Edge 274 - February 9, 2009
(8,400 words)
This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge274.html
----------------------------------------------------
THE THIRD CULTURE
----------------------------------------------------
"John Brockman, a literary agent, is the shadowy figure at the top of the cyberfashion food chain."
—Ted Nelson, Geeks Bearing Gifts: How The Computer World Got This Way
THE EDGE DINNER 2009
Long Beach, California — February 5, 2009—L'Opera
Yves Behar, FuseProject; Jeff Bezos, Amazon; Zack Bogue; Stewart Brand, Long Now Foundation; Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc.; Rod Brooks, Robotocist, Heartland Robotics; Geoffrey Carr, The Economist; Steve Case, Revolution Health; Jean Case, Case Foundation; Larry Cohen, Gates Foundation; Keith Coleman, Google G-Mail; Brian Cox, CERN; Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts; Susan Dennett; Peter Diamandis, X-Prize Foundation; Juan Enriquez, Excel Medical Ventures; Tony Fadell, Apple; Peter Gabriel; Bill Gates, Gates Foundation; Saul Griffith, Makani Power; Pati Hillis; Danny Hillis, Applied Minds; Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post; Joi Ito, Creative Commons, Neotony; Bill Joy, Kleiner Perkins; Dean Kamen, Deka Research; Jon Kamen, Radical Media; Mickey Kaus, Slate; Kevin Kelly, kk.org; Danielle Lambert; Jaron Lanier; Steven Levy, Wired; Katinka Matson, edge.org, Brockman, Inc.; Marissa Mayer, Google; Nathan Myhrvold, Intellectual Ventures; Shannon O'Leary; Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly's Radar; Anne Ornish; Dean Ornish, Preventive Medicine Research Institute; Pierre Omidyar, Omidyar network; Pam Omidyar, Omidyar Network; Larry Page, Google; Lori Park, Google; Nick Pritzker; Lisa Randall, Harvard; Jacqui Safra; Linda Stone; Yossi Vardi; Evan Williams, Twitter; Nathan Wolfe, Stanford; Richard Saul Wurman, Founder, TED
Photos by Nathan Myhrvold
----------------------------------------------------
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — ALL THINGS DIGITAL
BOOM TOWN
February 9, 2009
THE BILLIONAIRES' DINNER' AT TED: READJUSTED FOR THE 2009 ECONALYPSE
By Kara Swisher
Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference.
It was jokingly called the "Millionaires' Dinner," but I renamed it the "Billionaires' Dinner."
That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!?
Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman's most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week. ...
[Photo Album]
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE NEW YORKER
CHECKPOINTS
February 9, 2009
Where accuracy meets Flair
by John McPhee
Sara Lippincott retired as an editor at this magazine in the early nineteen-nineties, having worked in The New Yorker's fact-checking department from 1966 until 1982. She had a passion for science. In 1973, a long piece of the writer's called "The Curve of Binding Energy" received her full-time attention for three or four weeks and needed every minute of it. Explaining her work to an audience at a journalism school, Sara once said, "Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker's imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick." The writer describes a paragraph from his sixty-thousand-word piece—which was about weapons-grade nuclear material in private industry and what terrorists might do with it—which presented Sara with a certain degree of difficulty. Physicist John A. Wheeler had told the writer about a Japanese weapon balloon landing on a nuclear reactor at the Hanford Engineer Works, in the winter of 1944 or 45. If Wheeler's story were true, it would make it into print. If unverifiable, it would be deleted. Sara's telephone calls ricocheted all over the U.S. Hanford Engineer Works, of the Manhattan Project, was so secret that the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't know about it. ...
[MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE REALITY CLUB
----------------------------------------------------
SAM HARRIS, STEVEN PINKER on Jerry Coyne's "Does The Empirical Nature Of Science Contradict The Revelatory Nature Of Faith?"
HARRIS:And yet, there is more to be said against the likes of Coyne and Dennett and Dawkins (he is the worst!). Patrick Bateson tells us that it is "staggeringly insensitive" to undermine the religious beliefs of people who find these beliefs consoling. I agree completely. For instance: it is now becoming a common practice in Afghanistan and Pakistan to blind and disfigure little girls with acid for the crime of going to school. When I was a neo-fundamentalist rational neo-atheist I used to criticize such behavior as an especially shameful sign of religious stupidity. I now realize—belatedly and to my great chagrin—that I knew nothing of the pain that a pious Muslim man might feel at the sight of young women learning to read. Who am I to criticize the public expression of his faith? Bateson is right. Clearly a belief in the inerrancy of the holy Qur'an is indispensable for these beleaguered people.
