Edge in the News: 2014

So the writer Álvaro Bisam called the pairing of the philosopher and linguist Remis Ramos Ricardo Martinez, creators of Third Culture. A movement that, at the eaves of a podcast, mixed sciences, humanities, and popular culture. Now, if people want it, you could become a book.

In 2009, when the philosopher Remis Ramos (34) and the linguist Ricardo Martinez (44) were enrolled in a Masters in Cognitive Studies at the University of Chile, they launched the popular world of podcasts. The pair of humanist scholars decided that on his radio show webcast going to talk about ... science?

Yes Third Culture, podcast, blog and web show today disclosure cognitive science that make since, has earned them the title of "academic punks" (coined by writer Álvaro Bisam in the article "Freak City," published in UDP) magazine and a small, but loyal group of followers who reads and listens attentively their analyzes, ranging from dense scientific studies to issues of popular culture such as music, television and video games. According to legend, while Podcaster site existed always remained among the most listened to 10, which confirms to them that there is growing interest in learning about these issues.

- Why the name Third Culture?

RR: The concept is John Brockman, who in his book Third Culture argues that this dichotomy between science and the humanities must end. There is an idea that there are two cultures: the humanities, all locked in their libraries, arguing amongst themselves, and on the other hand, scientists in their laboratories, arguing amongst themselves. The third culture would try to amigarlos and bring that knowledge to the public.

John Brockman asks experts what we should fret over—and what to let go

PARENTING Relax, says psychologist Aiison Gopnik. Mostly kids are shaped by their genes and peers. Be concerned about poverty or neglect, not about being the perfect parent. Says Brockman: "Kids will be just fine."

VIOLENCE IN FILMS Fictional mayhem isn't worth all the hand-wringing, says English professor Jonathan Gottschall. Proof that it leads to real violence is shaky.

FINDING LOVE Yes, singles, worry a little. According to psychologist David Buss, 'The competition to attract desirable mates is ferocious," so give it your attention.

INTERNET COLLAPSE Big worry, says historian George Dyson, who believes we are not prepared for an inevitable "catastrophic breakdown oft he Internet."

WORRYING lt is itself a worry because it is mentally "corrosive," says psychiatrist Joel Gold, who fears too many people are fretting instead of enjoying life.

The darkest fears of the leading lights and rising stars of science, brought together by the Edge's John Brockman, could keep us all awake at night

WARNING: read the subtitle of this book first. Its editor, cultural impresario John Brockman, may well have you struggling to get your shut-eye as he sets out to keep us on our toes.

The trick this time lies in the tone of a book of answers to questions that Brockman poses annually to science's great and good on his Edge website. It's really not all good news.

In 2007, Edge asked what we were optimistic about. Six years later, the tone sounds like a pessimistic rejoinder: what shouldwe be worried about? But with Brockman it's rarely simple. He invited people to share a scientific worry that might not be on the popular radar, or one they think should drop off the radar. ...

At the end of the exercise, Brockman's crew has left us with a net balance of new fears. But they also introduce us to some big ideas. As psychologist Daniel Goleman puts it: "Effective worrying focuses our attention on a genuine threat and leads to anticipating solutions." Or perhaps biologist Craig Venter is onto something when he writes, hopefully tongue in cheek: "As a scientist, an optimist, an atheist, and an alpha male, I don't worry."

Cosmologist Sean Carroll is one of many who have recently answered the annual question posed by Edge.org, which this year was: What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Sean, whom I’ve met at the Naturalism workshop he organized not long ago, and for whom I have the highest respect both as a scientist and as a writer, picked “falsifiability.”

Which is odd, since the concept — as Sean knows very well — is not a scientific, but rather a philosophical one.

Now, contra some other skeptics of my acquaintance, at least one of whom was present at the above mentioned workshop, Sean is actually somewhat knowledgable and definitely respectful of philosophy of science, as is evident even in the Edge piece. Which means that what follows isn’t going to be yet another diatribe about scientism or borderline anti-intellectualism (phew!). ...

The book also focuses on lesser-known ideas, such as the modular mind. These sections are the ones who make the work fun and interesting.

One or the other essay is difficult to understand for the layman, most texts but present themselves as easily digestible and entertaining. No contribution is longer than four pages. The shortest essay is even only three words: "Keep it short." He brings an idea from philosophy to the point - that of Occam's Razor. It says that one should be frugal in the formation of scientific theories: If you have the choice between several possible explanations of the same facts is to bring forward the simplest theory - that is the one that gets by with as few hypotheses. The tightness of the contributions makes the book even to the profitable reading if you just only has ten minutes time to read.

...The compilation of the brilliant, sometimes even stunning ideas can be recommended to all who are interested in science.

There are some books that are not amenable to analysis' method writing 'or' flow of the plot. " Because quite simply it works anthology individual authors. Or, as in our case, distilled wisdom year 2013. This annual essay of online magazine Edge.org ("the world's smartest website" by the British newspaper Guardian). Contains a "peak exploration of the mysteries of logical thinking, decision making, intuition, ethics, willpower, problem solving, prediction, prognosis of unconscious behavior, etc.", edited by the publisher Edge John Brockman. You therefore only list the issues-the book's chapters and gleaming spiritual writers of each...

...all 16 chapters of the book full of recent findings for the top organ of life, the human brain. ... If you are thirsty for such knowledge, do not miss this book.

From 1981 until today, through The Reality Club, or its online version, edge.org, the literary agent and provocateur John Brockman has brought together "the best minds of his generation" to talk. It's an old-fashioned salon of intellectuals, only adapted to the times, i.e. nearly free of literary intellectuals and full of scientists and technologists.   we are not interested in received "wisdom". …

…In 1991 John Brockman wrote that  the intellectual map of the West and the "traditional" intellectual world of the fifties had been condemned to the margins In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s.

Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.

So borrowing from C.P. Snow, author of "The Two Cultures" (1959), which described the divorce between science and humanities, and who, in 1963, predicted the emergence of a "third culture", in which the gap between the two fields of knowledge would narrow until it disappears, Brockman wrote his own essay on "The Third Culture" (1991). …

What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios that keep scientists up at night. This is the title of the new book edited by the literary agent John Brockman, founder of the website Edge.org, a discussion forum that includes novelist Ian McEwan, musician Brian Eno, physicists Frank Wilczek and Freeman Dyson, as well as yours truly, 13.7's Tania Lombrozo, and a couple of hundred of other academics and intellectuals. Every year, Brockman asks this group a "question." Answers in the form of short essays are compiled in paperback volumes with the intention of providing food for thought, as well as showcasing some of the cutting-edge ideas in science and technology and how they shape our culture. This is year, nothing less than 150 answers were published, of which I provide a meager sample here.

A cross-disciplinary kaleidoscope of intelligent concerns for the self and the species.

In his famous and wonderfully heartening letter of fatherly advice, F. Scott Fitzgerald gave his young daughter Scottie a list of things to worry and not worry about in life. Among the unworriables, he named popular opinion, the past, the future, triumph, and failure "unless it comes through your own fault." Among the worry-worthy, courage, cleanliness, and efficiency. What Fitzgerald touched on, of course, is the quintessential anxiety of the human condition, which drives us to worry about things big and small, mundane and monumental, often confusing the two classes. It was this "worryability" that young Italo Calvino resolved to shake from his life. A wonderful 1934 book classified all of our worries in five general categories that endure with astounding prescience and precision, but we still struggle to identify the things truly worth worrying about — and, implicitly, working to resolve — versus those that only strain our psychoemotional capacity with thedeathly grip of anxiety.

In What Should We Be Worried About? (public library), intellectual jockey and Edge founder John Brockman tackles this issue with his annual question — which has previously answered such conundrums as the single most elegant theory of how the world works (2012) and the best way to make ourselves smarter (2011) — and asks some of our era’s greatest thinkers in science, psychology, technology, philosophy, and more to each contribute one valid "worry" about our shared future. Rather than alarmist anxiety-slinging, however, the ethos of the project is quite the opposite — to put in perspective the things we worry about but shouldn’t, whether by our own volition or thanks to ample media manipulation, and contrast them with issues of actual concern, at which we ought to aim our collective attention and efforts in order to ensure humanity’s progress and survival. . . .

. . .What Should We Be Worried About? is an awakening read in its entirety. For more of Brockman’s editorial-curatorial mastery, revisit the Edge Questions compendiums from 2013 and 2012, and see Nobel-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman on the marvels and flaws of our intuition.