Tag: human nature

MIMIC, BULLSHITTER AND MACHINE

December 15, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on ChatGPT and the possibilities and limitations of AI, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 11 December 2022, under the headline “ChatGPT can tell jokes, even write articles. But only humans can detect its fluent bullshit”. As the capabilities of natural language processing technology continue to advance, there is a growing hype around the potential of chatbots and conversational AI systems. One such system, ChatGPT, claims to be able to engage in natural, human-like conversation and even […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, chatgpt, consciousness, human nature, literalness, meaning

CYNICISM, TRUST AND A BROKEN PUBLIC SPHERE

December 29, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the need to rebuild the public sphere, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on TS Eliot’s “Four Quartets”.) It was published on 20 December 2020, under the headline “We want to trust in each other. But it’d be easier if we weren’t so isolated”. Volunteers from Sikh communities – some from as far away as Coventry – provide food for stranded lorry drivers in Kent. Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, apologises for breaching Covid rules after a […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: call-out culture, community, coronavirus pandemic, covid 19, cynicism, human nature, humankind, lockdown, nicola sturgeon, public sphere, rutger bregman, trust

VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

May 26, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Viktor Frankl’s existentialism,, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on deserving and undeserving migrants.) It was published on 24 May 2020, under the headline ‘What the lessons from Auschwitz teach us about the choices we make’. ‘To speak about the meaning and value of life may seem more necessary today than ever.’ It’s a quote that might have been plucked from any number of op-eds over the past couple of months. […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: auschwitz, choice, existentialism, holocaust, human agency, human nature, man's search for meaning, meaning, responsibility, social, vienna, viktor frankl, yes to everything

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN JUDGMENT

May 19, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the difference between human and artificial intelligence, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the return of football in Germany.) It was published on 17 May 2020, under the headline ‘For all its sophistication, AI isn’t fit to make life-or-death decisions’. Artificial intelligence is searching for the drugs to combat Covid-19. It enabled the pandemic to be tracked and information about it to be synthesised. It is diagnosing patients, triaging them, and identifying those in […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, brian cantwell smith, coronavirus, human nature, judgment, reckoning

HEROISM AND THE QUALITY OF BEING HUMAN

April 26, 2020 by Kenan Malik

When we think of heroes, we usually think of superhuman figures, fictional or mythologized, from Achilles to Churchill, from Boudica to Superman, from Joan of Arc to James Bond. They are heroes because they are able to accomplish that which mere mortals cannot. Over the past few weeks, we’ve discovered new kinds of heroes – nurses working with inadequate protection, care workers with exceptional dedication, bus drivers who continue to transport key workers. Few of them would want to be […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: helder camara, heroes, heroism, human nature

ON STORIES AND THEIR AMBIGUITIES

December 30, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Milton, Phillip Pullman and the ambiguities of stories, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on strikes in France.) It was published on 29 December 2019, under the headline ‘From Milton to Pullman, the quest for truth is riddled with ambiguity’. ‘A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Human • Tags: areopagitica, blake, christianity, his dark materials, human nature, john milton, paradise lost, philip pullman, religion, the fall

INHUMANITY AND REDEMPTION

December 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about deradicalisation and redemption in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the shooting dead of rape suspects in India.) It was published on 8 December 2019, under the headline ‘Redemption defines a civilised society. We must not forsake the idea’. Can terrorists be deradicalised? Do all offenders, even those who commit the most abhorrent of crimes, deserve a second chance? […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: deradicalisation, healthy identity intervention, human nature, islamism, jack merritt, jihadism, joseph mccann, london, london bridge attack, radicalisation, redemption, saskia jones, terrorism, usman khan

HOPE AND FEAR IN A WORLD OF UNCERTAINTY

July 16, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the meaning of hope, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 15 July 2018 under the headline ‘The Thai cave rescue was born of hope, an instinct that sustains and drives us’. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ So reads the inscription above the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno. There must have been times over the past two weeks when it might have seemed the inscription to the entrance to the Tham Luang […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: hope, human nature, seneca, thai cave rescue, tham luang caves, viktor frankl

ON MORALITY AND ITS HISTORY

August 10, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. What can the history of morality tell us about the nature of morality? And about ourselves as human beings? These are the questions at the heart of The Quest for a Moral Compass. And these are the questions I want to explore tonight. For some, the questions themselves might seem absurd. It is striking that there are thousands of books about the […]

Categories: History, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-imperialism, christianity, enlightenment, europe, french revolution, greek philosophy, haitian revolution, history of moral thought, human agency, human nature, imperialism, modernity, monotheism, morality, nietzsche, plato, radical enlightenment, thrasymachus, viktor frankl

SARTRE ON GIACOMETTI

July 16, 2017 by Kenan Malik

I remember when I saw my first Giacometti statue. It was in the Foundation Maeght, near St Paul de Vence, in Provence. The gallery was founded by two local art dealers, Marguerite and Aimé Maeght, who were friends with many of great figures of modernism. The Foundation Maeght houses one of the great collection of twentieth century art – Chagall, Braque, Bonnard, Miro, Leger, Kandinsky, Hepworth, Hartung, Soulages, Takes, Kelly, Lam… And outside stands the Giacometti courtyard, a gloriously rich collection of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: art, existentialism, giacometti, human nature, modernism, sartre, sculture

ON THE QUEST FOR A MORAL COMPASS

January 25, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the text of my talk at the Galle Literary Festival Last week. What can the history of morality tell us about the nature of morality? And about ourselves as human beings? These are the questions at the heart of what I want to explore today. For some, the questions themselves might seem absurd. There is a widespread perception of morality as occupying a sphere of its own. We imagine that morality can, and should, be understood in its […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-imperialism, chinese philosophy, christianity, enlightenment, ethics, europe, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, human agency, human nature, imperialism, modernity, monotheism, nietzsche, plato, radical enlightenment, thrasymachus, viktor frankl

FROM THE ARCHIVES: IGNATIEFF ON BERLIN

August 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old book reviews that I am publishing while I am away in South Africa, here is my review of Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin, originally published in the Independent on Sunday, 25 October 1998. Review of Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life Independent on Sunday, 25 October 1998 In the autumn of 1951 Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay in the Jewish Chronicle putting the case for Zionism. Until the founding of Israel, he observed, no Jew […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-semitism, human nature, isaiah berlin, israel, liberalism, michael ignatieff, palestine, pluarlism, ts eliot, zionism

ON SCIENCE, MORALITY AND BEING HUMAN

March 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Cambridge Science Festival last week on ‘The science of morality’. Others taking part were Ray Tallis, Pater Cave and Alasdair Coles. I have here mashed up my introductory and concluding comments. Every year, I give a lecture to theology students on why I am an atheist. It is essentially a primer on why we don’t need God to explain the universe or to ground morality. And in talking of morality, I take […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: atheism, human nature, humanism, morality, religion, sam harris

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ON CIVILIZATIONS

August 26, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Another review from the archives while I am away, the last hopefully before normal service resumes on Pandaemonium. This is a review of Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Civilizations, first published in the Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2000. ‘It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization.’ So wrote Victorian anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies. According to Morgan, savagery, barbarism […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Human • Tags: civilization, fernandez armesto, human nature, progress

HOW FAR DOES HUMANITY STRETCH?

July 4, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week I posted an essay by Greg Hollin on changing scientific conceptions of human nature and of the ‘social’, and of the way that autism has become ‘window to the soul’. As a coda here is a review I wrote in 2006 of Michael Blastland’s book Joe, about his autistic son. I am struck by how, having read Greg’s work, I might well ask different questions now of the book, and perhaps even look upon it differently. The […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: autism, human nature, morality