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Unmoderated Tag: Celebrities Rating: No Votes Hits: 41 Comments: 0 Big Think: Big Think Mentor: From Big Think to Big Action Big Think: Big Think Mentor: From Big Think to Big Action Big Think Mentor: http://goo.gl/Ejj1Y To meet a growing demand among our audience to see the world-class ideas on Big Think transformed into actionable tools to improve their lives, we created Big Think Mentor , which launches today as one of a handful of new paid subscription channels on YouTube. Mentor puts the big ideas on Big Think into action by connecting world-class mentors like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Julia Galef, and Tim Ferriss with a global community of smart, driven users to teach the habits of mind and people skills we need to live happier, healthier, more productive lives. For $2.99 a month, or $19.99 a year, Mentor gives you access to exclusive video lessons, with two brand new workshops added on the first of every month. And, of course, this will help us bring you an even greater and more dynamic array of free video content through Big Think's public site and our public YouTube channel. Since 2008, bigthink.com has been curating the most powerful emerging ideas in every discipline through interviews with artists, intellectuals, and business leaders -- people like actor/entrepreneur Edward Norton, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, and neurologist Oliver Sacks. With Mentor, we're transforming those big ideas into tools for defining and achieving your personal and professional goals, starting today. May 10, 2013 5:09 PM
Headline Tag: Barack Obama Rating: Good Hits: 2695 Comments: 0 Neil deGrasse Tyson: Sputnik Moment Neil deGrasse Tyson: Sputnik Moment In Space Chronicles, Neil deGrasse Tyson describes how the Soviet Union was a catalyst for the U.S. space program, and China might be considered a similar catalyst today (http://goo.gl/fzGtH). Transcript-- When the president, President Obama, mentioned the Sputnik moment, seeing that we are losing a competitive edge to the Chinese and others, said, "This is a new Sputnik moment" and then he gave a list of things we should do, which included like higher speed Internet and light rail. I'm thinking, no, no. Energy independence, that's not a Sputnik moment. We should have those things anyway. Sputnik moments, you reserve those for grand visions that take your mind, body and soul to places that no one had previously dreamed. Sputnik moments are occasions where you invent tomorrow. I'm not old enough to remember 1957 but there's certainly plenty of people among us who do. And when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik that was a Sputnik moment. This was our sworn enemy, the communists. And we had our own state of self-assessment that we were technologically proficient, you know, we won the war. Our manufacturing was back in place and here's this country that we were telling the whole world that we were better than they were in every way that mattered and, bam, out comes a satellite. Our response was we created NASA; first we went berserk then we created NASA a year later. We redoubled our efforts in science and technology and engineering. And that would shape the identity of the United States from the end of the 1950s through the 1970s. The Sputnicity of that moment I think comes from the fact, whether or not the public knew this, the military folks knew it, that Sputnik was a hollowed out intercontinental ballistic missile shell. They took out the warhead and put in a radio transmitter that went beep, beep. The military folks knew that if they could put a radio transmitter in a ballistic missile shell and fly it over our heads that they have the new higher ground. So in that case the Sputnik moment was a military one. And it was clear that technology and science would be what would enable nations to take the lead and the high ground. Right now we're, we in America, we're sort of slowing down, or maybe everyone else is just speeding up but the effect is we've lost our edge. We've lost our leadership position. When President Obama said, "In a Sputnik moment, in fact we will rejuvenate the space program." The space program in fact is not dead it's just kind of smoldering back there. One of them is we'll be back to Mars in the 2030s, 2030's, maybe as early as the late 2020's. Who's gonna be president? On what budget? So that's a nice thing to listen to in a speech because he's thinking about the future but that's not a future that's actually within reach that anyone can act upon. I don't like Sputnik moments. I'd rather have been the leader all along. Why do we have to be shocked into being motivated to lead? Why don't we just lead all the time? And maybe that's just unrealistic, maybe that's just not human nature. Maybe we have to feel threatened in order to act. So yes Sputnik moments work, and if we can't lead all the time, let it be a Sputnik moment that kick starts our heart back beating again. But I can't help but be a little disappointed that we haven't stayed there. That we're going to have to play catch-up if we're gonna catch up at all. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd User: Curtius May 2, 2013 5:22 AM
