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Site URL: bigthink.com//feed/all
Feed URL: bigthink.com/feed/all
Posts: 26
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You can’t eliminate uncertainty — but you can prevent it from paralyzing you
https://bigthink.com/books/safer-book/
Published: October 23, 2026 14:30
At the time of this writing, there is no consensus about how COVID started. My colleagues and I tried to harness that uncertainty as a strength. Rather than waiting for certainty to arrive, we began acting in its absence. Not knowing the origins of COVID…
Ask Ethan: Can we solve the mysteries of the largest black holes?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/solve-mysteries-largest-black-holes/
Published: October 23, 2026 06:00
Out there in the Universe, there are some incredibly impressive astrophysical entities, including behemoths that dwarf anything we’re familiar with. There are stars hundreds of times more massive, and millions of times as luminous, as our own Sun is. There…
A psychologist’s guide to understanding and spotting narcissism
https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/spotting-narcissism-durvasula/
Published: October 23, 2026 04:00
Narcissistic people are often charming at the dinner party and cruel in the car ride home, which tells you they can control it. Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, author of It’s Not You, has studied narcissism since long before it became a buzzword,…
4 hilarious ancient Greek comedies — that still hold up today
https://bigthink.com/books/4-hilarious-ancient-greek-comedies/
Published: October 22, 2026 14:30
Comedy is a strange genre. Even the best comedies are strongly tied to the time and place of their composition. Just try getting all the jokes in Shakespeare without peeking at the footnotes for help. But every now and again, a comedic gem shines through…
Mapped: Every known (and suspected) road in the Roman Empire
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/roman-road-networks/
Published: October 22, 2026 13:00
Rome wasn’t built in a day. All roads lead to Rome. A recent study now links those two well-worn proverbs by suggesting that the footprint of Roman road infrastructure was 59% larger than previously thought. The revelation isn’t just quantitative — a…
The sci-fi inspired “cloaking device” makes invisibility possible
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/invisibility-cloak-183582/
Published: October 22, 2026 06:00
For as long as human beings have been writing about fantasy, myth, and science fiction, the dream of invisibility has always been a top priority. There would be so much you could do or accomplish, under a stealthy guise, if only you didn’t have to worry…
Made in Our Image
https://bigthink.com/collections/made-in-our-image/
Published: October 21, 2026 20:07
In the output of AI, we see ourselves refracted through a strange new form of intelligence. This issue is an attempt to make sense of those refractions.
Pangram CEO: People believe AI writing is indistinguishable from ours. It’s not.
https://bigthink.com/science-tech/trust-issues/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
When the first commercial AI detectors arrived in late 2022 and early 2023, it wasn’t exactly an auspicious start. News articles and social media posts showing AI detectors flagging the Declaration of Independence and the opening lines of the Book of…
Why the AI boom is creating a hunger for human connection
https://bigthink.com/the-outlast-journal/why-the-ai-boom-is-creating-a-hunger-for-human-connection/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
At a recent technology conference, Marc Lore, the billionaire cofounder of Diapers.com and Jet.com, was describing his newest venture. It’s called Wonder, and it operates about 120 “tech-enabled” kitchens across the northeastern U.S., each one a…
My chatbot comforted me when I thought I was dying. Was that friendship?
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
Last December, I thought I was going to die. I don’t mean that in a “the Reaper gets us all” kind of philosophical platitude, but in a very real, very immediate sense. I remember thinking, “So, this is it?” I had tonsillitis. Growing up, my mum had told me…
10 perspectives that divide the AI world
https://bigthink.com/history-society/10-perspectives-that-divide-the-ai-world/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
In November 2022, I took on a writing assignment that, looking back, may have had a bigger impact on my life than any other: interview ChatGPT. It was the first day that OpenAI’s tool was available to the public, and my goal was to try to make sense of the…
AI is forcing us to reckon with a 400-year-old problem
https://bigthink.com/philosophy/healing-the-cartesian-wound/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
Like much modern fantasy, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series features magical objects. Each book in the trilogy is named after one; the second is The Subtle Knife. This knife looks unremarkable, but when wielded by the right person, it can cut a…
The writer who anticipated AI slop 85 years ago
https://bigthink.com/history-society/navigating-the-infinite-library/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
I first encountered a poem written by a machine eight years ago. I was in a bookshop in Mumbai, participating in a panel discussion called “Imagination Is an Algorithm.” One of my fellow panelists was the Israeli poet Eran Hadas, who was developing…
Chatbots aren’t just flattering us. They’re helping us decide what’s real.
