Nathan Cofnas is a research fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His research is supported by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a college research associate at Emmanuel College. Working at the intersection of science and philosophy, he has published several papers in leading peer-reviewed journals. He also writes popular articles and posts on Substack. In January, Cofnas published a post called “Why We Need to Talk about the Right’s Stupidit

Text-to-video entry: “Please generate a high-octane, action film with the following storyline: "A father receives a phone call from an unknown number informing him that his estranged daughter has been kidnapped. If the father wishes to see his daughter alive, he must break into the safety deposit box of the five-star Seoul hotel where he works as a midnight janitor. He has two hours to get the contents of the security box to the designated drop point. In addition to the ticking cl

The crushing defeat of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s party in last week’s nationwide parliamentary election casts a dark cloud over the fate of his administration’s various reform plans as well as its ability to manage national affairs efficiently. His administration will face difficulty implementing many of its announced policies and creating new ones. It is the first time under the current Constitution that a sitting president’s party has failed to win the majority in parli

Recent discussions about the implications of artificial intelligence for employment have veered between the poles of apocalypse and utopia. Under the apocalyptic scenario, AI will displace a large share of all jobs, vastly exacerbating inequality as a small capital-owning class acquires productive surpluses previously shared with human laborers. The utopian scenario, curiously, is the same, except that the very rich will be forced to share their winnings with everyone else through a universal ba

The academic seminar is busy reinventing itself in 21st century style. A space of learning that the humanities have relied on for centuries, it’s more powerful than ever. The seminars getting the high-profile attention are the ones that push the boundaries when it comes to “academic” subject matter. Taylor Swift is the celebrity seminar topic of the moment. But seminars for credit on everything from the music of The Beatles to hip-hop studies are the new normal in higher educat

If the British computer scientist Alan Turing’s work on “thinking machines” was the prequel to what we now call artificial intelligence, the late psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling “Thinking, Fast and Slow” might be the sequel, given its insights into how we ourselves think. Understanding “us” will be crucial for regulating “them.” That effort has rapidly moved to the top of policymakers’ agenda. On March 21, the UN unanim

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., scion of one of America’s most storied political families, is running for president of the United States. But unlike his late uncles -- President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy (who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1980) -- or his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (who was assassinated during his own presidential run), RFK Jr. is not campaigning as a Democrat. Instead, he is running as the head of a newly formed third party, We the People. Thus unfolds th

As the well-known saying goes, “Life is a journey.” Indeed, we are all lifelong travelers in one way or another. When we travel, we may have a pleasant trip, where we meet new people and enjoy exciting adventures. We might also have a perilous journey of obstacles and ordeals. During our voyage, we might encounter a perfect storm or a dangerous reef that threatens to capsize us. Other times, we become lost and wander, or we may stumble down the wrong path. The 2021 American science f

K-pop group BTS debuted in June 2013, and the rest is history. But did you ever wonder about the other boy groups that debuted that year? Maybe it’s because I’m a sociologist, but I believe we can learn more about social phenomena when we talk to the average rather than exceptional person, or idol in this case. There are thousands of former idols or trainees that didn’t “make it big.” Some have even managed to stay in the K-pop music industry. For people who becam

The Kennedy era guru on capitalism, John Kenneth Galbraith, presciently proclaimed in the “New Industrial State” (1967) that “the imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society." The cacophony of ideology, including religious fervor, is what is killing people in Ukraine, Gaza and other warring states. In the meantime, investors worldwide are chasing tech stocks like Nvidia while the rest of the wor