Big Think (videos of April 2017)

source: Big Think
5:42 Do Our Senses Reveal the World—Or Do They Obscure It? | Beau Lotto We know the world exists, we just don’t know what it actually looks like—and it's likely that we never will, says neuroscientist Beau Lotto. Humans can only access reality, whatever it may be, thro...
4:44 Your Brain Tells You Time Is Real — But Is It Lying to You? | Dean Buonomano If you're here to indulge in some mind-bending talk about time travel, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano is about to break some hearts. He doesn't think it's plausible—but if it were, there is one hypo...
4:32 You Don't Need a Lot of Money or Business Classes to Start a Company | Sara Blakely What's the difference between a successful entrepreneur and everyone else? People who build an empire from a product or idea are the ones who take themselves off auto-pilot and ask: is there a bett...
3:36 Faith Is Absurd—Let’s Embrace the Comedy in That | Adam Mansbach With something as sensitive as faith, humor isn't just a handy way to bring people of various religions together, it's an essential tool for social cooperation. Adam Mansbach finds plenty to laugh ...
5:36 Quadruple Amputee Kyle Maynard Is a Photographer, Wrestler, and Inspiration Machine Life advice is awesome under one condition only: when it's being given by someone who has truly lived. That's Kyle Maynard defined. At 26 years old, Maynard became the first quadruple amputee to as...
1:53 Bill Nye Explains the Scientific Method and His Greatest Accomplishment in Life Bill Nye has many feathers in his cap — he's the CEO of The Planetary Society, has a brand-new Netflix show, flew on Air Force One with President Obama, has at least six honorary doctorate degrees ...
7:48 Artificial Intelligence Should Be a Good Kick in the Groin | MIT's Michael Schrage What if AI stood for 'Augmented Introspection' as well as 'Artificial Intelligence'? We've been given a precious do-over opportunity in this emergent time of AI technology, where we can choose to r...
3:36 Brain Training to Beat Procrastination with the World's Easiest Learning Technique | Barbara Oakley Learning is not always easy, and there may be a biological reasons for that. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley teaches the world's largest online open class, commonly referred to as MOOCs. So yo...
5:26 Facebook May Not Want to Beat Fake News | Katherine Maher Wikipedia has come a long, long way. Back when teachers and education institutions were banning it as an information source for students, did anyone think that by 2017 "the encyclopedia that anyone...
2:12 Religion Can Be Dangerous without a Sense of Humor | Dave Barry How can each religion be right and have conflicting beliefs? That, says Dave Barry, is why a sense of humor is crucial for religions to peacefully co-exist. Being able to laugh a little at our own ...
5:09 America's LGBTQ Community: Eye-opening Facts and Statistics | Bennett Singer How many young Americans identify as 100% heterosexual? Where do LGBTQ people live? In what countries is same-sex activity punishable by prison or death? These are all things the stats can tell you...
2:23 The Universe Doesn’t Give a Damn about Us | Theoretical Physicist Lawrence Krauss on Optimism The universe doesn't care about you, and the future is miserable. So begins theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss' guide to optimism. Optimism? You heard us right. We may never find meaning or purp...
3:25 Bill Nye: Will Robots Take Everyone's Job? There are two schools of thought about job automation: one rejects the idea as robots "stealing" human jobs, while the other cannot wait to put its feet up and tuck into some Proust — finally, free...
4:49 Nobody Can Have It All, but You Can Learn to Cope | "New Yorker" Writer Ariel Levy "The thinking that you can have every single thing you want in life is not the thinking of a feminist," says Ariel Levy, "it's the thinking of a toddler." According to Levy, Western culture isn't t...
6:29 The Truth about Success That Nobody Is Telling You | Former Equinox President Sarah Robb O'Hagan What do successful people have in common? They're not satisfied with success. After winning an Olympic gold medal, or filling one the nation's top offices "they would then say, 'Okay, I’m restless ...
4:37 Defund the NEA and PBS? That's Criminal. | Tribeca Film Festival Co-founder Jane Rosenthal The arts reflect what a country is, says Jane Rosenthal — so what kind of country is the US if it cuts funding to its arts communities? The NEA and PBS are two organizations on the chopping block u...
5:38 Want to Be More Empathetic? Start Reading Books by Minorities | Gene Luen Yang Fiction is so much more than a vehicle for entertainment. Graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang believes "own-voice" stories, told by people from within those communities, have immense power to show us t...
5:09 Optimists Decide the Future | "Wired" Founder Kevin Kelly The news certainly doesn't portray it this way, but every year the world becomes a better place, says Kevin Kelly. There is currently an imbalance in our optimism and pessimism levels, because we f...
3:50 Carl Sagan Changed My Life: Bill Nye on Chuck Berry, Kids' Love of Science, and Voyager Spacecraft When Bill Nye was studying engineering at Cornell University, he took astronomy under none other than Carl Sagan. In the past, Nye has said that Sagan gave his lectures just as he presented the ico...
5:30 How Online Advertising Is Tricking Your Thoughts, Attitudes, and Beliefs | Tristan Harris The attention economy has always existed—penny papers competed with each other the same way streaming services do now—but today we feel it so much more because our devices are no longer plugged int...
4:17 Donald Trump: The World's First TV President | Adam Mansbach Until now, the relationship of the President of the United States to the TV had been predictable. The President made news, and satirists made fun of the President. The President did not watch the s...
4:18 Quantum Mechanics, Onions, and a Theory of Everything | Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss It’s no surprise that understanding highly abstract mathematics can be challenging, says theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. The organ of your body that does the understanding — the brain — is l...
4:40 Politics Is Based On a Fundamental Lie, says “Cynical Libertarian” Dave Barry If you think lies are funny, you might be a cynic. If you’re a cynical libertarian, you might be Dave Barry. As a humorist at the Miami Herald for more than 20 years, Barry kept a close watch on st...
4:51 The History of "B*tch" | Merriam-Webster Lexicographer Kory Stamper Language is an evolving animal. That's why the world needs lexicographers, to update dictionaries so they reflect the language of the time. This paper trail leaves a fascinating historical record, ...
4:08 China Spends Billions of Dollars Copying Western Art and Architecture. Why? | Gish Jen In 2012, the southern Chinese province of Guangdong spent $940 million constructing a complete replica of Austria's most picturesque town, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Hallstatt. Did the rest o...
3:27 Your Mind Is So Powerful It Creates Your Reality: What Isaac Lidsky Learned by Going Blind at Age 25 If Isaac Lidsky had not gone blind by the age of 25, would he have graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, or clerked for two Supreme Court Justices, or created a technology company wort...
3:41 Bill Nye on Conspiracy Theorists: NASA's Moon Landing, Vaccines, Astrology, and Tarot Cards Denial comes in all flavors. Some think the moon landing was staged, some think Tupac is alive, and others reject vaccines. If the United States learnt anything in the 2016 election, it's that soci...
4:22 Shaving Your "Bikini Region" While Driving, and Other Florida Stories | Humorist Dave Berry There's a place Americans feel they can do anything, and it's not Las Vegas. Car crashes, sex acts, Walmart, stuffed animals: where else but Florida could these four things be part of the same narr...
4:17 Poker Rule #1: To Win, Don't Privilege Your Gut Instincts | Poker Champ Liv Boeree Want to win at poker? First, understand how your mind works. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel-Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains the mind’s two thinking systems: System 1 which “i...
4:23 It Would Not Be Cool If AI Were Conscious — It Would Be Dumb | Daniel Dennett If consciousness is ours to give, should we give it to AI? This is the question on the mind of the very sentient Daniel Dennett. The emerging trend in AI and AGI is to humanize our robot creations:...