User:KorikS/sandbox

What is Ethics?
Ethics is a discipline that deals with questions of morality, what is good and what is bad, trying to create a set of moral values, it "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". From Ancient Greek the work ēthos means "habitual character and disposition; moral character; habit, custom;". The origin of ethics as a system of moral norms cannot be described in the same sense as the origin of, for example, science or philosophy. There was no particular point on a timeline when morality arose, morality was inherent in the society, in one form or another, at all stages of its development. People living together were bound by different moral norms shaped by accepted beliefs, tendencies, and presuppositions.

Western Ethics
In the western tradition, philosophical reflection on morality is considered to have started with the sophists in the fifth century B.C.E. The Sophists were teachers who taught a wide range of different subjects from philosophy and rhetoric to mathematics. They were focusing on arete –"virtue" or "excellence" Socrates challenged the subjectivism of Sophist ethics. He held the belief that ethical principles were universal and they were able to be identified, examined, and improved within the individual . Our knowledge of Socrates is derived mainly from Plato’s dialogues, such as The Republic and Gorgias. Plato’s student, Aristotle builds his view of ethics upon his teacher’s beliefs but with significant differences. Unlike Plato, he viewed the goodness as a part of a flourishing life (or eudaimonia ) as the highest good, not the good itself. And eudaimonia can only be achieved through virtuous life.

With the development of the discipline, philosophers started to distinguish between deontological ethics (from Greek: δέον, 'obligation, duty' + λόγος, 'study') and consequentialism, the first of the two hold that morality of an action is determined by the action itself, while the second one focuses on the consequences or results of an action. In this sense, deontology is often associated with Immanuel Kant, who believed that ethical actions follow universal laws, while utilitarianists, such as Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill, believed in maximization of utility of an action.

Ethics as a separate discipline
Ethics is now a part of most degrees in Philosophy, moreover, you can even find undergraduate degrees that concentrate on ethics. Some universities even have also have a B.A. in Ethics and Public Polic. At the master's degree level, ethics is studied to be applied "to solve moral dilemmas of pastoral care, social opposition to new biotechnologies, or other ethical issues faced by contemporary society." Ethics is also now implemented into other disciplines, such as Medicine and Law, and helps to tackle moral dilemmas within these disciplines.

Manipulation of Statistics
Statistics is often viewed as an ultimate mean to present evidence. When evidence is quantitative and maths-based rather than qualitative, it is easier to believe in. Techniques of data representation in statistical research can often be flawed. Consequently, there is a huge amount of statistics that is unjustified but still presented to the general public, creating the spread of fake news and unreasonable opinions. Unfortunately, not many people are willing to fact-check and analyse the information that they read, particularly, on internet. And not only an ordinary reader can fall victim to misuse of statistics, but even professional scientists can sometimes be decieved.

It was already proven that manipulation of statistics is very easy and common, particularly by Darrell Huff, the author of the book How to lie with statistics . In this book, he described the ways that are used to make information more appealing, to take the necessary parts of the research, leaving the unnecessary befind, and to misuse statistics in order to deceive the audience and manipulate their opinion. Misuse of statistics can be best described as "using numbers in such a manner that – either by intent or through ignorance or carelessness – the conclusions are unjustified or incorrect." The implementation of false evidence via misuse of statistics is common in media. Darrell Huff described many methods that can be used to manipulate the numbers, from non-representative sampling and manipulation of processing to overgeneralization.

Covid-19 Statistics in the Russian Media
In order to track how statistics have been manipulated for self-serving purposes, we can look at the example of the coronavirus and trace how the russian governmental media have described the situation. The Russian authorities claimed that the reason of low numbers of deaths during the first wave in spring was the high quality of healthcare in the country. However, the pathologists who perform autopsies state that they have been concealing the cause of death because of the instructions from the Ministry of Health. For example, if the cause of death is pneumonia that was caused by coronavirus, the documents will state 'pneumonia', rather than 'covid'. Demographers who study Russian health statistics believe that this is deliberate manipulation of data caused by the federal government that distorts the picture of the pandemic. These kinds of distortions are not uncommon in the Russian media. They became especially widespred after Vladimir Putin's "May 2012 Decrees", that obliged the regions of the country to reduce mortality from certain diseases.