How can a militant secularist atheist neo-dogmatist like Coyne not see the plain truth? There simply IS no conflict between religion and science. And even if there were one, it would be an utter waste of time to say anything about it. Lawrence Krauss has established this second point beyond any possibility of doubt. Go back and read his essay. It'll just take you five seconds. I've read it upwards of seventy times, and each perusal brings fresh insight.
PINKER: Jerry Coyne applies rigorous standards of logic and evidence to the claims of religion and to the attempts to reconcile it with science. Many scientists who share his atheism still believe that he is somehow being rude or uncouth for pressing the point. But he is right to do so. Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.
Science cannot be walled off from other forms of belief. That includes meaning and morality – reason connects them all. The same standards of evidence that rule out unparisimonious, unfalsifiable, or empirically refuted hypotheses in science also rule out crackpot conspiracy theories, totalizing ideologies, and toxic policy nostrums. Moral systems depend on factual beliefs, informed by psychology and biology, about what makes human beings suffer or prosper. They depend on standards of logical consistency that make it possible to apply the principle of fairness. And they depend on meta-ethical propositions about what morality is, and on how we can decide what is moral in particular cases. Just as coherent biological reasoning cannot proceed under the assumption that God can step in at any moment and push the molecules around, coherent moral reasoning cannot proceed under the assumption that the universe unfolds according a divine merciful plan, that humans have a free will that is independent of their neurobiology, or that people can behave morally only if they fear divine retribution in an afterlife.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. And no, this isn't having "faith" in reason (in the same way that some people have faith in miracles), because we don't "believe" in reason; we use reason.
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
EDGE VIDEO
----------------------------------------------------
"For those seeking substance over sheen, the occasional videos released at Edge.org hit the mark. The Edge Foundation community is a circle, mainly scientists but also other academics, entrepreneurs, and cultural figures.
"Edge's long-form interview videos are a deep-dive into the daily lives and passions of its subjects, and their passions are presented without primers or apologies. The decidedly noncommercial nature of Edge's offerings, and the egghead imprimatur of the Edge community, lend its videos a refreshing air, making one wonder if broadcast television will ever offer half the off-kilter sparkle of their salon chatter. - Boston Globe
EDGE VIDEO: http://www.edge.org/edge_video.html
----------------------------------------------------
IN THE NEWS
----------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON POST
The Death of 'Rational Man'
By David Ignatius
...That's why Greenspan didn't see it coming, argues Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton professor who is often described as the father of behavioral economics. His rational-actor model wouldn't let him...
...One of the most powerful ideas I heard at Davos was the idea of "pre-mortem" analysis, which was first proposed by psychologist Gary Klein and has been taken up by Kahneman.
A pre-mortem analysis can provide a real "stress test" to conventional thinking. Let's say that a company or government agency has decided on a plan of action. But before implementing it, the boss asks people to assume that five years from now, the plan has failed -- and then to write a brief explanation of why it didn't work. This approach stands a chance of bringing to the surface problems that the decision makers had overlooked -- the "black swans," to use former traderNassim Nicholas Taleb's phrase, that people assumed wouldn't happen in the near future because they hadn't occurred in the recent past. ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE NEW YORK TIMES
When Humans Need a Nudge Toward Rationality
By Jeff Sommers
...After the flies were added, "spillage" on the men's-room floor fell by 80 percent. "Men evidently like to aim at targets," said Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, an irreverent pioneer in the increasingly influential field of behavioral economics.
Mr. Thaler says the flies are his favorite example of a "nudge" — a harmless bit of engineering that manages to "attract people's attention and alter their behavior in a positive way, without actually requiring anyone to do anything at all." What's more, he said, "The flies are fun."
...Nudging derives from research by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in economics; by Mr. Kahneman's late colleague, Amos Tversky; and by Mr. Thaler and others over several decades. Mr. Kahneman, a psychologist, gives Mr. Thaler considerable credit for the birth of behavioral economics. ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Education Is All in Your Mind
By Richard Nisbett
...James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, has estimated that for every dollar spent on a prekindergarten like Perry, $8 has been gained in higher incomes for participants and in savings on the costs of extra schooling, crime and welfare.
