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Edge Question
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress
Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific discovery, today's visionary thinkers target the greatest roadblocks to innovation.
Few truly new ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones. In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org ("the world's smartest website"—The Guardian), asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge * Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation * Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas * Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior * Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism * Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence * Physicist Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think * Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal * Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe * Sam Harris argues that our definition of science is too narrow * Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek disputes the division between mind and matter * Lawrence Krauss challenges the notion that the laws of physics were preordained * plus contributions from Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nicholas Carr, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Sean Carroll, Daniel C. Dennett, Helen Fisher, Douglas Rushkoff, Lee Smolin, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson, and others.
Few truly new ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones. In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org ("the world's smartest website"—The Guardian), asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge * Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation * Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas * Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior * Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism * Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence * Physicist Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think * Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal * Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe * Sam Harris argues that our definition of science is too narrow * Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek disputes the division between mind and matter * Lawrence Krauss challenges the notion that the laws of physics were preordained * plus contributions from Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nicholas Carr, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Sean Carroll, Daniel C. Dennett, Helen Fisher, Douglas Rushkoff, Lee Smolin, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson, and others.
568 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2015
398 people are currently reading
4063 people want to read
About the author
John Brockman
66 books614 followersJohn Brockman is an American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He established the Edge Foundation, an organization that brings together leading edge thinkers across a broad range of scientific and technical fields.
He is author and editor of several books, including: The Third Culture (1995); The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years (2000); The Next Fifty Years (2002) and The New Humanists (2003).
He has the distinction of being the only person to have been profiled on Page One of the "Science Times" (1997) and the "Arts & Leisure" (1966), both supplements of The New York Times.
He is author and editor of several books, including: The Third Culture (1995); The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years (2000); The Next Fifty Years (2002) and The New Humanists (2003).
He has the distinction of being the only person to have been profiled on Page One of the "Science Times" (1997) and the "Arts & Leisure" (1966), both supplements of The New York Times.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 186 reviews
March 11, 2015
This book was a lot like the TED conferences. While you're watching them you think they're the most brilliant thing you've ever seen and just wonder why you didn't come up with thinking about the problem that way on your own. But, when it's over you start to think maybe that wasn't worth my time after all. This book was fun while doing it, but I strongly suspect it wasn't worth my time.
Some essays were very good. I really liked Alan Alda's on why true and false should not be how we look at things. Richard Dawkin's (and a host of others) also thinks Essentianism should be retired. It just muddles our way of thinking since nature doesn't always fall into neat categories (Darwin dances around what a species is for a very good reason). When the theme of the essay was on the real nature of science being particular to the data available, and contingent to the current understanding of nature that we have and science is never absolute (back to Alan Alda's essay, e.g.), the essay would work nicely and would fit into an overall narrative.
Overall, I would recommend skipping this book and reading Marcelo Gleiser's "Island of Knowledge", who did give the second essay presented in this book and will give the listener a more coherent sense on the limitations of science than this book does.
Some essays were very good. I really liked Alan Alda's on why true and false should not be how we look at things. Richard Dawkin's (and a host of others) also thinks Essentianism should be retired. It just muddles our way of thinking since nature doesn't always fall into neat categories (Darwin dances around what a species is for a very good reason). When the theme of the essay was on the real nature of science being particular to the data available, and contingent to the current understanding of nature that we have and science is never absolute (back to Alan Alda's essay, e.g.), the essay would work nicely and would fit into an overall narrative.
Overall, I would recommend skipping this book and reading Marcelo Gleiser's "Island of Knowledge", who did give the second essay presented in this book and will give the listener a more coherent sense on the limitations of science than this book does.
July 30, 2017
The problem with books of this nature is that either the "death of an idea" is such a no-brainer that it doesn't deserve an essay or it's the bete noire of the author. For example, in this volume one can find essays that call for the final interment of String Theory alongside others that as vigorously defend it. Or materialists who deny that consciousness persists after death alongside others who argue for the opposite.
The best essay in the collection - and what makes it worth reading - is Ian McEwan's, "Beware of Arrogance! Retire Nothing!"
The best essay in the collection - and what makes it worth reading - is Ian McEwan's, "Beware of Arrogance! Retire Nothing!"
A great and rich scientific tradition should hang onto everything it has. Truth is not the only measure. There are ways of being wrong that help others to be right. Some are wrong, but brilliantly so. Some are wrong but contribute to method. Some are wrong but help found a discipline....
We need to remember how we got to where we are, and we'd like the future not to retire us. Science should look to literature and maintain a vibrant living history as a monument to ingenuity and persistence. We won't retire Shakespeare. Nor should we Bacon. (pp. 256-7)
February 13, 2017
Bullet Review:
This was a Goodreads Giveaway win. That didn't influence my review one bit.
So. This took nearly 2 years to finish - why? Perhaps because it suffered from being too long with too many voices saying the same thing (two essays have the exact same title and subject matter as well as opinion).
That said, when the essays were good, they were VERY good. I can't seem to find any off the top of my head, but they were there. Unfortunately, due to the format, the good essays could only be a max of 4 pages, leading to a truncated discussion of a fascinating topic - another detriment to the book, being too long and yet not long enough.
Note: saying that a figure of speech such as "knowing is half the battle", "people are sheep" and "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" should die makes you sound like an elitist prick. You DO realize they are FIGURES OF SPEECH not scientific principles, RIGHT?!???!
If you read, I would be judicious with skipping any essay you aren't enjoying. Enjoy the 10 or 15 of the 18 jillion the book has.
This was a Goodreads Giveaway win. That didn't influence my review one bit.
So. This took nearly 2 years to finish - why? Perhaps because it suffered from being too long with too many voices saying the same thing (two essays have the exact same title and subject matter as well as opinion).
That said, when the essays were good, they were VERY good. I can't seem to find any off the top of my head, but they were there. Unfortunately, due to the format, the good essays could only be a max of 4 pages, leading to a truncated discussion of a fascinating topic - another detriment to the book, being too long and yet not long enough.
Note: saying that a figure of speech such as "knowing is half the battle", "people are sheep" and "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" should die makes you sound like an elitist prick. You DO realize they are FIGURES OF SPEECH not scientific principles, RIGHT?!???!
If you read, I would be judicious with skipping any essay you aren't enjoying. Enjoy the 10 or 15 of the 18 jillion the book has.
Read
April 6, 2017I read all the women first
December 10, 2020
2 Stars for This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (audiobook) by John Brockman read by David Colacci and Susan Ericksen. I thought the premise of this book seemed interesting. And some of the parts were interesting but some were terrifying. I almost gave up on the book.
April 13, 2015
This book is a collection of essays; answers to the question What scientific idea is ready for retirement? This format is like placing a soap box in the middle of a town full of cranks, quacks, sophists, pseudo-intellectuals, and contrarians. The result is not really a book so much as a colossus of nonsense hewn from contradictory essays.
I can't fault John Brockman his choice in ordering these essays, however. They flow together smoothly as a river of lingual effluent filled with the mangled corpses of battered straw men.
Of course there are some few decent authors who contributed poignant, reasonable essays (Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Steven Pinker, Hugo Mercier, Richard H. Thaler, Michael Shermer).
Others were just plain wrong. Some so reprehensibly wrong that I screamed out loud from anger and merely typing their names now causes me hypertension (Douglas Rushkoff, Geoffrey West, Marcelo Gleiser, David Deutsch, Susan Blackmore, Nicholas G. Carr, W. Daniel Hillis, Gary Klein, Beatrice Golomb, Tania Lombrozo). Their responses constitute nothing more than denials of physics, neurology, human nature, and even the scientific method its self. Its a crime against reason that these lies were published.
Most of the rest suffer from fervent accusation that everyone in the world but themselves are drooling idiots who can't begin to comprehend whichever corner of their field the author happens to be expert. If only they'd take a short break from clobbering their straw men to search PubMed or the arXiv, they'd find their dismal fears of universal incompetence totally unfounded. There were also a ton of shameless false dichotomies.
It's not all their fault, really. They were after all provoked by that pesky soap box.
I can't fault John Brockman his choice in ordering these essays, however. They flow together smoothly as a river of lingual effluent filled with the mangled corpses of battered straw men.
Of course there are some few decent authors who contributed poignant, reasonable essays (Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Steven Pinker, Hugo Mercier, Richard H. Thaler, Michael Shermer).
Others were just plain wrong. Some so reprehensibly wrong that I screamed out loud from anger and merely typing their names now causes me hypertension (Douglas Rushkoff, Geoffrey West, Marcelo Gleiser, David Deutsch, Susan Blackmore, Nicholas G. Carr, W. Daniel Hillis, Gary Klein, Beatrice Golomb, Tania Lombrozo). Their responses constitute nothing more than denials of physics, neurology, human nature, and even the scientific method its self. Its a crime against reason that these lies were published.
Most of the rest suffer from fervent accusation that everyone in the world but themselves are drooling idiots who can't begin to comprehend whichever corner of their field the author happens to be expert. If only they'd take a short break from clobbering their straw men to search PubMed or the arXiv, they'd find their dismal fears of universal incompetence totally unfounded. There were also a ton of shameless false dichotomies.
It's not all their fault, really. They were after all provoked by that pesky soap box.
October 21, 2015
Another Brockman-curated sampling of thought from his roster of scientists, this collection explores scientific ideas that are blocking progress. Interestingly, many of the contributors to this book are opposed to research that is championed by other contributors, and the counterpoints were often striking. This one kind of grated on me at times, because some of the essays were arguing against things that interest me, but it was nevertheless interesting to hear the arguments, either way. A gripping read.
September 7, 2025
This is a series of essays submitted in response to a question (seen in the book title). It covers a broad range of scientific disciplines — physics, biology, mathematics, social sciences, psychology, etc. — and are sort of grouped together by topic but not really.
Some of them were reasonable, some of them were plain wrong (and proved wrong since the book came out), and a few were really good — a very few. Many were straw-man arguments. (I’m all, I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with your position on this.) Many were redundant, so there was a decent amount of skimming happening here. The great thing about essays is that you only have to read the first and last paragraphs to get all the information.
I agreed with the call to end Malthusianism and questioning the use of calculus requirements for computer science majors. One wrote about how natural selection is not evolution, which I’d always thought but everyone insists that is how evolution worked. So I felt vindicated there. I found it interesting that several said we need to give up on GUTs because there isn’t one. I was kind of amused at how so many would essentially say, It is arrogance to assume we know everything about the universe or that we can know everything about or that we can even imagine it, but there absolutely cannot be a divine being involved.
So it took 545 pages to get about 10 pages of gems.
Clean content
Some of them were reasonable, some of them were plain wrong (and proved wrong since the book came out), and a few were really good — a very few. Many were straw-man arguments. (I’m all, I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with your position on this.) Many were redundant, so there was a decent amount of skimming happening here. The great thing about essays is that you only have to read the first and last paragraphs to get all the information.
I agreed with the call to end Malthusianism and questioning the use of calculus requirements for computer science majors. One wrote about how natural selection is not evolution, which I’d always thought but everyone insists that is how evolution worked. So I felt vindicated there. I found it interesting that several said we need to give up on GUTs because there isn’t one. I was kind of amused at how so many would essentially say, It is arrogance to assume we know everything about the universe or that we can know everything about or that we can even imagine it, but there absolutely cannot be a divine being involved.
So it took 545 pages to get about 10 pages of gems.
Clean content
March 17, 2015
قرأته ببطء، وببطءٍ أكثر كان يجب أن يُقرأ!
