Scotty Hendricks
Contributing Writer
Scotty Hendricks is a graduate student and long-time contributor to Big Think. He resides in Chicago.
From “Thompson’s violinist” to the “Experience Machine,” these thought experiments will throw your mind for a loop.
Take a closer look at the different types of reasoning you use every day.
Most philosophers merely contemplate the world, but what about the ones who actually tried to change it?
Despite being called the “dismal science,” economics impacts our lives every day. Here, we look at seven of the greatest economists in history.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that we often don’t truly want to obtain what we think we desire.
Zen masters often have strikingly different ideas about how to live and attain enlightenment.
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From Aristotle’s lazy cosmology to Immanuel Kant’s “scientific” racism, great minds are not immune to very bad ideas.
One award was for a medical procedure that incapacitated thousands of people.
Literature’s first utopia shows how far we’ve come.
From Ramses II to Alexander the Great, these leaders helped shaped the world we know today.
The minimum wage is a popular policy, but it’s not the only way governments have tried to help workers secure a decent living.
While becoming a monk is an evolutionary dead end for the individual, celibacy reaps benefits for the group as a whole.
A new study shows that political partisans are more likely to remember things that didn’t happen — as long as it fits their narrative.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss Enlightenment philosopher who praised a simple life and inspired the worst of the French Revolution.
Seattle slowly raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour. The results provide fuel for both sides of the minimum wage debate.
People often ask “What should I do?” when faced with an ethical problem. Aristotle urges us to ask “What kind of person should I be?”
Jokes so cheesy even French philosophers will love them.
The ancient Maya enjoyed filling their teeth with gemstones. A new study reveals how the procedure was done and how it didn’t kill them.
A new study of Martian dust gives insights into the ancient Martian climate. The findings hint at a wetter world.
Pseudoscience is science’s shadow.
Europa may be difficult to access. But if a recent study is correct, its subsurface ocean would be more accessible than previously thought.
Majoring in economics can boost a graduate’s early-career income by several thousand dollars, at least for those who live in California.
Dr. Tyson explains where we might find aliens, why “dark matter” is a misleading term, and why you can blame physics for your favorite team’s loss.
Michio Kaku predicts, among other things, how we’ll build cities on Mars and why cancer will one day be like the common cold.
Some scientists believe that DMT could revolutionize the treatment of depression.
Outfitted with wheels and rotors, the bot can morph from a land drone into a quadcopter in seconds.
Many animals practice what looks like self-medication. A new report suggests that chimps tend wounds with insects, often treating each other.