www.edge.org je i ove godine napravio interesantan novogodisnji prilog. Novinari su pitali 120 vrhunskih znanstvenika koju znanstvenu ideju (koja nije nuzno morala poteci od njih) smatraju najopasnijom - ne zato sto bi mogla biti kriva, nego zato sto bi mogla biti tocna. Preporucam kao ultrazabavno stivo za trenutke dokolice dok vam kompjuter racuna nesto ...
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_print.html
Interesantne ideje koje copy pasteam na engleskom jer mi se ne prevodi:
1. Craig Venter, founder of the J Craig Venter Science Foundation, said the genetic basis of personality and behaviour would cause conflicts in society. He said it was inevitable that strong genetic components would be discovered at the root of many more human characteristics such as personality type, language capability, intelligence, quality of memory and athletic ability. "The danger rests with what we already know: that we are not all created equal," he said.
2. Science may be 'running out of control'
3. Government is the problem not the solution
4. The posterior probability of any particular God is pretty small
5. The hyper-Islamicist critique of the West as a decadent force that is already on a downhill course might be true
6. The more we discover about cognition and the brain, the more we will realize that education as we know it does not accomplish what we believe it does
7. Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox
The story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence with some other physicists. They were impressed that our galaxy holds 100 billion stars, that life evolved quickly and progressively on earth, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked simply, "So, where is everybody?". That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence is common, why haven't we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi's Paradox.
I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi's Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.
8. The End of Insight
I worry that insight is becoming impossible, at least at the frontiers of mathematics. Even when we're able to figure out what's true or false, we're less and less able to understand why.
9. Science Must Destroy Religion
10. The human brain and its products are incapable of understanding the truths about the universe
11. The free market
One of the most dangerous ideas at large in the current culture is that the "free market" is the ultimate arbiter of political decisions, and that there is an "invisible hand" that will direct us to the most desirable future provided the free market is allowed to actualize itself. This mystical faith is based on some reasonable empirical foundations, but when embraced as a final solution to the ills of humankind, it risks destroying both the material resources, and the cultural achievements that our species has so painstakingly developed.
12. Free will is going away. Time to redesign society to take that into account.
13. No More Teacher's Dirty Looks
My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don't learn much.
Linearni mod