Moreover, during the second wave of coronavirus in autumn, in St. Petersburg, for several weeks, the daily number of people recovering from Covid-19 have been half of the daily number of cases. This suspicious pattern has been noticed by local media, but even after their publications, the strange ratio in the statistics of the coronavirus remained the same. The local authorities did not explain this strange pattern, only noted that daily statistics may not be completely accurate, due to the heavy load in hospitals and the delay in documenation.

Consequences
As a result, it is not only impossible to state with complete certainty what is the number of cases, but also to make sure that the health care system is able to manage with the large flow of patients. Using this statistics, the government officials can easily say that the country is able to provide everyone with sufficient health care, when it is clearly not so.

Truth in Videography or the Future of Fake News
The time when a photo or a video could be used as a certain proof is now behind us. Photo manipulation was developed long time ago and now only moving forward, while the manipulations with videos is becoming more and more common. Deepfake is a new format of videos in which faces on the original video are replaced with other faces. Generative-adversarial neural networks (GANS) are used to create such videos. Generative Adversarial Networks are an approach to generative modeling using deep learning methods, such as convolutional neural networks. The mechanism is as follows: one part of the algorithm learns from real photos of a certain person and creates an image, literally "competing" with the second part of the algorithm, until it begins to confuse the copy with the original.↵GAN technology was developed in 2014 by Stanford University student Ian Goodfellow, and for a long time it was used only among AI researchers and developers. The latest software and the spread of machine learning have simplified the process of creating fake videos. The Internet learned about deepfakes in 2017, when porn videos began to appear on Reddit, in which the faces of porn actresses were replaced with the faces of celebrities. ↵Given a training set, this technique learns to generate new data with the same statistics as the training set. For example, a GAN trained on photographs can generate new photographs that look at least superficially authentic to human observers, having many realistic characteristics.↵GANs enable algorithms to move beyond classifying data into generating or creating images. This occurs when two GANs try to fool each other into thinking an image is “real.” Using as little as one image, a seasoned GAN can create a video clip of that person.

Malicious Applications of Deepfake Technology
↵At first, most of the deepfake content was used only for entertainment purposes. However, during the last few years, the technology has developed so much that the materials created with it have become frighteningly convincing. The dissemination of false information, invasion of privacy, destruction of reputation — this is only a small part of what deepfakes can cause. Large corporations, such as Facebook, Microsoft, Google, are trying to fight the spread of fake videos by creating datasets using which the developers will be able to train algorithms to detect deepfakes.This technology makes it easy to manipulate audio and video content, and with its development, it becomes much more difficult to figure out where the truth is and where the fake is.↵A recent study by Deeptrace, a Netherland based cybersecurity company, showed that nearly 96% of deepfake videos are porn .↵With the spread of deepfakes, there were cases of discreditation of public figures, whose images can be easily found on the internet. For example, in the spring of 2019, the network published a deepfake video with the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. The author of the video with the help of AI changed Pelosi's speech so that she did not pronounce words well, and those who watched the video thought that the politician was drunk. The situation turned into a loud scandal, and only after some time it was proved that Pelosi's speech was generated by AI.

Laws against the Misuse of the Technology
↵In 2019 the state of California passed on October 3, 2019 the bill AB-602, which bans depiction of individual using digital or electronic technology that can be used as sexually explicit material without the consent of the people depicted.

Power in Politics
The concept of power is unseparable from politics, those in the position of power are able to influence the actions and beliefs of others. Consequently, it is inevitable that power can sometimes be used for self-serving purposes or execised unjustly. How can a government execise its power?

