There were a lot of thoughtful comments on my observations last week about the ethics of denying that climate change is real. Many felt that I was arrogant, since […]
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Online encyclopedia pioneer Jimmy Wales is excited about the explosion of people online, saying it even gives those living under tyrants the power to demand change.
Researchers at Stanford University have found a new ultra-low power source for transmitting data via microchips. The development could bring about a new generation of computers.
Like many others, I was not very enthusiastic about the launch event of the iPhone 4S. The expectations where simply too high, and the whole event seemed to lack the […]
As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming […]
When researching medical treatments online, Web users have to be discerning and think like consumers, not patients, to avoid scams and commercially motivated advice.
I saw Melissa Harris Perry deliver the keynote speech for King Week at Emory University this past Tuesday. Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University, the new […]
Two-thirds of people surveyed in the U. K. support the temporary shutdown of services such as Twitter and Facebook in future riots in order to stem the spread of unrest.
In today’s excerpt – the accelerating pace of change. I began my career in financial services in the late 1970s. In my first decade in that industry, there were only […]
Welcome to What Not to Think About. On this blog, Big Think’s editors will pick the stories that are making headlines elsewhere but which we encourage you to ignore. Why? […]
While the purpose of sleep is still not perfectly clear, neuroscientists increasingly believe we need sleep to rest the brain, restoring neurons to a restful state in order to learn better.
If you ever want to make even the most cosmopolitan of your friends speechless, telling them you have volunteered to travel to Newark, New Jersey, so you can masturbate to orgasm in an fMRI is a great way to start. Once they overcome the shock, chances are they will start to ask questions. Most I was able to answer.
Employers now have a new tool “to cut through the crap and get to the right person” when recruiting–a video interview screening service.
It’s easy to see why we’re stuck in such a cynical rut these days. However, a new book argues the accelerating rate of technological change will “put an end to what ails us” within 25 years with “noticeable change possible within the next decade.”
Scientists of the RUB department for Neurophysiology have proven that we don’t need to actively explore new environments in order to learn but that passively watching new information on a […]
New research finds that government regulations that restrict the supply of abortions performed after 15 weeks gestation in the state of Texas increased the price of late abortions by 37% […]
As I wrote last week — with unemployment dropping below 9% for the first time since the start of 2009 — public belief and concern over climate change may be […]
The Telesar V Robot Avatar delivers touch, audio and sight data to its human operator from a remote location using a series of sensors and a 3-D head-mounted display.
In most circumstances, narcissism doesn’t go over well. But there’s one big exception to the rule: leadership.
Batman is wrong to be nonlethal in the case of the Joker. This shows we can, in some cases, morally kill someone against his will. I am something of a […]
The hilarious swami of style and fashion egalitarian Simon Doonan, author of Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, offers some efficient guidelines to personal style for the mad scientist whose mind is on loftier things.
What’s the Big Idea? In a 2011 interview, physicist Stephen Hawking declared, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.” Of course, the […]
The latest episode of Boss had so many parallels to the Herman Cain saga, I thought I was watching a “ripped from the headlines” episode. A political neophyte with a […]
Can we be aware without actually paying attention? In other words, can our brains somehow imbibe visual information from the outside world without any conscious effort on our part? It […]
Ray Kurzweil has developed six epochs for stages in the evolution of information.
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Two simple pieces of brain-training software have successfully been used to stave off depression before it starts by showing individuals how to recognize positive mental states.
Public opinion about climate change, observes the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, can be compared to “waves in a shallow pan,” easily tipped with “a lot of sloshing but not […]
The ideal American store, Adam Gopnik once suggested, would have no employees. Consumers’ desires would be met flawlessly by unerring, tireless machines. On the other hand, the ideal French store […]
Have you ever attended a public talk where the moderator or speaker invited audience members to ask questions afterwards? If you have, I bet you heard someone ask a question […]
Descartes’ dualism argued that the mind was entirely distinct from the body. More recently, the computational theory of the mind said it was a rational computer. Neither is accurate.