travelled along the Silk Road, reaching the Crimea by 1346, Medieval doctors thought it was created by “air corrupted by humid weather, decaying unburied bodies, and fumes produced by poor sanitation.” The plague resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 per cent of Europe’s population. As people struggled to understand the causes of the plague, renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in its wake, leading to the widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, foreigners, beggars and lepers. 

At first blush, this may not come as a huge surprise. We know anecdotally, if not empirically, that traumatic events are, at their heart, crises of meaning that cause us to question assumptions about our lives and spiritual beliefs. Psychologists, of course, tell us that when our physical and psychological wellbeing are threatened, our minds – those self-organising, self-seeking systems, having evolved over millions of years to defend us – place winning ahead of just about anything else.

On dying

Philosophy begins with the death of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. But, as we know, he goes to his death with equanimity – without fear and without reproach. Philosophy can allow us to overcome the fear of death without requiring a belief in the afterlife and without requiring a belief in a religion – a sort of longing for immortality.

Are conspiracy theories just part of our evolutionary history?

Conspiracy theories and medical misinformation about the coronavirus started to spread through social media sites almost immediately after the outbreak was first reported. The reasons for this are complex and talk to the way our brains have evolved over the last two million years.

Australians are being urged to refuse vital testing and self-isolation despite threats of a second wave of COVID-19 cases in Australia and elsewhere around the world. These theories are by no means a recent phenomenon, but social media has allowed people all over the world to convene in causes wherein ideas of uncertain merit gain traction and spread through society like a microbe-borne disease spreading through a

The lost notebooks: Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan’s extraordinary story

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s story is one of the great romantic tales of mathematics. It is an account of triumph and tragedy, of a man of genius who prevailed against incredible adversity and whose life was cut short at the height

Quantum Darwinism: The emergence of the classical world from the quantum

In 1925 a letter landed on Einstein's desk that in his mind turned out to be manna from physics heaven. Here, finally, was an idea that described the atom with the tried and trusted principles of classical mechanics.

In madness

After months of bizarre behaviour, Alicia, his wife had Nash involuntarily hospitalized at McLean Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital outside of Boston in 1959. Less than two years after his release from McLean, Nash was hospitalized once again, this time at Trenton State Hospital, the former New Jersey Lunatic Asylum. When his colleagues heard where Nash was, many were outraged. "Who's going to figure out what is wrong with a genius there" asked one. "It is in the national interest," warned another, "that everything possible be done to protect Nash¹s exceptional mind." His mother, Virginia, visited Nash but could hardly bear to see her son in such a state.  Of course, they were right, but treating delusional disorders is extraordinarily difficult.

The brave new world

Imagine a single, shared, immersive, persistent, three-dimensional virtual space where you can experience life in ways otherwise impossible in the physical world. A world were fictional characters, not unlike Jake Sully from the 2022 film, Avatar: The Way of Water can mingle with you, or more accurately your avatar to in ways only constrained by the limits of your imagination. Jake Sully for instance, lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora.

human body. Today, the Moon and conspiracy theories go together like Neil Armstrong and nifty one-liners. About one in 10 young adults in America think the Jewish people caused the Holocaust.

Now also imagine a fully realized spatial internet where every element of every building in the physical world is fully digitized. A World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics. This may well be what the next iteration of the internet will look like. Web 3.0 is still evolving and being defined, and as such, there isn't a canonical, universally accepted definition.

Nearly 700 years on, as the Coronavirus pandemic causes death and disrupts billions of lives globally, Americans, more than any other people from advanced economies, say COVID has strengthened their personal religious faith. This is according to a Pew Research Center study published in January 2021. when the plague

must come with great responsibility to ensure that they are not only safe and respectful of people’s fundamental rights but also part of the solution to related ethical and legal problems. The impact of these issues is often only limited by the extent these technologies are allowed to penetrate and pervade our work and the privacy of our homes.

of his powers. Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village of South India, is said to have spent so much time thinking about mathematics that he failed college, twice. His wife and family would feed him by hand so that he didn’t have to stop doing his sums, according to his wife Janakiammal.

mathematician, not just in this world, but  in his  world. Nash comments; “to some extent, sanity is a form of conformity” a distinction thus made between “consensual reality” and “private logic.” He continues: “    people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering.

Simulation hypothesis might reveal God’s hand.

Are religious beliefs borne out of video games and the Matrix

Far from the vestiges of science fiction, gameplay, and philosophy, the simulation hypothesis is not just a theory deeply rooted in Eastern and Western philosophies and religious traditions, it might bridge the ever-widening gap between religion and science and perhaps explain the biggest mystery of all - what is reality? Ever since Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford wrote a seminal paper about the simulation argument in 2003, philosophers, physicists, technologists and even comedians have

been grappling with the idea of our reality being asimulacrum. The idea that what we perceive as physical reality is actually a computer-generated simulation  not unlike a super sophisticated video game, and is a logical consequence to the exponential nature of technological advancement.

