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Philosophy
Fear of technology is not new. But we misunderstand its origin. In reality, we don't fear technology but each other.
Diogenes engaged in shocking behavior to demonstrate the contradictions, small-mindedness, and sheer absurdity of prevailing social conventions.
And why you, a non-expert, should absolutely not consider "explaining what you know" to an actual expert in the field.
Evolutionary pressures drove the formation of tribes who encoded their values in myths and symbols. Was this cooperation cursed?
If we took the values and principles of cooperation to the next level, we could effectively tackle many crises.
From forgotten Hollywood movies to Frank Herbert’s "Dune," science fiction illustrates some of our deepest fears about technology.
Would you confess your crimes to a skeleton with "an unnatural ghastly glow"? One inventor thought you would.
It’s the paradoxical observation that the more we try to process, the less we actually can.
A philosophy of birth can offset the prevailing narrative around extinction and mortality.
"Groupthink" gets a bad rap. In reality, we need groups to focus our thinking and to build on the ideas of others.
John Templeton Foundation
It's been 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. But if it's expanding, then what is it expanding into?
Mansa Musa, perhaps history's richest man, claims he ascended the throne of Mali after his predecessor sailed west and never came back. Could he have made it to the New World?
If our Universe were born a little differently, there wouldn't have been any planets, stars, galaxies, or chemically interesting reactions.
Perhaps the whole Universe is the result of a vacuum fluctuation, originating from what we could call quantum nothingness.
Germans are masters of building cars, cooking brats — and sitting while peeing.
Science fiction movies capture a classic human flaw: getting the future mostly wrong.
Does humanity have a moral imperative to seed life on lifeless worlds? And should we avoid colonizing a planet if life already exists there?
Within a month of that initial conversation, Peter Singer became a vegetarian.
Einstein's most famous equation is E = mc², which describes the rest mass energy inherent to particles. But motion matters for energy, too.
The Shirky Principle states that "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
Soviet censorship was thorough yet fallible.
If something exists, it is by definition natural.
But make sure you bring the fossegrim the proper offering—or else.
Neuroscience is beginning to provide clues about the emergence of human consciousness.
John Templeton Foundation
If you think everyone around you is terrible, the joke may be on you.
Claims of a "loneliness epidemic" aren't based on robust data. Loneliness might be a problem, but it's not worse than it was in the past.
There may be a symmetrical interdependence between order and chaos.
When the Universe was first born, the ingredients necessary for life were nowhere to be found. Only our "lucky stars" enabled our existence.
500 sheep were slaughtered to produce the 2,060 pages of the "Codex Amiatinus," a Latin translation of the Bible.