This Will Make You Smarter New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking Edited by John Brockman Foreword by David Brooks Contents David Brooks: Foreword John Brockman: Preface: The Edge Question Martin Rees “Deep Time” and the Far Future Far more time lies ahead than has elapsed up until now Marcelo Gleiser We Are Unique Modern science, traditionally considered guilty of reducing our existence to a pointless accident in an indifferent universe, is actually saying the opposite P.Z Myers The Mediocrity Principle Everything that you as a human being consider cosmically important is an accident Sean Carroll The Pointless Universe Looking at the universe through our anthropocentric eyes, we can’t help but view things in terms of causes, purposes, and natural ways of being Samuel Arbesman The Copernican Principle We are not anywhere special J Craig Venter We Are Not Alone in the Universe There is a humancentric, Earthcentric view of life that permeates most cultural and societal thinking Stewart Brand Microbes Run the World This biotech century will be microbe-enhanced and maybe microbe-inspired Richard Dawkins The Double-Blind Control Experiment Why half of all Americans believe in ghosts, three-quarters believe in angels, a third believe in astrology, three-quarters believe in hell? Max Tegmark Promoting a Scientific Lifestyle Our global scientific community has been nothing short of a spectacular failure when it comes to educating the public Roger Schank Experimentation Experimentation is something done by everyone all the time Timo Hannay The Controlled Experiment When required to make a decision, the instinctive response of most nonscientists is to introspect, or perhaps call a meeting Gino Segre Gedankenexperiment Consciously or unconsciously, we carry out gedankenexperiments of one sort or another in our everyday life Kathryn Schulz The Pessimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Science One generation’s verities often become the next generation’s falsehoods Samuel Barondes Each of Us Is Ordinary, Yet One of a Kind This dual view of each of us, as both run-of-the-mill and special, has been so well established by biologists and behavioral scientists that it may now seem self-evident John Tooby Nexus Causality, Moral Warfare, and Misattribution Arbitrage Our self-evidently superior selves and in-groups are error-besotted David G Myers Self-Serving Bias Compared with our average peer, most of us fancy ourselves as more intelligent, better-looking, less prejudiced, more ethical, healthier, and likely to live longer Gary Marcus Cognitive Humility Computer memory is much better than human memory because early computer scientists discovered a trick that evolution never did Douglas Rushkoff Technologies Have Biases Our widespread inability to recognize or even acknowledge the biases of the technologies we use renders us incapable of gaining any real agency through them Gerald Smallberg Bias Is the Nose for the Story Our brains evolved having to make the right bet with limited information Jonah Lehrer Control Your Spotlight Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber But that’s wrong Daniel Kahneman The Focusing Illusion The mismatch in the allocation of attention between thinking about a life condition and actually living it is the cause of the focusing illusion Carlo Rovelli The Uselessness of Certainty The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt Lawrence Krauss Uncertainty In the public parlance, uncertainty is a bad thing, implying a lack of rigor and predictability Aubrey de Grey A Sense of Proportion About Fear of the Unknown Fear of the unknown is not remotely irrational in principle but it can be and generally is overdone Nigel Goldenfeld Because Complex systems, such as financial markets or the Earth’s biosphere, not seem to obey causality Stuart Firestein The Name Game Even words that, like “gravity,” seem well settled may lend more of an aura to an idea than it deserves Seth Lloyd Living Is Fatal People are bad at probability on a deep, intuitive level Garrett Lisi Uncalculated Risk We are afraid of the wrong things, and we are making bad decisions Neil Gershenfeld Truth Is a Model Building models is a never-ending process of discovery and refinement Jon Kleinberg E Pluribus Unum The challenge for a distributed system is to achieve this illusion of a single unified behavior in the face of so much underlying complexity Stefano Boeri A Proxemics of Urban Sexuality Even the warmest and most cohesive community can rapidly dissolve in the absence of erotic