Edge in the News: 2014

Svante Pääbo has decoded the genome of the Neanderthal. In the interview, the researchers about the fatal stagnation of prehistoric humans, similar genes - and rather strange fantasies talks.

Q. In your book, you combine sober portrayals with very private insights: "We ran naked along the pristine beaches, snorkelled with fish." Can science literature with such intimate sprinkling sell?

A. (laughs) It was the New York agent, John Brockman, who persuaded me to write the book. I said, OK, I'll do it. "But it should be a book that not only interested geneticists, but also my children, will find of interest." An example was the American biochemist Jim Watson and his book THE DOUBLE HELIX in which he describes the operation of science and and also how scientists work with each other in a personal way.

This Will Change Everything

...provides more than 100 specialists in various fields to answer the question" What will change everything?"... Sometimes frightening, but very scenic professors, books, authors, public figures, insights and predictions reflect the innovative new ways of thinking and perception of the surrounding environment options. Intellectuals considerations, covering areas from genetics to computer science, points to the inevitable changes that will determine both the public and the rebuilding of the universe. Any thoughts expressed declares a new idea that appears small, but important piece of the future map.

A popular Washington Post article by my colleague Michael S. Rosenwald said that researchers were finding that the habit of scanning and skinning material online was changing the human brain and hindering people’s” ability to read long, complex and dense material. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, a professor at the University of Virginia, is highly skeptical. ...

… "The truth is, probably, that the brain is simply not adaptable enough for such a radical change. Yes, the brain changes as a consequence of experience, but there are likely limits to this change, a point made by both Steve Pinker and Roger Schank when commenting on this issue. If our ability to deploy attention or to comprehend language processes were to undergo substantial change, the consequences would cascade through the entire cognitive system, and so the brain is probably too conservative for large-scale change."

Pinker and Schank were among a group of people who responded in 2010 to Edge.org’s question: How is the Internet changing the way you think? Pinker, a renowned experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist at Harvard University, gave this answer: Not at all. He wrote in part: …

"What Should We Be Worried About?" is the title of a new 2014 book edited by John Brockman, in which 153 scientists, professors and leading thinkers write two- and three-page essays in response to the book title.

One essay highlights an issue that will worry governments increasingly in the future. The issue is the current unsustainable expectation of infinite economic growth.

The essay title is a question: "A World Without Growth?" by financial risk expert Satyajit Das. To paraphrase, all modern societies, whether capitalist, socialist or communist, depend on continuing economic growth as a universal solution for all political, social and economic problems, which includes improving living standards and reducing poverty.

Also, growth is now expected to solve the problems over overindebted individuals, businesses and nations.

Over the past 30 years, globalization and debt-driven consumption across the planet became the tool of generating economic growth. That planetwide growth is destroying the Earth's environment and using up finite resources, especially water.

Those factors, plus unsustainable debt levels rising in all nations, threatens to end an unprecedented 200 years of growth and expansion. ...

Bring together two hundred of the most powerful minds in one place and let them inspire each other, confront and learn—it's a great recipe to accelerate scientific progress in the world and a quite interesting way to spend time. But how to do it? Even 30 years ago, such a project would not have a chance. The Internet radically changed this situation. In 1996, a New York literary agent John Brockman established the website Edge.org. It's an extraordinary cul-de-sac in the global network, which sooner or later gets everyone fascinated by the most advanced content on science, technology and society.

For website Edge.org publishes the writings and record videos of absolutely exquisite people, primarily leading American and British scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, as Frank Wilczek, Eric Kandel, Daniel Kahneman and George Smoot. A significant contribution by the science popularizors: writers, journalists and the golden children of Silicon Valley, who introduce the rest of the world to new technologies. 

All this, the incredible group and its works, are managed by John Brockman—the man whose biography complies with the idea of the American dream. . . .

Insomniacs will have plenty of fodder to fuel their sleeplessness after reading What Should We Be Worried About? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night.

...Fifty years ago, nuclear annihilation might have topped the list. War is a bit player here, with a cheery nod from Steven Pinker, who basically tells us there’s not much to worry about (but offers prescient speculation about an aging Putin bent on regaining a former Soviet republic or two).