بدايةً أحبّ الحديث سريعًا عن مشروع (جون بروكمان) المميّّز، وهو مشروع يهدف إلى حثّ أهم العلماء والمفكّرين على كتابة إجابات مختصرة (في 1- 4 ورقات) لسؤال علمي فلسغي عميق ومحدد. ويجيب كلّ عالم أو مفكّر على السؤال من زاوية تخصصّه واهتمامه. ومن ثمّ يتمّ إصدار هذه الإجابات في كتاب .
فمثلًا كان سؤال هذا العام ( ما هي الفكرة التي يجب أن تموت أو تتقاعد لئلا تظلّ قيدًا على التقدّم العلمي- أو لأنّ كل الأدلة والإشارات تبيّن عدم دقّتها)
الجميل في الكتاب أنّه رحلة حقيقية في أفكار أهم العقول في هذا الزمن، وتتفاوت المجالات وتتعدّد من الإحصاء والرياضيات إلى علم النفس والبيولوجي إلى الفلك إلى الفلسفة ..إلى غير ذلك. وتتعدّد الإجابات من نقد ونقض مفاهيم أساسية تكاد بدهيات في بعض العلوم مثل فكرة(الفلك) ....إلى حدّ نقد ونقض السؤال نفسه الذي يحمله الكتاب! كلّ ذلك في أكثر من 175 إجابة تقريبًا.
لماذا قلت أنّ هذا الكتاب يُقرأ على مهل شديد؟! لأنه إجابات متنوعة في مجالات متعدّدة وواسعة الطيف مما يجعل قراءة إجابة واحدة أو فكرة واحدة إ ثم التفكر بها كلّ مرّة أفضل من القراءة السردية .
وهذا ما أنوي القيام به بشكلِ ما في التعامل مع كتبه الأخرى إن شاء الله.
ما يعيب الكتاب هو إخراجه. وأقصد عدم تنظيمه في فصول متناسبة وواضحة العناوين التخصصية. وقد لاحظت هذا أيضًا في كتابه السابق عن التفكير.
بدايةً أحبّ الحديث سريعًا عن مشروع (جون بروكمان) المميّّز، وهو مشروع يهدف إلى حثّ أهم العلماء والمفكّرين على كتابة إجابات مختصرة (في 1- 4 ورقات) لسؤال علمي فلسغي عميق ومحدد. ويجيب كلّ عالم أو مفكّر على السؤال من زاوية تخصصّه واهتمامه. ومن ثمّ يتمّ إصدار هذه الإجابات في كتاب .
فمثلًا كان سؤال هذا العام ( ما هي الفكرة التي يجب أن تموت أو تتقاعد لئلا تظلّ قيدًا على التقدّم العلمي- أو لأنّ كل الأدلة والإشارات تبيّن عدم دقّتها)
الجميل في الكتاب أنّه رحلة حقيقية في أفكار أهم العقول في هذا الزمن، وتتفاوت المجالات وتتعدّد من الإحصاء والرياضيات إلى علم النفس والبيولوجي إلى الفلك إلى الفلسفة ..إلى غير ذلك. وتتعدّد الإجابات من نقد ونقض مفاهيم أساسية تكاد بدهيات في بعض العلوم مثل فكرة(الفلك) ....إلى حدّ نقد ونقض السؤال نفسه الذي يحمله الكتاب! كلّ ذلك في أكثر من 175 إجابة تقريبًا.
لماذا قلت أنّ هذا الكتاب يُقرأ على مهل شديد؟! لأنه إجابات متنوعة في مجالات متعدّدة وواسعة الطيف مما يجعل قراءة إجابة واحدة أو فكرة واحدة إ ثم التفكر بها كلّ مرّة أفضل من القراءة السردية .
وهذا ما أنوي القيام به بشكلِ ما في التعامل مع كتبه الأخرى إن شاء الله.
ما يعيب الكتاب هو إخراجه. وأقصد عدم تنظيمه في فصول متناسبة وواضحة العناوين التخصصية. وقد لاحظت هذا أيضًا في كتابه السابق عن التفكير.
May 18, 2015
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (Edge Question Series) by John Brockman
“This Idea Must Die" is the thought-provocative book of scientific essays brought to you by The Edge. The Edge is an organization that presents original ideas by today's leading thinkers from a wide spectrum of scientific fields. The 2014 Edge question is, “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” This interesting 592-page book provides over 175 short essays that address the question. The quality of the essays in this book range from a few one-star duds to a handful of outstanding 5-star essays.
For my sake, I created a spreadsheet of all the essays and graded them from zero to five stars based on overall quality. A quality essay to me is well written, interesting, addresses the topic and either teaches me something new or uses the best of our current knowledge effectively. On the other hand, those receiving two or fewer stars represent essays that were not worthy of this book. Of course, this is just one reviewer's personal opinion.
Positives:
1. Generally well-written, succinct essays. High quality-value. I’m a fan of the Edge Series.
2. An excellent question, “What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?”
3. You don’t have to read the essays in order.
4. This is well-balanced book, covers the question from many scientific angles and perspectives.
5. There were a number of outstanding essays. The following fifteen outstanding essays met my aforementioned standards and are worthy of five stars, starting with: “The Big Bang was the first moment of time” by Lee Smolin. “The hypothesis that there was a first moment of time is remarkably generic and unconstraining, as it’s consistent with an infinite number of possible states in which the universe might have begun.”
6. “Entropy” by Bruce Parker. “…we shouldn’t retire entropy, but perhaps we should treat it with a little less importance and recognize the paradox it creates.”
7. “Race” by Nina Jablonski. Makes the persuasive case that race has no place in science.
8. “Hardwired = Permanent” by Michael Shermer. “It’s time for scientists to retire the theory that God and religion are hardwired into our brains.”
9. “Cognitive agency” by Thomas Metzinger. A great essay. “As it turns out, most of our conscious thoughts are actually the product of subpersonal processes, like breathing or the peristaltic movements in our gastrointestinal tract.”
10. “Free will” by Jerry Coyne. One of the best essays of this book. “Whether or not we can “choose” is a matter for science, not philosophy, and science tells us that we’re complex marionettes dancing to the strings of our genes and environments.”
11. “Fully random mutations” by Kevin Kelly. Fascinating essay. “The evidence shows that chance plays a primary role in mutations, and there would be no natural selection without chance. But it’s not random chance. It’s loaded chance, with multiple constraints, multipoint biases, numerous clustering effects, and skewed distributions.”
12. “Robot companions” by Sherry Turkle. Did someone say robots? “We’re drawn to the robotic because it offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”
13. “The grand analogy” by David Gelernter. Artificial intelligence. “Until we understand how to make digital computers feel (or experience phenomenal consciousness), we have no business talking up a supposed analogy between mind:brain and software:computer.”
14. “Stationarity” by Giulio Boccaletti. “Accelerating changes in climate, coupled with a more sensitive global economy, in which more people and more value is at stake, reveal that we don’t live in a world as stationary as we thought. And infrastructure designed for that world and intended to last for decades is proving increasingly inadequate.”
15. “The scientific method” by Melanie Swan. “A new improved scientific method for today. We can no longer rely exclusively on the traditional scientific method in the new era of science emerging in areas like Big Data, crowd- sourcing, and synthetic biology.”
16. “Romantic love and addiction” by Helen fisher. Compelling. “The sooner we embrace what brain science is telling us— and use this information to upgrade the concept of addiction— the better we’ll understand ourselves and the billions of others on this planet who revel in the ecstasy and struggle with the sorrow of this profoundly powerful, natural, often positive addiction: romantic love.”
17. “Anthropocentricity” by Satyajit Das. “Transcending anthropocentricity may allow new frames of reference, expanding the boundary of human knowledge.”
18. “Essentialist views of the mind” by Lisa Barrett. “Essentialism leads to simplistic “single cause” thinking, whereas the world is a complex place. Research suggests that children are born essentialists (what irony!) and must learn to overcome it. It’s time for scientists to overcome it as well.”
19. “Mental illness is nothing but brain illness” by Joel Gold. “In understanding, preventing, and treating mental illness, we will rightly continue to look into the neurons and DNA of the afflicted and unafflicted. To ignore the world around them would be not only bad medicine but bad science.”
20. Quite a few 4.5 star essays as well. It’s a matter of opinion.
Negatives:
1. Require an investment of your time to get through.
2. There are just a few essays that were not worthy of this book, but just a few.
3. I would have liked to have seen more hot-button topics addressed. Controversy is not bad for a book like this.
4. Having more essays in a book is not necessarily better but at least you can be the judge of that.
In summary, I’m a big fan of The Edge and these types of books. They’re fun to read and provide many different perspectives on a given question. Philosophy is asking the right questions and good science is providing the answers based on the best of our current knowledge. There are many bad scientific ideas that are ready for retirement but seeking the truths about our world based on good science is not one of them. These kinds of books are always fun and stimulating to read, enjoy, I recommend it.
Further recommendations: “This Explains Everything” and “This Will Make You Smarter” and “This Will Change Everything” by the same author.
“This Idea Must Die" is the thought-provocative book of scientific essays brought to you by The Edge. The Edge is an organization that presents original ideas by today's leading thinkers from a wide spectrum of scientific fields. The 2014 Edge question is, “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” This interesting 592-page book provides over 175 short essays that address the question. The quality of the essays in this book range from a few one-star duds to a handful of outstanding 5-star essays.
For my sake, I created a spreadsheet of all the essays and graded them from zero to five stars based on overall quality. A quality essay to me is well written, interesting, addresses the topic and either teaches me something new or uses the best of our current knowledge effectively. On the other hand, those receiving two or fewer stars represent essays that were not worthy of this book. Of course, this is just one reviewer's personal opinion.
Positives:
1. Generally well-written, succinct essays. High quality-value. I’m a fan of the Edge Series.
2. An excellent question, “What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?”
3. You don’t have to read the essays in order.
4. This is well-balanced book, covers the question from many scientific angles and perspectives.
5. There were a number of outstanding essays. The following fifteen outstanding essays met my aforementioned standards and are worthy of five stars, starting with: “The Big Bang was the first moment of time” by Lee Smolin. “The hypothesis that there was a first moment of time is remarkably generic and unconstraining, as it’s consistent with an infinite number of possible states in which the universe might have begun.”
6. “Entropy” by Bruce Parker. “…we shouldn’t retire entropy, but perhaps we should treat it with a little less importance and recognize the paradox it creates.”
7. “Race” by Nina Jablonski. Makes the persuasive case that race has no place in science.
8. “Hardwired = Permanent” by Michael Shermer. “It’s time for scientists to retire the theory that God and religion are hardwired into our brains.”
9. “Cognitive agency” by Thomas Metzinger. A great essay. “As it turns out, most of our conscious thoughts are actually the product of subpersonal processes, like breathing or the peristaltic movements in our gastrointestinal tract.”
10. “Free will” by Jerry Coyne. One of the best essays of this book. “Whether or not we can “choose” is a matter for science, not philosophy, and science tells us that we’re complex marionettes dancing to the strings of our genes and environments.”
11. “Fully random mutations” by Kevin Kelly. Fascinating essay. “The evidence shows that chance plays a primary role in mutations, and there would be no natural selection without chance. But it’s not random chance. It’s loaded chance, with multiple constraints, multipoint biases, numerous clustering effects, and skewed distributions.”
