There’s a lot of talk on BIG THINK about evolutionary explanations of this or that human behavior. They’re all pretty fascinating, although far from completely convincing. Darwinian explanations, for what […]
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One of the most wonderful things about the emerging global superbrain is that information is overflowing on a scale beyond what we can wrap our heads around.
The new eugenic intention seems to be not only pro-life but pro-quality of every life. The choice will be for every person against nature’s randomness and indifference.
Before shopping and football, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a holiday for American solidarity.
Children as young as 3 are less likely to help a person after they have seen them harm someone else. This consciousness of other’s intentions is earlier than previously believed.rn
We see them every time we go to a museum, but we never really see them. Like Rodney Dangerfield, frames get no respect. Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company, Inc. […]
Does a dirty scoundrel need a bath or a moral lesson? Our brains easily confuse metaphor for reality, often with dangerous consequences, says Stanford biology professor Robert Sapolsky.
Country Strong hasn’t been taken seriously by film critics. I’m not going to review what they’ve said or speculate on why they said it. I’m just going to explain why […]
“The process of consciousness is the process that allows us to run our lives personally and in society the way we do,” says Damasio. “It’s the thing that gives us […]
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Those of us writers who are not experts on foreign policy have done more reading than writing this week about the tense situation between the Egyptian government and the Egyptian […]
We all think we know what it means to be conscious, but it is hard to pin this down in a precise, scientific way—as USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in our video. Every weekday in September, Big Think will offer a new insight into the human brain in our new “Going Mental” blog.
Innovation is built into the American way of life, says former President Jimmy Carter. “Quite often, the people who do leave their own nation and come to an unknown destination, […]
He didn’t look back. David Remnick’s recent thoughts on the Khodorjovsky trial, its parallels—and non-parallels—to an earlier Soviet prosecution (of poet Josef Brodsky) made us think about poets, diplomats, and […]
“Some of the boldest eco-warriors are those with the most to lose—our children.” The Independent says pester power can get parents to go green.
“One obvious problem for many porn users is the conflict between their stated belief in equality and respect for women, and the material they’re watching in private.”
Let me open this blog with a realistic statement: It is and will remain the case that the best way to feel good for members of our species is to […]
The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the limbic system, is where the the brain processes and reacts to frightening stimuli. Because of its mechanism, our emotional responses to situations that feel dangerous are often unconscious.
“The impulse to be social is so deep-seated in human consciousness that it’s even evident in the womb, suggests a new study on the interaction of unborn twins.”
In a special Big Think conversation arranged by Discover magazine and published online today, Dr. Antonio Damasio, a behavioral neurobiologist at the University of Southern California speaks with novelist Siri […]
“This research is an important reminder that the unconscious is smarter than we can comprehend, as it processes vast amounts of information in parallel.”
Colonel Russell Williams is one of those double-life people—an able military commander who was also a rapist and murderer. The crimes for which he was sentenced last month were shockingly […]
Calling it “an insistent history that refuses to wait any longer to be told,” Lynn Hershman Leeson declares “WAR,” her acronym for the women’s art revolution begun in the 1970s, […]
Earlier this month I wrote about the possibility of a replay of 2001-2002 and the US targeting al-Qaeda operatives with drones. The news that the US “assisted” with this week’s […]
OK, I promised a post on video 2.0 over a month ago, bad form on my part not to deliver, I was busy working on my Babson application and a […]
…is something my dad used to say all the time when trying to corral the dispersed Willis children into giving up their “way to busy for family” lives for a […]
“We do have a measure of control,” says Damasio, “but it is not true that we have full control and it is not true that when we are executing an […]
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Over the weekend the NY Times’ Scott Shane had this piece on Yemeni detainee, Alla Ahmad, and the difficulties in closing Guantanamo as President Obama pledged. The article is, in […]
From a neural standpoint, memory structures “are in of themselves rather dumb,” says Damasio. “It’s not that they know anything consciously. What they know is they have a sort of […]
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The recent shuttle launch has a strange passenger: a 330-pound humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, or R2 for short. It’s the first humanoid robot to be sent into space, and […]
After reading George Lakoff’s diary “Untellable Truths” over at Daily Kos this morning, which methodically described why the progressive wing of the Democratic Party always seems to get the short […]