“When people think about CIA and they think about foreign missions and they think about secret operations, they always think about the word manipulation. What CIA taught me is that manipulation is one side of a coin, and on the other side of the coin is the word motivation, but t … | Continue reading
There’s an old journalism adage: “If your mother says she loves you… check it out.” This week, I joined John Mihaljevic, chairman of MOI Global, and Elliot Turner, Managing Partner, CIO of RGA Investment Advisors LLC, to talk about how I started my career as a fact-checker — then … | Continue reading
Since we first realized that Earth was just another planet orbiting our Sun — like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn — we’ve been compelled to wonder whether the other stars in our night sky possessed planets like we do. This question went wholly unanswered, from a scienti … | Continue reading
Very occasionally, I’ll sit with a group of friends and we’ll congratulate ourselves on how little we care about beauty. “It’s all vanity,” someone says, followed by grunts of agreement. “The youth today are so obsessed with their looks. They don’t know what inner beauty is.” We … | Continue reading
One day in the 1940s, an inmate came to see Raymond Corsini, a psychologist at Auburn Prison in Upstate New York. The prisoner, a man in his thirties, was getting out on parole, and before he left, he just wanted to thank Corsini. The inmate said that, before meeting Corsini, he … | Continue reading
Much of the management advice we find in books emphasizes using leadership tactics that may seem reasonably obvious. This advice is often easy to follow — but that’s not where leaders run into issues with their strategy, argues Ben Horowitz, founding partner at the venture capita … | Continue reading
Here in today’s modern world, it may not seem like investing in basic, fundamental research is a necessity anymore. Instead, our society focuses much more on technological and engineering applications of already-known science. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and mach … | Continue reading
It’s definitely safe to assume that current text-based LLMs, which have never seen the real world and thus have no iconic representations with which to ground their learning, are aphantasic — they never think with pictures. But does this mean that they are incapable of thinking a … | Continue reading
The world has changed vastly since Julian Metcalfe co-founded sandwich business Pret a Manger (aka Pret) with a single branch in London, 1986. Few had a phone in their pocket back then. Smartphones still weren’t common when Metcalfe launched Japanese food chain Itsu, in 1997 — or … | Continue reading
Have you ever thought about the Universe, and asked perhaps the most profound question of all: where did all of this come from? For as long as humans have been around, we’ve not only asked these questions, but have provided stories — based on logic, reasoning, mythology, religion … | Continue reading
When we think about memory, we often assume that a superior memory means remembering more things for a longer time. That’s how we think of computer memory, too: the more, the better. But biologically speaking, memory did not evolve simply to store information. It selects what inf … | Continue reading
Ethan Siegel, theoretical astrophysicist and science communicator, author of the James Webb Space Telescope book, “Infinite Cosmos,” and writer of the science blog, “Starts With A Bang” joins us to explore the cosmic origins of our universe. This video 3 discoveries that change t … | Continue reading
What makes a great leader? And what can we learn from others to improve our leadership skills and those of our teams and colleagues? Over the past two decades, I’ve explored these questions from two distinct perspectives. The first is practical: At 22, I found myself leading a Ba … | Continue reading
Throughout the Universe, practically all galaxies house a supermassive black hole. Messier 87, best known as the supermassive galaxy whose black hole was first imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope, has its relativistic jets and the shockwaves created by their material imaged in … | Continue reading
When was the last time you had a good sulk? It probably wasn’t the cross-armed, scowling caricature kind of a sulk, but probably the subtler, more common kind. It’s the sulk of bitterness and bottled fury. It’s the desire to harm someone who’s harmed you, to want vengeance for so … | Continue reading
Our world seems more fragmented than ever. Author and podcaster Sam Harris thinks that an open conversation with 8 billion strangers could solve that. Here’s his full Big Think interview, in its entirety. This video Sam Harris: Breaking the spell of propaganda is featured on Big … | Continue reading
On February 18, NASA announced the recently discovered asteroid, 2024 YR4, has a 3.1% chance of striking Earth in 2032. We can sleep a little easier, though, because the following day this was revised down to 1.5%. And the odds were then slashed again down to a reassuring 0.004%, … | Continue reading
Here in our Universe, there are three major properties that have led to it unfolding as it has: the laws of physics that govern all of nature, the initial conditions that our Universe began with, and the values of the fundamental constants that apply to the particles, fields, and … | Continue reading
We’ve all experienced the illusion of knowledge. This cognitive bias leads us to walk around overconfident in the depth of our understanding of how the world works. We believe we know how zippers zip, the internet connects, and local politics work until someone asks us to explain … | Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, I observed that in the age of AI, the price of research goes down — but the value of conviction goes up. This week, I expanded on that idea in a new Long Game essay for Big Think. In the piece, I argue that automation — when used improperly — can erode resi … | Continue reading
How many states of matter are there? When you were young, you probably learned about the three that are most common to our experience: solid, liquid, and gas. All of these occur with regularity here on Earth’s surface: rocks and ices are solids, water and many oils are liquids, w … | Continue reading
At some point in the first week of January, I came down with a self-diagnosed case of AI fatigue. There are many variations of AI fatigue. The first I call “new model confusion.” This is where you find yourself dizzy trying to keep up with the latest alphanumeric rebrand out of C … | Continue reading
Alua Arthur has been an outsider all her life. At 3 years old, she moved from Ghana to the United States and was immediately immersed in a culture that set her apart from those around her. As she grew up, she believed the best way to succeed was to follow a traditional path, so s … | Continue reading
All throughout the Universe, there’s a massive puzzle whose solution remains unknown: the dark matter mystery. Within every large, high-mass system that we examine, including: spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, cosmic filaments, and th … | Continue reading
