Americans are getting worse at math. Student scores have fallen to their lowest point in decades. Nearly half of high school students barely meet what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) considers a “basic” level of comprehension, and more than 900 freshmen at the University of California, San Diego — 12.5% of the institution’s first-year class in 2024 — had the mathematical proficiency of a 13-year-old.
U.S. adults aren’t faring much better. Last checked, only 65% could pass a basic arithmetic test, making the country one of the more quantitatively challenged in the industrialized world.
But this isn’t the first time the math graph has trended downward. A similar development took place during the early stages of the Cold War, when enrollment in high school algebra fell to levels not seen since the start of the 20th century. It wasn’t until the launch of Sputnik in 1957, when the Soviet Union kicked off the space race, that alarm gave way to action. Math and science education were overhauled, and calculus was introduced into the curriculum.
As then, concerns about the national “math ... Continue Reading »
Outer space is having a moment. NASA’s Artemis 2 mission is about to take humans farther into space than we have ever gone; SpaceX is preparing to test the latest version of Starship, its interplanetary transport system; and just today, a crew of four astronauts flew to the International Space Station to replace the team that was evacuated last month due to a medical emergency. These efforts are part of a common vision: expanding humanity’s presence beyond Earth, including the eventual creation of human settlements on Mars.
But what would it be like to live on Mars? Aside from the challenges of lower gravity, intense radiation, and toxic soil, an important, but less often considered, factor would be your love life.
People have been traveling to space for more than six decades and have been living off-planet continuously since 2000, when the International Space Station (ISS) became operational. Yet, no one has had sex in space (as far as we know). This is surprising given the extensive research dedicated to understanding nearly every aspect of how space affects biological systems. Not to ... Continue Reading »
One of the most mind-bending concepts about the Universe is the idea that the very fabric of space itself is expanding. It was proven, way back in 1922, that this is an inevitable consequence of having a Universe that’s filled, in a near-uniform fashion, with any type (or types) of energy at all. Such a Universe cannot be static and stable, but must, in the context of general relativity, either expand or contract. When this theoretical framework was combined with observational data measuring the distance to, and redshift of, galaxies external to our own Milky Way, the fact of the expanding Universe was established observationally.
It’s now a full century later, and we’ve learned — to a great degree of accuracy — how quickly the Universe itself is expanding, as well as what forms of energy drive that expansion and how the cosmic expansion has changed over time. Yet, we can only draw these conclusions by examining many different objects at many different cosmic distances, and combining all of that data together. Could we ever hope to see evidence for the ... Continue Reading »
The story of the chip is a story about geopolitics and scarcity. From $20 billion fabrication plants to machines built by a single Dutch firm, the supply chain behind your devices is both miraculous and astonishingly fragile.
Chris Miller explains why the AI race, U.S.–China tensions, and the future of economic dominance, all rest on this tiny square of silicon.
This video The most important piece of technology in your lifetime is this tiny chip is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Walking through a field one day, a 17-year-old schoolteacher named George Boole had a vision. His head was full of abstract mathematics — ideas about how to use algebra to solve complex calculus problems. Suddenly, he was struck with a flash of insight: that thought itself might be expressed in algebraic form.
Boole was born on November 2, 1815, at four o’clock in the afternoon, in Lincoln, England. He was the first child of John Boole, a shoemaker, and his wife Mary Ann. But John was no ordinary shoemaker — he was an enthusiast of science and mathematics, as likely to be making telescopes as shoes. Appropriately, his son George received a quality education, studying the classics as well as mathematics and learning to play the flute and piano. He quickly became fluent in Latin and Greek, and his translations of classical poems were published in the local newspaper when he was 14 (creating some controversy when a reader refused to believe they were the work of a schoolboy). When his father’s business began to fail a couple of years later, ... Continue Reading »
Perhaps the most commonly told myth in all of science is that of the lone genius. The blueprint for it goes something like this. Once upon a time in history, someone with a towering intellect but no formal training wades into a field that’s new to them for the first time. Upon considering the field’s issues, they immediately see things that no one else has ever seen before. With just a little bit of hard work, they find solutions to puzzles that have stymied all of the greatest minds in the field that approached those problems previously. They wind up revolutionizing their field, and the world is never the same. It leaves one with a strong take-home message: that if you were that inexperienced person with a similarly towering intellect, and you had the good fortune of coming into a field just as that legend did, then you too could make those great breakthroughs that the world’s greatest professionals are all currently missing.
That’s the myth we frequently tell ourselves about Albert Einstein. That he, an outcast and a dropout, taught ... Continue Reading »
We don’t often call people stupid. Unlike its sibling concepts of dumbness and idiocy, stupidity isn’t really a personality trait. Of course, you might think someone is stupid, but when we use the word, we tend to limit it to moments of stupidity. We say, “Well, that was a stupid thing to do” or “You’re being stupid.” Stupidity is a blip.
In fact, somewhat ironically, stupidity is often defined in contrast to otherwise normal and intelligent activities. We say “you’re being stupid” because we expect the person to be sensible otherwise.
