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Philosophy
Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
In 2017, a kilonova sent light and gravitational waves across the Universe. Here on Earth, there was a 1.7 second signal arrival delay. Why?
Ryan Holiday on why wisdom depends on failure, experimentation, and the courage to admit when we’re wrong.
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.
3mins
The brain is an “illusion factory.” Here’s what that means for our perception of time.
Unlikely Collaborators
13mins
“Chance invents and natural selection propagates that chance invention.”
Former tech founder Scott Britton wants to shatter the binary myth that separates driving ambition from inner development.
12mins
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it.
During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
Do aliens speak the same physics that we do, with similar laws, observables, and underlying mathematics. Maybe not, argues Daniel Whiteson.
1hr 12mins
“Consciousness is fundamental. It's a fundamental property of the world that we inhabit, a fundamental property of the universe.”
16mins
“The messy reality of it is that all of these very smart people, including Isaac Newton, were talking to other people.”
The great books aren’t just classics — they’re cultural Schelling points that give our minds a place to meet up in the world of ideas.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Metacognition — the ability to think about your thinking — can help you learn faster and make better decisions.
10mins
“When you start to accept that you have profound influence on the world, but very limited control, you start to see the world differently.”
Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff, PhD on mysticism and the future of faith.
John Templeton Foundation
2mins
“In most instances, ‘good enough’ is good enough.” A time management expert, a cognitive scientist, and a psychologist share their takes on productivity, perfectionism, and the harm of hustle culture.
Unlikely Collaborators
Times dilate and lengths contract near the speed of light. Bizarre and confusing? Sure. But under relativity, it can't be any other way.
In this excerpt from "The Shortest History of AI," Toby Walsh explores the history of the Logic Theorist, the first AI to prove mathematical theorems.