12. “Robot companions” by Sherry Turkle. Did someone say robots? “We’re drawn to the robotic because it offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”
13. “The grand analogy” by David Gelernter. Artificial intelligence. “Until we understand how to make digital computers feel (or experience phenomenal consciousness), we have no business talking up a supposed analogy between mind:brain and software:computer.”
14. “Stationarity” by Giulio Boccaletti. “Accelerating changes in climate, coupled with a more sensitive global economy, in which more people and more value is at stake, reveal that we don’t live in a world as stationary as we thought. And infrastructure designed for that world and intended to last for decades is proving increasingly inadequate.”
15. “The scientific method” by Melanie Swan. “A new improved scientific method for today. We can no longer rely exclusively on the traditional scientific method in the new era of science emerging in areas like Big Data, crowd- sourcing, and synthetic biology.”
16. “Romantic love and addiction” by Helen fisher. Compelling. “The sooner we embrace what brain science is telling us— and use this information to upgrade the concept of addiction— the better we’ll understand ourselves and the billions of others on this planet who revel in the ecstasy and struggle with the sorrow of this profoundly powerful, natural, often positive addiction: romantic love.”
17. “Anthropocentricity” by Satyajit Das. “Transcending anthropocentricity may allow new frames of reference, expanding the boundary of human knowledge.”
18. “Essentialist views of the mind” by Lisa Barrett. “Essentialism leads to simplistic “single cause” thinking, whereas the world is a complex place. Research suggests that children are born essentialists (what irony!) and must learn to overcome it. It’s time for scientists to overcome it as well.”
19. “Mental illness is nothing but brain illness” by Joel Gold. “In understanding, preventing, and treating mental illness, we will rightly continue to look into the neurons and DNA of the afflicted and unafflicted. To ignore the world around them would be not only bad medicine but bad science.”
20. Quite a few 4.5 star essays as well. It’s a matter of opinion.
Negatives:
1. Require an investment of your time to get through.
2. There are just a few essays that were not worthy of this book, but just a few.
3. I would have liked to have seen more hot-button topics addressed. Controversy is not bad for a book like this.
4. Having more essays in a book is not necessarily better but at least you can be the judge of that.
In summary, I’m a big fan of The Edge and these types of books. They’re fun to read and provide many different perspectives on a given question. Philosophy is asking the right questions and good science is providing the answers based on the best of our current knowledge. There are many bad scientific ideas that are ready for retirement but seeking the truths about our world based on good science is not one of them. These kinds of books are always fun and stimulating to read, enjoy, I recommend it.
Further recommendations: “This Explains Everything” and “This Will Make You Smarter” and “This Will Change Everything” by the same author.
May 31, 2015
Review title: Death Wish VI
The Death Wish movie franchise was a series of movies (up to V) where Charles Bronson's wife/daugter/mother/girlfriend would be attacked/kidnapped/tortured/raped/murdered by a lone psycho/gang/cult where upon Bronson would exact revenge. Kind of like Taken without Liam Neeson's voice. I have entitled my review as the next in the franchise because this collection of essays by scientists talks a lot about death and involves a strong wish to see many ideas be done away in various painful and cringe worthy ways.
These scientists are all responding to a question on the website edge. org, and you will recognize many of their names: Dawkins, Dyson, Diamond and dozens of others whose names do not begin with D--like Alan Alda, so obviously the definition of "scientist" is a little fluid here. It is interesting and worth the time to note the writer's title, role and institution and publication listed. Clearly they were only allowed to list one, as for example I have read several of Jared Diamond's books but not the one listed; I wonder if this is the most recent publication, the one the author is most proud of or the one that best suits the topic?
There was also clearly an upper limit to length (about 5 printed pages in this paperback) but no lower, as some essays are less than a page. The editor has done a nice job arranging them in a logical flow that isn't reflected in any kind of hierarchy or table of contents structure, but becomes clear if you read from front to back as I did.
The first topic on the death wish list is the Theory of Everything, which because of scope (unhelpful overreach, most say) is on a lot of respondents' lists. Then come the big cosmological ideas like the universe, multiverse, and quantum physics. Eventually we get down to man himself: mind, human exceptionalism, free will, emotion (just a brain state) all have to go under Bronson's gun. After that things kind of scatter about depending on the specialty of the writer. A few of the ideas get quite specific, but most are explicable to the layman and applicable to multiple disciplines.
My big conclusions:
1. Pretty much every idea in science is on someone's list to eliminate.
2. Science can be arrogant about what it thinks is certain and ignorant of what it might not know.
3. There are a vast number of roles and institutions which perform and pay for science, and those factors clearly do influence the writers, though in what ways are not obvious from this level.
My response to the radical materialism and certitude of so many of the writers is that I believe that while science is advancing in so many areas, in the big areas (quantum physics, cosmology, human nature and mind) the science is defining representations of reality not reality itself, and that in these ideas there will be decades and centuries of redefinition, rethinking, and revolution before science defines reality. I agree with the writer of the final essay who says : "privately every scientist knows that what science really does is discover the profundity of our ignorance."
The Death Wish movie franchise was a series of movies (up to V) where Charles Bronson's wife/daugter/mother/girlfriend would be attacked/kidnapped/tortured/raped/murdered by a lone psycho/gang/cult where upon Bronson would exact revenge. Kind of like Taken without Liam Neeson's voice. I have entitled my review as the next in the franchise because this collection of essays by scientists talks a lot about death and involves a strong wish to see many ideas be done away in various painful and cringe worthy ways.
These scientists are all responding to a question on the website edge. org, and you will recognize many of their names: Dawkins, Dyson, Diamond and dozens of others whose names do not begin with D--like Alan Alda, so obviously the definition of "scientist" is a little fluid here. It is interesting and worth the time to note the writer's title, role and institution and publication listed. Clearly they were only allowed to list one, as for example I have read several of Jared Diamond's books but not the one listed; I wonder if this is the most recent publication, the one the author is most proud of or the one that best suits the topic?
There was also clearly an upper limit to length (about 5 printed pages in this paperback) but no lower, as some essays are less than a page. The editor has done a nice job arranging them in a logical flow that isn't reflected in any kind of hierarchy or table of contents structure, but becomes clear if you read from front to back as I did.
The first topic on the death wish list is the Theory of Everything, which because of scope (unhelpful overreach, most say) is on a lot of respondents' lists. Then come the big cosmological ideas like the universe, multiverse, and quantum physics. Eventually we get down to man himself: mind, human exceptionalism, free will, emotion (just a brain state) all have to go under Bronson's gun. After that things kind of scatter about depending on the specialty of the writer. A few of the ideas get quite specific, but most are explicable to the layman and applicable to multiple disciplines.
My big conclusions:
1. Pretty much every idea in science is on someone's list to eliminate.
2. Science can be arrogant about what it thinks is certain and ignorant of what it might not know.
3. There are a vast number of roles and institutions which perform and pay for science, and those factors clearly do influence the writers, though in what ways are not obvious from this level.
My response to the radical materialism and certitude of so many of the writers is that I believe that while science is advancing in so many areas, in the big areas (quantum physics, cosmology, human nature and mind) the science is defining representations of reality not reality itself, and that in these ideas there will be decades and centuries of redefinition, rethinking, and revolution before science defines reality. I agree with the writer of the final essay who says : "privately every scientist knows that what science really does is discover the profundity of our ignorance."
May 10, 2016
This book was a chore to plow through. The title and the concept intrigued me, yet I was disappointed in the overall outcome.
Some of the contributors used the question as an opportunity to rant on their own personal pet peeve, such as the lady who went off on the phrase "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to ...."
One of my greatest disappointments with the book was that so many of the contributors took it upon themselves to ridicule a belief in a Supreme Creator.
While they are all brilliant individuals in their respective fields. It is clear that there is much they yet don't understand. For example there were back to back essays both calling for string theory to be retired, and another singing its praises. Yet despite their inability to agree on areas in which they are specialists, they all seem to agree that it would be "foolish" to believe in a higher power.
While they ridicule a belief in God because of a lack of proof. I would ask what proof they have that there is no God? I maintain that they have none save it be their word only. While to me all things denote there is a God. Including the testimony of the prophets contained in scripture. The earth and all things that are upon the face of it. And to the dismay of many of the contributors of this book, their own work. Such as those that point out how sub atomic particles relate to each other, and that if they weren't the precise size that they are in relation to others life on this Earth could not exist. Or the one who talked about how random mutations in evolution aren't as "random" as we once thought. Of course he was quick to point out that they must be careful how they discuss that "lest Creationists get the wrong idea."
What I fail to understand is why it is so unreasonable to believe that a Supreme Creator, who has a a perfect understanding of nature's laws (that we are so striving to comprehend), could not use those laws to bring about all the marvels we see around us. And why it is so important for those who do not believe in a Supreme Creator to so militantly attack those that do. What does it hurt them if someone else chooses to believe in a higher power?
Some of the contributors used the question as an opportunity to rant on their own personal pet peeve, such as the lady who went off on the phrase "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to ...."
One of my greatest disappointments with the book was that so many of the contributors took it upon themselves to ridicule a belief in a Supreme Creator.
While they are all brilliant individuals in their respective fields. It is clear that there is much they yet don't understand. For example there were back to back essays both calling for string theory to be retired, and another singing its praises. Yet despite their inability to agree on areas in which they are specialists, they all seem to agree that it would be "foolish" to believe in a higher power.
While they ridicule a belief in God because of a lack of proof. I would ask what proof they have that there is no God? I maintain that they have none save it be their word only. While to me all things denote there is a God. Including the testimony of the prophets contained in scripture. The earth and all things that are upon the face of it. And to the dismay of many of the contributors of this book, their own work. Such as those that point out how sub atomic particles relate to each other, and that if they weren't the precise size that they are in relation to others life on this Earth could not exist. Or the one who talked about how random mutations in evolution aren't as "random" as we once thought. Of course he was quick to point out that they must be careful how they discuss that "lest Creationists get the wrong idea."
What I fail to understand is why it is so unreasonable to believe that a Supreme Creator, who has a a perfect understanding of nature's laws (that we are so striving to comprehend), could not use those laws to bring about all the marvels we see around us. And why it is so important for those who do not believe in a Supreme Creator to so militantly attack those that do. What does it hurt them if someone else chooses to believe in a higher power?
August 26, 2015
Meh. This book is one that I should not have bought, but you know what they say about fools and money I guess. I really should have looked through it beforehand, but I was charmed by the title. What is even more aggravating is the fact that I was in the bookstore when I bought this and could have looked through the physical copy I was holding.
This book is a collection of essays with a common theme; "What Ideas should be shelved to aid progress?" With some of them it's almost like the author just needed a topic to write on so they could get published. Now a lot of them are educated people, I assume, since they list their credentials ahead of all of the essays, but I don't really think they understand what they are saying. Perhaps I am the one in the wrong.
As an example to illustrate my point, some people in the statistics section of the book want to do away with the average, the statistical deviation, and other things. Of course, this is all to stir up controversy since they say that they don't want to get rid of the idea per se, but rather some elements of the subject that aren't pertinent to their own fields. Sometimes they write only one page on the subject that they have and that is that. They say something terrible for about three paragraphs and they change over to another author. It's like each essay was left slightly unfinished.
Finally, they have a few cases where the subject is repeated. I am glad that two neuroscientists agree that the idea of Left Brain/ Right Brain should be retired, but do we need to hear from both of them?
The editor did his best, but this just wasn't an enjoyable collection. It certainly did stir up some controversy in my brain, just not the type that was intended.
