Unexpected research partner

Science rarely looks to non-scientists for ideas and solutions. But on this occasion, the nuns have helped scientists to understand more about the achoques and how to breed them. The nuns gained lots of their understanding from the indigenous people who know where to find the salamanders.

Socratic Thinking about Climate Change

Of course, we could study intensively the different approaches to the ethical question of ¨Why should we bother about climate change?¨ that scholars have identified. But we believe that policymakers and responsible citizens must able to answer that question for themselves.

Coronavirus (7) – Groupthink by Governments and Health Authorities

When we proposed in the first blog post about coronavirus that the slow reaction and lax attitude of institutions can partly be explained by the phenomenon of groupthink, we could not imagine that later on groupthink would assume an even more dominant role in tackling the crisis. In the beginning, warnings about an emergent pandemic …

Thinking about the Spread of the Coronavirus (2) – Concepts

In the crucial month of February, in those weeks before the major outbreak in Europe, there was still room to stock up on protective equipment, to scale up the laboratories, to expand the purchase and production of test materials, to prepare for the removal of serum with antibodies in healed patients. Only, it didn't happen. …

Societal Science Fiction – 21st Century Challenges

Throughout history stories have help shaped our minds, our ideas and actions. With the increasing acceleration in information and biotechnology we need better stories about future technological, social and economic developments. In this 21th century, ¨societal¨science fiction might be an important genre, if not the most important, to interprete the consequences of accelarating technological developments.

Unquestioned Good – Human Rights

This Thinkibility nibble hypothesizes that the concept of human rights is used to manufacture public consent for waging gruesome proxy- wars leading to an even further collapse of human rights in the countries concerned.

Social Justice

n on earlier post Sense of Justice we pointed out Harari's approach to comprehend and judge moral dilemmas. Below we show our efforts to think effectively "to get a solution or at least a direction for one of today’s urgent issues": - The underdevelopment of Africa - Working conditions in low-wage countries