Every year the website Edge.org poses a provocative question to some of the world’s brightest bulbs. The 2009 question is out.
Drumroll, please:
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
The respondents include Nick Bostrom, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Brian Eno, David Gelernter, Sam Harris, Marc Hauser, Stuart Kauffman, Laurence Krauss, P.Z. Myers, Steven Pinker, Rupert Sheldrake, Michael Shermer, Frank Tipler, J. Craig Venter, Frank Wilczek, and lots of others.
Have a look here.
3 Comments
Malcolm,
I wasn’t familiar with this website-have been reading through the different answers. I am fascinated by Karl Sabbagh’s thoughts on the idea of “deprogramming” ,for use of a better word, the human brain to have any thoughts that would cause harm to others or at least to act on them. I didn’t know if you read all of the answers but thought this one might have caught your eye with “free will” in mind.
Jeanie
No, I hadn’t read that one yet, Jeanie. The quality does vary: I won’t single out what I thought were I thought were some of the weaker ones, but I found Stuart Kauffman’s contribution particularly interesting.
I can’t quite tell if Kauffman is challenging that phenomena are governed by the laws of physics or explainable by the laws of physics. If the latter, which I presume, then this is not a new idea. I’ve heard some pretty compelling arguments to this effect, which I of course cannot recall or cite in detail at this time. But I remember being struck by the idea.