What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything

John Brockman

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061984907
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Essays on Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Even geniuses change their minds sometimes.

Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online intellectual salon, recently asked 150 high-powered thinkers to discuss their most telling missteps and reconsiderations: What have you changed your mind about? The answers are brilliant, eye-opening, fascinating, sometimes shocking, and certain to kick-start countless passionate debates.

Steven Pinker on the future of human evolution • Richard Dawkins on the mysteries of courtship • SAM HARRIS on the indifference of Mother Nature • Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the irrelevance of probability • Chris Anderson on the reality of global warming • Alan Alda on the existence of God • Ray Kurzweil on the possibility of extraterrestrial life • Brian Eno on what it means to be a "revolutionary" • Helen Fisher on love, fidelity, and the viability of marriage • Irene Pepperberg on learning from parrots... and many others.

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything

Edited by John Brockman

with An Introduction by Brian Eno

Contents

Preface: The Edge Question

Introduction by Brian Eno

Chris Anderson:

Seeing Through a Carbon Lens

The biggest thing I’ve changed my mind about is climate change…. I was a climate skeptic and now I’m a carbon zealot. I seem to annoy traditional environmentalists just as much, but I like to think that I’ve moved from behind to in front

Brian Goodwin:

Pan-Sentience

I have changed my mind about the general validity of the mechanical worldview that underlies the modern scientific understanding of natural processes.

Sam Harris:

Optimizing Our Design

Like many people, I once…imagined there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that with the advent of genetic engineering we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology.

Rebecca Goldstein:

The Popperian Sound Bite

It long seemed to me that Popper’s falsifiability test was basically right and enormously useful. But then I started to read Popper’s work carefully…and to look to scientific practice to see whether his theory survives the test of falsifiability…. And I’ve changed my mind.

Roger C. Schank:

Specialized Intelligences

When reporters interviewed me in the 1970s and ’80s about the possibilities for Artificial Intelligence I would always say that we would have machines as smart as we are within my lifetime…. I no longer believe that will happen.

Daniel C. Dennett:

What Could a Neuron “Want”?

I’ve changed my mind about how to handle the homunculus temptation: the almost irresistible urge to install a “little man in the brain” to be the Boss, the Central Meaner, the Enjoyer of pleasures, and the Sufferer of pains.

Susan Blackmore:

“Where Are You, Sue?”

Perhaps there were no paranormal phenomena at all. As far as I can remember, this scary thought took some time to sink in.

Nicholas Humphrey:

Solving the Hard Problem

Just suppose that the Cartesian theater of consciousness, about which modern philosophers are generally so skeptical, is in fact a biological reality.

Barry C. Smith:

Neuroscience and Philosophy

I have changed my mind about the relevance of neuroscience to philosophers’ questions, and vice versa.

Jesse Bering:

Wiggle Room

I stopped believing in God long ago, but he still casts a long shadow.

Martin Rees:

We Are Custodians of a Posthuman Future

We need to keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to the possibility that humans themselves could change drastically within a few centuries.

Janna Levin:

Finite and Edgeless

I won’t claim I “believe” the universe is finite, just that I recognize that a finite universe is a realistic possibility for our cosmos.

Joseph Ledoux:

Reconsolidating Memory

Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and accessed when used.

Nicholas Carr:

The Internet and the ...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Chris Anderson
• Brian Goodwin
• Sam Harris
• Rebecca Goldstein
• Roger C. Schank
• Daniel C. Dennett
• Susan Blackmore
• Nicholas Humphrey
• Barry C. Smith
• Jesse Bering
• Martin Rees
• Janna Levin
• Joseph Ledoux
• Nicholas Carr
• Douglas Rushkoff
• Marcelo Gleiser
• Freeman Dyson
• Roger Highfield
• Daniel Engber
• Ray Kurzweil
• Rudy Rucker
• Ed Regis
• Nick Bostrom
• Gino Segre
• Arnold Trehub
• Mark Pagel
• Piet Hut
• Howard Gardner
• Donald Hoffman
• Irene Pepperberg
• Robert Provine
• Charles Seife
• Timothy Taylor
• Leon Lederman
• Dan Sperber
• Thomas Metzinger
• Marc D. Hauser
• Todd E. Feinberg
• Keith Devlin
• Daniel Everett
• Gary Marcus
• David Dalrymple
• Max Tegmark
• Robert Sapolsky
• Tor Nørretranders
• Helen Fisher
• Steve Nadis
• Paul Steinhardt
• Rodney Brooks
• William H. Calvin
• J. Craig Venter
• Laurence C. Smith
• Lee M. Silver
• Lee Smolin
• Stephon Alexander
• A. Garrett Lisi
• John Baez
• Lawrence Krauss
• Stephen M. Kosslyn
• Ernst Pöppel
• Scott D. Sampson
• Peter Schwartz
• Kevin Kelly
• Alan Kay
• Diane F. Halpern
• Stephen H. Schneider
• Xeni Jardin
• Sherry Turkle
• Daniel Gilbert
• Daniel Kahneman
• Stewart Brand
• Oliver Morton
• Judith Rich Harris
• Terrence Sejnowski
• Jonathan Haidt
• Patrick Bateson
• Alan Alda
• Steven Pinker
• Nicholas A. Christakis
• Paul Davies
• Leo M. Chalupa
• Scott Atran
• Marco Iacoboni
• Richard Wrangham
• Sean Carroll
• Linda Stone
• Stanislas Dehaene
• Mary Catherine Bateson
• Carolyn Porco
• Aubrey De Grey
• Helena Cronin
• Frank Wilczek
• Philip Campbell
• Daniel Goleman
• David M. Buss
• Robert Shapiro
• Brian Eno
• Paul Ewald
• Anton Zeilinger
• Seth Lloyd
• Adam Bly
• Pz Myers
• Esther Dyson
• Jaron Lanier
• Austin Dacey
• Simon Baron-Cohen
• David Sloan Wilson
• Neil Gershenfeld
• Paul Saffo
• Alison Gopnik
• Jordan Pollack
• George Johnson
• Geoffrey Miller
• Steve Connor
• Roger Bingham
• Richard Dawkins
• Gregory Benford
• Lera Boroditsky
• George B. Dyson
• Jamshed Bharucha
• Denis Dutton
• Linda S. Gottfredson
• Clay Shirky
• Randolph M. Nesse
• David Gelernter
• Mark Henderson
• Tim O’reilly
• David Goodhart
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Bart Kosko
• W. Daniel Hillis
• Books by John Brockman
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher