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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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Transcript

Jonathan Haidt: My advice, my counsel, is that people learn some moral psychology. We’re discovering a lot these days. Learn about the basic software of your mind, of your social brain. And if you do that, you should develop some moral humility.

You will realize that despite our constant feeling that we are right, and there’s pure evil out there, and there are stupid people and ignorant people and enemies who are making things terrible, you’ll discover the truth is a lot more complicated.

And once you do that, I think you’ll be a least more open to talking to people on the other side. And that’s the crucial first step. Expose yourself to people, not just to ideas on the other side, but actually to people. We have an enormous capacity to like people when we meet them face to face. Once we like people, we can take their ideas seriously. To the extent that we only hear about people through their ideas, it’s just too easy to hate and to dismiss them.

Recorded on: May 9, 2008