Aeon

Our machines could become self-aware without our knowing it. We need a better way to define and test for consciousness

Either cause and effect are the very glue of the cosmos, or they are a naive illusion due to insufficient math. But which?

Where once we saw each branch in isolation, DNA evidence now reveals a network of connections. From an African origin more than 1.8 million years ago, human ancestors flowed into […]

Hunger isn’t in your stomach or your blood-sugar levels. It’s in your mind – and that’s where we need to shape up

Historians of science usually date the origin of the Scientific Revolution as 1543, when Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus first put the Earth in motion. While that is a convenient and defensible […]

Robots came to Europe before the dawn of the mechanical age. To a medieval world, they were indistinguishable from magic

Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?

Why shower precious resources on rescuing individual animals while habitats are destroyed and whole species disappear?

We have this powerful sense that death is a transition, not an end. Why can’t we imagine a world without us?