What Have You Changed Your Mind About?
eBook - ePub

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything

  1. 416 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access What Have You Changed Your Mind About? by John Brockman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Mathematics Essays. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything

Edited by John Brockman

with An Introduction by Brian Eno
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Contents

Preface: The Edge Question
Introduction by Brian Eno
Chris Anderson:
Seeing Through a Carbon Lens
The biggest thing Iā€™ve changed my mind about is climate changeā€¦. I was a climate skeptic and now Iā€™m a carbon zealot. I seem to annoy traditional environmentalists just as much, but I like to think that Iā€™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 onceā€¦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 Popperā€™s falsifiability test was basically right and enormously useful. But then I started to read Popperā€™s work carefullyā€¦and to look to scientific practice to see whether his theory survives the test of falsifiabilityā€¦. And Iā€™ve changed my mind.
Roger C. Schank:
Specialized Intelligences
When reporters interviewed me in the 1970s and ā€™80s about the possibilities for Artificial Intelligence I would always say that we would have machines as smart as we are within my lifetimeā€¦. I no longer believe that will happen.
Daniel C. Dennett:
What Could a Neuron ā€œWantā€?
Iā€™ve changed my mind about how to handle the homunculus temptation: the almost irresistible urge to install a ā€œlittle man in the brainā€ to be the Boss, the Central Meaner, the Enjoyer of pleasures, and the Sufferer of pains.
Susan Blackmore:
ā€œWhere Are You, Sue?ā€
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 philosophersā€™ 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 wonā€™t claim I ā€œbelieveā€ 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

  1. Preface
  2. Introduction
  3. Chris Anderson
  4. Brian Goodwin
  5. Sam Harris
  6. Rebecca Goldstein
  7. Roger C. Schank
  8. Daniel C. Dennett
  9. Susan Blackmore
  10. Nicholas Humphrey
  11. Barry C. Smith
  12. Jesse Bering
  13. Martin Rees
  14. Janna Levin
  15. Joseph Ledoux
  16. Nicholas Carr
  17. Douglas Rushkoff
  18. Marcelo Gleiser
  19. Freeman Dyson
  20. Roger Highfield
  21. Daniel Engber
  22. Ray Kurzweil
  23. Rudy Rucker
  24. Ed Regis
  25. Nick Bostrom
  26. Gino Segre
  27. Arnold Trehub
  28. Mark Pagel
  29. Piet Hut
  30. Howard Gardner
  31. Donald Hoffman
  32. Irene Pepperberg
  33. Robert Provine
  34. Charles Seife
  35. Timothy Taylor
  36. Leon Lederman
  37. Dan Sperber
  38. Thomas Metzinger
  39. Marc D. Hauser
  40. Todd E. Feinberg
  41. Keith Devlin
  42. Daniel Everett
  43. Gary Marcus
  44. David Dalrymple
  45. Max Tegmark
  46. Robert Sapolsky
  47. Tor NĆørretranders
  48. Helen Fisher
  49. Steve Nadis
  50. Paul Steinhardt
  51. Rodney Brooks
  52. William H. Calvin
  53. J. Craig Venter
  54. Laurence C. Smith
  55. Lee M. Silver
  56. Lee Smolin
  57. Stephon Alexander
  58. A. Garrett Lisi
  59. John Baez
  60. Lawrence Krauss
  61. Stephen M. Kosslyn
  62. Ernst Pƶppel
  63. Scott D. Sampson
  64. Peter Schwartz
  65. Kevin Kelly
  66. Alan Kay
  67. Diane F. Halpern
  68. Stephen H. Schneider
  69. Xeni Jardin
  70. Sherry Turkle
  71. Daniel Gilbert
  72. Daniel Kahneman
  73. Stewart Brand
  74. Oliver Morton
  75. Judith Rich Harris
  76. Terrence Sejnowski
  77. Jonathan Haidt
  78. Patrick Bateson
  79. Alan Alda
  80. Steven Pinker
  81. Nicholas A. Christakis
  82. Paul Davies
  83. Leo M. Chalupa
  84. Scott Atran
  85. Marco Iacoboni
  86. Richard Wrangham
  87. Sean Carroll
  88. Linda Stone
  89. Stanislas Dehaene
  90. Mary Catherine Bateson
  91. Carolyn Porco
  92. Aubrey De Grey
  93. Helena Cronin
  94. Frank Wilczek
  95. Philip Campbell
  96. Daniel Goleman
  97. David M. Buss
  98. Robert Shapiro
  99. Brian Eno
  100. Paul Ewald
  101. Anton Zeilinger
  102. Seth Lloyd
  103. Adam Bly
  104. Pz Myers
  105. Esther Dyson
  106. Jaron Lanier
  107. Austin Dacey
  108. Simon Baron-Cohen
  109. David Sloan Wilson
  110. Neil Gershenfeld
  111. Paul Saffo
  112. Alison Gopnik
  113. Jordan Pollack
  114. George Johnson
  115. Geoffrey Miller
  116. Steve Connor
  117. Roger Bingham
  118. Richard Dawkins
  119. Gregory Benford
  120. Lera Boroditsky
  121. George B. Dyson
  122. Jamshed Bharucha
  123. Denis Dutton
  124. Linda S. Gottfredson
  125. Clay Shirky
  126. Randolph M. Nesse
  127. David Gelernter
  128. Mark Henderson
  129. Tim Oā€™reilly
  130. David Goodhart
  131. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  132. Bart Kosko
  133. W. Daniel Hillis
  134. Books by John Brockman
  135. Credits
  136. Copyright
  137. About the Publisher