Issue_75
19 articles-
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction
Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. You can learn from them so seamlessly that you might believe you knew something—about ancient Greece, say—before having gleaned it from Mary Renault’s novel The Last of the Wine. You’ll also retain false information even if you didn’t mean to. That seems like a liability: […] -
Can New Species Evolve From Cancers? Maybe.
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Aggressive cancers can spread so fiercely that they seem less like tissues gone wrong and more like invasive parasites looking to consume and then break free of their host. If a wild theory recently floated […] -
How American Tycoons Created the Dinosaur
The story of dinosaurs is also the story of capitalism. -
A Hologram Shows How Space Could Pop Into Existence
The holographic principle—with a real hologram. -
What Color Really Evolved For
The finding that melanosomes are so common inside animals’ bodies may overhaul our very understanding of the function of melanin, the pigment responsible for color in feathers and other external features.Photograph by Aline Dassel / Pixabay Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . What color were the dinosaurs? If you […]
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Human Emotions Are Personal Narratives
Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux on what makes our brains unique.
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The Tricky Problem with Other Minds
How our mental states overlap with and diverge from those of other species.
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Daydreams Shape Your Sense of Self
Certain daydreams reflect what is important to a person; what worries them, who they care about, and what they love and aspire to do.Photograph by Crispy Fish Images / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You are at home, cutting onions for dinner, and tear up from the […]
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How Aging Shapes Narrative Identity
It’s not just our flesh and bones that change as we get older.Photograph by dirkmvp41 / Flickr Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . In 2010, Dan McAdams wrote a biography about George W. Bush analyzing the former American president using the tools of personality psychology. It was, in his […]
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Does English Fulfill the Dream of a Universal Language?
English adapts to the needs of people speaking it more than it shapes those people’s ideas or ideals.Photograph by kimberrywood / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Hideo Kojima is the Japanese creator of the 2015 video game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. He evidently chose […]
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Why Did Witch Hunts Go Viral?
If it is in fact accurate to think of witch trial beliefs as viruses, maybe it would be helpful to study their spread the way scientists study the spread of viruses: using an epidemiological model.“The Witch, No. 1” (1892) by Joseph E. Baker / Wikicommons Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join […] -
A Novelist Teaches Herself Physics
To explore loss and mystery, Nell Freudenberger journeyed into the atomic world. -
The Great Silence
A parrot has a question for humans. -
In Brain’s Electrical Ripples, Markers for Memories Appear
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . It’s very easy to break things in biology,” said Loren Frank, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s really hard to make them work better.”Yet against the odds, researchers at the New York […] -
The Real Differences Between Human and Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, it seems, is now everywhere. Text translation, speech recognition, book recommendations, even your spam filter is now “artificially intelligent.” But just what do scientists mean with “artificial intelligence,” and what is artificial about it? Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Artificial intelligence is a term that was […]