tension Kevin Kelly Failure Liberates Success Failure is not something to be avoided but something to be cultivated Nicholas A Christakis Holism Holism takes a while to acquire and appreciate It is a grown-up disposition Robert R Provine TANSTAAFL “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” [is] a universal truth having broad and deep explanatory power in science and daily life Gerald Holton Skeptical Empiricism In politics and society at large, important decisions are all too often based on deeply held presuppositions Thomas A Bass Open Systems Now that the Web has frothed through twenty years of chaotic inventiveness, we have to push back against the forces that would close it down George Church Non-Inherent Inheritance We are well into an unprecedented new phase of evolution, in which we must generalize beyond our DNA-centric worldview Paul Kedrosky Shifting Baseline Syndrome We don’t have enough data to know what is normal, so we convince ourselves that this is normal Martin Seligman PERMA The elements of well-being must be exclusive, measurable independently of one another, and— ideally—exhaustive Steven Pinker Positive-Sum Games In a positive-sum game, a rational, self-interested actor may benefit the other actor with the same choice that benefits himself or herself Roger Highfield The Snuggle for Existence Competition does not tell the whole story of biology Dylan Evans The Law of Comparative Advantage At a time of growing protectionism, it is more important than ever to reassert the value of free trade Jason Zweig Structured Serendipity Creativity can be enhanced deliberately through environmental variation Rudy Rucker The World is Unpredictable Even if the world is as deterministic as a computer program, you still can’t predict what you’re going to Charles Seife Randomness Without an understanding of randomness, we are stuck in a perfectly predictable universe that simply doesn’t exist outside our heads Clifford Pickover The Kaleidoscopic Discovery Engine We are reluctant to believe that great discoveries are part of a discovery kaleidoscope and are mirrored in numerous individuals at once Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Inference to the Best Explanation Not all explanations are created equal Emanuel Derman Pragmamorphism Being pragmamorphic sounds equivalent to taking a scientific attitude toward the world, but it easily evolves into dull scientism Nicholas Carr Cognitive Load When our cognitive load exceeds the capacity of our working memory, our intellectual abilities take a hit Hans Ulrich Obrist To Curate In our phase of globalization there is a danger of homogenization but at the same time a countermovement, the retreat into one’s own culture Richard Nisbett “Graceful” SHAs An assumption of educators for centuries has been that formal logic improves thinking skills But this belief may be mistaken Rob Kurzban Externalities The notion of externalities forces us to think about unintended (positive and negative) effects of actions, an issue that looms larger as the world gets smaller James O’Donnell Everything Is in Motion Remembering that everything is in motion—feverish, ceaseless, unbelievably rapid motion—is always hard for us Douglas T Kenrick Subselves and the Modular Mind The only way we manage to accomplish anything in life is to allow only one subself to take the conscious driver’s seat at any given time Andy Clark Predictive Coding The brain exploits prediction and anticipation in making sense of incoming signals and using them to guide perception, thought, and action Donald Hoffman Our Sensory Desktop Our sensory experiences can be thought of as sensory desktops that have evolved to guide adaptive behavior, not report objective truths Barry C Smith The Senses and the Multisensory We now know that the senses not operate in isolation but combine, both at early and late stages of processing, to produce our rich perceptual experiences of our surroundings David Eagleman The Umwelt Our brains are tuned to detect a shockingly small fraction of the surrounding reality Alison Gopnik The Rational Unconscious The idea of the rational unconscious has transformed our scientific understanding of creatures whose rationality has traditionally been denied, such as young children and animals Adam Alter We Are Blind to Much That Shapes Our Mental Life Our brains are processing multitudes of information below the surface of conscious awareness W Tecumseh Fitch An Instinct to Learn The antidote to “nature versus nurture” thinking is to recognize the existence, and importance, of “instincts to learn.” Michael Shermer Think Bottom Up, Not Top Down Almost everything important that happens in both nature and society happens from the bottom up, not the top down Irene Pepperberg Fixed-Action Patterns The concept of a fixed-action pattern, despite its simplicity, may prove valuable as a metaphorical means to study and change human behavior Terrence Sejnowski Powers of 10 Thinking in powers of 10 is such a basic skill that it ought to be taught along with integers in elementary school Juan Enriquez Life Code As we begin to rewrite existing life, strange things evolve Stephen M Kosslyn Constraint Satisfaction When moving into a new house, my wife and I had to decide how to arrange the furniture in the bedroom Daniel C Dennett Cycles The secret ingredient of improvement is always the same: practice, practice, practice Jennifer Jacquet scale transitions, 371–72 scaling laws, 162 Schank, Roger, 23–24 Schmidt, Eric, 305 schools, see education Schrödinger’s cat, 28 Schulz, Kathryn, 30–31 science, 192–93 discoveries in, 109–11, 240–41, 257 humanities and, 364–66 method of, 273–74 normal, 242–43, 244 pessimistic meta-induction from history of, 30–31 replicability in, 373–75 statistically significant difference and, 378–80 theater vs., 262–63 scientific concept, 19, 22 scientific lifestyle, 19–22 scientific proof, 51, 52 scuba divers, 40 seconds, 163 security engineering, 262 security in information-sharing, 75–76 Segre, Gino, 28–29 Sehgal, Tino, 119 Seife, Charles, 105–8 Sejnowski, Terrence, 162–64 self, 212 ARISE and, 235–36 consciousness, 217 Other and, 292–93 separateness of, 289–91 subselves and the modular mind, 129–31 transcendence of, 212–13 self-control, 46–48 self-model, 214 self-serving bias, 37–38, 40 Seligman, Martin, 92–93 Semelweiss, Ignaz, 36 senses, 43, 139–42 umwelt and, 143–45 sensory desktop, 135–38 September 11 attacks, 386 serendipity, 101–2 serotonin, 230 sexuality, 78 sexual selection, 228, 353–54 Shamir, Adi, 76 SHAs (shorthand abstractions), xxx, 228, 277, 395–97 graceful, 120–23 Shepherd, Jonathan, 274 Shermer, Michael, 157–59 shifting baseline syndrome, 90–91 Shirky, Clay, xxvii, 198, 338 signal detection theory, 389–93 Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics (Green and Swets), 391 signals, 228 Simon, Herbert, 48 simplicity, 325–27 skeptical empiricism, 85 skepticism, 242, 243, 336 skydivers, 39 Smallberg, Gerald, 43–45 smell, sense of, 139–42, 143–44 Smith, Adam, 258 Smith, Barry C., 139–42 Smith, Hamilton, 166 Smith, Laurence C., 310–11 Smith, John Maynard, 96 Smolin, Lee, 221–24 social microbialism, 16 social networks, 82, 262, 266 social sciences, 273 Socrates, 340 software, 80, 246 Solomon Islands, 361 something for nothing, 84 specialness, see uniqueness and specialness Sperber, Dan, 180–83 spider bites, 68, 69, 70 spoon bending, 244 stability, 128 Standage, Tom, 281 stars, 7, 128, 301 statistically significant difference, 378–80 statistics, 260, 356 stem-cell research, 56, 69–70 stock market, 59, 60–61, 151, 339 Flash Crash and, 60–61 Pareto distributions and, 199, 200 Stodden, Victoria, 371–72 stomach ulcers, 240 Stone, Linda, 240–41 stress, 68, 70, 71 string theories, 113, 114, 299, 322 subselves and the modular mind, 129–31 success, failure and, 79–80 sun, 1, 7, 11, 164 distance between Earth and, 53–54 sunk-cost trap, 121 sunspots, 110 Superorganism, The (Hölldobler and Wilson), 196–97 superorganisms, 196 contingent, 196–97 supervenience, 276, 363–66 Susskind, Leonard, 297 Swets, John, 391 symbols and images, 152–53 synapses, 164 synesthesia, 136–37 systemic equilibrium, 237–39 Szathmáry, Eörs, 96 Taleb, Nassim, 315 TANSTAAFL (“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”), 84 Tapscott, Don, 250–53 taste, 140–42 tautologies, 355–56 Taylor, F W., 186 Taylor, G I., 185–86 Taylor, Timothy, 333 Taylorism, 186 technology(ies), 223, 249, 251, 257, 259, 273, 315 biases in, 41–42 black-swan, 315–17 humanity and, 333 Tegmark, Max, 19–22 telepathy, 244, 245 telephone game, 177, 178, 179 television, 287 temperament dimensions, 229–31 temperature, 151–52 ten, powers of, 162–64 terrorism, 69, 262, 264, 265 September 11 attacks, 386 testosterone, 230, 231 Thaler, Richard, 338–39 theater, science vs., 262–63 theory, effective, 192–93 Theory of Everything, 365 There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Friedman), 84 thermodynamics, 108, 227, 237, 302 Thich Nhat Hanh, 289 ’t Hooft, Gerard, 297 thought, thinking, 395 bottom-up vs top-down, 157–59 design for, 250–53 flow of, 211–13 language and, 242 projective, 240–41 reactive, 240 