This book is a collection of essays with a common theme; "What Ideas should be shelved to aid progress?" With some of them it's almost like the author just needed a topic to write on so they could get published. Now a lot of them are educated people, I assume, since they list their credentials ahead of all of the essays, but I don't really think they understand what they are saying. Perhaps I am the one in the wrong.
As an example to illustrate my point, some people in the statistics section of the book want to do away with the average, the statistical deviation, and other things. Of course, this is all to stir up controversy since they say that they don't want to get rid of the idea per se, but rather some elements of the subject that aren't pertinent to their own fields. Sometimes they write only one page on the subject that they have and that is that. They say something terrible for about three paragraphs and they change over to another author. It's like each essay was left slightly unfinished.
Finally, they have a few cases where the subject is repeated. I am glad that two neuroscientists agree that the idea of Left Brain/ Right Brain should be retired, but do we need to hear from both of them?
The editor did his best, but this just wasn't an enjoyable collection. It certainly did stir up some controversy in my brain, just not the type that was intended.
April 11, 2015
I think I got the recommendation to read this book from a magazine review, but I can't remember which one. Maybe Smithsonian. The idea is a question put forth to scientists: Which scientific idea is ready for retirement? The book is 555 pages of 2-4 page essays answering this question, each essay from a different scientist. Unfortunately, the editor put the answers from the physicists first, so quantum mechanics, string theory, and the like made heavy, mostly (to me) incomprehensible reading, and I almost stopped reading the book. Then suddenly it switched to biologists, whose answers were readible, then to the social scientists, so I made it all the way through the book. However, the last essays were just as difficult to understand, for the last group was the statisticians. I even had a course on statistics in graduate school, a course which kept me from pursuing a doctorate, since I didn't understand what any of the math meant, and I thought that I'd have to do original research and statistically analyze the data to get a doctorate. I'd recommend this book to a theoretical psychologist with a degree in physics and a love of biology. Or anyone with an immense science vocabulary.
May 7, 2020
For a book seeking to dispel common scientific misconceptions, this book is startlingly inaccessible to the average every-day reader. Like, if you want to reach the masses, maybe consider *not* starting your book with sections on quantum physics? So it was really difficult to slog through all the scientific jargon that's not meant for the average reader, which is sad, because I really loved the concept and enjoyed reading the few sections that were reader-friendly. I understand wanting to publish a work aimed at a specific community, but again, due to the subject matter, this really feels like something that should be more accessible.
July 11, 2015
It took a while to get through this book - the sum of 175 essays to answer the question "What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance?"
I've always had an acute professional and intellectual envy of those working in the hard sciences - their fields seem to be so put together. So it's guilty pleasure to find out that things aren't as neat as they seem from the outside:
* String theory (or 'M' theory) is a dead end
* The falsifiability requirement is under siege
* The Big Bang, that staple of science textbooks, is showing a lot of cracks
I am starting to get the impression that Big Science is headed into another intellectual crisis (but that's good thing, considering the clarification that happened the last time).
Even the soft sciences (always in shaky empirical grounds to begin with) is not spared from the brutal accounting of what no longer works:
* The appeal to 'Culture' is essentially a reference to "phlogiston" or "protoplasm"
* Multiple regression as causation is demolished
* The null-hypothesis method is characterized as empty "ritual"
Even with my conceptual idols dashed, I can't help but admire the institutional processes and culture that makes this soul-searching possible. There is an openness here, the recognition that "the possibility of correction is a strength, not a weakness."
The legal enterprise is built on some of the "retire-able" ideas dissected in this book:
* The discreteness of mind, the unity of behavioral intent (and therefore of human agency) is an axiom for our system of assigning liability.
* Our rules of evidence systematize (now faulty) assumptions about cause and effect, the reliability of perception and our own capacity for reason.
We have over-invested in comfortable truths. Perhaps it's time for a similar accounting of doctrines that need to die.
I've always had an acute professional and intellectual envy of those working in the hard sciences - their fields seem to be so put together. So it's guilty pleasure to find out that things aren't as neat as they seem from the outside:
* String theory (or 'M' theory) is a dead end
* The falsifiability requirement is under siege
* The Big Bang, that staple of science textbooks, is showing a lot of cracks
I am starting to get the impression that Big Science is headed into another intellectual crisis (but that's good thing, considering the clarification that happened the last time).
Even the soft sciences (always in shaky empirical grounds to begin with) is not spared from the brutal accounting of what no longer works:
* The appeal to 'Culture' is essentially a reference to "phlogiston" or "protoplasm"
* Multiple regression as causation is demolished
* The null-hypothesis method is characterized as empty "ritual"
Even with my conceptual idols dashed, I can't help but admire the institutional processes and culture that makes this soul-searching possible. There is an openness here, the recognition that "the possibility of correction is a strength, not a weakness."
The legal enterprise is built on some of the "retire-able" ideas dissected in this book:
* The discreteness of mind, the unity of behavioral intent (and therefore of human agency) is an axiom for our system of assigning liability.
* Our rules of evidence systematize (now faulty) assumptions about cause and effect, the reliability of perception and our own capacity for reason.
We have over-invested in comfortable truths. Perhaps it's time for a similar accounting of doctrines that need to die.
December 12, 2018
Utterly exhausting. There are lots of interesting authors here with lots of interesting things to say. But the format -- hundreds of tiny essays -- is beyond tiring. If you went onto your social media feed and found that 150 of your friends had each posted a link to one article about something interesting, you wouldn't click on all those links, would you?
You would? Well then, you can go to this page and click on all these links, which contain the text of all the articles in this book:
https://www.edge.org/contributors/wha...
As for me, I need to stop clicking around and try to focus on one or two ideas at a time.
You would? Well then, you can go to this page and click on all these links, which contain the text of all the articles in this book:
https://www.edge.org/contributors/wha...
As for me, I need to stop clicking around and try to focus on one or two ideas at a time.
January 12, 2020
This was a grind. 175 contributors given one to three pages to air their favorite complaint in what I would call chapterlets. Like an anthology of short stories, you're probably going to find some that are worthwhile. But I found there was too high a spoil to nuggets ratio for me.
The better contributions stressed the concept not semantics. Try "Large Randomized Controlled Trials" or "Mouse Models" as examples. "Altruism" made the interesting argument that real egoists share. Others had value in what they introduced to me, your mileage may vary. For me, genetic mosaicism in "One Genome Per Individual" and the Turing test Loebner Prize mentioned in "Artificial Intelligence" made them memorable.
Regretfully too many were undone by too much jargon. "Intelligence as a Property" and "The Continuity of Time" come to mind. But I also understand why many of the authors relied on it, given such a small word count in each piece.
Most of the blame rests in the editing with too many feeling like filler. Several made weak and/or somewhat pointless arguments. Check out "Big Data", "The Habitable-Zone Concept" or "Companion Robots" to see if you agree. "Malthusianism" disputed the theory's validity. It only made me think, "who out there is still claiming that Malthusianism is still valid?" I've saved what I think is the worst for last. "Cartesian Hydraulicism" contends that Descartes' theory of how the nervous system works is past its prime. No kidding. I had to Google that one. The only relevant hits came from two sites: philosophypages.com and edge.org - the editor's website.
Then there is the overall tone. Each chapterlet, good or bad, felt like a bundle of rushed negativity. I found this commensurate to catching snippets of conversations while sitting in the middle of a room full of speed daters who are unimpressed with each other and would rather be somewhere else.
My best advice to you is to scan the chapterlet titles and sample those that sound intriguing to you. There's no reason to slog through the whole thing like I did. I only made it by switching to the audio book whenever my eyes glazed over. But then I'd have to switch back when it seemed my ears wanted to fold down the way my cats do when she's pissed off.
I get that the editor was aiming for a 'science sampler'. I believe the idea would be better served with more aggressive weeding giving the surviving entries more space to make their points.
The better contributions stressed the concept not semantics. Try "Large Randomized Controlled Trials" or "Mouse Models" as examples. "Altruism" made the interesting argument that real egoists share. Others had value in what they introduced to me, your mileage may vary. For me, genetic mosaicism in "One Genome Per Individual" and the Turing test Loebner Prize mentioned in "Artificial Intelligence" made them memorable.
Regretfully too many were undone by too much jargon. "Intelligence as a Property" and "The Continuity of Time" come to mind. But I also understand why many of the authors relied on it, given such a small word count in each piece.
Most of the blame rests in the editing with too many feeling like filler. Several made weak and/or somewhat pointless arguments. Check out "Big Data", "The Habitable-Zone Concept" or "Companion Robots" to see if you agree. "Malthusianism" disputed the theory's validity. It only made me think, "who out there is still claiming that Malthusianism is still valid?" I've saved what I think is the worst for last. "Cartesian Hydraulicism" contends that Descartes' theory of how the nervous system works is past its prime. No kidding. I had to Google that one. The only relevant hits came from two sites: philosophypages.com and edge.org - the editor's website.
Then there is the overall tone. Each chapterlet, good or bad, felt like a bundle of rushed negativity. I found this commensurate to catching snippets of conversations while sitting in the middle of a room full of speed daters who are unimpressed with each other and would rather be somewhere else.
My best advice to you is to scan the chapterlet titles and sample those that sound intriguing to you. There's no reason to slog through the whole thing like I did. I only made it by switching to the audio book whenever my eyes glazed over. But then I'd have to switch back when it seemed my ears wanted to fold down the way my cats do when she's pissed off.
I get that the editor was aiming for a 'science sampler'. I believe the idea would be better served with more aggressive weeding giving the surviving entries more space to make their points.
June 2, 2021
2.5 stars
I’m mostly pretty disappointed by this book. It’s pretty much a collection of responses from scientists, authors, medical professionals, mathematicians, etc etc etc. giving their response to the 2014 EDGE question: What scientific idea is ready to retire?
Some of these were great and taught me something new or provided me perspective on something I already knew about through school or my own reading.... but a lot of these were written by snobby assholes. Especially those written by people in the field of STEM (except for biology). So many of these responses were very obviously written in a “holier-than-thou” tone, filled with jargon and inaccessible language. Even for topics with which I had knowledge of and experience in the subject, I found myself getting lost. Whats the point of scientific information if that information can’t be communicated to others? Both to people in other scientific fields or outside the scientific world?
And the piece by the physicist that said biology is a lesser science and it’s based on random observation and mostly irrelevant data, suggesting that the majority (it not all) biological findings are useless can fuck right off.
I’m mostly pretty disappointed by this book. It’s pretty much a collection of responses from scientists, authors, medical professionals, mathematicians, etc etc etc. giving their response to the 2014 EDGE question: What scientific idea is ready to retire?
Some of these were great and taught me something new or provided me perspective on something I already knew about through school or my own reading.... but a lot of these were written by snobby assholes. Especially those written by people in the field of STEM (except for biology). So many of these responses were very obviously written in a “holier-than-thou” tone, filled with jargon and inaccessible language. Even for topics with which I had knowledge of and experience in the subject, I found myself getting lost. Whats the point of scientific information if that information can’t be communicated to others? Both to people in other scientific fields or outside the scientific world?
And the piece by the physicist that said biology is a lesser science and it’s based on random observation and mostly irrelevant data, suggesting that the majority (it not all) biological findings are useless can fuck right off.
January 30, 2018
Есть любопытные доводы, есть сомнительные. Очень разный уровень эссе. Сборник, разные авторы, не понятно кому верить.
November 4, 2015
Essays identify old ideas that may be stalling scientific progress. Brain plasticity, godlessness, Malthusian notions - all should go according to the responses to John Brockman's latest question.
