Philosophy

Philosophy

Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.

words for love
You can love a romantic partner, but also a pet, a book, God, or the sound of someone’s voice. We need many more words for love.
personal branding
Brands manufacture meaning through consensus; people must strive to create their own.
just asking questions
Media provocateurs and conspiracy theorists insist that they're "just asking questions." No, they aren’t.
naive realism
We tend to assume our view of the world is objective and accurate rather than subjective and biased — which is what it really is.
extraterrestrial
There are billions of potentially inhabited planets in the Milky Way alone. Here's how NASA will at last discover and measure them.
What Odysseus needed from his father was something more important: the comfort of being a son.
genius
You've heard of Stephen Hawking. Ever heard of Renata Kallosh? Didn't think so.
John Templeton Foundation
greater fool theory
An analogy explains the greater fool theory: You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away; you just have to run faster than the other guy.
With two different black hole event horizons now directly imaged, we can see that they are, in fact, rings, not disks. But why?
climate change
Any alien civilization that grows to span an entire planet would spark the same effects that we have. So, what do we do about it?
start-ups
In New Zealand, ambitious Kiwis want to launch a lawn mowing business; in South Africa, it's cooking gas refills. Start-up dreams vary widely.
techno-optimism
Technology will not save the world, and it is inherently neither good nor bad. But, when tech is coupled to human virtue, good will prevail.
google AI
The engineer working on Google's AI, called LaMDA, suffers from what we could call Michelangelo Syndrome. Scientists must beware hubris.
A dispute marked by flags and booze has been replaced with an official land border.
mechanical turk
An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.
Nero dystopia
The answer to this question depends on how you define "freedom."
Prison is an unreliable method of punishment. Let's do better.
Science doesn't fit neatly into ideology.
John Templeton Foundation
In all of science, no figures have changed the world more than Einstein and Newton. Will anyone ever be as revolutionary again?