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Taleb Says Nationalize Banks, You Can't Trust Them (Update2)
By Svenja O'Donnell and Francine Lacqua
...Bank nationalizations are "absolutely necessary" to stop them damaging the financial system further with more losses, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the best-selling finance book "The Black Swan." ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
HUFFINGTON POST
Gabbing with Gates: We Talk Meltdown, Malaria, Mosquitoes, and How Not Getting Enough Sleep Lowers His IQ
By Arianna Huffington
......He has clearly been leading by example in changing both the business world and the world of philanthropy. But when it comes to sleep, all I can say is that when I left a dinner given by EDGE's John Brockman after midnight last night, Gates was still there talking away with X Prize's Peter Diamandis about providing big rewards for scientific breakthroughs...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE NEW SCIENTIST
Born believers: How your brain creates God
By Michael Brooks
...Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."...
...The religion-as-an-adaptation theory doesn't wash with everybody, however. As anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor points out, the benefits of holding such unfounded beliefs are questionable, in terms of evolutionary fitness. "I don't think the idea makes much sense, given the kinds of things you find in religion," he says. A belief in life after death, for example, is hardly compatible with surviving in the here-and-now and propagating you. ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
THE ECONOMIST
Godless watch, continued
A few years ago, Daniel Dennett, an atheist philosopher, wrote
"Politicians don't think they even have to pay us lip service, and leaders who wouldn't be caught dead making religious or ethnic slurs don't hesitate to disparage the "godless" among us. From the White House down, bright-bashing is seen as a low-risk vote-gette."
Not this White House
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
SCIENCE
Friendship as a Health Factor
BOSTON—On the first snowy day in December, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler are ensconced in Christakis's rambling home in Concord, Massachusetts, plotting their next conquest. Christakis, at his desk, is nearly hidden behind two enormous Apple computer screens that beam dizzying network patterns of lines and circles representing community ties. Fowler sits cross-legged and barefoot on the couch, a laptop balanced on his knees.
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
PORTFOLIO
5 Steps to Fix the Banks
By Chris Anderson
Over the past decade, we have built a country-sized economy online where the default price is zero -- nothing, nada, zip. Digital goods -- from music and video to Wikipedia -- can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00. For the Google Generation, the Internet is the land of the free.
Which is not to say companies can't make money from nothing. Gratis can be a good business. How? Pretty simple: The minority of customers who pay subsidize the majority who do not. Sometimes that's two different sets of customers, as in the traditional media model: A few advertisers pay for content so lots of consumers can get it cheap or free. The concept isn't new, but now that same model is powering everything from photo sharing to online bingo. The last decade has seen the extension of this "two-sided market" model far beyond media, and today it is the revenue engine for all of the biggest Web companies, from Facebook and MySpace to Google itself. ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
PORTFOLIO
5 Steps to Fix the Banks
Guest Commentary: Pulling banks out of their apparent death spiral won't be easy. But these simple principles should frame the debate.
By Andrew M. Rosenfield
As the liquidity crisis continues, the problem is clear—it's the solution that remains opaque.
The problem with the U.S. banking system is simple: It's largely insolvent. Banks have far too little capital to supply the credit needed to finance recovery let alone growth.
The insolvency problem is centered around so-called "toxic" or troubled assets that banks hold in great amount and which are today worth far less than cost—generally securitized residential home loans.
But the problem of insolvency is centered around toxic assets only in the sense that the problem of a burning house is "centered" around the place the fire started. ...
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Wall Street Bonuses May Go Way of Dodo Amid Bailouts (Update2)
By Dawn Kopecki and Christine Harper
The current system of "asymmetric compensation," in which people are rewarded when they do well and aren't required to return the rewards when they lose money, is detrimental to society and needs to change, said Nassim Taleb, a professor at New York University and author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," in an interview.
[...MORE]
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
BOOKS FROM EDGE
Now Available in Bookstores and Online...
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT (Harper Perennial)
Edited by John Brockman
With An Introduction By BRIAN ENO
http://www.amazon.com/What-Have-Changed-Your-About/dp/0061686549
"An intellectual treasure trove"
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge274.html
----------------------------------------------------
Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
EDGE
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2009 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
----------------------------------------------------
EDGE Newsbytes: http://www.edge.org/newsbytes.html
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
---
You are currently subscribed to edge_editions as: wheresrhys@googlemail.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-3547053-17333020.06691da9c6d471dcdf1278a10377548a@sand.lyris.net
Or, you can use the web form at the following URL: http://www.edge.org/subscribe.html
No comments:
Post a Comment