“Science advances by a series of funerals,” writes Brockman, founder of the online discussion forum Edge.org. Sometimes, he says, old ideas have to be put to bed before new ones can flourish. With that in mind, he asked researchers, journalists and other science enthusiasts to weigh in on which established theories need to go. From the replies, Brockman compiled This Idea Must Die, a fascinating smorgasbord of 175 short essays about every field and facet of research.
Many of the responses offer tweaks to theories to better fit new discoveries. A psychologist points out that sadness and other “negative” emotions are not inherently bad, that they can help sharpen analytical thinking and enhance memory. Other essays call for more radical changes. Laboratory mice make lousy stand-ins for people when developing new drugs, argues an oncologist. It’s time to stop using them as furry human surrogates, she says. And a number of physicists would be happy to toss out string theory for good. “What we've learned is that this is an empty idea,” one physicist writes. “It predicts nothing about anything.”
Some of the essays tackle broader subjects, suggesting ways scientists can improve how they design experiments, crunch numbers and publish papers. Other writers lament poor communication between scientists and the general public, especially when misconceptions allow old theories to linger in the media long after they've been debunked. Take, for example, the notion of nature versus nurture — it still crops up in politics and the press, even though biologists have long known that genetics and environment are inextricably intertwined.
A few of the arguments are bound to be controversial. For example, a journalist asserts that the information gleaned from massive particle accelerators isn’t worth their equally massive price tags. And while Brockman’s question inspired some thought-provoking responses, the short essays can provide only a brief overview of complex problems. Readers will want to do some research of their own before deciding which, if any, of these ideas really requires a funeral.
“Science advances by a series of funerals,” writes Brockman, founder of the online discussion forum Edge.org. Sometimes, he says, old ideas have to be put to bed before new ones can flourish. With that in mind, he asked researchers, journalists and other science enthusiasts to weigh in on which established theories need to go. From the replies, Brockman compiled This Idea Must Die, a fascinating smorgasbord of 175 short essays about every field and facet of research.
Many of the responses offer tweaks to theories to better fit new discoveries. A psychologist points out that sadness and other “negative” emotions are not inherently bad, that they can help sharpen analytical thinking and enhance memory. Other essays call for more radical changes. Laboratory mice make lousy stand-ins for people when developing new drugs, argues an oncologist. It’s time to stop using them as furry human surrogates, she says. And a number of physicists would be happy to toss out string theory for good. “What we've learned is that this is an empty idea,” one physicist writes. “It predicts nothing about anything.”
Some of the essays tackle broader subjects, suggesting ways scientists can improve how they design experiments, crunch numbers and publish papers. Other writers lament poor communication between scientists and the general public, especially when misconceptions allow old theories to linger in the media long after they've been debunked. Take, for example, the notion of nature versus nurture — it still crops up in politics and the press, even though biologists have long known that genetics and environment are inextricably intertwined.
A few of the arguments are bound to be controversial. For example, a journalist asserts that the information gleaned from massive particle accelerators isn’t worth their equally massive price tags. And while Brockman’s question inspired some thought-provoking responses, the short essays can provide only a brief overview of complex problems. Readers will want to do some research of their own before deciding which, if any, of these ideas really requires a funeral.
December 18, 2015
Things I learnt:
So much of our society still operates on a paradigm of simplification, compartmentalisation and boundaries, when we need a paradigm of diversity, complexity, relationships and process.
A triumphalist scientism needs philosophy to support itself. Philosophy is joined to science in reason's project. Its mandate is to render our views and attitudes maximally coherent.
A modest proposal (by Alan Alda): Scientific truth should be identified in a way acknowledging that it's something we know and understand for now, and in a certain way. Facts are useful in a given frame or context.
If every child received an identical education, heritability of academic performance would rise to 100%. High heritability would not mean that education matters little.
On the concept of altruism being outdated: The starting point is neither selfishness nor altruism but the state of being bound together. It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.
Mouse models aren't good models of human disease.
Big data isn't good at identifying laws, only detecting correlations. And correlations will never be causation.
Unbiased Objectivity is a luxury at odds with reaching the right ansewrs in limited time from small amounts of evidence. When solving inductive problems, it can be rational to be biased.
Left/right sides of the brain PREFERENTIALLY process details / overall shapes of objects we see or syntax/pragmatics. Not solely.
No information overload, only filter failure.
One way to shift away from the scarcity-based mindset of continually producing more is to become focused instead on selecting among those that already exist. The market should be manipulated for human purposes rather than obeyed.
Scientists have a moral obligation to engage with the public about their findings - to advise and speak out on policy and critique its implementation.
Whether or not an emotion is good or bad seems to have surprisingly little to do with the emotion itself but rather with how mindfully we ride the ebbing and flowing tides of our rich emotional life.
Hickam's dictum, the medical profession's counter to Ockham's Razor: The patient can have as many diagnoses as they damn well please.
Variance is usually more informative than the average.
So much of our society still operates on a paradigm of simplification, compartmentalisation and boundaries, when we need a paradigm of diversity, complexity, relationships and process.
A triumphalist scientism needs philosophy to support itself. Philosophy is joined to science in reason's project. Its mandate is to render our views and attitudes maximally coherent.
A modest proposal (by Alan Alda): Scientific truth should be identified in a way acknowledging that it's something we know and understand for now, and in a certain way. Facts are useful in a given frame or context.
If every child received an identical education, heritability of academic performance would rise to 100%. High heritability would not mean that education matters little.
On the concept of altruism being outdated: The starting point is neither selfishness nor altruism but the state of being bound together. It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.
Mouse models aren't good models of human disease.
Big data isn't good at identifying laws, only detecting correlations. And correlations will never be causation.
Unbiased Objectivity is a luxury at odds with reaching the right ansewrs in limited time from small amounts of evidence. When solving inductive problems, it can be rational to be biased.
Left/right sides of the brain PREFERENTIALLY process details / overall shapes of objects we see or syntax/pragmatics. Not solely.
No information overload, only filter failure.
One way to shift away from the scarcity-based mindset of continually producing more is to become focused instead on selecting among those that already exist. The market should be manipulated for human purposes rather than obeyed.
Scientists have a moral obligation to engage with the public about their findings - to advise and speak out on policy and critique its implementation.
Whether or not an emotion is good or bad seems to have surprisingly little to do with the emotion itself but rather with how mindfully we ride the ebbing and flowing tides of our rich emotional life.
Hickam's dictum, the medical profession's counter to Ockham's Razor: The patient can have as many diagnoses as they damn well please.
Variance is usually more informative than the average.
August 18, 2017
In this collection of essays, scientists around the globe answer the question "What scientific idea is ready for retirement?", and their responses give us an interesting glimpse at where our scientific understanding is today and where it is headed. This book contains over 170 short, concise essays covering a wide range of topics and disciplines. In general, the essays are well written, interesting, and easy to understand; although, I think it is best suited to those who already have a strong interest and background in science. Naturally, there is some overlap and disagreement amongst the essays, but I liked how this showcased the scientific process at work. My one complaint, and my reason for giving this book three stars, is that this was a very slow read. Although the essays are short and well organized, it was hard to read more than one or two essays at a time.
October 25, 2014
Goodreads win. Will read and review once received.
A different type of book than I am usually used to. It was an interesting read but I will admit it isn't a book I would pick up and buy by myself. I was happy to have received this book for free through goodreads. The writing in this book is good and the book had a good flow to it. I will say this book was engaging and thoughtful. I can see many people finding this book interesting.
A different type of book than I am usually used to. It was an interesting read but I will admit it isn't a book I would pick up and buy by myself. I was happy to have received this book for free through goodreads. The writing in this book is good and the book had a good flow to it. I will say this book was engaging and thoughtful. I can see many people finding this book interesting.
September 11, 2015
This is the book that I did not know I had been waiting for.
I found it undermining some things I thought were scientific 'tenets'. And ain't that what science is all about?
I found it undermining some things I thought were scientific 'tenets'. And ain't that what science is all about?
January 16, 2020
This Idea Must Die uses essays written by various experts explaining which scientific ideas each believes are holding humanity back. I love reading about stuff like this, even with my minuscule understanding of all things science, because it all bends and stretches my mind in ways it's not used to, forcing me to think about things I've never considered before.
The book starts with 3 essays on killing The Theory of Everything. These scientists believe it to be a detrimental OVERsimplification of the complexities of, well, Everything. They take the nearly artistic viewpoint of saying, "Maybe Everything can't be explained via math, numbers, and formulas." As one essay put it, expecting some sort of mathematical “Perfection is too hard a burden to impose on nature.” It's monotheistically-tinged thinking. Nature is too vast and imperfect to fit into nice little boxes. Expecting Everything to fit into one singular, easy-to-explain box is not looking like a good use of resources (a similar stance is put forth regarding String Theory later on from 2 different experts and "Culture" from 3 experts as well). We should embrace complexity; it's everywhere we look. A different expert wants to retire the very similar idea of the rocket scientist cliche: science can be done by non-geniuses, shouldn't be done in utter isolation. All should embrace relationship and should NOT be all about silo-ing all the disciplines and areas in life. This is echoed again later by an expert discussing "Indivi-duality," and how humans need to stop seeing themselves as individuals. We're both divisible (into cells and atoms and so on) and not a singular thing (since we have more bacterial cells than our own and we're also hugely interconnected with other beings).
1 expert wants to do away with "the universe" in favor of the multiverse, and a different expert favors each observer having their own "universe" via quantum mechanics. However, a 3rd expert wants to do away with the multiverse-oriented "Theory of Anything" because it's unproven, unprovable, untested, and untestable (the same critique of String Theory elsewhere); believing in such infinite infinities amounts to throwing up your hands and giving up. 1 expert wants to kill infinity: it makes much of physics less useful in predicting. Besides, our computers use finite resources and finite numbers to predict events like weather quite well, so maybe we need to stop accepting infinities.
2 different experts want to kill the left-brain/right-brain BS, finally, although it's an annoyingly persistent social meme. Another wants to kill the myth of IQ (again, finally), saying it's like getting a Body Quotient and expecting that to say something useful about your physical health. After that comes a call to end talks of brain plasticity. The expert claims it's too vague of a term used too often to mean much anymore and has been more or less ruined by marketing. Another expert echoes this, saying our talk of "changing the brain" is meaningless, as everything does just that.
On another brain-related note, one expert wants us to stop thinking bigger is better when it comes to brains. In fact, sometimes smaller is better as it may just be more efficient "software" (something our own brains do during adolescence in the social sector). Interestingly, the expert suggests our big brains give us reserves so we can stay intelligent much longer than other species, like after reproduction, suggesting that this mental endurance helped create culture and generational knowledge via grandparents and elders. This matches nicely with the idea of human physical endurance and cooperation being how our ancestors once hunted animals we have little hope of predating otherwise.
However, computer scientist David Gelernter argues that we need to stop thinking of brains as meat computers. He admits it's helped some, but says it's nowhere near correct, and we've gotten all we're likely to get from the incorrect analogy. Another essay wants Cartesian hydraulicism (that our bodies/brains work like hydraulic pumps, which is false beyond engorging genitalia) to be fully buried, which is just a predecessor to our computational idea. Rodney A. Brooks makes this exact point. Philosopher Andy Clark even wants to kill the input-output model of perception, claiming we're "proactive predictavores, forever trying to stay one step ahead" of inputs that we, ourselves, choose and predict.
