What Should We Be Worried About?

John Brockman

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780062296245
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Science
• Index: Psychology

Drawing from the horizons of science, today's leading thinkers reveal the hidden threats nobody is talking about—and expose the false fears everyone else is distracted by.

What should we be worried about? That is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"— The Guardian ), posed to the planet's most influential minds. He asked them to disclose something that, for scientific reasons, worries them—particularly scenarios that aren't on the popular radar yet. Encompassing neuroscience, economics, philosophy, physics, psychology, biology, and more—here are 150 ideas that will revolutionize your understanding of the world.

Steven Pinker uncovers the real risk factors for war ? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi peers into the coming virtual abyss ? Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek laments our squandered opportunities to prevent global catastrophe ? Seth Lloyd calculates the threat of a financial black hole ? Alison Gopnik on the loss of childhood ? Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why firefighters understand risk far better than economic "experts" ? Matt Ridley on the alarming re-emergence of superstition? Daniel C. Dennett and george dyson ponder the impact of a major breakdown of the Internet ? Jennifer Jacquet fears human-induced damage to the planet due to "the Anthropocebo Effect" ? Douglas Rushkoff fears humanity is losing its soul ? Nicholas Carr on the "patience deficit" ? Tim O'Reilly foresees a coming new Dark Age ? Scott Atran on the homogenization of human experience ? Sherry Turkle explores what's lost when kids are constantly connected ? Kevin Kelly outlines the looming "underpopulation bomb" ? Helen Fisher on the fate of men ? Lawrence Krauss dreads what we don't know about the universe ? Susan Blackmore on the loss of manual skills ? Kate Jeffery on the death of death ? plus J. Craig Venter, Daniel Goleman, Virginia Heffernan, Sam Harris, Brian Eno, Martin Rees, and more

INDEX

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

acceptance versus worry, 209

access tiers, 408

accidental multiverse, 189

activity rhythm, 43

actual threats, 370–71

Adam and Eve, 61

Adams, Douglas, 50–51

adaptive language of fitness (Wright), 265–66

ADHD, 313, 376

Afghanistan, 2, 115, 158, 215, 299, 347

afterlife, 200, 225

Age of Anxiety, 403–4

Age of Reason, 337

aggregators, data, 347

aggression, 5

aging population, 59, 119–20, 124, 225–37, 283–84, 289, 292–94, 370–71, 407, 478

AIDS/HIV, 46, 126, 201

airport security, 437

air-traffic control, 12

Akin, Todd, 140

alcohol use, 46, 84, 370

Alexander, Stephon H., 438–39

aliens, space, 72–76

Allen, Woody, 136

alloparents, 381–82

Almheiri, Ahmed, 183

Alter, Adam, 399–400

Altmeyer, Robert, 279

Alzheimer’s disease risk profile, 407

American Mathematical Society (AMS), 388

American Psychiatric Association (APA), 84

Amish, 65

anesthesia, 29

AngelList, 445

Animal Liberation Front, 50–51

Aniston, Jennifer, 156

anomalies, 180–83

Anonymous, 353

anthropocebo effect, 213

Anthropocene Age, 10, 210–11, 213

anthropology, 51, 82, 146–49, 418

antibiotics, 201

anti-matter, 356–57

anxiety, 284, 285, 370, 373–76, 403–4

Apple Computer, 320–21

Archilochus, 51

Archimedes, 421

Argentina, 450

Arikha, Noga, 427–30

Aristotle, 105, 207, 336

Armageddonists, 3, 10, 60–64, 62–64, 72

Armstrong, Lance, 269, 270–71

Armstrong, Neil, 268

arrogance, 269–71

art, 215

artificial intelligence (AI), 349–51, 413, 448–49. See also robots; Singularity, The

