The Minefield

It’s 18 months since the technology company OpenAI made its wildly popular interface with an advanced large language model — GPT-4 — available to the public. What has ChatGPT done to the habits of thought and consideration that produce distinctly human expression?

Protests are, by their nature, unequivocal and univocal. They tend to avoid nuance or fine distinctions, and most often do not invite dialogue. They make demands. Does the particular vocation of universities place ethical limits on the forms of expression available to protestors?

Reciprocity, cooperation, kindness, turn-taking, forbearance, empathy, experimentation — can these counter the decidedly illiberal, impatient, anti-pluralistic, well-nigh apocalyptic energies that now seem resurgent in parts of the West?

During the pandemic, there was a sudden renewal of interest in Harold Ramis’s 1993 film “Groundhog Day” — especially its bleaker aspects. But this missed its sophistication and humanity, to say nothing of its acute depiction of moral growth.

Residents of Sydney have found themselves understandably overwhelmed by the compound traumas of two stabbing attacks in three days. How are we to make sense of the cycling-through of emotions in response to shocking public violence?

There has been an odd confluence of events over the past couple weeks that has managed to intensify the sense of a conflict between two of our most important democratic institutions: the law and the media.

Does the failure on the part of Israel to enable the provision of humanitarian aid or to do everything in its power to prevent civilian casualties suggest “a blameworthy indifference to Palestinian lives”?

It is important to remember that Thoreau’s motivation for withdrawing was neither escapism nor apolitical quietism. The fact that he departed on 4 July signals an invitation to discover a different way of living together.

If Thoreau regards withdrawal and solitude as means by which we learn to escape self-deception, then they may well be little more than preparation for the moral demands friends make of one another.

Solitude is neither alone-ness nor idleness. It is strenuous and takes practice. Solitude does not simply happen in the way that isolation or loneliness does — it must be inhabited.

Are periodic bouts of withdrawal from life’s urgent demands and heated debates necessary to regain a sense of our shared humanity, and to renew the commitments that sustain the moral life?

Waleed Aly, Scott Stephens and philosopher Stephanie Collins field questions from a live studio audience on crowd-behaviour, conformity and the importance of dissent.

Ever since Plato, “crowds” have been associated with irrationality, emotivism, conformism, short-term thinking, and herd-like behaviour. But what if it turns out that crowds are collectively more intelligent than their individual members?

What are we trying to convey when we reach for a word like “evil”? Is it something about a person’s actions or character? Is it what they do or the manner in which they do it?

It is worth reflecting, not just on what is singular about Taylor Swift at this particular cultural moment — why she attracts both the loyalty and the animus that she does — but on what it is about live music events that now draw millions of people to them.