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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Videos from Big Think experts
Are you dating or have you ever dated a psychopath? There are actually clear signs, or "tells," to use a poker analogy, according to Kevin Dutton, the Oxford psychologist and author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success . Regular readers ...
"We are stepped out upon the world stage now, with the fate of human dignity in our hands," proclaims Daniel Day Lewis in his celebrated portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln . "Blood's been spilled to afford us this moment!" Day Lewis exclaims. "Now, now, now!" While ...
What's the Big Idea? In his new book, How To Create a Mind , Ray Kurzweil looks at the “pattern recognition” theory of the human mind, arguing that all higher-order thinking is based on a consistent pattern-recognition algorithm. "The neocortex is a metaphor machine," Kurzweil tells Big Think ...
As a psychologist, Madeline Levine has seen firsthand how children today are unraveling under pressure. In order to "succeed," children take stimulants to study or cheat regularly to maintain their grades. They also resort to unhealthy ways of coping with anxiety such as substance abuse or self ...
"We've done quite well for ourselves," wrote Neil deGrasse Tyson in a January 1, 2001 Op-Ed in The New York Times. Tyson was ringing in the New Year by sizing up the "relentless comparisons" between the fictional world of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , and "our measly earthbound life in ...
“Brutality in playing a game should awaken the heartiest and most plainly shown contempt for the player guilty of it," said President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, a year in which 18 young men died playing high school and college football. The reform-minded Roosevelt's criticism led to sweeping ...
What's the Big Idea? In protesting the Kansas State Board of Education's decision to allow intelligent design to be taught in public schools as an alternative to creationism, Bobby Henderson audaciously argued that "Flying Spaghetti Monsterism" ought to be given equal time in classrooms as well ...
What's the Big Idea? We live in an amazingly uncertain world. And uncertainty is especially problematic because it keeps you frozen still in a fast-paced world. Moreover, any assessment based on uncertainty involves a large amount of risk. Therefore, in an uncertain world, the value of certainty ...
If the magician, comedian and outspoken atheist Penn Jillette had one question for God, what would it be? "Just how hip are you?" Jillette asked in a recent Big Think interview, addressing God directly. He expanded on this question as such: What kind of super hip, surrealist, ultra ...
Following the masacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a task force led by Vice President Joe Biden has met with many stakeholder groups including gun control advocates, gun rights advocates, victims' families, Hollywood, and the gaming industry. The task force is expected to submit proposals on ...
It wasn't entirely clear whether Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were joking when they suggested they planned to wing it at tonight's Golden Globe Awards. After all, the two Saturday Night Live alums have the chops to pull it off. Of all the awards shows, the Golden Globes is perhaps the most ...
What's the Big Idea? Unlike other animals, human beings are deeply neurotic. We possess the knowledge that one day we are going to die. We struggle with the idea of our own mortality, and therefore have created a complex culture with an engenius array of diversions. One of those diversions ...
What's the Big Idea? "Christianity, if false, is of no importance," the lay theologian C.S. Lewis once said. And yet, if Christianity is true, Lewis continued, it is "of infinite importance." In other words, there is no middle ground. Christianity cannot be of moderate importance. Tim Keller ...
What's the Big Idea? We're often at a disadvantage when it comes to problem-solving because we think too fast, and our analytic brains shut off new ideas before they have even emerged. Improvisation, on the other hand, creates "a set of experiences that allow you to fine-tune and hone all of the ...
The killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut has shocked a nation that had become numb to violence. Is it even possible to make sense of such a horrendous crime? Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University has devised a 22-point "scale of evil" to try to do just that ...