Stupidity is not tied to IQ — as dumbness is — or the ability to assess risks — as being foolish is. Stupidity is an action, one defined by its implications. A Nobel Prize-winning professor can be stupid. A five-year-old can be stupid. We can all be stupid. But do enough stupid things in too short a period, and people might start whispering, “I think he might just be stupid.”
So, here is Carlo Cipolla’s “golden law of stupidity” on how to spot and avoid acts of stupidity.
The golden law of stupidity
Cipolla ... Continue Reading »
One of the most important lessons we learn from studying the Universe is that none of the sources of light that we see — none of the stars, galaxies, stellar remnants, quasars, or heated matter — will continue to shine forever. After a finite amount of time, anything powered by nuclear fusion or infalling matter will run out of fuel. Anything that emits light because it’s hot will cool, and once it’s cooled enough, it won’t emit detectable light signatures any longer: not only ultraviolet and visible light, but infrared, microwave, and even radio emissions will eventually cease. Every point-like and every extended light source, even though they shine brilliantly and ubiquitously today, will someday be snuffed out.
For stars, there are three main fates that a star can have, all of which are heavily dependent on their mass at birth.
The most massive stars will burn through their fuel and undergo collapse: either direct collapse to a black hole or core-collapse, leading to a supernova. These stars can leave black holes, neutron stars, or nothing at all behind when they die.
The ... Continue Reading »
The great management guru Peter Drucker wrote about the need to observe how people work, identify their needs, and then translate that need into demand for something better. “The only purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
Design firm IDEO and its CEO, Tim Brown, spent a career popularizing human-centered design and integrating it into corporate strategy—but what were the results? If it’s such a natural thing to do, why don’t we see more successes on the level of Uber, Airbnb, iPhone, Fitbit, eBay, and PayPal? The problem is that conventional research methods don’t uncover how people work and, importantly, how people work around problems to create jury-rigged solutions that satisfy them, at least for a time. So their needs may be obfuscated, obscured even, from them!
For example, I would love to have a pair of lightweight running shoes to use when I travel. Most of the weight in my suitcase is from shoes, and the rubber in running shoes is a big culprit. I haven’t found a shoe that meets my needs, and the rental of shoes ... Continue Reading »
In 2015, the New York Times ran a “Modern Love” column that might have made it into your inbox. The title, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” apparently tapped into some of our collective anxieties and quickly went viral. In the essay, writer Mandy Len Catron tells the story of using a set of increasingly intimate questions to get to know a potential romantic partner. The 36 questions, actually developed many years prior as an experimental research tool by Arthur Aron and colleagues, are designed to accelerate close connection between two people. They start with “easy” ones, like Would you like to be famous? In what way? (#2), but lead inexorably to If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet? (#33).
The purpose of this task was to help the pairs develop a close bond in a short period of time, by accelerating through the moments of connection that would otherwise naturally occur as a friendship or ... Continue Reading »
Americans are getting worse at math. Student scores have fallen to their lowest point in decades. Nearly half of high school students barely meet what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) considers a “basic” level of comprehension, and more than 900 freshmen at the University of California, San Diego — 12.5% of the institution’s first-year class in 2024 — had the mathematical proficiency of a 13-year-old.
U.S. adults aren’t faring much better. Last checked, only 65% could pass a basic arithmetic test, making the country one of the more quantitatively challenged in the industrialized world.
But this isn’t the first time the math graph has trended downward. A similar development took place during the early stages of the Cold War, when enrollment in high school algebra fell to levels not seen since the start of the 20th century. It wasn’t until the launch of Sputnik in 1957, when the Soviet Union kicked off the space race, that alarm gave way to action. Math and science education were overhauled, and calculus was introduced into the curriculum.
As then, concerns about the national “math ... 
Outer space is having a moment. NASA’s Artemis 2 mission is about to take humans farther into space than we have ever gone; SpaceX is preparing to test the latest version of Starship, its interplanetary transport system; and just today, a crew of four astronauts flew to the International Space Station to replace the team that was evacuated last month due to a medical emergency. These efforts are part of a common vision: expanding humanity’s presence beyond Earth, including the eventual creation of human settlements on Mars.
But what would it be like to live on Mars? Aside from the challenges of lower gravity, intense radiation, and toxic soil, an important, but less often considered, factor would be your love life.
People have been traveling to space for more than six decades and have been living off-planet continuously since 2000, when the International Space Station (ISS) became operational. Yet, no one has had sex in space (as far as we know). This is surprising given the extensive research dedicated to understanding nearly every aspect of how space affects biological systems. Not to ... 
One of the most mind-bending concepts about the Universe is the idea that the very fabric of space itself is expanding. It was proven, way back in 1922, that this is an inevitable consequence of having a Universe that’s filled, in a near-uniform fashion, with any type (or types) of energy at all. Such a Universe cannot be static and stable, but must, in the context of general relativity, either expand or contract. When this theoretical framework was combined with observational data measuring the distance to, and redshift of, galaxies external to our own Milky Way, the fact of the expanding Universe was established observationally.
