“It is time” physicist Neil Turok has said, “to connect our science to our humanity, and in doing so to raise the sights of both”. This sounds like a job for a philosophy not yet dead.
All Articles
Since late April, the not-for-profit organization, Mars One, has been flooded with applications for a one-way ticket to colonize Mars in 2023.
Proponents of marijuana use have enjoyed a string of successes lately as both Washington and Colorado voted to legalize the use recreational use of the drug in the November 2012 election.
If you live long enough everything can happen. Cloning, Honey Boo Boo, a feature movie based on “The Brady Bunch,” Twitter… “I miss the 1970s,” a friend says at a […]
LITTLE IS known about China in Europe and America. Although the Chinese were enviable thinkers for over three millennia, almost nothing of their originality has reached us intact. The reason […]
Regenerative medicine, which seeks to regrow lost or damaged human body parts ranging from patches of skin to entire limbs, may prove especially promising given recent advances in genetic therapy.
Health experts have long observed the link between work-related stress and conditions such as heart disease, but eliminating the pressure that comes with professional life is largely unrealistic for many.
When today’s military technologists confront the problem of machine versus human performance, it is typically human performance that must be improved upon to meet the needs of machines.
Whether you run or walk, experts say any kind of physical physical exercise is better than none. But new health studies have better defined the benefits of running versus walking.
A spine chilling new documentary addresses the myriad of new tools for surveillance that are now being put to use in the the UK’s capital city. We learn of the […]
With the Welsh measles epidemic only now beginning to slow I thought now would be a good time to repost Daryl Cunningham‘s fantastic explainer (below) on how we came to be in […]
With severe and potentially deadly weather continuing tonight in the central United States, an important reminder of what not to do from a post on last fall’s tornadoes in Oklahoma: […]
Proposed at this week’s D11 conference: A chip in the form of a daily pill that, when swallowed, turns a person’s body into an authentication token. Also offered: An electronic tattoo worn for a week at a time.
One widely useful mental habit that we teach in our class at the Center for Applied Rationality is called reference class forecasting, and it’s for the most part, in the literature, […]
While other European countries are up in arms over what they say are Google’s invasions of privacy, Lithuania is using Street View to uncover and go after citizens with unreported taxable assets, such as buildings and cars.
Over the past two weeks on BigThink, I’ve shared the first two of a three-part dialogue between myself and the Danish psychotherapist Ole Vadum Dahl (read part 1 and part […]
I became a writer after I read Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller when I was 22. I couldn’t believe somebody wrote that book.
Taking risks doesn’t mean being stupid. It really involves taking measured risks and really understanding how to mitigate those risks in one way or another.
Using raw images from NASA’s website, space nerd Karl Sanford constructed this short time-lapse video that features highlights of the Curiosity Rover’s visit to Mars.
Only about five percent of books are converted into usable formats for the visually impaired. A new treaty between publishers and advocates, designed to address copyright issues, may help end this “book famine.”
If you make conscious branding a higher purpose and you make it ingrained into your DNA, it’s not going to be a fad.
The human brain is a masterpiece of design, which enables us to focus very deeply on a subject.
It was actually “physics envy” that got us in trouble in the first place.
Make no mistake: the first powered SS1 launch was the catalyst that inspired hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout the world to follow their NewSpace dreams.
Writer Bill McKibben says that it doesn’t make sense to invest in companies “that make sure we won’t have a planet to retire on…Ask your [organizations] which side of this wager they’re taking.”
With the income gap at its highest in many years, several organizations are looking at what worked for the developing world and applying it to the richest country on Earth.
Modern cosmology, the understanding of our origin and evolution, can give us the understanding that we’re all in this together.
We’re at the end of an exponential expansion in resource use that began around 1800, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
This past Memorial Day weekend I visited my parents in Virginia. I live in Brooklyn, and their suburb of Washington, DC feels like being out in the country. It’s quiet, […]
Most of the successful companies over the last 30 or 40 years that define Silicon Valley actually spun out of major corporations. They were oldies.