
from the most publicity, criticize the thing that’s the
most public.
On Goldacre, the Baroness replied that he was “like
the people who denied that smoking caused cancer.”
Yes: this is the kind of monster that we’re dealing
with. Of course, Greenfield is hardly alone in
exposing her almost total disregard for the merits of
Facebook et al. Last year, pseudo social intellectual
Malcolm Gladwell poopooed the net benefits of
social media, notably in its potential as a force for
change. “Why does it matter who is eating whose
lunch on the Internet? Are people who log on to
their Facebook page really the best hope for us all?”
he opined. This is the same Malcolm Gladwell who
has openly admitted that he doesn’t have much use
for the internet.
These are the same fears that are paralyzing the
newspaper industry. But news isn’t going away –
it’s simply the way that we consume news that is
changing, and anyone who resists will (and must)
be left behind.
After all, it’s less than a decade ago since we were
all walking around listening to a handful of tracks
on our portable CD players. Then Steve Jobs gave
us the iPod, and things were never the same. My 10year old son doesn’t even know what a CD is. And
why would he? They were rubbish, and couldn’t
hold a candle to the sheer, majestic and, I dare say,
unmatched glory of vinyl.
The medium has also made marketing maestro Seth
Godin look uncomfortably out of touch, and even a
little bit hypocritical. “I don’t use Twitter. It’s not
really me,” he has said. “I also don’t actively use
Facebook, and I’m not adding any friends, though I
still have an account for the day when I no doubt
will.” Strange, then, that he seems to make
observations about the subject in every second or
third article that he publishes on his blog.
[ARTICLE 2] Pro and Con:
Should Gene Editing Be
Performed on Human
Embryos?
All of this opinion, of course (because that’s all that
it is), comes from the same place: fear. Fear of the
unknown. Of change. Fear that what you’ve been
doing and saying and preaching and selling your
entire life no longer works. Fear that the world has
passed you by. That you don’t get it. That you’ve
turned into your parents. How did that happen?
When did you suddenly become old-fashioned?
The most potent use of the new gene editing
technique CRISPR is also the most controversial:
tweaking the genomes of human embryos to
eliminate genes that cause disease. We don’t allow
it now. Should we ever?
It’s greed, as well. Ironically, for attention, which
can be so leveraged through social channels, but it’s
also greed for respect. The Greenfields and
Gladwells of this world cannot so easily be assured
of this when the internet, and social media in
particularly, dramatically levels the playing field,
allowing the thoughts and ideas of anyone to rise to
the very top – if they’re good enough.
PRO: RESEARCH ON GENE EDITING IN
HUMANS MUST CONTINUE
By John Harris
In February of this year, the Human Fertilization
and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom
approved a request by the Francis Crick Institute in
2
consent,” he has said, constitute “strong arguments
against engaging in” gene editing.
London to modify human embryos using the new
gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9. This is the
second time human embryos have been employed in
such research, and the first time their use has been
sanctioned by a national regulatory authority. The
scientists at the Institute hope to cast light on early
embryo development—work which may eventually
lead to safer and more successful fertility
treatments.
This makes no sense at all. We have literally no
choice but to make decisions for future people
without considering their consent. All parents do
this all the time, either because the children are too
young to consent, or because they do not yet exist.
George Bernard Shaw and Isadora Duncan knew
this. When, allegedly, she said to him “why don’t
we make a baby together … with my looks and your
brains it cannot fail” she was proposing a deliberate
germline determining decision in the hope of
affecting their future child. Shaw’s more sober
response—“Yes but what if it has my looks and
your brains!”—identifies a different possible, but
from the child’s perspective equally nonconsensual, outcome. Rightly, neither Shaw nor his
possible partner thought their decision needed to
wait for the consent of the resulting child.
The embryos, provided by patients undergoing in
vitro fertilization, will not be allowed to develop
beyond seven days. But in theory—and eventually
in practice—CRISPR could be used to modify
disease-causing genes in embryos brought to term,
removing the faulty script from the genetic code of
that person’s future descendants as well. Proponents
of such “human germline editing” argue that it
could potentially decrease, or even eliminate, the
incidence of many serious genetic diseases,
reducing human suffering worldwide. Opponents
say that modifying human embryos is dangerous
and unnatural, and does not take into account the
consent of future generations. Who is right?