On the spectrum of opinions

Abstract

The fact that behavioural symptoms of Autism often appear early, with many children showing symptoms by 12 months to 18 months of age or earlier, has unfortunately been reason for some to promulgate an erroneous viewpoint that a link exists between childhood vaccines and Autism.

So it was significant that Danish researchers recently confirmed that there is no link between the childhood vaccine Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) and the related risk of developing an Autism Spectrum Disorder (Autism).

On the lack of Psychiatry Services for people with Intellectual Disability

New South Wales was the first state to sign up for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS.) It may surprise some that about 18,000 people in New South Wales are receiving support for the first time and this number is growing year on year. Significant, but not all the problems facing the NDIS are associated with the sheer number of new entrants alone. A large proportion of these people also require specialist Mental Health services.

When the NDIS trial was launched in the NSW Hunter region in 2013 one of the biggest revelation was in fact just how many people with mild learning difficulties (who were not eligible for disability funding previously) also required urgent Mental Health assessment and support.

But religion is, indeed, the basis of an afterlife. It makes death at once an anxious dramatic event and, at the same time, a more bearable process. The sacred texts in Christianity, Judaism and Islam talk of an afterlife.

In Nash, in a man suffering extended periods of paranoid schizophrenia; psychoeducation, psychotherapy, critical in treatment was not to be provided effectively. How could he commit to forging a trusting relationship when by in large he was subjected to a less than controversial aggressive insulin coma therapy which by 1961 had been phased out in all but a few hospitals.

Nash’s psychotic process allowed a clinical refuge permitting his high-flown goals - to be the world’s greatest

If the fidelity of virtual and augmented reality platforms continue to improve, it's possible that we will soon be unable to distinguish between 1the physical and virtual reality as evinced in the Sci-Fi film, The Matrix.

The Metaverse is an idea rooted deeply in a dystopian novel

It is no secret that social media companies such as Facebook are finally facing the greatest degree of scrutiny, criticism and backlash from almost every stakeholder that deals with them. In this year alone, Facebook was forced to defend criticism over rampant anti-vaccine misinformation, and the fall-out of a whistle-blower's testimony to the US Senate about the company's harmful actions. And, it wasn’t that long ago when Facebook had to apologise for failing to protect the personal data of millions of users from being accessed by data mining company Cambridge Analytica. But during this time, and indeed, for the longest time, debate has largely been concerned with an assertoric but important question of whether social media companies are considered

technology companies. Whether they should accept their role as publishers and be held to the same journalistic standards. And, we have largely come to accept the inevitability of privacy infractions as a price paid for having and maintaining an online presence. Of course there is the ever present drive to garner personal affirmation and prize – the number of followers and the number of likes, a holy grail invented not by technologists but psychologists who understand the frailty of the human condition, and how to tap into the brain’s reward and pleasure centres.

Infinity, the existence of something beyond

We humans meet the idea of infinity very early. As children we begin to realise that we can go on counting until we can no longer. The idea, at once attracts us, and it scares us. At times it’s an object of desire but more often a subject of conjectural study. It is the testimony that intellect, even starting from experience can overcome limits and boundaries - yet it’s easier to list what infinity is not lest a real definition because it can be far more elusive. The concept of infinity is significant in the

A genealogy of panic disorder in the 20th century

When we look back at the Cold War culture, we find a US government alarmed at the fact US citizens were not sufficiently fearful of a perceived Soviet attack. A panicked population was vital in the government’s pursuit of nuclear supremacy. It was after all enacting two diametrically opposed objectives. It was seeking to quadruple its defence spending in 1952 and it wanted to be portrayed as a nation taking the high moral ground in an ever-escalating arms race. Consequently, vast sectors of the American population were actively

elusive. The concept of infinity is significant in the formation of the Western modern vision of the world, in contemporary philosophy, and its re-conceptualization in contemporary physics, mathematics and philosophy of science. Philosophical approaches to infinity link with the discourse of ontology and epistemology; and routinely invoke “The Infinite God.”

encouraged to be more fearful of the Soviets. Jackie Orr, an Associate Professor of sociology at Syracuse University uses the expression “the militarisation of inner space” to describe the government’s war-like tactics with its own people. Here we see a government trying to take the space of what we would call the self, the psychological self, and turn that into a kind of a theatre of war. A vigilant attempt to enlist the psychological life of citizens as a military asset.

When faith and reality collide in pandemics