The Minefield

Does a ‘digital duty of care’ threaten free speech?

Evidence has been mounting for more than a decade that social media tears away at the fabric of democratic life by eroding the conditions of deliberation, shared understa

Is loyalty a virtue?

It is surely one of the more perverse achievements of modern marketing to have taken words that have a certain moral valence — which is to say, words that connote intimac

Live from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Does longevity threaten the future?

It is suitably ironic that one of the most poignant, and pertinent, moments in Homer’s The Odyssey was airbrushed out of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation. The f

What response does Jason Arday’s life, and death, morally demand?

It is hard to imagine a series of events more tragic, more unseemly, more emblematic of the performativity and polarisation that dominate our time, than the premature ris

Is opposition to data centres good news for democracy?

At a time of profound polarisation, when the fracturing of media ecosystems has been so complete that any agreement on threats to our common life seems impossible, an iss

Should fat from cadavers be used for cosmetic procedures?

The widespread availability of GLP-1 based drugs has been lauded as a “revolution in weight loss” and as inaugurating the “end of obesity”. As we’ve discussed previously,

How to protect democratic politics from the malign influence of money?

Ever since Aristotle, it has been recognised that money poses a particular threat to the integrity of political office. Ever the realist, Aristotle knew that those who se

What happens to our moral lives when we stop reading books?

According to every available metric, the number of people who read books across almost every demographic in countries like Australia and the United States has fallen prec

Do prediction markets enhance our understanding of the world or corrupt it?

Even for those who don’t gamble, the exponential growth of online sports betting since 2018 has made it impossible to avoid. Not only have odds and ads been seamlessly in

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ — high fashion or vision of hell?

It’s no mystery why David Frankel’s 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada was a hit. The movie had all the ingredients of a certain kind of success. Take a bestselling novel (b

Copyright theft is AI’s original sin — are we doomed to repeat it?

Essential to the profitability and widespread adoption of modern technologies is the need to conceal their costs — the human labour, the unjust or exploitative working co

Last Words: ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ — Martin Luther King, Jr in Memphis

In 1967, after reaching the heights of social and political influence in 1963, after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and having been instrumental in the pass

Why the anxieties over multiculturalism? What’s the appeal of a monocultural society?

If One Nation leader Pauline Hanson managed to reignite a public debate with her assertion that Australia is “a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural” during h

One Nation is on the rise — but do we know what it means?

Over the last twelve months, there have been two conspicuous trends in federal politics. One is the precipitous decline in electoral support for the Liberal Party, which

The ethics of ‘longtermism’ — what are our obligations to the future?

One of the criticisms often directed at democratic politics is that it is irresponsibly, even dangerously, short-term in its orientation. The wellbeing of future generati

Last Words: The ‘Farewell Sermon’ of the Prophet Muhammad

It could be said that human beings reveal who they most truly are as they approach the end. For the end of one’s life is not simply its terminus ad quem; it is also its t

The Problem of Nationalism, with David Moscrop — Live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival

It’s common these days to refer to “the return of nationalism”. But that assumes that nationalism receded for a time, like the tide, and here the world is, now, getting i

What is the moral of Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’?

There are four stories that could justifiably be described as foundational to Western culture: the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden; Prometheus’s gift of fire to h

Does the budget have a coherent underlying philosophy?

The federal budget is, in many respects, the high point of Australia's political calendar. This federal budget is no exception. The public had been primed for weeks to ex

Are ‘reaction videos’ dulling our ability to be genuinely responsive?

One of the by-products of digital technology’s pervasiveness in our lives is its seeming irresistibility. However much we try to remain conscientious objectors, to resist