asteroids, 147

Atran, Scott, 80–82

augmented reality, 77

auroras, 19

Australia, 119

authoritarianism, 15, 277–79

autism, 201, 263, 292–93, 299–301, 376–78

bacteria, 201–2, 295–98, 338–39

Baldwin, Stanley, 379

Barlow, John Perry, 316–17

Baron-Cohen, Simon, 417–20

Bateson, Mary Catherine, 456–57

Bayes’ Theorem, 471

Beethoven Ludwig van, 206–7

behavioral economics, 104

behavioral genetics, 104

bell curve, 468–69, 472

Benford, Gregory, 67–71

Bergen, Benjamin, 48–49

Berlin, Isaiah, 51

Berlinski, David, 389

Berreby, David, 233–37

Big Bang, 195

Bigelow Aerospace, 69

binomial probabilities model, 470–71

BioBricks, 23

biocomputers, 22

biofuels, 149

Bio-Lego, 23

biological engineering, 22–23

biometric data privacy, 284, 406–9

biophilia, 313

biosphere, 109

biotechnology, 448–49

bioterrorism, 12, 20

Bjork, Robert, 398

black-hol...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: The Edge Question
• The Real Risk Factors for War
• MADness
• We Are in Denial About Catastrophic Risks
• Living Without the Internet for a Couple of Weeks
• Safe Mode for the Internet
• The Fragility of Complex Systems
• A Synthetic World
• What Is Conscious?
• Will There Be a Singularity Within Our Lifetime?
• “The Singularity”: There’s No There There
• Capture
• The Triumph of the Virtual
• The Patience Deficit
• The Teenage Brain
• Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Words?
• The Contest Between Engineers and Druids
• “Smart”
• The Stifling of Technological Progress
• The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism and the End of Progress
• Armageddon
• Superstition
• Rats in a Spherical Trap
• The Danger from Aliens
• Augmented Reality
• Too Much Coupling
• Homogenization of the Human Experience
• Are We Homogenizing the Global View of a Normal Mind?
• Social Media: The More Together, The More Alone
• Internet Drivel
• Objects of Desire
• Incompetent Systems
• Democracy Is Like the Appendix
• The Is-Ought Fallacy of Science and Morality
• What Is a Good Life?
• A World Without Growth?
• Human Population, Prosperity Growth: One I Fear, One I Don’t
• The Underpopulation Bomb
• The Loss of Lust
• Not Enough Robots
• That We Won’t Make Use of the Error Catastrophe Threshold
• A Fearful Asymmetry: The Worrying World of a Would-Be Science
• Misplaced Worries
• There Is Nothing to Worry About, and There Never Was
• Worries on the Mystery of Worry
• The Disconnect
• Science by (Social) Media
• Unfriendly Physics, Monsters from the Id, and Self-Organizing Collective Delusions
• Myths About Men
• The Mating Wars
• We Don’t Do Politics
• The Black Hole of Finance
• The Opinions of Search Engines
• Technology-Generated Fascism
• Magic
• Data Disenfranchisement
• Big Experiments Won’t Happen
• The Nightmare Scenario for Fundamental Physics
• No Surprises from the LHC: No Worries for Theoretical Physics
• Crisis at the Foundations of Physics
• The End of Fundamental Science?
• Quantum Mechanics
• One Universe
• The Dangerous Fascination of Imagination
• What—Me Worry?
• Our Increased Medical Know-How
• The Promise of Catharsis
• I’ve Given up Worrying
• Our Blind Spots
• The Anthropocebo Effect
• The Relative Obscurity of the Writings of Édouard Glissant
• The Danger of Inadvertently Praising Zygomatic Arches
• The Belief or Lack of Belief in Free Will Is Not a Scientific Matter
• Natural Death
• The Loss of Death
• Global Graying
• All the T in China
• Technology May Endanger Democracy
• The Fourth Culture
• Classic Social Sciences’ Failure to Understand “Modern” States Shaped by Crime
• Is the New Public Sphere . . . Public?
• Blown Opportunities
• The Power of Bad Incentives
• Science Publishing
• Excellence
• Unmitigated Arrogance
• The Decline of the Scientific Hero
• Authoritarian Submission
• Are We Becoming Too Connected?
• Stress
• Putting Our Anxieties to Work
• Science Has Not Brought Us Closer to Understanding Cancer
• Society’s Parlous Inability to Reason About Uncertainty
• The Rise in Genomic Instability
• Current Sequencing Strategies Ignore the Role of Microorganisms in Cancer
• The Failure of Genomics for Mental Disorders
• Exaggerated Expectations
• Losing Our Hands
• Losing Touch
• The Human/Nature Divide
• Power and the Internet
• Close to the Edge
• The Paradox of Material Progress
• Close Observation and Description
• Impact
• The Complex, Consequential, Not-So-Easy Decisions About Our Water Resources
• Children of Newton and Modernity
• Where Did You Get That Fact?
• Is Idiocracy Looming?
• The Disconnect Between News and Understanding
• Super-AIs Won’t Rule the World (Unless They Get Culture First)
• Posthuman Geography
• Being Told That Our Destiny Is Among the Stars
• Communities of Fate
• Working with Others
• Global Cooperation Is Failing and We Don’t Know Why
• The Behavior of Normal People
• Metaworry
• Morbid Anxiety
• The Loss of Our Collective Cognition and Awareness
• Worrying About Children
• The Death of Mathematics
• Should We Worry About Being Unable to Understand Everything?
• The Demise of the Scholar
• Science Is in Danger of Becoming the Enemy of Humankind
• Illusions of Understanding and the Loss of Intellectual Humility
• The End of Hardship Inoculation
• Internet Silos
• The New Age of Anxiety
• Does the Human Species Have the Will to Survive?
• Neural Data Privacy Rights
• Can They Read My Brain?
• Losing Completeness
• C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures and the Nature-Nurture Debate
• The Unavoidable Intrusion of Sociopolitical Forces into Science
• The Growing Gap Between the Scientific Elite and the Vast “Scientifically Challenged” Majority
• Present-ism
• Do We Understand the Dynamics of Our Emerging Global Culture?
• We Worry Too Much About Fictional Violence
• A World of Cascading Crises
• Who Gets to Play in the Science Ballpark
• An Exploding Number of New Illegal Drugs
• History and Contingency
• Unknown Unknowns
• Digital Tats
• Fast Knowledge
• Systematic Thinking About How We Package Our Worries
• Worrying About Stupid
• The Cultural and Cognitive Consequences of Electronics
• What We Learn From Firefighters: How Fat Are the Fat Tails?
• Lamplight Probabilities
• The World As We Know It
• Worrying—the Modern Passion
• The Gift of Worry
• Notes
• Index
• Books by John Brockman
• Copyright
• About the Publisher