bigthinkeditor

In describing economic growth, some economists ask how much our mental states have to do with how the economy functions. Trust, for example, is heralded as a necessity for transactions to occur.

Besides dampening the spirit, when a person experiences racist thoughts and feelings, stress hormones rush the body, the heart pumps harder and the blood vessels constrict.

While scientists often leave their religious beliefs at the door, it is much harder to abandon one’s philosophical beliefs, which are equally unproven yet influence science to a high degree.

The error of the Chicago school was that it fixed reality around its economic theories of the rational consumer and producer. We should begin with irrational reality and proceed from there.

As metaphors for the mind go, one researcher at Stanford says our brains function much more like search engines than computers. We are more probabilistic than deterministic, she says.

Why did modernism skip England? One academic asks why a people so close to the Second World War cling to their outmoded literary traditions while the world around them has progressed.

Public intellectual and Postwar European historian Tony Judt should be remembered for his consummate political stance: an ardent defense of the welfare state until his last moments.

156 years since Thoreau published ‘Walden’, his criticism of technology remains as vital as ever. Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic says we need reminding how to use technology well.

Fats, oils and grease are increasingly reprocessed into biofeuls, a method that was put on display when a giant butter sculpture of Benjamin Franklin was melted and made into diesel.

The net neutrality framework laid out by Google and Verizon exempts wireless networks from rules that would govern broadband service and allows providers to set up Internet ‘toll lanes’.

Anyone who has watched a cable news channel for long enough recognizes the problem: after 20 or 30 minutes the news gets repetitive as stories are recycled for new viewers […]

Legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein says that he’s not as concerned about the state of investigative journalism as some of his contemporaries are—in fact, he thinks that newspapers like the […]

Is the fading dominant male stereotype accurately captured by this summer’s films, which exhibit more dynamic gender roles? Are traditional men becoming less relevant to modern families?

“Beauty may only be skin deep, but that’s plenty deep enough to cost you a job, a promotion, or the training to get one.” Is discrimination based on looks the next civil rights battle?

“In other advanced economies, higher personal savings and greater reliance on export earnings created expectations of more rapid economic recovery,” Judge Richard Posner explains.

Patents are relatively weak incentives for innovation, especially when it comes to software and Internet startups, yet they may be usual in securing funding from venture capitalists.

“Psychologists have spent decades searching for personality traits that exist independently of circumstance, but what if personality can’t be separated from context?”

“The difference between major and indie labels now has less to do with aesthetics than with the way bands conceive of their careers.” Smaller labels can be just as profitable as big ones.

European scientists have unveiled Nao, a robot that is capable of mimicking human emotions and correctly identifying and responding to negative and positive emotions in other people.

“The govenrment needs to be exposed because it cannot be trusted to expose itself.” Even Fox News praises WikiLeak’s release of Afghan war logs as a necessary check against secrecy.

“By allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers.”

“Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory—inspired by pencil lead—that could make it all very simple.” The New Scientist reports.

Larry Wall, the father of Perl programming language, says that the language he created in 1987 is very “post-modern.” Like po-mo architecture, for instance, Perl “collects features from other languages, […]

Granting same-sex couples access to marriage would be far better if that access came from elected institutions rather than from the courts, says Steve Chapman at The Chicago Tribune.

“Until we find the collective will, the drive for national economic security will continue to lead to collective insecurity.” A finance professor discusses the eventual downside of coveting resources.

“Once on the fringe, about 750,000 off the grid American households pioneer green living by tapping sustainable energy from the wind, sun, and earth.” The Christian Science Monitor reports.

“Mr. Greenspan is calling for the complete repeal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, brushing aside Republicans and Democrats who say the economic recovery would be threatened.”

“Liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the ‘war on drugs’ there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight.”

Does the ability to exercise self-control determine your class? Research suggests that children with higher socioeconomic status demonstrate more self-control.

“Don’t covet your grief like a precious thing, something that justifies your every whim.” In the controversy over Cordoba House, The Economist sees a petulant America just trying to get its way.