Needless to say, parents and scientists should think
responsibly, based on the best available
combination of evidence and argument, about how
their decisions will affect future generations.
However, their decision-making simply cannot
include the consent of the future children.
Let’s start with the objection that embryo
modification is unnatural, or amounts to playing
God. This argument rests on the premise that
natural is inherently good. But diseases are natural,
and humans by the millions fall ill and die
prematurely—all perfectly naturally. If we protected
natural creatures and natural phenomena simply
because they are natural, we would not be able to
use antibiotics to kill bacteria or otherwise practice
medicine, or combat drought, famine, or pestilence.
The health care systems maintained by every
developed nation can aptly be characterized as a
part of what I have previously called “a
comprehensive attempt to frustrate the course of
nature.” What’s natural is neither good nor bad.
Natural substances or natural therapies are only
better that unnatural ones if the evidence supports
such a conclusion.
Finally, there’s the argument that modifying
genomes is inherently dangerous because we can’t
know all the ways it will affect the individual. But
those who fear the risks of gene editing don’t take
into account the inherent dangers in the “natural”
way we reproduce. Two-thirds of human embryos
fail to develop successfully, most of them within the
first month of pregnancy. And every year, 7.9
million children—6 percent of total births
worldwide—are born with a serious defect of
genetic or partially genetic origin. Indeed so risky is
unprotected sex that, had it been invented as a
reproductive technology rather than found as part of
our evolved biology, it is highly doubtful it would
ever have been licensed for human use.
Certainly we need to know as much as possible
about the risks of gene-editing human embryos
before such research can proceed. But when the
suffering and death caused by such terrible single-
The matter of consent has been raised by Francis
Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Ethical issues presented by altering the germline in
a way that affects the next generation without their
3
gene disorders as cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s
disease might be averted, the decision to delay such
research should not be made lightly. Just as justice
delayed is justice denied, so, too, therapy delayed is
therapy denied. That denial costs human lives, day
after day.
embryos or gametes to produce a child—and in
some 40 countries, passed laws against it.
The issue of human germline modification stayed
on a slow simmer during the first decade of the 21st
century. But it roared to a boil in April 2015, when
researchers at Sun Yat-sen University announced
they had used CRISPR to edit the genomes of
nonviable human embryos. Their experiment was
not very successful in technical terms, but it did
focus the world’s attention.
CON: DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR TO
EDITING GENES IN FUTURE HUMANS
By Marcy Darnovsky
This is not an entirely new question. The prospect
of creating genetically modified humans was openly
debated back in the late 1990s, more than a decade
and a half before CRISPR came on the scene and
several years before the human genome had been
fully mapped.
In December 2015, controversy about using
CRISPR to produce children was a key agenda item
at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing
organized by the national science academies of the
United States, the United Kingdom, and China.
Nearly every speaker agreed that at present, making
irreversible changes to every cell in the bodies of
future children and all their descendants would
constitute extraordinarily risky human
experimentation. By all accounts, far too much is
unknown about issues including off-target
mutations (unintentional edits to the genome),
persistent editing effects, genetic mechanisms in
embryonic and fetal development, and longer-term
health and safety consequences.
It wasn’t long before we saw provocative headlines
about designer babies. Princeton mouse biologist
Lee Silver, writing in Time magazine in 1999,
imagined a fertility clinic of the near future that
offered “Organic Enhancement” for everyone,
including people with “no fertility problems at all.”
He even wrote the ad copy: “Keep in mind, you
must act before you get pregnant. Don’t be sorry
after she’s born. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for your child-to-be.”
Conversations about putting new gene editing tools
into fertility clinics need to begin with an obvious
but often overlooked point: By definition, germline
gene editing would not treat any existing person’s
medical needs. At best, supporters can say that it
might re-weight the genetic lottery in favor of
different outcomes for future people—but the
unknown mechanisms of both CRISPR and human
biology suggest that unforeseeable outcomes are
close to inevitable.
The gene editing tool known as CRISPR catapulted
into scientific laboratories and headlines a few short
years ago. Fast on its heels came the reemergence of
a profoundly consequential controversy: Should
these new techniques be used to engineer the traits
of future children, who would pass their altered
genes to all the generations that follow?