It’s now a full century later, and we’ve learned — to a great degree of accuracy — how quickly the Universe itself is expanding, as well as what forms of energy drive that expansion and how the cosmic expansion has changed over time. Yet, we can only draw these conclusions by examining many different objects at many different cosmic distances, and combining all of that data together. Could we ever hope to see evidence for the ... 
Walking through a field one day, a 17-year-old schoolteacher named George Boole had a vision. His head was full of abstract mathematics — ideas about how to use algebra to solve complex calculus problems. Suddenly, he was struck with a flash of insight: that thought itself might be expressed in algebraic form.
Boole was born on November 2, 1815, at four o’clock in the afternoon, in Lincoln, England. He was the first child of John Boole, a shoemaker, and his wife Mary Ann. But John was no ordinary shoemaker — he was an enthusiast of science and mathematics, as likely to be making telescopes as shoes. Appropriately, his son George received a quality education, studying the classics as well as mathematics and learning to play the flute and piano. He quickly became fluent in Latin and Greek, and his translations of classical poems were published in the local newspaper when he was 14 (creating some controversy when a reader refused to believe they were the work of a schoolboy). When his father’s business began to fail a couple of years later, ... 
Perhaps the most commonly told myth in all of science is that of the lone genius. The blueprint for it goes something like this. Once upon a time in history, someone with a towering intellect but no formal training wades into a field that’s new to them for the first time. Upon considering the field’s issues, they immediately see things that no one else has ever seen before. With just a little bit of hard work, they find solutions to puzzles that have stymied all of the greatest minds in the field that approached those problems previously. They wind up revolutionizing their field, and the world is never the same. It leaves one with a strong take-home message: that if you were that inexperienced person with a similarly towering intellect, and you had the good fortune of coming into a field just as that legend did, then you too could make those great breakthroughs that the world’s greatest professionals are all currently missing.
That’s the myth we frequently tell ourselves about Albert Einstein. That he, an outcast and a dropout, taught ... 
We don’t often call people stupid. Unlike its sibling concepts of dumbness and idiocy, stupidity isn’t really a personality trait. Of course, you might think someone is stupid, but when we use the word, we tend to limit it to moments of stupidity. We say, “Well, that was a stupid thing to do” or “You’re being stupid.” Stupidity is a blip.
In fact, somewhat ironically, stupidity is often defined in contrast to otherwise normal and intelligent activities. We say “you’re being stupid” because we expect the person to be sensible otherwise.
Stupidity is not tied to IQ — as dumbness is — or the ability to assess risks — as being foolish is. Stupidity is an action, one defined by its implications. A Nobel Prize-winning professor can be stupid. A five-year-old can be stupid. We can all be stupid. But do enough stupid things in too short a period, and people might start whispering, “I think he might just be stupid.”
So, here is Carlo Cipolla’s “golden law of stupidity” on how to spot and avoid acts of stupidity.
The golden law of stupidity
Cipolla ... 
One of the most important lessons we learn from studying the Universe is that none of the sources of light that we see — none of the stars, galaxies, stellar remnants, quasars, or heated matter — will continue to shine forever. After a finite amount of time, anything powered by nuclear fusion or infalling matter will run out of fuel. Anything that emits light because it’s hot will cool, and once it’s cooled enough, it won’t emit detectable light signatures any longer: not only ultraviolet and visible light, but infrared, microwave, and even radio emissions will eventually cease. Every point-like and every extended light source, even though they shine brilliantly and ubiquitously today, will someday be snuffed out.
For stars, there are three main fates that a star can have, all of which are heavily dependent on their mass at birth.
The most massive stars will burn through their fuel and undergo collapse: either direct collapse to a black hole or core-collapse, leading to a supernova. These stars can leave black holes, neutron stars, or nothing at all behind when they die.
The ... 
The great management guru Peter Drucker wrote about the need to observe how people work, identify their needs, and then translate that need into demand for something better. “The only purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
Design firm IDEO and its CEO, Tim Brown, spent a career popularizing human-centered design and integrating it into corporate strategy—but what were the results? If it’s such a natural thing to do, why don’t we see more successes on the level of Uber, Airbnb, iPhone, Fitbit, eBay, and PayPal? The problem is that conventional research methods don’t uncover how people work and, importantly, how people work around problems to create jury-rigged solutions that satisfy them, at least for a time. So their needs may be obfuscated, obscured even, from them!
For example, I would love to have a pair of lightweight running shoes to use when I travel. Most of the weight in my suitcase is from shoes, and the rubber in running shoes is a big culprit. I haven’t found a shoe that meets my needs, and the rental of shoes ... 
In 2015, the New York Times ran a “Modern Love” column that might have made it into your inbox. The title, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” apparently tapped into some of our collective anxieties and quickly went viral. In the essay, writer Mandy Len Catron tells the story of using a set of increasingly intimate questions to get to know a potential romantic partner. The 36 questions, actually developed many years prior as an experimental research tool by Arthur Aron and colleagues, are designed to accelerate close connection between two people. They start with “easy” ones, like Would you like to be famous? In what way? (#2), but lead inexorably to If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet? (#33).
The purpose of this task was to help the pairs develop a close bond in a short period of time, by accelerating through the moments of connection that would otherwise naturally occur as a friendship or ...