So the other day, I was having a somewhat politically incorrect conversation with my fiancé. I won’t go into the details. At one point, I slightly rebuked her by saying, “Honey, you know, Mark Zuckerburg could be listening to us as we speak!”

She laughed.

Alexa laughed.

Siri laughed.

Yeah, we’ve grown quite comfortable with Big Brother in our household. He’s literally the elephant in the room.

In line with that, I wanted to talk today a little bit about what’s been called Surveillance Capitalism.

The elephant in the room

Lately, I’ve been commenting a lot on artificial intelligence. And through one particularly insightful book…

Philosophy Of Mind

If you follow my content, you know I’m fascinated with Philosophy of Mind. In this blog, I want to just briefly summarize a thought experiment that was imagined by a renowned philosopher, John Searle. It’s likely one of the first items you will read about in this subcategory of philosophy.

It was crafted to be an answer to a group of people known as functionalists who hold that if something exhibits the same behaviours or functions of a conscious organism, for all intents and purposes, that thing can be called conscious. The argument has also been cited as a useful…

So lately I’ve focused a number of my blogs on the topic of artificial intelligence. This one will specifically build on a recent work which defined what transhumanism is. I will be defining that word shortly in case it’s unfamiliar to those of you reading.

Even though it appears to be driving – or at least underpinning much of the advances in AI research today – the goal of transhumanism is not a novel one. Its appearance as something new is so because it takes the form of our most recent fascination, AI.

Transhumanism is a very old, almost inherent…

I wanted to answer the question posed in the title of this article. Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide an elaborate response today. Besides, I’ve released dozens of blogs on artificial intelligence lately; and I would say most, if not all, raise the query indirectly. So it’s not like I haven’t addressed this in a big way already.

What I wanted to do in this one, though, is opine as to whether AI could ever be programmed with or develop a moral sense. …

We need to challenge the stigma that has long attended addiction as a mental health condition. There’s a good reason developed societies, like Canada, are moving away from punitive conservative methods of tackling drug abuse and homelessness!

Lately, I’ve been developing a series of articles exploring the topic of mental illness. And one matter that is frequently raised in the context of homelessness or addiction is Safe Injection Sites. It’s an extremely serious and controversial matter. I’m completely for the use of them. But there are many who are vociferously against it.

By clicking on this blog, I presume you…

The traditional modes of treatment for sufferers of mental illness need a serious rethink.

In this article, I want to talk about exciting new programs that are being used to officially treat all kinds of psychological conditions. One is called cognitive remediation (or CR), and the other is CAT, cognitive adaptation training. These are pretty fascinating developments!

If you’ve been following my content lately, you know that I’ve been discussing mental illness in a big way. Most of these explorations are framed around a book I read that was just published on May 4th entitled We Can Do Better: Urgent…

Shock therapy has been amazing for many sufferers of clinical depression, but it’s terribly invasive and causes memory disturbance.

In the last mental illness piece I wrote, I spoke about a new science that is going to revolutionize the medical industry, especially in mental healthcare. It’s called Pharmacogenetics, and it is especially effective for matching the right drug to the right patient. I’m most excited how it will stand to help those whose depression is treatment resistant. …

Is this the intended application for such stimulants? What concerns are raised should this become more common? Could it lead to unexpected inequities?

Today, I wanted to talk about the prescription, or some would argue, the overprescription of attention-defecit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) pharmacueticals like Adderall, Ritalin and Modafinil. It’s no secret that many folks use these drugs to simply improve their focus, similar to quaffing coffee or Red Bull. Colour me a hypocrite; I come to you a jittering, fiendishly over-caffeinated inebriate.

There is no denying these pills can be tremendous for those who struggle with ADHD. But I wanted…