Also anyone notice the link to the article about a Norwegian philosopher floating the idea of using brain-dead women as surrogates? We're officially in hell.

A philosopher doing their job. Peter Singer is a favourite of mine because he ponders the unthinkable for the purposes of exploring ethics. He was notorious in the 90s for saying similarly outrageous things in academic articles. I don’t necessarily agree with him on anything, but the world is better for him being in it because it’s an important role to fill - ethicists have to consider the most horrific things, it’s their job.

What this sort of thing exposes is the lack of intelligence in your average journalist these days. They’re hired based on factors other than their understanding of, or ability to synthesise complex concepts and communicate them to a lay public and so we get articles about womb transplants and brain-dead surrogates and they’re written in a way to suggest that these things are just around the corner when the opposite is true.

Part of that might be the shift in the role of news organisations, from priding themselves for informing the public (and therefore attracting viewers/readers through being trustworthy and useful) to measuring their success based on clicks and advertising sales. Outrage generates more clicks and page impressions than anything and so everything is now written or discussed in the most outrage generating fashion.