Social Science Space

David Canter considers some implications of ChatGPT and what it tells us about real intelligence, general, artificial or otherwise.

David Canter considers the strange phenomena of Russians believing Putin’s propaganda.

David Canter considers the sorts of psychological processes that may be shaping Vladimir Putin’s actions.

David Canter follows his concern that psychologists are losing contact with people by considering how computers are presented as replacements for human ‘intelligence’. This ignores the importance of in situ person to person contact, which has been shown by the COVID pandemic to be so crucial for people.

David Canter discusses the alienation between people that is being generated by a combination of fears of interpersonal contact and the power of the internet. Is a new world emerging in which isolated avatars replace social interaction?

My absence from these pages has been a produce of many forces. Paradoxically, pandemic-related lockdown has made access through the […]

David Canter considers how it is that people judge vaccination related risks so bizarrely.

David Canter considers how disasters and tragedies can bring out the best in what it means to be human, and sometimes the worst.

David Canter considers the tragic implications of people not understanding what they are told by politicians and experts.

David Canter considers what the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington tells us about the power inherent in a crowd.

David Canter considers why the social sciences failed to influence behavior in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. The virologists had been preparing for a new virus for some years, so were already ahead of the game when they had to start creating a new vaccine. What preparations had social psychologists, sociologists or anthropologists for the inevitable emergence of a new pandemic?

David Canter, a psychologist observing from the United Kingdom, struggles to explain how Trump got 70 million votes in the United states