A few wrote on ending our ideas of entropy, which stuck in my mind. They suggest this law of thermodynamics isn't quite what we assumed. 1 uses this to discuss how our universe's likely not uni-directional in time and is instead time-symmetric, in part meaning the universe cycles. The other uses it to suggest that perhaps we've mislabled it, and that things go not from "order to disorder" but from "simple to complex" in the 2nd law. This idea, especially, keeps rattling around in my skull. The suggestion's even made that perhaps entropy's like the first law, and if we could quantify complexity scales, we may find that in our infinite system entropy's constant, while constantly developing greater complexity in tiny areas to balance the simplicity of the vastness of empty space.
1 expert writes that we need to stop letting our storytelling brains turn everything into cause and effect. Just as our observation of a particle doesn't "cause" its state, gene's don't cause cancer, markets here don't cause stock markets there to rise, etc.-such complex systems need to be viewed differently than simple cause and effects. This fits with the overall push in the collection to embrace complexity, as comes up later again in an essay on doing away with the fallacy of Moore's Law, which tries to predict the future and simplify progress while ignoring unpredictable social and political changes. Some psychologists agree with this a bit too, arguing mental illness isn't as simple as a brain illness.
A biological anthropologist posits we need to kill the idea of race, since it's not at all scientific and basically meaningless. My worry about this is white people might end up doing the "colorblind" thing with racial issues. Even though race isn't real, it's real in people's minds, which matters on a day-to-day decision-making level. Perhaps doing away with it in science would help begin a positive shift away from it, but it's definitely an area that needs to be handled carefully.
Richard Dawkins says we must retire essentialism. Stemming from Plato but possibly just human nature, we love to categorize and name, especially in black and white. So, considering black and white, we lump people into boxes by race, when it's a spectrum without borders. We have this same issue with abortion (when's a fetus a human?) and animals (when's it human enough to deserve rights?) and euthanasia (when's a person dead?) and psychology (when's it depression?) and even money (when's a person in poverty?). Like the calls to embrace complexity, Dawkins (and, later on, others including Alan Alda, in a way) calls to embrace the continuums of life.
1 essay attacks a phrase I used just sentences before: human nature. This scientist says we all know some people are great, a few people suck, and most people are somewhere in between, that there's no real human nature, given the complexity and spectrum of our species. Another echoes this by explaining all "hardwired" traits are not permanent for the species. For example, we're not "hardwired" for violence as some have thought, science having shown the factors that increase and decrease the "propensity" for it. Multiple psychologists write on the complexity of human thought and emotion, including placing emotion as central to our thinking instead of an added flavor.
One scientist wrote an interesting piece calling for an end to "at all costs" knowledge. The idea's that discovering the Higgs, for example, wasn't worth its price tag, especially when that same amount of money could've eradicated diseases through vaccines, as another example. He says, "Some scientific knowledge is simply not worth the cost." I think it's all about priorities, but it's also exceedingly difficult to measure the possible impact of any given research, let alone the direct and indirect impact of previous discoveries.
There was a good point made in the destruction of our views of memory as "immutable." We've now found that remembering a long-term memory opens it up for reinterpretation and storage in its new form. This further ruins the already troubling issue of forgetting things. We use human memory for far too much, considering how inconsistent and unreliable it is.
I also enjoyed the call to end our thinking of a free willing self, being a determinist. The essay makes the point that allowing choice/self creates an abrupt halt in "causality when trying to understand thoughts and actions." When we do this, we make it impossible "to make progress in understanding how we really operate." Another essay adds on that we now know all our choices come from meat, our brains, there's not some spirit guiding us. Second, the essay adds that brain scans show the meat deciding things before there's even awareness of having decided, suggesting our meat then slaps on a narrative that includes some semblance of a consistent character with agency. This second essay encourages the death of free will by making points that I've enjoyed about determinism as well: justice becomes a focus on rehabilitation as opposed to retribution, morality simplifies into an action's consequences without focus on the actor, and religions of choice begin to crumble. As the essay says, it's such a powerful trick our brains play, that we'll always act like we have free will, even if we know we don't. A psychologist later also questions our ideas of justice, as we see self-harm as mental illness but not other-harm.
1 bit that blew my mind was an essay on how genetic mutation's not random. 1st of all, mutation increases under stress, such as predation, competition, environmental change, and so on. While there's an element of chaos here, it's cleaner and more efficient than I thought or was taught. It also nicely lines up with the entropy issue, as it seems that evolution trends toward complexity. This is all further complicated by a later essay on how we need to stop thinking of individuals as having 1 genome since we now have evidence of genetic mutations happening at any point in life. From this genetics section of the book, another essay tears down "nature vs nurture" using a combination of the ideas from other essays: that's too simple, environment and genetics are too interwoven to discern, epigenetics existing between the two, and so on. It's not one or the other "side" here, it's both. Even height, as the essay explains, is heritable only in the sense that genes and the environment you inherit (such as quality and quantity of food) impact it. The next essay goes so far as to say that EVERY gene expression depends on environment (relating to the stress mutations and such earlier). Furthermore, the essay after that goes into epigenetics and their heritability: mice taught to fear a neutral smell passed the fear on through genes and multiple generations. While we don't know what can be passed on in this manner, it means that people can possibly start/break genetic inheritance of some things like, perhaps, diabetes, obesity, addiction, and so on.
Steven Pinker questions this in a cloudy essay. He makes the mistake of viewing the brain as a finished, final, unchanging product and of thinking of a phone as the same thing. He says inputs don't shape behavior, but they do in both cases. Everything you do on your phone's tracked and used by the software to better suck your time. Everything that happens around you changes your brain. He does make a good point about how everything isn't genes+environment, since there still appears to be randomness (such as the weighted randomness in gene mutation mentioned earlier).
Some essays on science itself were also interesting. One pushed back on evidence-based medicine as the gold standard. Another questioned the strength of large randomized controlled trials. A psychology professor wants us to stop using multiple regression data analysis as science in and of itself and instead use it to suggest good experiments to run (which CAN find causal links) while others hate on other aspects and uses of statistics. A professor of medicine wants us to kill mouse models, not for ethical reasons but because they just don't work for most of medical research. Numerous experts dislike the institution of research publishing, longing for a modern technique to publish, revise, and refute. A few essays ask us to do away with anthropocentric science, as best we can given our human perception and such...
An essay on doing away with the "linear no-threshold radiation dose hypothesis" points out that the hypothesis was a guess in the 1960s that stuck, and we now have evidence to believe that low levels of radiation are not at all harmful. As a fan of nuclear power, the essay points out how our unreasonable fear of radiation has increased costs of nuclear power and prevented it from helping lower pollution and/or slow climate change. The essay made me wonder how many more of these arbitrary guesses exist as untested fact in the world...
A fun essay by Ian McEwan told us to "beware of [our] arrogance" and "retire nothing!" He makes the point that you learn from things other than the truth, that wrongness can contribute to methods, disciplines, and can come back around to "rightness" in some way after we learn more or apply it elsewhere. Thaler echoes this too. He wants us to keep "wrong theories and hypotheses alive, but remember they're just hypotheses, not facts." Another essay agrees, suggesting we lower the standards of correctness for publication.
A mind-bending essay on killing the idea of continuous time explains how this "Newtonian time" is a fallacy, created by our brains so we can create coherent experiences of events that are "atemporal" - given speeds of light and sound as well as our brains' processing speeds of visual and auditory information, we're never in any sort of perception of a true "present."
Another idea a few experts want to kill is economic growth (and its unlimited, eternal nature). Sadly, two experts want to kill stationarity, which is the idea that we can predict resources based on a big historical batch of data, thanks to things like climate change.
A few different essays and experts want to do away with the idea of rational individuals. We're not rational. We're hardly individuals (as discussed previously). We're hugely irrational and impacted by social norms. (This idea shows up wonderfully in Ariely's Predictably Irrational.) It's complicated, as is everything.
To finish, an essay wants to include the finding of new mysteries to our idea of "progress."
The book starts with 3 essays on killing The Theory of Everything. These scientists believe it to be a detrimental OVERsimplification of the complexities of, well, Everything. They take the nearly artistic viewpoint of saying, "Maybe Everything can't be explained via math, numbers, and formulas." As one essay put it, expecting some sort of mathematical “Perfection is too hard a burden to impose on nature.” It's monotheistically-tinged thinking. Nature is too vast and imperfect to fit into nice little boxes. Expecting Everything to fit into one singular, easy-to-explain box is not looking like a good use of resources (a similar stance is put forth regarding String Theory later on from 2 different experts and "Culture" from 3 experts as well). We should embrace complexity; it's everywhere we look. A different expert wants to retire the very similar idea of the rocket scientist cliche: science can be done by non-geniuses, shouldn't be done in utter isolation. All should embrace relationship and should NOT be all about silo-ing all the disciplines and areas in life. This is echoed again later by an expert discussing "Indivi-duality," and how humans need to stop seeing themselves as individuals. We're both divisible (into cells and atoms and so on) and not a singular thing (since we have more bacterial cells than our own and we're also hugely interconnected with other beings).
1 expert wants to do away with "the universe" in favor of the multiverse, and a different expert favors each observer having their own "universe" via quantum mechanics. However, a 3rd expert wants to do away with the multiverse-oriented "Theory of Anything" because it's unproven, unprovable, untested, and untestable (the same critique of String Theory elsewhere); believing in such infinite infinities amounts to throwing up your hands and giving up. 1 expert wants to kill infinity: it makes much of physics less useful in predicting. Besides, our computers use finite resources and finite numbers to predict events like weather quite well, so maybe we need to stop accepting infinities.
2 different experts want to kill the left-brain/right-brain BS, finally, although it's an annoyingly persistent social meme. Another wants to kill the myth of IQ (again, finally), saying it's like getting a Body Quotient and expecting that to say something useful about your physical health. After that comes a call to end talks of brain plasticity. The expert claims it's too vague of a term used too often to mean much anymore and has been more or less ruined by marketing. Another expert echoes this, saying our talk of "changing the brain" is meaningless, as everything does just that.
On another brain-related note, one expert wants us to stop thinking bigger is better when it comes to brains. In fact, sometimes smaller is better as it may just be more efficient "software" (something our own brains do during adolescence in the social sector). Interestingly, the expert suggests our big brains give us reserves so we can stay intelligent much longer than other species, like after reproduction, suggesting that this mental endurance helped create culture and generational knowledge via grandparents and elders. This matches nicely with the idea of human physical endurance and cooperation being how our ancestors once hunted animals we have little hope of predating otherwise.
However, computer scientist David Gelernter argues that we need to stop thinking of brains as meat computers. He admits it's helped some, but says it's nowhere near correct, and we've gotten all we're likely to get from the incorrect analogy. Another essay wants Cartesian hydraulicism (that our bodies/brains work like hydraulic pumps, which is false beyond engorging genitalia) to be fully buried, which is just a predecessor to our computational idea. Rodney A. Brooks makes this exact point. Philosopher Andy Clark even wants to kill the input-output model of perception, claiming we're "proactive predictavores, forever trying to stay one step ahead" of inputs that we, ourselves, choose and predict.
A few wrote on ending our ideas of entropy, which stuck in my mind. They suggest this law of thermodynamics isn't quite what we assumed. 1 uses this to discuss how our universe's likely not uni-directional in time and is instead time-symmetric, in part meaning the universe cycles. The other uses it to suggest that perhaps we've mislabled it, and that things go not from "order to disorder" but from "simple to complex" in the 2nd law. This idea, especially, keeps rattling around in my skull. The suggestion's even made that perhaps entropy's like the first law, and if we could quantify complexity scales, we may find that in our infinite system entropy's constant, while constantly developing greater complexity in tiny areas to balance the simplicity of the vastness of empty space.
