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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
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Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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A Critical Look at the Ideas We Fear Most
The Philosopher’s Beard (hereafter, PB) certainly thinks we should consider it: "Many people would automatically say that such punishments are inhumane. But the very reason for this reaction - that such punishments are extremely unpleasant to contemplate - is exactly their advantage over ...
NOTE: I recommend you click "View Entire Story", so the endnotes work. When prostitution cases are brought before a judge in Britain, a particular kind of “John” (or customer) will almost always have the case tossed out of court: that is, if the customer is a person with a disability. So ...
I want to issue an apology and a goodbye to many frequent commenters, who I consider my intellectual mentors. Comments are now turned off on the blog. Many will see this as a cowardly move, as censorship, and so on. It is precisely these kinds of irrational reactions that I am no longer tolerating ...
I’m trying to understand this. Someone called Kristen Stewart, who is a Hollywood actress, issued an apology for having a (brief?) affair: “I'm deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I've caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected. This momentary indiscretion has ...
Corey Milne of WhatCulture.com doesn’t think ‘feminism’ belongs in video games – alongside sex, BDSM, infanticide and so on. As a man, whenever someone mentions feminism I reply with a bemused “oh that thing from the sixties?” – then I get back to wrestling bears and bench pressing an ...
When discussing moral matters, there are often misconceptions many of us espouse. To gain greater understanding on ethical topics, of your own and your opponents’ views, it’s important to correct several common “moral” misconceptions. Whether these are “directly” moral or related to just clear ...
I wrote a short post on why freedom of expression must and should always trump dignity. Ideas can remain, locked in place as true or good, even if they are actually terrible ones, by virtue of being unchallenged, whether through ignorance or censoring alternative ideas. We do not want to ...
A gunman opened fire during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Most of us, after hearing about this, are probably feeling sickened and disturbed. No doubt preachers of all stripes will come crawling out the woodwork to align their loving god with the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, or thank Him ...
Note: Before you comment to say “This is not going to change the mind of someone who would issue a death threat”, please don’t. That’s not my point. Ask yourself this: Is there anything someone could write about a film or video game that could possibly warrant threats of violence? If you ...
The Guardian reports that some English schools are opting out of HPV vaccination programmes because their pupils, say the schools, “follow strict Christian principles” and “do not practise sex outside marriage”. As Bernard Lo wrote in the BMJ about the HPV vaccine: “The vaccine prevents cancer ...
It’s France, 1785. An Englishman offers a surgeon money to perform a pretty standard operation: leg amputation. However, for the surgeon, there is no good medical reason to do so, since the man and his leg appear healthy. That the money and leg belong to the same person is irrelevant. Money changes ...
Intro This post may be mostly about what's happening in gaming culture, but it concerns online conduct in general. Some background: online video blogger, Anita Sarkeesian, started a campaign to fund a series looking at women in gaming. Alyssa Rosenberg from ThinkProgress describes what happened ...
This post is an introductory framework for moral infanticide. Before we can even discuss cases of ending an infant’s life for non-medical reasons, we must understand why infants’ lives can be deliberately ended at all (for medical ones). Deliberately killing a human is difficult to consider ...
Over the last decade, Europe has a seen a rise in the use of so-called ‘Baby Boxes’. As The Telegraph reports: “Often found in the walls of hospitals the boxes offer a safe place where parents can place an unwanted child, and have becoming increasingly popular in European countries such as the ...
Our species’ history appears to be aligned to the length of our weapons: how far, how much, how long can we keep attacking, killing, damaging? Men with bullets became men and women with giant machinery which became robots with bombs. But what began with fists and stones has now evolved into ...