O’Leary, Denyse
27 Articles at Lifeissues.net

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Articles

Don't expect a quick end to the war on free speech

The momentum of the campaign will be hard to stop.

Date posted: 2017-05-23

The war on freedom is rotting our intellectual life

How can you think if you don't believe in Truth?

Date posted: 2017-05-07

The war on intellectual freedom

One of two things will happen if universities continue to make themselves enemies of intellectual freedom and free speech. Either our intellectual life will rot or it will find a home other than the university. In the age of the internet, many are now exploring alternatives.

Date posted: 2017-05-03

Why the mainstream media was doomed to call the US election wrong

The traditional gatekeeper are rapidly losing viewers, advertisers, and staff and fading into irrelevance

Date posted: 2016-11-27

What's wrong with social science today?

Recently, Japanese universities started moving away from liberal arts and social sciences , sending global "shivers down academic spines." The official reason given was a need to focus on disciplines more needed by society.

Date posted: 2016-08-28

Is dementia a fate worse than death?

When Canada effectually legalized euthanasia, I was dismayed. Dementia victims, certain to be targets, can be got to "consent" without any fixed or firm idea what they are doing. With the ageing of the world's population dementia has become the new leprosy.

Date posted: 2015-10-14

Civilized world cannot recover its will?

The point of all these stories is that Christian majority countries don't care and don't do anything. Few vote based on anything that happens to Christians.

Date posted: 2015-04-22

Should we restrict children's Internet use?

Recently, I have been writing about how living online, as increasing numbers of people are choosing to do, promotes a depersonalized attitude to sexuality, which contributes in turn to the mainstreaming of pornography. (It will be much more difficult to enforce laws against child porn if "porn moments" become an accepted part of childhood.)

Date posted: 2015-02-27

How internet dating helps to mainstream porn

The explosion of Internet dating affects teens and young adults principally by making the casual sharing of intimacies with strangers seem normal. Aldous Huxley foresaw this development (1932), though he envisioned it happening in half a millennium or so. One outcome is the mainstreaming of porn.

Date posted: 2015-02-27

Will automation also steal jobs that require intelligence? Part I

It is a serious question, and there aren't easy answers. One problem is that whether technology and robots will eliminate jobs tends to get conflated with political accusations like "you just want to keep wages down" and "you just hate immigrants."

Date posted: 2015-02-02

At least one reason why transhumanism will not translate into reality

Transhumanism: a new way of thinking that challenges the premiss that the human condition is and will remain essentially unalterable. Clearing away that mental block allows one to see a dazzling landscape of radical possibilities, ranging from unlimited bliss to the extinction of intelligent life

Date posted: 2014-12-11

People seem to be turning against the i[can't]Carebots - robot caregivers for the elderly

It's not a shortage of caregivers, it's a shortage of caring.

Date posted: 2014-08-15

Underage sexting is common but risks child porn law charges

Young people should learn early on that it is best not to send any electronic communication that would embarrass them if it got rebroadcast. Most e-mails won't; for example, if the Car Wash for United Way planning documents go to some people they weren't intended for by mistake, they will simply sound boring or puzzling, and be ignored or delete

Date posted: 2014-07-09

Internet can foster crime or addiction, but weigh remedies carefully

Recently, I mentioned a conflict between people who want the government to do something about cyberbullying that can lead to suicide and people who worry about the fact that it would give both private companies and governments access to vast amounts of personal user information. It's one of those dilemmas where the fact that everyone has a reasonable concern does not automatically suggest a solution.

Date posted: 2014-06-09

The real online danger for kids turns out to be wasting time

Video games are not taking over your kid's brain. What's happening is more conventional: He is daydreaming instead of learning.

Date posted: 2014-06-07

Robotic caregivers are a bad idea (but not just for the obvious reasons)

Earlier this week, we looked at technological advances that cause anxiety for many. One was robot caregivers. By definition, caregiving isn't something we associate with robots; the whole point of robots is that they don't care. That's why we can use them to detonate bombs.

Date posted: 2014-05-06

Does science have answers to absolutely everything?

Science provides only one approach to the human condition -- and not always the most pertinent one.

Date posted: 2014-02-23

Decline in belief in God masks rise in superstition

If people stop believing in God, they still have to believe in something.

Date posted: 2014-01-11

An end to the madness?

Causes of mental illness. The manual attempts to apply science to psychiatry, but it is not clear how well that works. Only three percent of listed disorders have any recognized biological cause.

Date posted: 2013-11-25

The fallacy of a happy, productive and ageing work force

Glib answers will not conjure away the hard, cold fact that workers everywhere are getting older and older.

Date posted: 2013-05-26

Brain explosion: big neuroscience teams up with Obama

The US President is backing a brain activity map project that would cost billions and may be fatally flawed.

Date posted: 2013-03-10

Unlearning Liberty

American universities are discouraging students from expressing controversial views.

Date posted: 2012-12-20

Why America might pull through the demographic collapse

It is mainly religious people who raise children, and more women in America are religious.

Date posted: 2011-11-15

Why Islam is in as much trouble as the West

Many countries in the Muslim world, including Iran, are also in demographic freefall.

Date posted: 2011-11-01

Eugenics and the Firewall

Is science always a good thing? Anti-science always a bad one? A walk into a century ago might shed some light.

Date posted: 2011-10-15

Does death end all?

It is difficult to argue with the world's best-recognized cosmological scientist, Stephen Hawking, a man who has lived with death for 49 years, when he tells The Guardian: "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." It's too personal with him. But we might ask why do other intelligent people believe the opposite -- that physical death does not end all?

Date posted: 2011-06-10

Morality for neurons

Can you build a system of moral behaviour on complete materialism? A famous neuroscientist gives it the old college try.

Date posted: 2011-04-03