1 expert writes that we need to stop letting our storytelling brains turn everything into cause and effect. Just as our observation of a particle doesn't "cause" its state, gene's don't cause cancer, markets here don't cause stock markets there to rise, etc.-such complex systems need to be viewed differently than simple cause and effects. This fits with the overall push in the collection to embrace complexity, as comes up later again in an essay on doing away with the fallacy of Moore's Law, which tries to predict the future and simplify progress while ignoring unpredictable social and political changes. Some psychologists agree with this a bit too, arguing mental illness isn't as simple as a brain illness.
A biological anthropologist posits we need to kill the idea of race, since it's not at all scientific and basically meaningless. My worry about this is white people might end up doing the "colorblind" thing with racial issues. Even though race isn't real, it's real in people's minds, which matters on a day-to-day decision-making level. Perhaps doing away with it in science would help begin a positive shift away from it, but it's definitely an area that needs to be handled carefully.
Richard Dawkins says we must retire essentialism. Stemming from Plato but possibly just human nature, we love to categorize and name, especially in black and white. So, considering black and white, we lump people into boxes by race, when it's a spectrum without borders. We have this same issue with abortion (when's a fetus a human?) and animals (when's it human enough to deserve rights?) and euthanasia (when's a person dead?) and psychology (when's it depression?) and even money (when's a person in poverty?). Like the calls to embrace complexity, Dawkins (and, later on, others including Alan Alda, in a way) calls to embrace the continuums of life.
1 essay attacks a phrase I used just sentences before: human nature. This scientist says we all know some people are great, a few people suck, and most people are somewhere in between, that there's no real human nature, given the complexity and spectrum of our species. Another echoes this by explaining all "hardwired" traits are not permanent for the species. For example, we're not "hardwired" for violence as some have thought, science having shown the factors that increase and decrease the "propensity" for it. Multiple psychologists write on the complexity of human thought and emotion, including placing emotion as central to our thinking instead of an added flavor.
One scientist wrote an interesting piece calling for an end to "at all costs" knowledge. The idea's that discovering the Higgs, for example, wasn't worth its price tag, especially when that same amount of money could've eradicated diseases through vaccines, as another example. He says, "Some scientific knowledge is simply not worth the cost." I think it's all about priorities, but it's also exceedingly difficult to measure the possible impact of any given research, let alone the direct and indirect impact of previous discoveries.
There was a good point made in the destruction of our views of memory as "immutable." We've now found that remembering a long-term memory opens it up for reinterpretation and storage in its new form. This further ruins the already troubling issue of forgetting things. We use human memory for far too much, considering how inconsistent and unreliable it is.
I also enjoyed the call to end our thinking of a free willing self, being a determinist. The essay makes the point that allowing choice/self creates an abrupt halt in "causality when trying to understand thoughts and actions." When we do this, we make it impossible "to make progress in understanding how we really operate." Another essay adds on that we now know all our choices come from meat, our brains, there's not some spirit guiding us. Second, the essay adds that brain scans show the meat deciding things before there's even awareness of having decided, suggesting our meat then slaps on a narrative that includes some semblance of a consistent character with agency. This second essay encourages the death of free will by making points that I've enjoyed about determinism as well: justice becomes a focus on rehabilitation as opposed to retribution, morality simplifies into an action's consequences without focus on the actor, and religions of choice begin to crumble. As the essay says, it's such a powerful trick our brains play, that we'll always act like we have free will, even if we know we don't. A psychologist later also questions our ideas of justice, as we see self-harm as mental illness but not other-harm.
1 bit that blew my mind was an essay on how genetic mutation's not random. 1st of all, mutation increases under stress, such as predation, competition, environmental change, and so on. While there's an element of chaos here, it's cleaner and more efficient than I thought or was taught. It also nicely lines up with the entropy issue, as it seems that evolution trends toward complexity. This is all further complicated by a later essay on how we need to stop thinking of individuals as having 1 genome since we now have evidence of genetic mutations happening at any point in life. From this genetics section of the book, another essay tears down "nature vs nurture" using a combination of the ideas from other essays: that's too simple, environment and genetics are too interwoven to discern, epigenetics existing between the two, and so on. It's not one or the other "side" here, it's both. Even height, as the essay explains, is heritable only in the sense that genes and the environment you inherit (such as quality and quantity of food) impact it. The next essay goes so far as to say that EVERY gene expression depends on environment (relating to the stress mutations and such earlier). Furthermore, the essay after that goes into epigenetics and their heritability: mice taught to fear a neutral smell passed the fear on through genes and multiple generations. While we don't know what can be passed on in this manner, it means that people can possibly start/break genetic inheritance of some things like, perhaps, diabetes, obesity, addiction, and so on.
Steven Pinker questions this in a cloudy essay. He makes the mistake of viewing the brain as a finished, final, unchanging product and of thinking of a phone as the same thing. He says inputs don't shape behavior, but they do in both cases. Everything you do on your phone's tracked and used by the software to better suck your time. Everything that happens around you changes your brain. He does make a good point about how everything isn't genes+environment, since there still appears to be randomness (such as the weighted randomness in gene mutation mentioned earlier).
Some essays on science itself were also interesting. One pushed back on evidence-based medicine as the gold standard. Another questioned the strength of large randomized controlled trials. A psychology professor wants us to stop using multiple regression data analysis as science in and of itself and instead use it to suggest good experiments to run (which CAN find causal links) while others hate on other aspects and uses of statistics. A professor of medicine wants us to kill mouse models, not for ethical reasons but because they just don't work for most of medical research. Numerous experts dislike the institution of research publishing, longing for a modern technique to publish, revise, and refute. A few essays ask us to do away with anthropocentric science, as best we can given our human perception and such...
An essay on doing away with the "linear no-threshold radiation dose hypothesis" points out that the hypothesis was a guess in the 1960s that stuck, and we now have evidence to believe that low levels of radiation are not at all harmful. As a fan of nuclear power, the essay points out how our unreasonable fear of radiation has increased costs of nuclear power and prevented it from helping lower pollution and/or slow climate change. The essay made me wonder how many more of these arbitrary guesses exist as untested fact in the world...
A fun essay by Ian McEwan told us to "beware of [our] arrogance" and "retire nothing!" He makes the point that you learn from things other than the truth, that wrongness can contribute to methods, disciplines, and can come back around to "rightness" in some way after we learn more or apply it elsewhere. Thaler echoes this too. He wants us to keep "wrong theories and hypotheses alive, but remember they're just hypotheses, not facts." Another essay agrees, suggesting we lower the standards of correctness for publication.
A mind-bending essay on killing the idea of continuous time explains how this "Newtonian time" is a fallacy, created by our brains so we can create coherent experiences of events that are "atemporal" - given speeds of light and sound as well as our brains' processing speeds of visual and auditory information, we're never in any sort of perception of a true "present."
Another idea a few experts want to kill is economic growth (and its unlimited, eternal nature). Sadly, two experts want to kill stationarity, which is the idea that we can predict resources based on a big historical batch of data, thanks to things like climate change.
A few different essays and experts want to do away with the idea of rational individuals. We're not rational. We're hardly individuals (as discussed previously). We're hugely irrational and impacted by social norms. (This idea shows up wonderfully in Ariely's Predictably Irrational.) It's complicated, as is everything.
To finish, an essay wants to include the finding of new mysteries to our idea of "progress."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2021
John Brockman (redaktør av Edge.org) har gjennom 2010-tallet stilt ulike spørsmål til sidens mange bidragsytere, som består av et stjernagalleri av verdensledende forskere og offentlig intellektuelle.
Spørsmålet i 2015 var, hvilken vitenskaplig ide er klar for pensjonstilværelsen? Hvilken ide er det som holder vitenksaplig fremgang tilbake? Hvert bidrag er på maksimalt 4 sider, boken er på 570sider. Det er altså mange bidrag..
Det tok lang tid å lese ferdig boken, det var et skikkelig slit. Jeg er ikke helt sikker på hvorfor, men jeg har noen tanker. For det første, det veldig mye gjentakelse, når man leser den åttende kritikken på økonomifagets "homo-economicus-modell" så er man rett og slett lei. For det andre føles det ut som om 4 sider er for lite til å kritisere en veletablert ide, noe som fører til at bidragsyterne enten sparker inn åpne dører eller kritikken kommer til kort. Siden boken nå er 6 år gammel later det også til at mange av ideene, hvertfall i mitt fagfelt psykologien, allerede er forkastet.
Boken dekker også en vanvittig bredde av tema, noe som bør være en styrke, men det blir vanskelig - hvertfall for meg - når det er 8 tekster som taler imot string theory, og 8 som taler for. Hva skal jeg, som ikke har noen fysikkbakgrunn, ta ut av dette?
Noe av skylden i dette tror jeg er spørsmålet i seg selv. Det er mye vanskeligere å presentere en ide man er uenig i, og vil få bort, enn en ide man beundrer. Resultatet blir i mange tilfeller en følelse av at bidragsyterne tar tak i hver sine respektive kjepphester og rir inn i solnedgangen.
Noen av tekstene er virkelig interessante, men de er spredt og langt fra hverandre. Om det er ett tema eller en ide som jeg likte best å lese om, må det ha vært bokens ulike metavitenskaplige betraktninger. Hvilke premisser setter vi for vitenskapen i seg selv? Mange av disse tekstene nekter å gå med på premissene til spørsmålet boken stiller, for eksempen "Beware of Arrogance! retire nothing! av Ian McEwan og "Don't Discard Wrong Theories, Just Don't Treat Them as True" av Richard H. Thaler. Når de beste tekstene er dem som ikke godtar premissene til boken, har noe gått galt.
Jeg liker imidlertid veldig godt konseptet - still et åpent spørsmål til verdens intellektuelle, et spørsmål som ikke kan besvares empirisk og som gjelder alle fagretninger.
Spørsmålet i 2015 var, hvilken vitenskaplig ide er klar for pensjonstilværelsen? Hvilken ide er det som holder vitenksaplig fremgang tilbake? Hvert bidrag er på maksimalt 4 sider, boken er på 570sider. Det er altså mange bidrag..
Det tok lang tid å lese ferdig boken, det var et skikkelig slit. Jeg er ikke helt sikker på hvorfor, men jeg har noen tanker. For det første, det veldig mye gjentakelse, når man leser den åttende kritikken på økonomifagets "homo-economicus-modell" så er man rett og slett lei. For det andre føles det ut som om 4 sider er for lite til å kritisere en veletablert ide, noe som fører til at bidragsyterne enten sparker inn åpne dører eller kritikken kommer til kort. Siden boken nå er 6 år gammel later det også til at mange av ideene, hvertfall i mitt fagfelt psykologien, allerede er forkastet.
Boken dekker også en vanvittig bredde av tema, noe som bør være en styrke, men det blir vanskelig - hvertfall for meg - når det er 8 tekster som taler imot string theory, og 8 som taler for. Hva skal jeg, som ikke har noen fysikkbakgrunn, ta ut av dette?
Noe av skylden i dette tror jeg er spørsmålet i seg selv. Det er mye vanskeligere å presentere en ide man er uenig i, og vil få bort, enn en ide man beundrer. Resultatet blir i mange tilfeller en følelse av at bidragsyterne tar tak i hver sine respektive kjepphester og rir inn i solnedgangen.
