Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Musical Ways of Knowing
Our long-time blogger David Canter considers what he has learned while completing his PhD in music composition. He spent a lifetime as a social scientist, requiring every argument to be bolstered by some form of empirical evidence, or at least a supportive citation from the works of others. The contrast of developing an approach to composing music that can be regarded as ‘a contribution to knowledge’, has made him aware that there are many ways of knowing which scientists, especially social scientists and psychologists, ignore at their peril.
Do We Need the Police?
David Canter considers whether ‘all-purpose’ police forces a no longer fit for purpose.
The Trouble with Bootlaces: Treading on Artificial and General Intelligence
David Canter considers some implications of ChatGPT and what it tells us about real intelligence, general, artificial or otherwise.
When Ignorance is Reassuring
David Canter considers the strange phenomena of Russians believing Putin’s propaganda.
How Does Putin Think?
David Canter considers the sorts of psychological processes that may be shaping Vladimir Putin’s actions.
The Robot Will See You Now
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.
Are Other People Hell?
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?
If Music Be…
My absence from these pages has been a produce of many forces. Paradoxically, pandemic-related lockdown has made access through the internet to […]
