The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma - but was it deliberately punitive? And to what extent does our welfare system reflect negative public attitudes toward people living in poverty?
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Knowledge, culture and parenting apps
There's an app for everything these days, including parenting and childrearing - but at what cost? Women in the Global South are increasingly using parenting apps, whose Western developers say their advice is scientific and reliable. But that modern, scientific advice is edging out older, traditional childrearing wisdom and causing intergenerational tension.
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The contradictions of democracy
Democracy is a powerful force for progress, but it's also vulnerable and beset by its own internal contradictions. Plato thought that democracy was a bad idea, as it gave unmerited power to the ignorant and the malevolent. Looking around the world today, can we confidently say he was wrong?
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Environmental techno-utopias: building nature better
Conservation is the name of the game in most ecological thinking - but in the eyes of some environmental philosophers, conservation is a backward-looking concept. What if, instead of looking to conserve nature, we tried to recreate and improve it via biotechnology? This year's Alan Saunders Lecture explores such futuristic interventions as reviving extinct species, turning carnivores into herbivores and genetically engineering less resource-intensive humans.
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Slopaganda
Are you troubled by the way that social media has enabled the spread of propaganda? Well, get ready for slopaganda, which is propaganda that's AI-powered and unprecedented in terms of speed, scale, audience reach and persuasiveness. "AI slop" is the term used to identify unwanted AI content - the algorithm-driven equivalent of spam email. Slopaganda is turning out to be just as annoying as spam, but far more dangerous.
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
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