Unmoderated Tag: Interview Rating: No Votes Hits: 48 Comments: 0 Big Think: Honoring Earth Day with Roger Moenks: I Am Eco-Warrior Big Think: Honoring Earth Day with Roger Moenks: I Am Eco-Warrior From Stylizing the Environmental Movement: I Am Eco-Warrior http://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/stylizing-the-environmental-movement-i-am-eco-warrior People always think of environmentalists "being granola or hippy-ish or even snobbish," says the photographer Roger Moenks. "They never really think of it like being cool or in the frontline of pop culture." And so Moenks turned his talents to change all of that. His new multimedia platform and coffee-table book, I Am Eco-Warrior: Portraits from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, seeks to answer the question "How can I stylize a movement -- the environmental movement -- and make it interesting?" "I didn't want to depict them as tree-huggers," Moenks said. Instead we see ECO-warriors like Ted Turner, Jeffrey Sachs, Stella McCartney, Sir Richard Branson, David de Rothshild, Jane Goodall, Michael Bloomberg and many more. Transcript -- Roger Moenks: Right now or in the past people always think of environment being granola or hippyish or even snobbish. But they never really think of it like being cool or in the frontline of pop culture. How can I stylize a movement, an environmental movement and make it interesting. So this is really what I wanted to do is to create a new -- a rebranding of the environmental movement using innovative global thinkers and stylize them in their homes. But very often the photo drives you to read the story behind it. So if you look at a picture and you find it attractive you're going to read about it. So it is just another way trying to raise awareness and have people take a step back and actually try to learn about somebody. And in Eco-Warrior there are 53 innovative thinkers are represented with long interviews and their photos. And I personally think it's a blueprint of what anybody can take out of it to make better decisions in their own life. It was important for me to find iconic people for this project because I think having the community that is extremely involved in the environment and environmental concerns be part of a project like I Am Eco-Warrior makes it authentic. And I went to very specific people like Ted Turner and Howard Buffet and Mayor Bloomberg and I asked them could you, would you mind me taking a photo of you and doing an interview with you to raise awareness and to bring environment into pop culture and make it sexy and cool. And I think that's really exciting because you're using the power of imagery to raise awareness. It always comes back to, you know, what do you want to do with a specific project or a specific image. And images have moved the world. I personally think it's individuals, big thinkers, that start the chain, the domino effect. And we have to support these people so they can get to work and keep on raising the awareness and push corporations, governments, society at large to make better decisions. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd Apr 22, 2013 6:03 PM
Headline Tag: Celebrities Rating: Good Hits: 485 Comments: 3 Neil deGrasse Tyson: Has the Future Arrived? Neil deGrasse Tyson: Has the Future Arrived? American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says he would like to go to space himself, or at the very least help others get there, but he's content living vicariously through the robots for now. User: Pantufas Apr 21, 2013 2:20 PM
Permanent Tag: Television Rating: Good Hits: 151 Comments: 0 Penn Jillette: Donald Trump is Scrooge McDuck Penn Jillette: Donald Trump is Scrooge McDuck Penn Jillette says that despite Donald Trump's apparent craziness, the real estate mogul's move into entertainment is a good role for him in our culture. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd User: Pantufas Apr 19, 2013 5:07 AM
Headline Tag: Science Rating: Good Hits: 2016 Comments: 2 Big Think: Eric Kandel: How Your Brain Finishes Paintings Big Think: Eric Kandel: How Your Brain Finishes Paintings The idea that a painting is not complete until the viewer responds to it was conceived of by Alois Riegl. He determined that as art evolved, you see there's a conscious attempt on the part of the painter to paint people who look at you, who interact with you. Transcript-- We don't have a deep understanding of the Beholder's Response, but it's interesting that if you put together what we know from disorders of brain function and the normal physiology, we begin to understand an outline what the beholder's response is. And this is so important because in 1906 when Freud was active and Klink, Tolkuchka and Sheely, the artists, were active, there was a major person at the Vienna School of Artistry called Alois Riegl. And he said that the problem with art history is, it's going to go down the tubes because it's too anecdotal, it's too descriptive, it doesn't have enough of a science base. It's got to become more scientific. And the science it should relate itself to is psychology. And the key problem that it should address right off is the beholder's share. You have a painting, that painting is not complete until the viewer responds to it. It's obvious once you say it, you know, this is why it was painted in the first place. But he pointed out; this has become more explicit in the history of art. If you look at Renaissance art, particularly early Renaissance art, it's very inner directed. And he points to a painting in Florence of the Trinity in Santa Maria Novella painted by Masaccio, which has one of the early paintings to show you a wonderful sense of perspective. You see Christ on the cross, you see Mary and Joseph, they're turning toward him. God is above, he looks down, the two donnas at the side, they're looking -- they're all looking at Christ. It's a very inner directed picture and it doesn't really recruit the involvement of the beholder dramatically. But as art evolved, particularly when you move to Dutch art, which Riegl was very impressed with, you see that there's a conscious attempt on the part of the painter to paint people who look at you, who interact with you. And that made him aware of the fact of how important the beholder was and to try to understand how does the beholder's response