We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
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
In a previous post, I indicated what I consider the “dangerous” realisation that there is no top-down meaning; that our actions aren’t found to be important by anyone (or One) other than ourselves. This idea destroyed and continues to destroy many ideas I embraced (and that I encounter). Based on ...
When we think of tyrants or dictators, I think many of us conjure up either Orwellian or, rather, Stalinist-type regimes; but as these are steadily disappearing from the world, we must watch for the other type of tyranny: the many-eyed beast that is growing in our backyard, feeding on our placidity ...
An idea which devastated many of my previous assumptions has implications for important views many of us hold. It also indicates the underlying basis of this blog itself. Investigating what is right or wrong often leads one into territory demarcated as a No-Man’s Land, to places forbidden, to ...
As has been pointed out by John Stuart Mill, there is little reason to intervene in the free actions of adults, even and only if those actions harm themselves. If this is true, then what can be said about the moral justification for the many blogs, websites, people and books that detail and debunk ...
The idea of being a parent should be thought through more carefully. When we assess the idea, it is clear that, given the current conditions of the world, there is no reason to create more children. I proposed this argument in 2010 and received vitriolic replies, which brought more heat than ...
The consistency of individual autonomy, as Mill outlined, indicates that just as we can live as we wish (with certain constraints), we ought to be able to die as we wish, too. Today is human rights day in South Africa. This piece seems to me appropriate, given that I think the right to die ...
John Stuart Mill would say, in most cases, we should allow people to harm themselves – assuming they are rational adults. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill writes: “the object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle." That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are ...
This is an open letter in response to a religious group, who have argued to remove a piece of entertainment based on their moral values, in a secular society. The South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference claims they have good reasons why you and I should not view an ad that apparently mocks ...
John Stuart Mill's argument against silencing dissent highlights important reasons we should never silence any view or idea, because of mere outrage or offence. Yesterday, I discussed the importance of John Stuart Mill and his idea of thinking for oneself. The primary idea lies in Mill’s ...
The first post in a series looking at John Stuart Mill and the defence of individual liberty. The great English philosopher and thinker John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) regarded himself as “unremarkable”. In his Autobiography (1873), he considered his early education to be something that “could ...
Threats and outrage can no more shut up ideas than a cage made of smoke. It’s time we stop using violent tactics, as ways to voice our disagreements. In case you are unaware, I’ve been focusing a lot on an article by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, called ‘After-birth abortion’. You can ...
There’s been some interesting responses to my post on our obligation to eat headless, legless chickens (aside from the vague namecalling and useless expressions of outrage and disgust. Something is wrong if my proposal for the animal not to suffer is what disgusts you more than the current industry ...
Francesca Minerva has been receiving death threats. Did she harm anyone? Did she stab, mutilate, or otherwise physically incite people to violence? No: instead she fulfilled her duty as a medical ethicist, in testing our convictions concerning our treatment of what I’ll call pre-person people (PPP ...
In defence of Alberto Giubilini, Francesca Minerva and the Journal of Medical Ethics, as per the recent publication about killing newborn infants. This essentially is an open letter of solidarity with Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, authors of a new article in the Journal of Medical ...
A recent proposal to remove the heads and legs of chickens may be the best thing we can do for them. If we can reduce our farmed animals to vegetables, we would have made great strides in reducing suffering. That is, if we can remove the functions of the brain that cause animals to suffer during ...