No, what we should be worrying about is superstition, fundamentalism, anti-scientific bias, the dumbing-down of just about everything–including ourselves–and the pervasive, addictive presence of the Internet.

But I found comfort in the 21-word, haiku-like entry from screenwriter and former Monty Python troupe member Terry Gilliam: "I’ve given up worrying. I merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me...and marvel stupidly." And probably sleeps at night.
 

Any political ideology involves some idea of the state of fiscal spending and tax scheme. And the practical tools of public policy (whether laws, regulations, taxes, or government subsidy programs) are directly influenced by the ideology of officials who create the advisers they hire, and the voters who elected to the first.

....And since we have an ideology formed, it acts as a "filter" that we use to make sense of the reality around us. As explained Gerald Smallberg...(see "Bias is the Nose for the Story" on "This Will Make You Smarter", 2012), humans do not appreciate the objective reality to filter the incredible amount of data they receive... Bias says Smallberg "is an intuition-a sensitivity, receptivity, which acts as a lens or filter our perceptions [...] These biases mediate between our intellect and our emotions to create, from perceptions, opinions, judgments, categories, metaphors, analogies, theories and ideologies through which we frame the way we see the world." This notion...is related to the argument of Daniel Kahneman (a psychologist and Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, see "Thinking, Fast and Slow", 2011) in the sense that our brain cohabiting two systems, one operating biases..."automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and without feeling voluntary control" and another that "directs attention to activities that require mental effort, including complex calculations [...] and are associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration".

There is a pivotal scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins is lost and alone deep under the Misty Mountains, and by happenstance finds the infamous One Ring and puts it in his pocket. Soon after, he encounters the creature Gollum, and is forced to play a riddle game to determine whether Gollum will show him the way out, or eat him instead. Bilbo wins the contest, but Gollum realizes that Bilbo has his ring, which confers invisibility upon the wearer. As Gollum moves to attack him, Bilbo puts on the ring, evades Gollum, and escapes.

But there’s an important caveat here: Bilbo wins by breaking the rules of a game that in Middle-Earth is considered to be “sacred and of immense antiquity.” Bilbo was at a loss to come up with another riddle, and as he fidgeted and fumbled in his pocket he said aloud to himself, “What have I got in my pocket?” Gollum assumed this was a riddle, but of course there was no way he was going to be able to answer it correctly. Yet Bilbo’s question wasn’t a “genuine riddle according to the ancient laws,” as the narrator tells us.

“Sacred and of immense antiquity.” Sounds a lot like human morality, doesn’t it? In a recent essay collection, Thinking, John Brockman observes that “everyone seems to be studying morality these days.” But why are so many devoting so much time to it? Perhaps because moral norms pervade every aspect of our lives, from the most mundane to the most profound. The peculiar thing about morality, however, is that we expect the truly moral person to submit to its demands regardless of her own interests or desires. She should do what morality commands because it is her duty to do so. We want to know why that is.

Ball State University (BSU) is in full spin mode trying to defend the use of a book, What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, as the sole textbook in one of its courses, "Dangerous Ideas." The book is cited in an article in the Muncie Star Press, "Lawmakers probe religion vs. science at BSU." BSU spokesman Tony Proudfoot tries to defend the course on the grounds that the book includes religion-friendly chapters, and therefore isn't a polemic against religion. In fact, BSU has badly misrepresented the hard-to-miss anti-religious goals of the book, as well as the three supposedly religion-friendly chapters it cites. I'll elaborate more below, but of the three chapters BSU cites as being religion-friendly, one has nothing to do with religion and the other two are explicitly anti-religious.

First, some background. What Is Your Dangerous Idea? is framed, billed, and marketed as a book of ideas by leading new atheist-types. The intended readership seems to be intellectual atheists, as its cover advertises the fact that the introduction is by new atheist (and evolutionary psychologist) Steven Pinker, and the afterword is by leading new atheist Richard Dawkins.

Indeed, the man behind What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, who served as its editor, is John Brockman, has been called one of "the 25 most influential living atheists." He was the literary agent and main promoter of Dawkins's 2006 book The God Delusion (and other books by Dawkins). In the acknowledgments of The God Delusion, Dawkins thanks Brockman for his "help in the preparation of this book" and states that Brockman's "whole-hearted and enthusiastic belief in the book was very encouraging." ....