At Big Think+, we are constantly evolving to create a more engaging and tailored experience for our learners. Today, we’re thrilled to unveil a groundbreaking new feature: Interests & Role-Based Recommendations. This enhancement is designed to ensure every learner—whether an Indi … | Continue reading
In the 18th century, weaving fabric was an art. Thread by thread, artisans created intricate patterns by hand — a slow, painstaking process requiring deep knowledge passed down through generations. Then, in 1804, a French merchant disrupted everything. His invention, the Jacquard … | Continue reading
In a 1979 study, cognitive scientists discovered something peculiar: When participants were asked to describe everyday experiences — going to the doctor, dining at a restaurant — they produced nearly identical responses. They followed the same sequences, listed the same steps, an … | Continue reading
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” I have the utmost respect for the sixteenth president of the United States, but I beg to differ. Power blinds us to the impact of our actions, but it’s not … | Continue reading
One of the greatest fears that science brings along with it is the idea that the act of conducting scientific research itself, even if it’s done with noble intentions, could end up creating something incredibly destructive and dangerous to humanity. Uncovering how to split the at … | Continue reading
“The quality of mercy is not strained,” argues Portia in The Merchant of Venice, meaning there should be no limits to being kind and forgiving. But 21st-century culture wars are no Shakespeare play. These days, mercy is a finite resource, and the question is how strained the qual … | Continue reading
You regularly work late to handle last-minute requests. You hesitate to voice contrary opinions in meetings. You feel guilty when you set boundaries. Your calendar fills with meetings where your presence adds little value. You frequently take on tasks that should be delegated, or … | Continue reading
From their earliest discovery, grand cosmic spirals have posed a tremendous puzzle. The featured image shows galaxy NGC 7331 along with other members of its galactic group, including the prominent galaxies NGC 7335, 7336, 7337, and 7340. We now know that a large fraction of galax … | Continue reading
Western philosophy has long had a habit of drawing a tight circle around itself, declaring that true philosophy happens only within its borders. For centuries, some of its most influential thinkers have dismissed the idea that deep, rigorous thought could flourish outside the Wes … | Continue reading
One of the most puzzling features of nature is this: as you approach the speed of light, everything you commonly understand about motion changes. If you’re on a train moving forward at 30 m/s (about 67 mph) and you throw a baseball forward at 30 m/s from it, to someone on the gro … | Continue reading
Once upon a time, in a small village in ancient China, a farmer’s horse ran away into the wild. The neighbors, wanting to show solidarity, came to see the farmer and offered: “We are very sorry to hear your horse has run away. What terrible fortune!” Looking off into the distance … | Continue reading
More instances of a dying person’s final utterances — their last words, called “famous” if the speaker is prominent or notable or the words themselves wry or ironic — are inscribed in the public record than any baby’s first words. As a counterbalance, let me suggest a few first w … | Continue reading
I’m in London this week for research and meetings, and a recurring theme keeps surfacing in my conversations: how is the nature of research evolving in a post-AI world? What’s clear is that Deep Research functions on OpenAI and Grok 3 are now surpassing human capabilities in many … | Continue reading
In every civilized society around the world, there’s a trade-off that must be made. The protection of individual freedoms, on one hand, enable the people living there to pursue their own goals, dreams, and ideals, whatever they may be. But those pursuits must not infringe on the … | Continue reading
“I want to change the way we think about the past altogether,” Dr. Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist who studies the origin of life, told me. “We think of it as some failed state, as if it’s irrelevant. That’s just not true.” At first, I wasn’t sure what she meant. We analyze histor … | Continue reading
At some point, there comes a wall. Few people will see the wall, but they’ll be walking at such a pace that they’ll smash straight into it — broken nose, cursing, and indignant cries for justice. Why wasn’t I told about this wall? It might be a relationship, a career choice, or a … | Continue reading
As children, we were taught the importance of kindness and compassion: “Share your toys.” “Use your words, not your hands.” “Help others when they fall.” These lessons, delivered by teachers, picture books, and shows like Sesame Street, aim to shape how we express ourselves, empa … | Continue reading
When we examine everything that exists, from atoms and molecules to macroscopic objects to planets and stars and even grander structures, we run into a fascinating puzzle: the fact that everything we see, observe, and know of is made from the same small set of fundamental particl … | Continue reading
Emily Nussbaum had been wanting to write a book about reality television since the early 2000s. It’s a good thing she waited, she writes in the introduction of that book, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV, which was published last June. Had she written it earlier, she woul … | Continue reading
We all know the stories. A Kodak researcher invented the first digital camera, but the company decided not to adopt it, fearing it would cannibalize their film business. Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center developed a wide range of technologies that Apple and Microsoft then used to … | Continue reading
Imagine you want to know about the Universe, and what its properties were like when it was first born. There are two ways to go about it: the “clean” way and the “messy” way. The clean way involves looking back to the earliest possible cosmic times — i.e., the stages where early, … | Continue reading
This may look like a weather map, but what it shows isn’t your usual kind of atmospheric interference. The red hexagons denote areas affected by GPS jamming in the preceding 24 hours. GPS jamming, which disables the positioning system of electronic devices, including those used t … | Continue reading
Introverts are often told to behave more like extroverts, and louder individuals often get most of the reward and recognition. Introverts, however, often have skills that are key for good leadership — such as the ability to listen, make wise decisions, and lead with empathy — tha … | Continue reading
Here in the Milky Way, our own galaxy’s structure remains obscure. The European Space Agency’s space-based Gaia mission has mapped out the three-dimensional positions and locations of more than one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy: the most of all-time. Looking toward the ce … | Continue reading