bigthink.com
Every bigthink.com story we have translated and published, newest first. · 170 stories
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Stop trying to find yourself
Philosopher Joe Folley is skeptical that there’s a core self down there to find. In this Big Think Conversation with Jonny Thomson, he makes
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Was dark matter first discovered by Fritz Zwicky or Vera Rubin?
It’s hard to believe, but the idea that the Universe was dominated not by normal matter but rather by dark matter — a novel form of non-inte
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3 ways to find and nurture better friendships
Why do you think anything is normal? Presumably, somewhere in your childhood, someone normalized things. Your parents only ever talked about
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Free will: The real casualty of the algorithm
In the deserts of fourth-century Egypt, monks described a strange affliction: a restless urge to be anywhere but where they were, attending
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These five divisions define how far we can go in space
In this Universe, just because you can see it doesn’t mean you can reach it. Conversely, just because you can’t see it today doesn’t necessa
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The world hasn’t become less smelly — we’ve just lost our nasal knowledge
Air, land, and sea. Our world is characterized by a proliferating variety of uncertain scents. Yet our noses are ill-equipped to discern bet
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The hard part of belonging begins after you’ve found your people
Drawing on psychiatrist Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, Henri Tajfel’s minimal group experiments, and Gustave Le Bon’s study of crowds
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The consciousness theory that connects you to everything
Neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist turns to one of philosophy’s oldest questions: what is consciousness, and where does it come from? He arg
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Do the three quantum forces all unify together?
Here in our Universe, there are a series of fundamental forces that all appear to operate independently of one another. There’s gravity, whi
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You have more control over reality than you think
Is a “red” rose really red? According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern Unive
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How long does it take to travel through the Universe at 1g?
Here on Earth, we constantly experience Earth’s gravity: 1g, or 9.8 m/s². This image shows a person in free-fall close to Earth’s surface. T
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Listen: Stellar streams and the dark Universe
When the general public speaks about dark matter, most of the discussion centers on the topic of whether dark matter exists or not: on wheth
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You can’t eliminate uncertainty — but you can prevent it from paralyzing you
At the time of this writing, there is no consensus about how COVID started. My colleagues and I tried to harness that uncertainty as a stren
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Ask Ethan: Can we solve the mysteries of the largest black holes?
Out there in the Universe, there are some incredibly impressive astrophysical entities, including behemoths that dwarf anything we’re famili
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A psychologist’s guide to understanding and spotting narcissism
Narcissistic people are often charming at the dinner party and cruel in the car ride home, which tells you they can control it. Clinical psy
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4 hilarious ancient Greek comedies — that still hold up today
Comedy is a strange genre. Even the best comedies are strongly tied to the time and place of their composition. Just try getting all the jok
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Mapped: Every known (and suspected) road in the Roman Empire
Rome wasn’t built in a day. All roads lead to Rome. A recent study now links those two well-worn proverbs by suggesting that the footprint o
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The sci-fi inspired “cloaking device” makes invisibility possible
For as long as human beings have been writing about fantasy, myth, and science fiction, the dream of invisibility has always been a top prio
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Made in Our Image
In the output of AI, we see ourselves refracted through a strange new form of intelligence. This issue is an attempt to make sense of those
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Why the AI boom is creating a hunger for human connection
At a recent technology conference, Marc Lore, the billionaire cofounder of Diapers.com and Jet.com, was describing his newest venture. It’s
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Pangram CEO: People believe AI writing is indistinguishable from ours. It’s not.
When the first commercial AI detectors arrived in late 2022 and early 2023, it wasn’t exactly an auspicious start. News articles and social
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My chatbot comforted me when I thought I was dying. Was that friendship?
Last December, I thought I was going to die. I don’t mean that in a “the Reaper gets us all” kind of philosophical platitude, but in a very
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Inside London’s strange new AI art scene
I was in a suburban convenience store, near London’s outer rim, where the growing city bleeds into nature. A bag of sweets caught my eye, br
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Chatbots aren’t just flattering us. They’re helping us decide what’s real.
Over the past year or so, popular media has documented a growing number of cases of what psychiatrists have dubbed “AI psychosis.” The term
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