Issue_47

29 articles
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    What Trump’s Simplified Language Means

    On the last weekend in April, I was surprised that a panel called “The Press and President Trump,” held at the Columbia Journalism School, didn’t broach the subject of mental illness. Just over a week earlier, at a psychiatry conference at Yale, a group of the attendees announced that Trump has a “dangerous mental illness.” […]
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    Stop Saying the Brain Learns By Rewiring Itself

    Most neuroscientists accept that the brain computes by modifying its synapses, the links between neurons. On this view, the brain learns because experience molds it, rather than because experience implants facts. But experience does implant facts. We all know this, because we retrieve and make use of them throughout the day.Illustration by Gary Waters / […]
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    How the Tension Between Mercy and Blame Shaped Our Legal Codes

    When we make moral judgments, says Fiery Cushman, the lead researcher at Harvard’s Moral Psychology Lab, the “more primitive, so to speak ‘you caused it, you should suffer’ response never goes away.”“The Barque of Dante,” by Eugène Delacroix (1822) One day in July 1884, four shipwrecked men aboard a lifeboat headed northwest off the Cape […]
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    God Created Consciousness in Fiction

    Given his grandeur, pettiness, and complexity, and his capacity for introspection, he’s the major exception to the flatness of ancient characters—God.Illustration by Humphrey King / Flickr Many modern novels do something that the earliest literature sometimes seems incapable of doing—representing the inner life of the individual, in all its complexity. The history of literature has […]
  • Lopata_HERO

    Pre-Conscious Humans May Have Been Like the Borg

    Does an alien race from Star Trek tell the story of human consciousness?
  • Penrose-HERO-2

    Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute

    The emperor of physics defends his controversial theory of mind.

  • Jordana-HERO

    Is Consciousness Fractal?

    Our subconscious love for fractals may tell an evolutionary story.

  • Musser_HERO

    A Theory of Consciousness Can Help Build a Theory of Everything

    Neuroscience is weighing in on physics’ biggest questions.

  • Article Image

    Is Quantum Theory About Reality or What We Know?

    Physicists know how to use quantum theory—your phone and computer give plenty of evidence of that. But knowing how to use it is a far cry from fully understanding the world the theory describes—or even what the various mathematical devices scientists use in the theory are supposed to mean. One such mathematical object, whose status […]

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    How to Solve Oncology’s Labor Crisis

    Cancer doctors are overworked, retire early, and attract fewer recruits than other specialties, leaving the rising cancer-patient population vulnerable. Here’s what must be done.Photograph by Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy / Getty Images I watched a man die today. We were “rounding” when we were summoned to his room. He was struggling to breathe, […]

  • Sedivy-HERO

    Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

    Literature’s evolution has reflected and spurred the growing complexity of society.