Over the next few months, Google will roll out new semantic search technology that will have a deeper understanding of website content. The advance brings us closer to artificial intelligence.
All Articles
“I think of my job as ‘leading people to those moments of awe – that brain fever that overtakes you when you encounter a new idea'”. In our livestream interview […]
Legislation has been proposed in Arizona that would allow employers to force women to provide documentation of their “medical” reasons for needing birth control before their health insurance would have […]
Changes in economic relationships simply don’t have much effect on already wealthy despots. Just like the honey badger, they do what they want.
Rick Santorum had a great day on Tuesday, winning the Republican primaries in both Alabama and Mississippi—a state in which no poll had shown Santorum in the lead. Newt Gingrich, […]
Read ’em and weep. Or just add your own ideas at the bottom of this post. 1. Julian Schnabel. Bombastic, prolific, self-promotional, and grandiose, Schnabelwas the ethos of 1980’s NYC writ large […]
There are circumstances where violence is necessary, says Andre Dubus III, author of Townie, but it always takes a heavy spiritual toll.
In The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita nakedly examines the (often ugly) means by which people are able to gain and keep power.
Scientists at Stanford have pioneered a new way to charge electric vehicles without requiring drivers to stop. The new system would place recharging coils beneath the surface of roads.
Two parallel technologies are providing a glimpse of the future: Digital database of all the knowledge you have and android technology that could mimic your behavior and speech.
This is an open letter in response to a religious group, who have argued to remove a piece of entertainment based on their moral values, in a secular society. The […]
One of the major barriers to hydrogen fuel production has been its production cost. Now, scientists want to use nanotechnology to split water atoms and power a generation of cars.
For a certain kind of economic conservative, the cardinal sin of modern governments is printing money whenever they please. Currency’s value should be tied to something real, they say, as […]
What is the Big Idea? Zambia-born Kunj Desai is a doctor in Newark, NJ where his salary is nearly ten times that of what he gets paid back home. He […]
The same unerring perversities of good old fashioned arithmetic that plagued the 2008 Democratic presidential primary have now afflicted the 2012 Republican presidential primary race. Mitt Romney was actually able […]
The Future Attribute Screening Technology project (FAST) was not dreamed up by Philip K. Dick, but it could have been. Lead by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the initiative aims […]
Big Think’s “Book of the Month” for March is The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha. For a quick overview and outline of their new ingredients for success, […]
If your school is planning to implement a one-to-one computer or tablet initiative, chances are a committee has been formed to plan, refine and ultimately kick off the initiative. Sometimes […]
The past 10 years or so of public atheist discourse, says Alain de Botton, author of Religion for Atheists, has been dominated by the idea that all religious belief is somehow […]
Animation from astrophysicists at the University of Colorado at Boulder demonstrates what travelling through a rift in space-time would look like as you free fall into a black hole.
The search for traces of ancient Martian life has been narrowed to 79 lake beds containing mineral deposits. Clay may have formed on the planet’s surface, preserving evidence of past life.
For those of you who missed last night’s debate on China vs. American capitalism hosted by Intelligence Squared U.S., here is the video. There was one decided winner with 85 […]
Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of all time, was born on this day in 1879 in the village of Ulm, located in the southwestern corner of the German Empire. Einstein […]
The latest climate change catastrophe scenario is now out: rising sea levels over the next century could flood 3.7 million people in over 500 U.S. cities, including New York, New Orleans and […]
John Stuart Mill’s argument against silencing dissent highlights important reasons we should never silence any view or idea, because of mere outrage or offence. Yesterday, I discussed the importance of […]
In an extraordinary move, a prominent executive at Goldman Sachs has resigned on grounds of ethical discomfort with a company culture of maximizing profits at clients’ expense. Greg Smith – […]
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have simulated exploding a one-megaton nuclear bomb against an asteroid 500 meters in diameter. The results are encouraging.
In 2018, the space program is scheduled to launch a probe that will get closer to the sun than any craft before it, measuring data in the star’s outer corona where temperatures are hellish.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory take on claims about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world, explaining away all the scenarios for a post-2012 apocalypse.
BY PEADER COYLE Nick Bostrom, a philosopher with a scientific background, serves on the faculty of the Future of Humanity Institute at the James Martin School at Oxford University. He […]