Noen av tekstene er virkelig interessante, men de er spredt og langt fra hverandre. Om det er ett tema eller en ide som jeg likte best å lese om, må det ha vært bokens ulike metavitenskaplige betraktninger. Hvilke premisser setter vi for vitenskapen i seg selv? Mange av disse tekstene nekter å gå med på premissene til spørsmålet boken stiller, for eksempen "Beware of Arrogance! retire nothing! av Ian McEwan og "Don't Discard Wrong Theories, Just Don't Treat Them as True" av Richard H. Thaler. Når de beste tekstene er dem som ikke godtar premissene til boken, har noe gått galt.
Jeg liker imidlertid veldig godt konseptet - still et åpent spørsmål til verdens intellektuelle, et spørsmål som ikke kan besvares empirisk og som gjelder alle fagretninger.
November 15, 2015
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress
John Brockman, ed.
In 1948 physicist Max Planck described the progress of science as a battle between newly discovered truths and old ideas championed by senior scientists who fight stubborn, rear-guard actions until they die. It has been summed up in the memorable phrase, “Science advances one funeral at a time.” This Idea Must Die attempts to rectify the process, if not by speeding up the death of old scientists, then at least by killing off some old ideas. In a series of brief essays, most only a few pages in length, 175 leading scientists pack their pet peeves into tumbrels and head them to the guillotine. It makes wonderful reading for those odd moments when you want to engage with something substantial but are short of the time or energy to tackle a major paper or book.
Some topics, not surprisingly, are aimed at specialists. As general readers we probably don’t care much about causal entropic forcing, stationarity, inclusive fitness, the somatic mutation theory, or string theory. And most of us, because our minds are boggled, are insulated from concern about an eleven-dimension theory of the universe. More accessible, if not entirely riveting, are essays which twist the knife into subjects which few people have little deep allegiance to any more, such as IQ, the concept of race, the absolute distinction between nature and nurture, lab mice as valid models for humans, and common sense. Some essays are useful in clarifying issues, such as Richard Dawkins’s piece debunking “essentialism,” that is, the search for “essences,” the unwillingness to accept continuities. This has impeded progress in biology, as anti-evolutionists hoot about “missing link” species, failing to understand that organisms evolve continuously, not jumping from type to type, and that in fact what we call species are simply samples picked out of a continuous stream. Essentialism, the “dead hand of Plato,” as Dawkins calls it, corrupts our thinking on many other fronts, too, falsely splitting continuities into segments, as, for example, when we ask at what point life begins in the development of an embryo, or when a person on life support is truly dead.
Some essays suggests science may be of two minds about humanity. On the one hand there are defenses of our species against common aspersions. The popular notion in psychology, for example, that we are sheep, easily led to surrender our consciences to authorities, is repudiated as simplistic and a misinterpretion of the data. Sci-fi dreams about robot companions get their comeuppance by an MIT professor who reminds us why machines designed as companions, not mere performers of simple functions but elder-care-bots, nanny-bots, teacher-bots, sex-bots, are poor, empty fictions. As non-living entities, robots are by definition incapable of sharing with us what it means to be alive and human. An artificial intelligence theorist suggests throwing out AI as a title for his field and replacing it more accurately with “the attempt to get computers to do really cool stuff.” Machine intelligence is so fundamentally different from human intelligence, and so much thinner, he says, that no one has even attempted to reproduce real human intelligence yet.
On the other hand, there are thinkers who are much less impressed by humanity. The old philosophical chestnut about determinism is dusted off by a professor who argues that, since everything we think and do is produced by our physical brains, it follows that all our thoughts and actions are locked into the laws of physics, making us, in theory, as predictable as the motions of the planets. There is no free will for us any more than there is free will for a planet, there are no real choices, everything we do is done under inescapable compulsion. Because criminals could not help being what they are, he believes, they should be given the kind of consideration that we now give to the mentally ill. A psychologist agrees there is no free will but goes a step further, arguing there is no such thing as the self, on the grounds that no evidence of it has been found in the lab. And, kicking the corpse, a philosopher discloses that we barely have cognitive agency at all. Only for a small fraction of time are we in charge of our thoughts; most occur independent of us as, for example, spontaneous responses to stimuli, sleeping, daydreaming, zoning out, and Mind Wandering (his capitals), not to speak of mental dysfunctions that involve loss of cognitive control, such as illness, intoxication, and various kinds of obsessive thinking. Even more, he suggests that our sense of identity, the feeling that we are the same person over time, is an illusion, an adaptive form of self-deception designed by the organism to achieve its goals. In reality, we are only cognitive systems, complex processes without an identity.
Some writers cleverly take exception to the premise of the book, refuting Max Planck with historical examples, insisting that new ideas do not triumph by replacing old ones, urging “Beware of arrogance! Retire nothing!” and “Don’t Discard Wrong Theories, Just Don’t Treat Them as True,” or calling scientific progress an illusion. What other ideas must die? Spacetime, brain plasticity, carbon footprint, left-brain-right-brain, information overload, standard deviation, universal grammar, Moore’s Law, altruism, innateness—the list goes on. Who would have imagined it even possible to doubt, never mind call for the end of, ideas such as cause and effect, geometry, the scientific method, culture, or the universe? We are assured that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, that humans are not social animals, that bias is not always bad, that sadness is not always bad and happiness is not always good. Glancing over the table of contents, the eyebrow rises again and again—but in a good way, as a sign that the mind is being pried open and that a moment of enlightenment might ensue.
John Brockman, ed.
In 1948 physicist Max Planck described the progress of science as a battle between newly discovered truths and old ideas championed by senior scientists who fight stubborn, rear-guard actions until they die. It has been summed up in the memorable phrase, “Science advances one funeral at a time.” This Idea Must Die attempts to rectify the process, if not by speeding up the death of old scientists, then at least by killing off some old ideas. In a series of brief essays, most only a few pages in length, 175 leading scientists pack their pet peeves into tumbrels and head them to the guillotine. It makes wonderful reading for those odd moments when you want to engage with something substantial but are short of the time or energy to tackle a major paper or book.
Some topics, not surprisingly, are aimed at specialists. As general readers we probably don’t care much about causal entropic forcing, stationarity, inclusive fitness, the somatic mutation theory, or string theory. And most of us, because our minds are boggled, are insulated from concern about an eleven-dimension theory of the universe. More accessible, if not entirely riveting, are essays which twist the knife into subjects which few people have little deep allegiance to any more, such as IQ, the concept of race, the absolute distinction between nature and nurture, lab mice as valid models for humans, and common sense. Some essays are useful in clarifying issues, such as Richard Dawkins’s piece debunking “essentialism,” that is, the search for “essences,” the unwillingness to accept continuities. This has impeded progress in biology, as anti-evolutionists hoot about “missing link” species, failing to understand that organisms evolve continuously, not jumping from type to type, and that in fact what we call species are simply samples picked out of a continuous stream. Essentialism, the “dead hand of Plato,” as Dawkins calls it, corrupts our thinking on many other fronts, too, falsely splitting continuities into segments, as, for example, when we ask at what point life begins in the development of an embryo, or when a person on life support is truly dead.
Some essays suggests science may be of two minds about humanity. On the one hand there are defenses of our species against common aspersions. The popular notion in psychology, for example, that we are sheep, easily led to surrender our consciences to authorities, is repudiated as simplistic and a misinterpretion of the data. Sci-fi dreams about robot companions get their comeuppance by an MIT professor who reminds us why machines designed as companions, not mere performers of simple functions but elder-care-bots, nanny-bots, teacher-bots, sex-bots, are poor, empty fictions. As non-living entities, robots are by definition incapable of sharing with us what it means to be alive and human. An artificial intelligence theorist suggests throwing out AI as a title for his field and replacing it more accurately with “the attempt to get computers to do really cool stuff.” Machine intelligence is so fundamentally different from human intelligence, and so much thinner, he says, that no one has even attempted to reproduce real human intelligence yet.
On the other hand, there are thinkers who are much less impressed by humanity. The old philosophical chestnut about determinism is dusted off by a professor who argues that, since everything we think and do is produced by our physical brains, it follows that all our thoughts and actions are locked into the laws of physics, making us, in theory, as predictable as the motions of the planets. There is no free will for us any more than there is free will for a planet, there are no real choices, everything we do is done under inescapable compulsion. Because criminals could not help being what they are, he believes, they should be given the kind of consideration that we now give to the mentally ill. A psychologist agrees there is no free will but goes a step further, arguing there is no such thing as the self, on the grounds that no evidence of it has been found in the lab. And, kicking the corpse, a philosopher discloses that we barely have cognitive agency at all. Only for a small fraction of time are we in charge of our thoughts; most occur independent of us as, for example, spontaneous responses to stimuli, sleeping, daydreaming, zoning out, and Mind Wandering (his capitals), not to speak of mental dysfunctions that involve loss of cognitive control, such as illness, intoxication, and various kinds of obsessive thinking. Even more, he suggests that our sense of identity, the feeling that we are the same person over time, is an illusion, an adaptive form of self-deception designed by the organism to achieve its goals. In reality, we are only cognitive systems, complex processes without an identity.
Some writers cleverly take exception to the premise of the book, refuting Max Planck with historical examples, insisting that new ideas do not triumph by replacing old ones, urging “Beware of arrogance! Retire nothing!” and “Don’t Discard Wrong Theories, Just Don’t Treat Them as True,” or calling scientific progress an illusion. What other ideas must die? Spacetime, brain plasticity, carbon footprint, left-brain-right-brain, information overload, standard deviation, universal grammar, Moore’s Law, altruism, innateness—the list goes on. Who would have imagined it even possible to doubt, never mind call for the end of, ideas such as cause and effect, geometry, the scientific method, culture, or the universe? We are assured that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, that humans are not social animals, that bias is not always bad, that sadness is not always bad and happiness is not always good. Glancing over the table of contents, the eyebrow rises again and again—but in a good way, as a sign that the mind is being pried open and that a moment of enlightenment might ensue.
September 13, 2024
Based on the long history of older scientific ideas, theories, and assumptions that were eventually overtaken by newer, better theories, this book explores — in a series of VERY short essays — current scientific ideas that “should” be retired in favor of even newer modes of thinking. (The “should” is according to the various 100+ authors of the essays.)
One early downside of the book for me is that a bunch of essays kept mentioning “this year’s Edge question”, and I didn’t know what “Edge” was (it wasn’t explained in the book). I looked it up later and apparently it’s a website that aims to be “a living document on the Web to display the activities of ‘The Third Culture’,” described as a group of scientists and “other thinkers”.
Another downside is that the scientists and “other thinkers” who wrote the essays were apparently writing for each other and not for the layperson (like myself) — much of the terminology and subject matter was esoteric and beyond my grasp.
The parts that I did understand were interesting and informative, which is exactly why I read nonfiction books on occasion.
(Also, this book website is SO much easier to use now that I found a browser plugin to mimic dark mode.)
April 18, 2017
This book is a collection of essays from thought leaders from various fields on how the usual way to view and do things may not be the optimal way that will lead to breakthroughs and new innovations. I find it is too much science and physics but there are some really good essays being curated that will make you think twice about using formulae for theorems and other philosophical stuff. I think it will appeal to people who are in the science field more than the general readers but if you want a different perspective, why not? It does force you to look at things in a more granular way and from another perspective. I have never Googled for so much information on physics in my life till this book!
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