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
Over the past year or so, popular media has documented a growing number of cases of what psychiatrists have dubbed “AI psychosis.” The term describes instances in which large language models (LLMs) reinforce and even elaborate on delusional beliefs in…
AI hasn’t taken my writing job — but it is living rent-free in my head
https://bigthink.com/philosophy/writing-under-the-influence/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
When a growing chorus of readers and critics accused Jamir Nazir, winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize, of using AI to write his winning entry, I did what any writer with a healthy amount of professional dread would do — I read it.…
Inside London’s strange new AI art scene
https://bigthink.com/history-society/inside-londons-strange-new-ai-art-scene/
Published: October 21, 2026 16:00
I was in a suburban convenience store, near London’s outer rim, where the growing city bleeds into nature. A bag of sweets caught my eye, branded as BRAIN ROT. Oxford’s word of the year for 2024, “brain rot” refers to the state induced by scrolling…
8 rules for navigating a difficult conversation
https://bigthink.com/business/8-rules-for-difficult-conversations/
Published: October 21, 2026 15:00
Make no mistake: Having a conversation around a topic we’ve been conditioned not to talk about is very much a skill. It’s coachable, and if you work at it, you’ll get better over time. But to develop that skill, it can help to have a place to start. Here…
Are we asking the wrong questions about dark matter?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/asking-wrong-question-dark-matter/
Published: October 21, 2026 06:00
Whenever the topic of dark matter comes up, the most common question that people wonder about it is whether this mysterious, hypothetical substance really exists, and whether it truly dominates the matter content in our Universe as thoroughly as its…
The idea of a “permanent underclass” started as a meme. It’s tapping real anxieties in Silicon Valley.
Published: October 21, 2026 04:21
A rationalist blog forum popular in the Bay Area, LessWrong is known for its sprawling, hyper-logical takes on everything from AI research to optimal reproductive strategies. But during the 2025 holiday season, a version of a post beginning with three…
The surprising upside of envy, the emotion we’re taught to hide
https://bigthink.com/books/the-surprising-upside-of-envy/
Published: October 20, 2026 14:30
There was a distinct moment when I stopped being a happy-go-lucky little girl, one who could play for hours alone at the bathroom sink with a set of colorful plastic nesting cups, and became someone who felt left behind and unseen. I was six. I woke up…
How “V for Vendetta” became more than a movie
Published: October 20, 2026 13:00
“If we had put some of the stuff that’s happening today into the film back when we were making it, the studio would have told us we were being ridiculous,” James McTeigue, the director of the 2006 film V for Vendetta, tells Big Think. “But V almost seems…
MMX mission to reveal the origins of the Martian moons
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/mmx-mission-origins-martian-moons/
Published: October 20, 2026 06:00
It was way back in the 1600s — immediately following the invention of the telescope — that moons around planets other than Earth were discovered. Jupiter’s four major moons were spotted by Galileo himself back in 1609 and 1610, leading his contemporary,…
How to experience more of reality
https://bigthink.com/perception-box/how-to-experience-more-of-reality/
Published: October 19, 2026 13:53
What is reality? People have debated this for centuries. Is reality objective — something definite that exists independent of us? Or is it subjective, existing only in our individual heads? Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor…
The ultimate key to unlocking the heart of the Milky Way
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/ultimate-key-heart-milky-way/
Published: October 19, 2026 06:00
At the centers of galaxies, supermassive black holes reside. This image of the central region of galaxy Messier 87 comes in the X-ray, via NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory. The central, supermassive black hole is blasting out energetic particles at 99%+…
Ask Ethan: What should humanity’s message to the Universe be?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/humanity-message-to-universe/
Published: October 16, 2026 06:00
One of the greatest open questions in all of the Universe today is just how abundant intelligent alien life is right at this very moment. We can imagine that extraterrestrial intelligence is common, and that the Milky Way is swarming with civilizations —…
Mimetic desire, social contagion, and the fight for your true self
https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/mimetic-desire-contagion/
Published: October 16, 2026 04:00
In 1936, a shipyard worker in Hamburg kept his arms folded while hundreds of men around him raised theirs for Hitler. Luke Burgis, author of Wanting and The One in the 99, wants to know what it takes to become that person, and he traces the answer back to…