Direct Democracy and Its Discontents
What is direct democracy? It is a process of political decision-making that puts power directly in the hands of the populace.
Oliver Conolly
· 12 min read
Using the Blockchain to Fight Corruption
Blockchain technology has the power to render the dealings of businesses and nation states into open books, purged of secrecy and the privacy of elite cabals.
Alexander Blum
· 6 min read
The Ethics of Cognitive Enhancement
Technologies arising out of our improved understanding may be developed to enhance IQ and considers some of the ethical questions that gives rise to.
Toby Young
· 7 min read
The Neuroscience of Intelligence: An Interview with Richard Haier
Is it possible to see if someone is high in g by their brain activity on a PET scan or fMRI scan – and if so, what does it look like?
Claire Lehmann
· 8 min read
Rethinking Romance with Stendhal's 'On Love'
The key term Stendhal introduces, which is central to his vision of romance, is (to use the Americanized spelling) “crystallization”
Matthew Stahlman
· 16 min read
Rational AI-nxiety: A Counter-Argument
Is there a dark side to artificial intelligence? Many people, including famous science and technology leaders, assert that advancements in AI should be approached with extreme caution.
Anna Marieta Moise
· 11 min read
Welcome to the West, But Please Don’t Integrate…
The West’s own ideological wars had thus moved geographically and were now surfacing in the rest of the world.
Nushin Arbabzadah
· 7 min read
Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer
It is important to note that this does not take into account the difficulty or danger involved in the types of tasks undertaken by hunter-gatherers.
William Buckner
· 14 min read
Irrational AI-nxiety
Concerns over the potential harm of new technologies are often sensible, but they should be grounded in fact, not flights of fearful fancy.
Edward Clint
· 9 min read
Worry About Piety Contests, Not 'Virtue Signaling'
The more important problem is that, in addition to getting signaling wrong, the expression also gets virtue wrong.
Cameron Harwick
· 7 min read
What if the Industrial Revolution Happened to Rome?
What, I wondered, would have happened had Jesus emerged in a Roman Empire that had gone through an industrial revolution?
Helen Dale
· 8 min read
The Postmodern Misuse of Tolerance
The celebration of tolerance as an end in itself is a symptom of the shift from self-confident modern liberal democracies to the self-doubting postmodern ones.
Alexis Carre
· 12 min read
The Politics of Science: Why Scientists Might Not Say What the Evidence Supports
The case for deferring to scientific consensus on politically contentious topics is much weaker. This is true because what scientists publicly say may differ from what they privately believe.
Jonathan Anomaly
· 6 min read
Should We Be Worried About GMOs?
GMOs interact with wider global systems that they could potentially undermine, with terrible consequence.
Simon Beard and Rachel Polfer
· 6 min read
The Case For Moral Doubt
When you find yourself in a moral stalemate, where appeals to rationality and empirical reality have been exhausted.
Scotty Jenkins
· 6 min read