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Current Issue

No. 73

Summer 2023

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

This time, believe the hype.

B.S. Jobs and the Coming Crisis of Meaning

AI will destroy a lot of jobs that are already pointless. Is that really worth celebrating?

Brian J. A. Boyd

Sam Altman Doesn’t Want To Be Your AI King

...but he might be anyway.

Louise Liebeskind

They’re Here…

The AI moment has arrived.

Symposium

Ari Schulman • Brian J. A. Boyd • Adam Elkus • Robert Mariani • Clayton O’Dell • Tess Doezema • Nina Frahm • Daniel Walden • Louise Liebeskind

An America of Secrets

Democracy dies in darkness.

Take No for an Answer on Genetic Engineering

Good news: The agonizing moral quandary of “designer babies” has been resolved. But will scientists accept democracy’s verdict?

The Editors of The New Atlantis

Culture War as Imitation Game

The timeliness of René Girard’s case against idolizing politics

How Congress Was Saved

A report from the year 2039 on how the spirit of efficiency reformed a once-maligned institution

A Lover of Good Government and Philip Wallach

The Masking Debate We Didn’t Have

The Covid establishment’s mistake was to treat mask policies as purely scientific. Now its critics are making the same mistake.

M. Anthony Mills

Resistance in the Arts

Why Substack won't save us

Spring 2023

Rational Magic

Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo

Tara Isabella Burton

What Was the Fact?

Here lies a beloved friend of social harmony (ca. 1500–2000). It was nice while it lasted.

Out of the Wild

Why we can’t rid nature of us

What Does “Scientific Progress” Mean, Anyway?

Three ways we think about science flourishing — or getting stuck

M. Anthony Mills

The Demise of the Garage Inventor

How Hollywood forgot the tinkering dad

Selling the Drama

A eulogy for “humdog,” the poster who led a tech backlash in the days of dial-up

Why Were They Dropped?

The revisionist historians who cast doubt on why Truman made his fateful decision

Nature, Toothless and Declawed

Martha Nussbaum’s dubious case for animals as liberal subjects

Fusion and the Holy Grail

Choosing poorly on the miracle technology

Winter 2023

No Other Options

Newly revealed documents depict a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a “beautiful” death.

Alexander Raikin

How to Make Friends

Fighting the system may take a while. Why not go to a bar?

Arcs of Life

A just society does not kill suffering people, it shares their burden.

Phoneless, Carless, Friendless

An essay trio by Clare Coffey on living under lonelytech when you can’t beat the system

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Special Series: “Reality: A Post-Mortem”

How Stewart Made Tucker

A world of authentic, post-spin journalism: The dream Jon Stewart spent a decade making real is now America’s waking nightmare. What did he get so wrong?

Reality Is Just a Game Now

Scoring points, hunting for clues, building plotlines, revealing the Grand Narrative... Why are people acting like the national fracture is fun?

What Was the Fact?

Here lies a beloved friend of social harmony (ca. 1500–2000). It was nice while it lasted.

An America of Secrets

Democracy dies in darkness.

Reality Is Just a Game Now

Scoring points, hunting for clues, building plotlines, revealing the Grand Narrative... Why are people acting like the national fracture is fun?

What Was the Fact?

Here lies a beloved friend of social harmony (ca. 1500–2000). It was nice while it lasted.

An America of Secrets

Democracy dies in darkness.

Our aim is a culture in which science and technology work for, not on, human beings.

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Featured Collections

Special Series

Recovering the Organism

Symposium | Winter 2022

Debating the “Public Interest” Online

Responses to “How to Fix Social Media” by Nicholas Carr

From the Archives

After Climate Despair

The hope for a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. What comes next?

Winter/Spring 2013

Do Elephants Have Souls?

On the evidence for non-human intelligence, awareness, and emotion

Shop Class as Soulcraft

The case for the manual trades

Matthew B. Crawford

Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls

Biotechnology and the pursuit of perfection

The Human Explorer

Why sending robots is not enough

How Can I Possibly Be Free?

Why the neuroscientific case against free will is wrong