Edge in the News: 2013

The musician Brian Eno looks with fear to the fact that intelligent people increasingly distance themselves from politics: "The most intelligent people I know do not want anything to do with politics. ... Avoid politics like the plague [...] We expect you handle it when other people and these people make mistakes we complain. We believe that our responsibility to stop at the ballot box and there are people who come to us even the ballot box." ... Kate Jeffrey, a professor of behavioral neuroscience is concerned that more and more people die in the years ahead: "The extension of the duration of human life is often claimed in the media and is never questioned." ... The tax and astronomer Gregory Benford afraid that human beings become like "mice blocked on the spherical surface of our world, where we will be even more trapped."

...We are serious fans of his work. And if his recent comments about the potential risks of greater-than-human artificial intelligence—or lack thereof—are any indication, he's itching to start a giant fight among futurists. ... Sterling made his remarks in the current manifestation of the Edge's annual Big Question. This year, editor John Brockman asked his coterie of experts to tell us what we should be most worried about. In response, Sterling penned a four paragraph article saying that we shouldn't fear the onset of super AI because a "Singularity has no business model." 

John Brockman’s Edge question for 2013 asks more than 150 intellectuals, “What should we be worried about?”... more»

The Edge Question again is not any question, but the question asked annually since 1998 by the bustling New York literary agent John Brockman to a circle of the most prestigious researchers and intellectuals in the world (who are mostly from English-speaking countries). A year ago, the Question was: "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" ...

...There perhaps seems to be a little too much science fiction in the game and too little politics. It is then, in one of the surprises that make Edge, that the pop star Brian Eno presents a response that is one of the shortest and most elegant, but perhaps the most disturbing: "Most of the smart people I know want nothing to do with politics. We avoid it like the plague—like Edge avoids it, in fact. ...We expect other people to do it for us, and grumble when they get it wrong. We feel that our responsibility stops at the ballot box, if we even get that far. After that we're as laissez-faire as we can get away with. ... What worries me is that while we're laissez-ing, someone else is faire-ing."

Largely, we live in narratives that weave ourselves. So why not stay with the most pleasing of all? After we were released from the closed mentality of the past, why not feel free? Explanations can create captivating images of ourselves, of our great country, our great society. We may be fascinated by our own dreams. 

But something tells me that we should be concerned. We live in a real world, where not all stories are equally good, and equally effective. ... (Carlo Rovelli, Edge )

This time the Question is: What should concern us? began 2013. It's hot. The economic situation is not easy for most. Is this what disturbs us or ... what may happen to future generations with the world we are creating? Are there concerns concerns? For the unemployed, their situation. For the debtor's account arrives, hungry for what and when is your next course, for some the last iPhone or fashionable shoe. Ultimately, what should concern us? Do you immediately or ... the farthest? Did staff or the collective? What worries the rich, how poor, one country or another? 

In his regular weekly column, Hungary's Minister of Economics Gyorgy Matolcsy has put the spotlight on one of the annual questions posed to the best minds of the planet by literary uber-agent and big idea wrangler John Brockman of Edge.org. "What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?" was the original question. Matolcsy has made a list of measures by which Hungary could win, including the co-operation between the government and the central bank's foreign currency debtors and rescuing all from their trap. Also He said, "nobody would lose if the state re-gains the domestic monopolies whose privatisation was a mistake."

A spat has broken out between Hungary's Economy Ministry and Roubini Global Economics about who is to blame for the downward spiral of the national currency, the forint, after Roubini's firm Roubini Global Economics (RGE) recommended shorting the currency. ... Hungary's Ministry for National Economy said in a statement that the forint began to depreciate after economist Nouriel Roubini - dubbed Dr Doom for his pessimistic forecasts - said in a newsletter that failure to secure a deal with the International Monetary Fund was bad news for the currency. ... But Roubini economists cited comments made by Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy in a newspaper column [ED. NOTE: A review of This Will Make You Smarter, the 2011 Edge Question book], in which he seemed to favor the country adopting more unorthodox economic policies as the reason for the currency's weakness. 

...This year, Brockman’s panelists (myself included) agreed to take on the subject of what we should fear. There’s the fiscal cliff, the continued European economic crisis, the perpetual tensions in the Middle East. But what about the things that may happen in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years? The premise, as the science historian George Dyson put it, is that “people tend to worry too much about things that it doesn’t do any good to worry about, and not to worry enough about things we should be worrying about.” A hundred fifty contributors wrote essays for the project. The result is a recently published collection, “What *Should* We Be Worried About?” available without charge at John Brockman’s edge.org. ...\