philosophy
You will need determination, humility, and courage if you are to master anything.
From surviving on wild plants and game to controlling our world with technology, humanity’s journey of progress is a story of expanding human agency.
A perfect map is as useless as it is impossible to create.
When stuffed and staring down the last bite, you might hear your mother’s voice in your mind.
“The movement is much bigger than Sam Bankman-Fried, or any one person, no matter how wealthy,” philosopher Peter Singer told Big Think.
In the fight between head and heart, psychologists will win.
The world needs a moral defense of progress based in humanism and agency.
In “Moral Ambition,” Dutch historian Rutger Bregman argues that all would benefit from a collective redefinition of success.
It’s good to be a wallflower. But sometimes, you need to show yourself off a bit.
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
Is a repressed memory always so bad?
Take a seat. Take a breath. Take a break.
Our “embodied minds” suggest an eventual escape from mortality via computer is unlikely.
Is there a force keeping humanity in check?
Rhetorical mastery is within everyone’s reach — equipped with some basic techniques you can rock it like Aristotle.
A researcher weighs in on who’s accountable, when and why, in the eyes of the law — and whether the measures work as intended.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch on human minds, AI, and bacteria.
Redemption is the journey towards becoming a better person. It’s the story of human life.
The philosopher Skye C. Cleary explores what being authentically happy looks like in a world where so many can’t be.
Just being a pessimist, cynic, or apathetic doesn’t make you a nihilist.
The acceptance of death is deeply embedded in our culture; it’s time to overthrow that idea.
God is not a vending machine, but is it wrong to treat him like one?
While weltschmerz — literally “world-pain” — may be unpleasant, it can also spur us to change things for the better.
A reader asks whether we have an ethical responsibility to always debate bad beliefs, especially those that come from our elders.
The road from Kant to modern cognitive psychology has taught us much about our mental filtering systems.
33 years ago, the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen offered an answer to the question “Is life computable?”
If music is a window onto truth, what does screaming reveal?
How heavy is the mask that you wear?
The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius.
The “Shopping Cart Litmus Test” is a popular meme about morality. What does it really reveal about one’s character?