Guest Thinkers — February 23, 2011

Ask Ray Kurzweil About the Future

Submit your questions now in advance of Big Think’s interview with this controversial thinker and visionary.

On Friday, February 25, Big Think will be interviewing Ray Kurzweil, the futurist visionary, inventor, entrepreneur and modern-day Nostradamus, who predicted with uncanny accuracy the rise of the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the year that a computer would beat a human being at chess. His prediction for the coming Singularity–when Artificial Intelligence completely outpaces the human brain, an event Kurzweil forecasts will happen in the year 2045–remains to be seen.

This is your chance to submit questions to be asked of this controversial thinker and visionary. Simply add your question to the comment section of this post.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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