Mind Hacks

Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist. Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge […]

Below is an excerpt from psychologist John Kihlstrom’s ¬≠2005 review article on dissociative disorders where he talks about the sudden ‘epidemic’ of multiple personality disorder, now know as DID, in the 1960s and 70s. Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID is a diagnosis that describes where someone manifests various personalities, often of a diverse range of […]

The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover was an influential article by Lindsy Van Gelder that examined how a case of gender-bending identity faking from the early days of online chatrooms impacted on a virtual community. I’d read it many years ago when it was published in the book, Computerization and Controversy, but have just […]

The Royal College of Psychiatrists podcast has a fascinating interview with psychologist Daniel Freeman who discusses his recent study that used virtual reality to study paranoid thinking. Freeman has pioneered the use of VR in studying paranoia to try and understand how individual psychological differences contribute to suspiciousness and fear. Of course, it’s possible to […]

The most recent edition of ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone discussed the philosophy of suicide, looking at how our concepts of self-killing have changed throughout history and whether there is any such thing as a rational reason for ending our own lives. The philosopher Albert Camus famously stated that “there is but one truly […]