Our worldview, our beliefs about what reality is, our views on what (if anything) has value and meaning, what Aldous Huxley called an ‘individual’s philosophy of life’, contributes more significantly than we often think to our mental well-being. From …
Utopias get a bad rap. The imagining of better futures, without any kind of details about how to achieve them, is seen as a form of escapism from life’s real problems. But utopian thinking can be much more than simply a way of consoling ourselves that …
The current orthodoxy of cosmology rests on unexamined assumptions that have massive implications for our view of the universe. From the size of the universe to its expansion, does the whole programme fail if one of these assumptions turns out to be wrong …
Facebook’s latest project, the metaverse, promises a future of virtual realities and experiences beyond the constraints of the physical world. But a thought experiment by Robert Nozick provides a cautionary tale for why we should be wary of stepping into …
Truth is what corresponds with the facts, right? That might seem like a simple and common-sense view, but as it turns out it is far from either of those things. Despite its many complications, the correspondence theory of truth is the default that …
The climate crisis is in many ways the consequence of having treated nature as a resource for the benefit of humans. Yet even environmentalists can find it hard to break away from this instrumental framework of thought. They talk of the benefits that wild …
Some think that the tendency to take offence is a “snowflake” generation thing, a sign of oversensitivity and a habit to grow out of. But instead of dismissing offence as the hurt feelings of the thin skined, we should take its main effect seriously: the …
The claim that reality’s fundamental building blocks are conscious can seem to challenge what physics tells us the world is like. It’s no surprise then to find prominent physicists arguing that panpsychism is incompatible with physics, and therefore false …
The current narrative about the economy is that price rises are a worrying sign. Long-term price inflation devalues people’s savings, discourages investment, and can create shortages. The textbook remedy is for central banks to raise interest rates, …
Blockchain holds the promise of helping us out of the grips of our current Big Tech, digital feudalism. Through decentralisation, big corporations and governments may lose their influence over the digital landscape. However, power games will still be …
We might think that telling the difference between science and pseudoscience is easy: science is based on empirical evidence, pseudoscience is not. But things are a lot more complicated than that. Coming up with a definition of either science or …
Innovation is the hottest word in business and an ideology that reaches ever further into our lives. Not only does innovation-hype fail to deliver, but our obsession with the new distracts us from the work that matters most. Andrew L. Russell calls out …
The Squid Game can certainly feel like an extreme version of life: a zero-sum competition, with winners and losers. We all want the same things - a fulfilling job, a family, a house, nice holidays - but living under conditions of scarcity means some of us …
The most popular Netflix show in the platform’s history is perhaps an unexpected hit. Why do people so enjoy watching others get brutally murdered simply for losing at children’s games? According to Edward Castronova, it’s because we see ourselves in the …
Contemporary streaming services encourage us to binge-watch. The services automatically ‘play next episode’, and rarely do we have the will to change channel. Under these conditions, our desire for film and television of aesthetic quality is waning. But, …
Those who live in liberal democracies might gasp at China’s new laws limiting the time children can play videogames and banning private tutoring. These laws are what we call paternalistic: they limit personal freedoms with the justification that they …
Most people recognize that the Nobel Peace Prize is political in nature. But few people are aware that the same is true for the Nobel Prize in physics. Politics, economic interests, and scientific research are more intertwined than they have every been – …
Its existence was first speculated to explain the rate at which the universe is expanding. Dark energy, together with dark matter, makes 95% of the universe - yet we have little idea of what it is. According to one theory, dark energy is a particle, linked …
Shamanic practices have long involved music and dancing with others while on mind-altering substances. A new study seems to suggest that the contemporary, secular version of that, taking psychedelic drugs while dancing at a rave, can induce similar …
The scientific image of the world seems to suggest free will is impossible for humans. Despite the central role it plays in giving meaning to our lives, it’s all too tempting to dismiss free will as an illusion. But that would be a mistake. Instead of …
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