works. He had two very gifted students, Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich, and they began to put this on a really rigorous basis. Ernst Kris said, "Great works are great because they are ambiguous." They allow for alternative readings. So you and I look at that Masaccio painting, we would have somewhat different responses to it which means that the beholder's share varies for each of us because we see somewhat different things in the painting. Now, what does that mean? He said, if that means that beholder's share varies, it means you and I must be creating different images in our brain about that particular portrait. So even though you and I are looking at the same object in the world, we are creating slightly different visual impressions in the mind. Emotional impressions in our mind are looking at this. And they began to document it. First he and then Gombrich showed you how you can trick the mind into alternate interpretations with illusions of various kinds. And they began to realize that when you look at a painting, you're undergoing a creative experience that is at least an outline similar to the painter.  The painter exercises a dramatic amount of creativity in doing a portrait, but you, yourself, generate a fair amount of creativity in reconstructing it in your head and reconstructing it in a way that is unique for you and it's slightly different for me. This was a remarkable insight and has really given rise to the sort of the current understanding of what goes on in our head.   The painting, the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci is generally considered one of the greatest masterpieces in western art. And the reason it's so great is for the same reason we talked about before. It has a great deal of ambiguity. And ambiguity is what brings out difference of interpretation. It makes -- it contributes to work being great. And with her, one of the very specific points of ambiguity is the nature of her facial expression. Is she smiling or is she not? And there's been endless discussions about this. And we want to understand why does that ambiguity arise? And there are two major interpretations. One is, it's the form of painting that Leonardo used in which he purposely paints over the edges of the mouth, a technique called Sfumato smoke. So it's a little bit hazy and not clearly outlined, and that gives rise to the ambiguity. And Marge Livingston has made the point, it's how you focus on it. If you focus on it with central vision, which sees detail, you don't see the smile. If you focus on peripheral vision, which sees the broad outlines, you do better at seeing the smile.   Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd Apr 8, 2013 9:04 AM
Unmoderated Tag: Science Rating: Amazing Hits: 77 Comments: 1 Big Think: Lawrence Krauss on Caveman Common Sense Big Think: Lawrence Krauss on Caveman Common Sense The physicist argues that our common sense is based on evolutionary imperatives that have less to do with the universe as it is than with what our ancestors needed to do to survive in a hostile wilderness. Transcript-- We evolved as human beings a few million years ago on the Savanna in Africa and we evolved to escape tigers, or lions, or predators. And so what makes common sense to us is the world on our scale. You know, how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave and we didn't evolve to understand quantum mechanics. And, therefore, it's not too surprising that on scales vastly different than the kind of experience we had as we were evolving as a species, that nature seems strange and sometimes almost unfathomable, certainly violates our common sense. Our sense of what is common sense and what's intuition. But as I like to say, the universe doesn't care about our common sense. We have to force our ideas to conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around And if reality seems strange, that's okay. In fact that's what makes science so wonderful; it expands our minds because it forces us to accept possibilities, which, in advance, we may never of thought was possible. I've said that scientists love mysteries, and we do. That's the reason I'm a scientist. Because it's the puzzles of the universe that make it so exciting. Now it is true that we want to solve, resolve those and solve those puzzles. That's part of the fun of doing science is solving puzzles, basically. But each time we do, new questions arise. And I think for many of us, just as in our lives, the searching is often much more profound than the finding. It's the searching for answers through life in some sense that make life worth living. If we had all the answers, we could just sit back and stare at out navels. And I think what makes the search so exciting is that the answers are so surprising. The universe continues to surprise us in ways we never would have imagined. Well beyond our own imagination in advance, and that's all we have to keep exploring the universe. We can't just sit in a room and think about it because every time we open a new window on the universe were surprised. And that makes the whole process incredibly exciting. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd Mar 20, 2013 12:05 AM
