thought experiments

Philosopher Daniel Dennett visits Google to discuss his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, describing thought experiments and thinking tools across psychology, biology, computer science and physics.

A CBC satire sketch in which a self-proclaimed thought leader gives a talk full of empty gestures and nothing-saying inspiration. It parodies TED-style conference talks.

Eben Moglen's re:publica 2012 talk argues that media which spy on and data-mine the public threaten freedom of thought, and that free technology and free culture are needed to protect it.

Sebastien Bubeck presents the Sparks of AGI paper at MIT, showing early experiments with GPT-4 across many domains and asking whether artificial intelligence has arrived. It includes the TikZ unicorn example.

A Seeker short documentary on a lab where robots run experiments with almost no human intervention, covering automation and active machine learning in drug discovery and synthetic biology.

CGP Grey asks whether Star Trek-style teleportation would kill you and recreate a copy, working through the philosophy of identity and the Ship of Theseus. It is a short animated explainer.

George Brocklehurst of thoughtbot demonstrates Vim's built-in completion mechanisms, from word, line and block completion to ctags. The aim is to type less and make fewer typos.

The Thought Emporium's update on the home-brewed gene therapy he took to cure his lactose intolerance. It reports how the effect held up over two years and what future versions might look like.

Technology Connections experiments with filtering white and colored LEDs to make holiday lights look less garish. He explains why narrowband LED strings look harsh compared with incandescent bulbs.

Shahriar of The Signal Path tears down and experiments with Keysight's UXR real-time oscilloscope, which offers 110GHz bandwidth and 256GS/s sampling, and compares architectures from Keysight, LeCroy and Tektronix.

Steven Pinker presents his book The Stuff of Thought at Google in 2007. He covers language as a window into human nature, including taboo words, swearing and the psychology and game theory of indirect speech like bribery.

A 2019 BBC News report by John Sudworth, who was given rare access to the secure facilities in Xinjiang where more than a million Muslims are thought to be held. Authorities call them training schools, and the report examines what the visit reveals about the system and conditions inside.

A lecture by Noam Chomsky on thought control in democratic societies, covering propaganda and manufacturing consent. The upload has no description.

Bryan Cantrill's Craft 2019 talk on the ethical dilemmas software engineers face as software eats the world. He explores cases where engineering thinking conflicts with the law or personal morals, including Facebook's news feed experiments.

A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on meat: why people love it and what it costs animals, the environment and health. It lays out the complicated trade-offs of meat production and consumption.

Mike Wallace interviews Aldous Huxley in 1958 about the warnings in Brave New World, including mass persuasion, overpopulation and voluntary totalitarianism.

Gregory Chaitin is interviewed on Closer To Truth about whether mathematics is invented or discovered. He gives a nuanced view that ties the question to the nature of reality.

A Philosophy Tube video essay on data, surveillance and the algorithms built on personal information, touching on Cambridge Analytica and the 'nothing to hide' argument.

Mirabai Knight's PyCon 2013 talk on Plover, a free cross-platform stenography engine that lets people write at up to 240 WPM on ordinary hardware, including a demo of coding by steno.

Bret Victor's closing keynote at UIST and SPLASH 2014 argues that our tools for thinking ignore most of human sensory and motor capability. He sketches representations that engage more modalities beyond screens and keyboards.

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

Bret Victor's 2013 MIT Media Lab talk argues that the media we think with determine which thoughts are possible. He demos new representations for scientific papers, circuits, filters and signal processing.

Andreas Antonopoulos explains how to tell Bitcoin-style blockchains from corporate blockchain hype. He argues the goal should be de-banking everyone rather than banking the unbanked.

A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.

Mark Rober digs into bed bugs, testing popular beliefs about where they come from and how to get rid of them. It mixes entertaining experiments with research-based advice on what works and what does not.

Tom Scott visits a rotating house near San Diego and explains how electricity, gas and water keep working on the rotating part. It includes a 3D render of the utility connection system.

At CppCon 2017 Herb Sutter presents his work on evolving C++ through compile-time code generation, including metaclasses and reflection. The aim is to make the language both more powerful and simpler by letting programmers express intent directly.

Hard Is Easy runs experiments to show that a correctly tied figure 8 knot is not hard to untie after loading. He shows how two knots that look similar can behave differently depending on how they are dressed.

Freeman Dyson's 2005 Boston University talk on heretical views about science and society. He questions prevailing dogmas, including his argument that climate and CO2 are a land management issue.

Atrocity Guide covers the 1965 dolphin experiments of Dr. John C. Lilly and Margaret Howe, who tried to teach dolphins English. It traces the bizarre methods and Lilly's later drug-fueled beliefs.

Sciencium examines the Mpemba effect, the claim that hot water freezes faster than cold water. It walks through experiments and a published paper questioning the effect.

TED talk by biochemist Cynthia Kenyon on how a simple genetic mutation can double the lifespan of the worm C. elegans, and what that suggests about extending healthy human life.

Styropyro wires 100 car batteries in parallel to produce more current than a lightning bolt and tests what happens when it is shorted. The experiments, done with other YouTubers, show spectacular effects of extreme current.

Archive footage from 1964 of Royal Marine Commando volunteers filmed on a field exercise after taking LSD at Porton Down. It documents a British military drug trial.

Dominion is a two-hour documentary using drones and hidden cameras to expose conditions in animal agriculture, including food, clothing, entertainment and research. It questions humanity's dominion over animals.

The first episode of Michael Sandel's Harvard course on moral reasoning, opening with the trolley problem and the choice between killing one to save five. Sandel draws out student arguments and introduces utilitarian and other approaches to justice.

CGP Grey narrates an animated adaptation of Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. The story uses a dragon that demands a daily toll of lives as a metaphor for aging and society's acceptance of death.

Alain de Botton's 2004 documentary based on his book Status Anxiety, running over two hours. It asks why people in rich societies are still unhappy, and examines how worries about success, snobbery and meritocracy drive that anxiety.

A two-minute animation of an Alan Watts talk arguing that life is like music: it is meant to be danced to in the moment, not rushed toward a final goal. It is a short, accessible take on living in the present.

Kurzgesagt animates Andy Weir's short story The Egg, in which a person learns that they are every human who has ever lived. It adds music and narration to the original text.