Every year, a few hundred idealistic, nerdy college students compete in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Teams representing universities across the United States are given 18 real-world issues, decide what they think about them from an ethical perspective, and then explain themselves. Issues have spanned from privacy and oppression in the Chinese Social Credit System to the moral status of rivers and aliens, the virtues of honesty in classrooms, and the ethics of fictional races like the Orcs from Lord of the Rings. It’s a friendly version of debate, rewarding the collegial and thoughtful more than the brash and eloquent.

Read the rest at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists