World Famous Comics: What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
By: John Brockman Publisher: Harper Perennial Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Harper Perennial Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: March 01, 2007 Release Date: March 13, 2007
From Copernicus to Darwin, to current-day thinkers, scientists have always promoted theories and unveiled discoveries that challenge everything society holds dear; ideas with both positive and dire consequences. Many thoughts that resonate today are dangerous not because they are assumed to be false, but because they might turn out to be true.
What do the world's leading scientists and thinkers consider to be their most dangerous idea? Through the leading online forum Edge (www.edge.org), the call went out, and this compelling and easily digestible volume collects the answers. From using medication to permanently alter our personalities to contemplating a universe in which we are utterly alone, to the idea that the universe might be fundamentally inexplicable, What Is Your Dangerous Idea? takes an unflinching look at the daring, breathtaking, sometimes terrifying thoughts that could forever alter our world and the way we live in it.
Interesting but safe In 2006, John Brockman asked some prominent thinkers what they considered to be their most dangerous idea. This book is a collection of some of the most striking answers. Brockman managed to get some leading minds to contribute, including Paul Davies, John Allen Paulos, Daniel C. Dennett, Freeman J. Dyson, Michael Shermer, and includes an introduction by Steven Pinker and an afterword by Richard Dawkins. That in itself makes the book remarkable.
Pinker raises high expectations in his introduction by including some dangerous, thought provoking and disturbing ideas that people have thought in the past. Unfortunately, the majority of the ideas presented in this book pale in comparison. Many contributors came up with ideas that only a religious fundamentalist or a completely uneducated person would find dangerous (e.g., there is no soul, much of our behaviour is controlled by genes, ...), whereas others were just playing games. However, I did come across some genuinely interesting ideas that result from thinking outside the box (e.g., the fact that our ethical snap decisions are sometimes irrational refutes the idea of a divine origin of morality), and one genuinely disturbing one (all pregnant single moms should undergo a forced abortion). And I came across the main concept of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
Despite the weaknesses, this is an enjoyable read. The contributions are so short that you never really get annoyed about a weak idea, and there are enough gems in this collection to make up for the rest.
Excellent Read These short essays are staggering in both their simplicity and depth. What do great thinkers think? Well here it is and it's accessible, so anyone who is willing to engage can be a great thinker too. Now whether or not you agree or disagree will be an entirely different story. Many of the contributors directly contradict each other, so once again, have at it and enjoy.
Challenging assumptions to expand your brain This is a book that has to be read twice to properly appreciate the depth and subtlety of the vast range of bright ideas. Not all of them are dangerous or unthinkable but they are all, nevertheless, thought-provoking. Not all of the 108 contributions will speak to you - but even if you find only one - that will have repaid your efforts handsomely.
Here are some of my favorites:
Evolutionary psychologist, David Buss, says that evolution programmed us with the capacity to "commit despicable atrocities against our fellow humans - atrocities that most of us would label evil" and that "The danger comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of human nature that cannot be wished away by attributing them to the modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media violence."
Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's dangerous idea is that genetically there are such things as races, that different races have genetically different average levels of intelligence and genetically different "life priorities". Presumably Pinker is making an oblique reference to the works of Phillipe Rushton Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Jon Entine Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It and Murray & Herrnstein The Bell Curve: Intelligence And Class Structure In American Life. As Professor Richard Dawkins observes in the Afterword: if we can breed horses for speed, why not humans for athletic ability? The sub-text is that the vagaries of racial differentiation over the millennia have already done that in the case of black domination of sprinting and white domination of swimming.
Cosmologist Paul Davies' idea is that the fight against global warming is futile and anyway already lost. But his dangerous idea is that the world will be a better place for it. This chimes with Nature editor, Oliver Morton's view that the earth doesn't need ice-caps and that even a quintupling of carbon dioxide levels will not reach the levels of the late Permian.
Philosophy professor, Denis Dutton debunks "social construction theory" which he categorizes as "... a series of fashion statements, clever slogans and postures imported from France in the 1960s...". His dangerous idea is that a Darwinian approach would provide a true theory for understanding and analyzing art, music, and literature.
Behavioral geneticist David Lykken observes that "Traditional societies in which children are socialized collectively, the method to which our species is naturally adapted, have very little crime." Lykkens' dangerous idea is that parents should only be allowed to make babies when they are over twenty-one, married and self-supporting.
Psychologist and author of The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris in a colorful and pithy piece says that there is no proof that "parents do shape their children". Moreover, "Parents are exhausting themselves in their efforts to meet their children's every demand not realizing that evolution designed offspring... to demand more than they really need." Her dangerous idea is that the "establishment's idea of the all-powerful, and hence all-blamable, parent" is incorrect.
Kai Krause writes a witty piece on his haunting realization that "Individuals, families, groups, neighborhoods, cities, states, countries all just barely hang in there between debt and dysfunction." We need to re-evaluate priorities: while we are looking at the horizon the ground beneath us is crumbling. "The anthill could go to ant hell!"
Matt Ridley says "everywhere there is too much government". Weak governments, as in eighteenth century England, allowed the country to develop the world's first industrial revolution. Strong central government (as in Argentina, Cuba, Stalinist Russia, imperial Spain) leads to "parasitic, tax-fed officialdom, a stifling of innovation, relative economic decline and usually war." His dangerous idea is that "the more we limit the growth of government, the better off we will all be."
Cognitive psychologist Roger Schank makes the case "School is bad for kids". Professor Clay Shirky argues that: "everyone from advertisers to political consultants increasingly understands, in voluminous biological detail, how to manipulate consciousness in ways that weaken our notion of free will". Logician Andy Clark notes that our brains make decisions for us in the split second before our consciousness informs us of the event. His dangerous idea is: "that we are indeed designed to cut conscious choice out of the picture whenever possible."
In writing this I see that my choices strongly accentuate evolutionary biology. I guess as a nutritional anthropologist and author Deadly Harvest that this is only to be expected. However there is something in this book for everyone, whatever your particular vocation or interest.
Entertaining and thought provoking I got this book as a gift and really knew nothing about it. Almost immediately upon starting, I felt drawn in, eager to continue reading.
The book is very well-edited, so that essays that discuss similar dangerous ideas are grouped together. The result is that the reader develops an increasingly nuanced and detailed understanding of concepts -- such as the "anthropic view" of physical laws -- that might have been entirely unfamiliar before starting the book.
The essays are generally excellent at explaining why the topics are relevant to modern life. Authors are asked to answer the question, "Why is your idea dangerous?" In so doing, they help the reader to understand why topics like the philosophy of mind, comparative religion, and evolutionary theory really matter. Many of the dangerous ideas presented really do challenge the political, economic, and sociological structures of our world.
It's also nice that the essays are short. If one essay fails to spark your interest, you only need to wade through 3 or 4 pages before the next one begins.
I highly recommend this book.
A treasure of ideas from 108 of our most creative minds (Plus Richard Dawkins, who writes an Afterword.)
I'll give you some dangerous ideas. Take steps to reduce the human population worldwide to around a billion people and keep it there. Take the biological desire of people to play house and be mothers and fathers, and redirect it into responsible stewardship of the planet.
Don't like that one? Seems too draconian? How about this? End all tax exempt status for churches, mosques, etc. (Resounding voice coming onstage: "Only when they tear my cold, dead fingers from the collection plate!")
Here's another: realize that to know all is to forgive all, and that we are all just biological automations acting out our genetic drives and have no more free will than an ant on the pheromone trail. Deal with people acting in antisocial ways by (1) curing them with psychopharmacology, surgery, retraining, or (2) euthanasia.
Decriminalize street drug use. Allow Phillip Morris to get into the cannabis business and Merck to process opium into heroin. If some people become dysfunctional, see previous dangerous idea and employ it.
Well, none of John Brockman's esteemed contributors came up with anything quite THAT dangerous, probably because the danger of such ideas is most immediately to the person who would advance them! Psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse gives us some guidance on why such ideas are not being advanced in this book in his modest essay on "Unspeakable Ideas." (pp. 193-195) Here's one: "when your business group is trying to deal with a savvy competitor, say, `It seems to me that their product is superior, because they are smarter than we are.'" Also unspeakable is, "I will only do what benefits me." Nesse writes that saying something like that is akin to committing "social suicide."
David Lykken thinks that parents ought to be required to get licenses to parent and prove they are twenty-one years old, married, and self-supporting. (pp. 175-176)
Jordan Pollack urges us (tongue in cheek, I presume) to embrace "faith-based science." He writes, "physics could sing the psalm that perpetual motion would solve the energy crisis..." with God "on our side to repeal the second law of thermodynamics!" "Astronomy could embrace astrology and do grassroots PR with daily horoscopes to gain mass support for a new space program." (pp. 156-158)
John Allen Paulos joins the Buddha and David Hume and presents the self as "an ever-changing collection of beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes, that is not an essential and persistent entity but a conceptual chimera." (p. 152)
Some of the other "dangerous ideas" concern such things as science versus religion (e.g., Sam Harris's "Science Must Destroy Religion" and Philip W. Anderson's "The Posterior Probability of Any Particular God Is Pretty Small"); exciting speculations (Terrence Sejnowski's "When Will the Internet Become Aware of Itself?"), cosmological conjectures (Brian Greene's "The Multiverse," and Leonard Susskind's "The `Landscape'").
Some of the ideas are not dangerous at all of course, and some are only dangerous to certain segments of society. The idea that the Christian God does not exist is no skin off my teeth and no Buddhist feels threatened by it, but television evangelicals find it downright scary. Judith Rich Harris advances the idea that parents really don't shape their children's mores (their peers and the larger society does). This idea isn't threatening at all unless you are a Pygmalion sort of parent infused with a weighty sense of responsibility, and in that case, her idea can help you to chill out.
Some other ideas may or may not be seen as dangerous. Karl Sabbagh suggests that "The Human Brain Will Never Understand the Universe," and Lawrence M. Krauss wants us to know that "The World May Be Fundamentally Inexplicable." Personally I think they're both right, but that shouldn't keep us from trying to expand the range of our knowledge and understanding. Seth Lloyd even goes so far as to suggest that one of our ideas "is likely to have the unintended consequence of destroying everything we know." He adds that "we cannot stop creating and exploring new ideas. The genie of ingenuity is out of the bottle. To suppress the power of ideas will hasten catastrophe, not avert it." (p. 101)
There are several essays on how drugs might, can, and will affect us (e.g., "Drugs May Change the Patterns of Human Love" by Helen Fisher, and "Using Medications to Change Personality" by Samuel Barondes). There are essays on politics and economics (e.g., Michael Shermer's ode to fiscal conservative and social liberalism, "Where Goods Cross Frontiers, Armies Won't" and Matt Ridley's "Government Is the Problem, Not the Solution"), and on the dangers and promises of futuristic technologies by Ray Kurzweil, Freeman J. Dyson and others. In fact there is so much in this book that a reader could study the ideas for decades--seriously--and hardly scratch the surface of what is implied, hoped for, dreamed of, and feared. It is a great collection of ideas, a masterful work of compilation and editing by science's most talented and creative editor, John Brockman. Don't miss this book. It's even better than Brockman's previous collection "What We Believe But Cannot Prove."
Let me throw in one more dangerous idea not in the book (lest I wax too sanguine): suppose that by bioengineering violent aggression out of the human genome (which seems like a good idea) we end up with something like H.G. Wells' Eloi? Can it be true that humans must be violently aggressive, and if not, will become stagnant and exploitable? One might argue that there would then be no exploiter, but should one appear what would--could--we do?
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