During the same millennial shift, policymakers in
dozens of countries came to a very different
conclusion about the genetic possibilities on the
horizon. They wholeheartedly supported gene
therapies that scientists hoped (and are still hoping)
can safely, effectively, and affordably target a wide
a range of diseases. But they rejected human
germline modification—using genetically altered
Beyond technical issues are profound social and
political questions. Would germline gene editing be
justifiable, in spite of the risks, for parents who
might transmit an inherited disease? It’s certainly
not necessary. Parents can have children unaffected
by the disease they have or carry by using thirdparty eggs or sperm, an increasingly common way
to form families. Some heterosexual couples may
hesitate to use this option because they want a child
4
who is not just spared a deleterious gene in their
lineage, but is also genetically related to both of
them. They can do that too, with the embryo
screening technique called pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis (PGD), a widely available procedure used
in conjunction with in vitro fertilization.
In opening the door to one kind of germline
modification, we are likely opening it to all kinds.
Permitting human germline gene editing for any
reason would likely lead to its escape from
regulatory limits, to its adoption for enhancement
purposes, and to the emergence of a market-based
eugenics that would exacerbate already existing
discrimination, inequality, and conflict. We need
not and should not risk these outcomes.
PGD itself raises social and ethical concerns about
what kind of traits should be selected or de-selected.
These questions are particularly important from a
disability rights perspective (which means they’re
important for all of us). But screening embryos for
disease is far safer for resulting children than
engineering new traits with germline gene editing
would be. Yet this existing alternative is often
omitted from accounts of the controversy about
gene editing for reproduction.
[ARTICLE 3] Nicholas
Negroponte: Internet Access is a
Human Right
By BIG THINK EDITORS
September 2014
It is true that a few couples—a very small
number—would not be able to produce unaffected
embryos, and so could not use PGD to prevent
disease inheritance. Should we permit germline
gene editing for their sake? If we did, could we
limit its use to cases of serious disease risk?
What constitutes a human right?
Abstractly, a human right is one that is inherent and
inalienable to all human beings. They are the
elements of social life any individual should
reasonably expect to be granted solely for the fact
that they are alive. According to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, there exist thirty such
elements ranging from the Right to Equality to
Freedom of Religion to the Right to Rest and
Leisure. Some are more abstract than others, some
more integral to survival than the rest. Near the end
of the list is the Right to Education, which is the
focus of Big Think expert Nicholas
Negroponte’s recent interview, featured today on
this site and embedded below:
From a policy perspective, how would we draw the
distinction between a medical and enhancement
purpose for germline modification? In which
category would we put short stature, for example?
We know that taller people tend to earn more
money. So do people with paler skins. Should
arranging for children with financially or socially
“efficient” varieties of height and complexion be
considered medical intervention?
Think back to the hypothetical fertility clinic
offering “Organic Enhancement” as a “once-in-alifetime opportunity for your child-to-be.” Think
back to the 1997 movie Gattaca, about a society in
which the genetically enhanced—
merely perceived to be biologically superior—are
born into the physical reality of those whom we
might now call the one percent. These are fictional
accounts, but they are also warnings of a possible
human (or not so human) future. The kinds of social
changes they foresee, once set in motion, could be
as difficult to reverse as the genetic changes we’re
talking about.
You’ll notice that Negroponte employs the transitive
property to include an addendum to the Right to
Education. In the 21st century access to the internet
is inextricably linked to a proper, thorough
education. Therefore, the internet is, or should be
considered, a human right:
And Internet access is such a fundamental
part of learning that by extension it is almost
certainly a human right and within a very
short period of time it will be particularly
because of those who don’t have schools,
those who have to do their learning on their
5
own. And for them Internet access is access
to other people. It’s not so much the
knowledge. It’s not the Wikipedia but it’s the
connection to others, particularly kids to
other kids – peer to peer learning. So yes,
Internet access will be a human right. At the
moment it’s edging up to it and probably not
everybody agrees but they will shortly.
views in a speech before the Internet Innovation
Alliance, a coalition of businesses and nonprofits.
O’Rielly described five “go …
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
How it works
- Paste your instructions in the instructions box. You can also attach an instructions file
- Select the writer category, deadline, education level and review the instructions
- Make a payment for the order to be assignment to a writer
- Download the paper after the writer uploads it
Will the writer plagiarize my essay?
You will get a plagiarism-free paper and you can get an originality report upon request.
Is this service safe?
All the personal information is confidential and we have 100% safe payment methods. We also guarantee good grades