Unmoderated Tag: Television Rating: Ok Hits: 133 Comments: 0 Big Think: Penn Jillette's Bullshit Detector Big Think: Penn Jillette's Bullshit Detector According to atheist magician Penn Jillette, the most important thing is to feel about things you should feel about -- and think about things you should think about. You should not feel about the speed of light or evolution and you should not think about love. You should feel "I love you," you should think about reality. Transcript -- You know, my bullshit detector works first of all...if there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most. I don't question bad news very much. I don't question things that go against what I believe very much. But boy, the stuff that I really want to believe, I really question a lot. Now, I was taught -- I grew up as a Christian. I suppose at some level I wanted to believe someone was watching over me. But when I want to believe something, that's when I want to question it the most. That's when I have to be the most careful. And I feel a little bit disingenuous with that answer because I don't think I any longer want to believe in God. My friend, who I miss very much, Hitch, Christopher Hitchens, said that wanting there to be a god was like wanting to live in North Korea, to give away all of your freedom. And for someone who loves freedom and loves people, I don't think you should hope for God at all. So I guess my detector on God is that whenever someone uses what they feel as evidence instead of what they think as evidence or what they can prove as evidence, I'm very, very skeptical. The most important thing is to feel about things you feel about -- should feel about -- and think about things you should think about. You should not feel about the speed of light or evolution and you should not think about love. You should feel "I love you," you should think about reality. And when someone says they feel the universe was created by a God, that's nonsense, just like saying, you know, "I've thought about it and maybe I should love you." Don't mix those two. And a lot of people seem to think that -- that feeling cheapens the science, that if you feel something it cheapens it. And there's not enough said about how it cheapens the emotion. You know, if you're spending your time feeling that the earth was created, instead of... by intelligent design, you should be spending your time feeling love, feeling compassion, feeling generosity and loyalty and all the stuff you should feel in your heart. Even anger, even disappointment. But that doesn't change the world. You should think about the world and feel about your heart. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd Mar 19, 2013 11:55 PM
Headline Tag: Cults and Religions Rating: Amazing Hits: 1215 Comments: 14 Sam Harris: On Interpreting Scripture Sam Harris: On Interpreting Scripture Maybe God spoke in metaphor. User: Curtius Mar 18, 2013 3:43 AM
Permanent Tag: Celebrities Rating: Good Hits: 250 Comments: 0 Michio Kaku: How to Reverse Aging Michio Kaku: How to Reverse Aging Enzymes like Telomerase and Resveratrol, though not the Fountain of Youth unto themselves, offer tantalizing clues to how we might someday soon unravel the aging process. User: Pantufas Jan 10, 2013 1:50 PM
Unmoderated Tag: Non Sequitur Rating: Good Hits: 234 Comments: 3 Are You A Psychopath? Take the Test! Are You A Psychopath? Take the Test! Psychologist Kevin Dutton presents the classic psychological test known as "the trolley problem" with a variation. Take the test and measure you response on the psychopathic spectrum. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd User: Pantufas Nov 25, 2012 3:50 PM
Headline Tag: Television Rating: Good Hits: 1485 Comments: 3 Penn Jillette: Mitt's Magical Mormon Undies Penn Jillette: Mitt's Magical Mormon Undies In this (profane) installment of Penn Jillette's Atheist's Guide to the 2012 Election, the Penn and Teller illusionist (and outspoken atheist) sizes up Mitt Romney's religion. Originally Recorded September 16, 2011 User: Pantufas Sep 18, 2012 12:26 PM
Unmoderated Tag: Interview Rating: No Votes Hits: 217 Comments: 0 Big Think Interview With Stephen Fry Big Think Interview With Stephen Fry A conversation with the British comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. Sep 11, 2012 1:25 AM
Headline Tag: Politics Rating: Amazing Hits: 1611 Comments: 8 Bill Nye: Creationism is not Appropriate for Children Bill Nye: Creationism is not Appropriate for Children Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. According to Bill Nye, aka "the science guy," if grownups want to "deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them." -- Transcript: Denial of evolution is unique to the United States. I mean, we're the world's most advanced technological—I mean, you could say Japan—but generally, the United States is where most of the innovations still happens. People still move to the United States. And that's largely because of the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science. When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in that, it holds everybody back, really. Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place. As my old professor, Carl Sagan, said, "When you're in love you want to tell the world." So, once in a while I get people that really—or that claim—they don't believe in evolution. And my response generally is "Well, why not? Really, why not?" Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don't believe in evolution. I mean, here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent. And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems. It's just really hard a thing, it's really a hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I'm sure, will be, it just won't exist. There's no evidence for it. Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd Aug 28, 2012 7:02 PM
Headline Tag: Celebrities Rating: Amazing Hits: 1287 Comments: 3 Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies Neil deGrasse Tyson: Commercial Space Fantasies There is a lot of talk lately about what role the privatization of space might play in our future ambitions of space exploration, and Neil deGrasse Tyson tells Big Think "from where I sit there is a lot of delusional thinking there." User: Pantufas Mar 21, 2012 4:20 PM
 
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