Authoritatian Point of View
Authoritarianism is, first of all, a social and political system that is focused around obedience to the state and its leaders. In an authoritarian state, the power is concentrated in the hands of one sovereign or a small group people in charge, with everyone living in that state obiding the sovereign. Second of all, it is a social view characterized by the belief that society should have strict and unconditional loyalty and subordination to the ruler. Authoritarianism is the principle of blind submission to authority.

Hobbes on the Power of the Government
An English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, argued for absolute monarchy, when monarch has absolute autocratic authority that is not limited by laws or legislature. In his book Leviathan, Hobbes states that the life in the natural condition of mankind is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, since there is no force to restrain humans, who are constantly in pursuit for power, because power provides survival, and, according to Hobbes, survival is the main thing that humans seek in the state of nature. Surprisingly, Hobbes does consider all people equal, however, being a pessimist, he also mentions that equality means that everyone is equally capable of killing others in order to preserve own life – it is called “the rights of nature”. This right invites a serious conflict, especially if there is lack of resources or any other crossing of interests. This everlasting competition leads to what Hobbes called “bellum omnium contra omnes” or “the war of all against all’. It is important to note that Hobbes viewed humans as fundamentally egoistic, hence their main motivation for actions is self-interest. Considering all of the above, he stated that humanity needs some kind of authority that subdues their natural desires in order to escape from the chaos. The only way to achieve peace is to develop a covenant or a “social contract” that prevents people from violence and seeking for power, and transfers this power to an ultimate mutually-recognized sovereign. Essentially, legitimacy of such sovereign depends on whether it can provide survival, which humans still need as they gave up their natural rights, the main being liberty. As people give up their natural rights, the sovereign gains power.

Consequences of Authoritarianism
This kind of political system implies a strict suppression of any kind of non-systemic opposition by the authoritarian authorities and the inability of the legal opposition to significantly influence the course of state development. Sometimes it implies the absolute absence of opposition. Authoritarian leaders use power with little regard for popular views that differ from the views of the government and the opposition, and it is almost impossible to change this kind of authority through legitimate elections. Considering this, it is possible to say that the power is exercised in no accordance with the opinions of citizens and often with the law, hence the people living in this society can be wronged by the government without any kind of repercussions for the sovereign. This leads to the abuse of power in politics.

Liberal Point of View
Liberalism focuses on protection of humans' liberty and in this political doctrine, government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but the government itself can pose a threat to liberty, therefore its power should be limited.

Locke on the Power of the Government
Unlike Hobbes, Locke is optimistic about man’s nature and he sees humans as naturally peaceful and cooperative creatures, that are capable of rational thought and mutual self-recognition. That is why he does not believe that the State of Nature is the state of “war of all against all”, from his point of view it is the state of absolute equality and freedom. “It is evident that all human beings – as creatures belonging to the same species and rank and born with the indiscriminately with all the same natural advantages and faculties – are equal amongst themselves” – wrote Locke in “Second Treasure”. Men in the State of Nature are free and equal – no one has the right to rule over others. The only right humans have is Natural Law – right to life, liberty and possessions. However, Locke’s definition of freedom differs from Hobbes’: a person does have liberty to do whatever he pleases with himself or his property, but he cannot harm anybody else. This freedom is limited by the Natural Law that states that nobody can restrict anyone in his life, health or possession, that is why the power of the government can’t be absolute – it is limited by the Natural Law – so its role is to overview the humanity and ensure well-being and honest mutual relationships. We can see that Locke was a strong individualist and he thought that the government should just make the State of Nature better, but it can’t have ultimate control over people’s lives.

The Extent of Governmental Power
All of the above raises a question of the extent to which the government can exercise its power, and both Hobbes and Locke provide us with two extremes - one being the restriction of individual's negative liberty (a concept described by a philosopher Isaiah Berlin as a freedom from external barriers ) and the second being the restriction of positive liberty (a concept of freedom from internal barriers ).