In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to share an article written by my former colleague Ross Robertson for EnlightenNext magazine called “A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21stCentury.” […]
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BIG THINKER Daniel Honan reminds us that Mayor Bloomberg is not in any obvious sense an ideologue. He’s just about using the power of government to curtail behavior that costs the […]
One need not read all 145 pages of the SOPA and PIPA bills to understand the debate in Washington DC. Big Think has provided a brief guide to the issue for your convenience.
The most basic definition of collective intelligence is to get group of people to do something collectively that seems intelligent. A profound definition is the creation a global brain.
This is a lengthy post but I want to do justice to Adam Lee, Big Think and the arguments. These are my initial thoughts. Fellow Big Think blogger and friend, […]
A new Pew poll, and the global perception captured in the chart below, leads Ali Wyne, a fellow Big Thinker, to inquire in an interesting post about the meaning of the idea, […]
Big thinker Will Willkinson summarizes and analyzes a summary of a study by Scott Eidelman and others that’s hurt a lot of conservative feelings. The big point seems to be that when […]
“You don’t arrest Voltaire.” That was French President Charles de Gaulle’s explanation for his pardon of Jean Paul Sartre, who was arrested for civil disobedience during the events of May, 1968 […]
We pay special attention to the history of an object – where it has been, who created it, what touched it – because object’s history is what really matters when it comes to its value.
Critics of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of soft drinks over 16 ounces in convenience stores, movie theaters and street carts are having a […]
In his blog post yesterday, Big Think’s own Adam Lee called into question the editorial standard that would have us introduce evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa as our newest blogger. Kanazawa […]
So BIG THINK’S book of the month—Mortalilty by Christopher Hitchens—is a moving account of a singularly personal effort to die as a free man. Hitchens wanted to see death as it […]
What is the Big Idea? Belachew Girma was once a school teacher, store owner and hotel owner. It seemed like he had it all. But after a series of bad […]
Philosopher David Edmonds lists the five books of philosophy that have figured most in his development as a moral thinker. Along the way, he explains when it may be OK to end a life.
So says an outstanding young conservative public intellectual—Helen Rittelmeyer. It’s true enough that conservatives still do accuse the Democrats—or, more precisely, the liberals—of being moral relativists. Rittelmeyer quotes Paul Ryan […]
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who ought to know, says that the future won’t be anything like The Terminator. “I live in the real world, and in the real world that’s simply […]
By the time he put the finishing touches on the Rite of Spring in November of 1912 in the Châtelard Hotel in Clarens, Switzerland, Stravinsky had spent three years studying Russian pagan […]
The questions in this quiz are adaptations of items from research studies from the 1960s to the 1980s, initiated by Daniel Kahneman and his late research partner, Amos Tversky.
A little science-fiction philosophy to provoke you to remember on Memorial Day, courtesy of Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit: Suppose you were given the chance to teleport yourself, Star Trek style, […]
With Stephen Colbert on vacation this week, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona seems to have jumped into the role of the laughable conservative who makes ridiculous arguments with a straight face — or, in this case, who tries to make worthwhile political science research sound ridiculous.
Sex symbol. Lethal weapon. Superstar. Chuck Norris dominator. Whatever epic descriptions we use to remember Bruce Lee, it’s hard to imagine this legendary martial artist once struggled in his career. […]
President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation's massive and destructive wealth inequality.
Big Think’s own founder and president Peter Hopkins gave Rahim Kanani at Forbes some face time in preparation for the 2012 Social Innovation Summit taking place next week at the United Nations Headquarters in […]
'Tis the season to be savvy. Here's a round-up of Big Thinkers' favorite tech ideas for simplifying - and beautifying - your holiday.
“Danger: Art Inside,” read the labels on the crated sculptures as I toured last month the almost-ready-for-public-viewing, but now restored, reinstalled, and reinterpreted Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The signs […]
Given the fact that Mormons were a key group that helped Mitt Romney win important victories in states such as Nevada and Arizona, it may seem counterintuitive that many Mormons are uncomfortable with a Romney candidacy.
The self is a disruptive, false, and, as such, unnecessary metaphor for the process of awareness and knowing: when we awaken to knowing, we realize that all that goes on in us is a flow of “thoughts without a thinker.”
On a late winter day in 1922, the sound of a gun shot resounded with a loud boom in the hills surrounding the house of three-year-old Edgar Curtis. The sound itself wasn't out of the ordinary, since the Curtises lived near a firing range. What was extraordinary was the question the boy turned to ask his mother: "What is that big, black noise?"
I suggested, although not as insistently as I should have, that February would be the month of Santorum. Well, it was. Santorum was so impressive that he was the non-Romney who came closest to winning.
We want to ascribe intentionality and blame for success and failure, then study them for blueprints. But Gladwell says he’s always found it more productive to follow his own curiosity without worrying too much about whether or not the world will reward him for it.