Big Think

Google and NASA Buy Quantum Computer for Better AI

Orion Jones — Sun, 19 May 2013 14:45:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? A partnership between Google and NASA has resulted in the purchase of a quantum computer which both organizations expect to aid in the development of artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning, a branch of AI that focuses on construction and study of ...

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Why Connecting Race to Intelligence Is Wrong

Orion Jones — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:15:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? Controversy surrounding a Harvard dissertation which claimed a genetic link between race and intelligence has cost its author, Jason Richwine, his job at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. Richwine, who recently wrote on the high costs of ...

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The Difference Between Epistemological and Instrumental Rationality

Jaan Tallinn — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00:00 -0400

When I talk about rationality I mean really two things. One is so-called epistemological rationality, which is caring about truth, caring about being right and following that processes called truth seeking process meaning that you just don’t—you are not curious and engaged in discussions, not just ...

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Green Spaces Help You Live Longer

Orion Jones — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:30:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? In terms of urban landscaping, New York City's Central Park is a major achievement. Built in 1859 to contest Europe's monopoly on sophisticated city-living, the ample greenery of Central Park contributes to the quality of life New Yorkers have come to enjoy. In ...

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Electrical Shocks Help the Brain Do Math

Orion Jones — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:17:02 -0400

What's the Latest Development? A team of scientists from Oxford University have shown that zapping the brain with electrical impulses improves its ability to complete mathematical problems. In an experiment, transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), in which electrodes placed on the surface ...

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The Job of Science is to Make People Less Stupid

Michael S. Gazzaniga — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

The job of the human being, as you go through life, is to become less stupid. And that is the job of science, to try to educate us about the nature of what we are, our very nature, how we’re built, how we work, understand that and in doing that it seems to me is fulfilling and of great value and ...

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Being Angry Makes Me Angry

Daniel Kahneman — Sun, 19 May 2013 08:00:00 -0400

Some people enjoy being angry and some people really hate it and that is a known difference. It is a know dimension of individual differences. For some people anger is a positive emotion. For others it’s negative. I happen to be an extreme case with for me anger goes into depression very quickly ...

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Look Out: Huge Asteroid to Pass Earth on May 31

Big Think Editors — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:00 -0400

This image shows the orbit of asteroid 1998 QE2 which will be making a flyby on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Pacific (4:59 p.m. Eastern / 20:59 UTC). If the 1.7 mile space rock were to make impact, we would almost certainly be doomed. The good news is that the asteroid, which was discovered 15 years ago ...

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The Power of Copycatting

Nicholas Christakis — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:00 -0400

One of the things that we have found in the study of networks is that whenever people are free to choose anything they want they usually choose what their friends have chosen and people tend to copy each other. This sort of fundamental mimicry or this mimicry that we humans evince is extremely ...

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You Have to Kill the Father Figure to Succeed

Robert Greene — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:00:00 -0400

One of the greatest obstacles to finding your life’s task quite honestly can be your parents. We all love our parents – at least most of us do. And they mean the best. But often they’re the ones that screw us up most in the sense that they want to consciously or unconsciously direct you in a path ...

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Separate the Argument from the Source.

Julia Galef — Sun, 19 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

You might find, as most of us do, that when you're arguing with someone you start to feel frustrated with them or combative with them or irritated by them and that can make it especially hard to rationally consider what they're saying. So one trick that I've found particularly useful is to ...

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An Experiment That's Never Been Tried: Morality Without Religion

Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

A long tradition of thinking tells us that due to man's animal nature we need to have order imposed from above, in the form of religion. Without religion, we could not live together, and that is why all human societies believe in the supernatural and have developed one religion or another. This ...

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Digital Roundworms and the Approaching Singularity

Orion Jones — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:29:08 -0400

What's the Latest Development? Computer scientists and artificial intelligence experts say that a project to create digital roundworms represents an essential stepping stone toward the fusion of life and non-life. The project, called OpenWorm, is an opensource effort to elucidate the principles ...

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How We Are Influenced by Super Symbols

Adam Alter — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:48:30 -0400

In Drunk Tank Pink I talk about the effect of symbols on various outcomes. And some of the symbols I talk about I call super symbols. And they’re super symbols because they have even greater meaning than maybe some other symbols do. And I think maybe the greatest super symbol in our culture and ...

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Finally an App That Reveals the True Story Behind the Brands You Buy

Teodora Zareva — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:21:41 -0400

You only know how hard it is to be a responsible consumer after you've tried it - running laps around isles trying to find that one brand you know is free-trade, reading labels to avoid carcinogenic ingredients, or looking for the organic produce sticker (5 digit code starting with 9 means organic ...

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How City Living Is Changing Human Biology

Orion Jones — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:45:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? While only three percent of the world's surface is covered by urban landscapes, more than half of the human population lives in city environments. That's changing human culture as well as human biology, say genetic experts. "The spread of genetic diversity can be ...

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Pediatricians Say Video Games Help Kids Exercise

Orion Jones — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:15:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? Pediatricians are encouraging children to play more video games, as long as those games run on consuls that depend on body movement, such as Xbox-Kinect and Wii, to move the game forward. A new study published in The Journal of Pediatrics has found that such games ...

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My Best Advice on Quitting Smoking

Charles Duhigg — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:00 -0400

If you want to stop smoking here’s the best advice that I could give you. The first thing I would say is, smoking is actually not physically addictive for very long after you stop smoking. So we know from studies that about 100 hours after your last cigarette, all of the nicotine is out of your ...

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What Exactly Do We Owe to Our Children?

Steven Mazie — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:29:54 -0400

“I believe the children are our future.” Never has a more brazen tautology graced the opening line of a Top 40 song. But when Whitney Houston popularized these words in her 1986 hit, she gave voice to an orientation that seems to be in retreat today. For Douglas Rushkoff, author of a new ...

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New Bionic Human Ear Works Better than Natural Ear

Orion Jones — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:45:00 -0400

What's the Latest Development? Biologists at Princeton and Johns Hopkins universities have created an artificial human ear—using a three-dimensional printer, no less—that detects sound better than natural human ears. "The technique lets scientists mimic the structural complexity of the ear ...

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