thought, thinking (cont.) in time vs outside of time, 221–24 see also mind thought experiments, 28–29 time, 1–2, 128, 138, 163, 169, 234 arrow of, 237 evolution and, 1–2, 223 thinking in vs outside of, 221–24 time span of discretion, 334–35 Tolstoy, Leo, 34 Tooby, John, 33–36 tools, 333 top-down thinking, 157–59 Topol, Eric, 303–4 Torrey, Fuller, 279 tracery, 247 trade, 100, 258 international, 96 traffic, 125 transparent self-model, 214 Trivers, Robert, 321 Truman Show, The, 143 truth, 43, 44–45, 192, 301 as model, 72–73 and thinking in time vs outside of time, 221–22, 223 utility vs., 135–36 Turing, Alan, 146–47 Tversky, Amos, 121, 280 Twain, Mark, 111 typewriter keyboards, 285–86 ulcers, 240 umwelt, 143–45 uncertainty, 28, 53–54, 65, 69, 72, 273, 340 and fear of the unknown, 55–57 unpredictableness, 103–4 risk literacy and, 259–61 statistical thinking and, 260 theater and, 262 see also certainty; probability unconscious, 146 rational, 146–49 understanding, 358 unintended effects of actions, 124–26, 372 uniqueness and specialness: Copernican Principle and, 11–12 in dual view of ourselves, 32 of Earth and humans, 3–5 mediocrity principle and, 6–8, 11, 12 Universal Turing Machine, 276 universe, 294, 301 causes and purposes in, 9–10 Copernican Principle and, 11–12 expansion of, 1, 11 life in, 3–5, 13–14, 292 mediocrity principle and, 6–8, 11, 12 truth and, 222 unknown, fear of, 55–57 Uranus, 361 “Use of Knowledge in Society, The” (Hayek), 258 utility, 347 truth vs., 135–36 vaccinations, 268, 279, 394 autism and, 56, 331 vanilla, 142 Veblen, Thorstein, 228 Veeck, Bill, 360 Veeck effect, 360–62 Venter, J Craig, 13–14, 15, 166 Venus, 360 vestibular system, 139, 142 violence, institutionalized, 96 viruses, 166 vision, 130, 139, 140, 144, 147–48, 149, 163, 188–90 robotic, 190 vitamin C, 269 Von Euxküll, Jakob, 143 Von Neumann, John, 94 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 109 War and Peace (Tolstoy), 34 Warburg, Aby, 186–87 Wason, P C., 122 water, 157 Watson, James D., 165, 244 wave-particle duality, 28, 296–98 weather, 103, 151–52, 184 Wegener, Alfred, 244 weights and measures, standard, 341 Weinstein, Eric, 321–23 Weiss, Ben, 326 well-being, 92–93 Wetware (Bray), 171–72 Whiteread, Rachel, 283 Whitman, Walt, 229 wicked problems, 203–5 Wiesel, Torsten, 189, 190 Wilczek, Frank, 188–91 William of Ockham, 324–27 Williams, G C., 196 willpower, 46–47, 48 Wilson, E O., xxv, 196–97, 386 Winer, Dave, 328–29 woe, 386 Woese, Carl, 15 Wolf, Gary, 306 Woolley, Leonard, 282–83 words: evolution of, 245 naming, 62–64, 190–91 scientific terms, 64, 190–91, 192, 193 World War II, 270 World Wide Web, see Internet Worringer, William, 248 wrestling, 321–23 Wright, Robert, 97 writing skills, 287 Wurman, Richard Saul, 358 zero-sum games, 94–96 Zimmer, Carl, 359 Zweig, Jason, 101–2 About the Author The founder and publisher of the online science salon Edge.org, JOHN BROCKMAN is the editor of Culture, The Mind, Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?, This Will Change Everything, and other volumes He is CEO of the literary agency Brockman Inc., and lives in New York City Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors Books by John Brockman As Author: By the Late John Brockman 37 Afterwords The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution Digerati As Editor: About Bateson Speculations Doing Science Ways of Knowing Creativity The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years The Next Fifty Years The New Humanists Curious Minds What We Believe but Cannot Prove My Einstein Intelligent Thought What Is Your Dangerous Idea? What Are You Optimistic About? What Have You Changed Your Mind About? This Will Change Everything Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? As Coeditor: How Things Are (with Katinka Matson) Credits Cover design by Oliver Munday Copyright Copyright © 2012 by Edge Foundation, Inc All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books THIS WILL MAKE YOU SMARTER FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data has been applied for EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062109408 12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia http://www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollins.ca New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O Box Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollins.com Footnotes * In our universe, too many things are interconnected for absolute statements of any kind, so we usually relax our criteria; for instance, “total confidence” might be relaxed from a percent chance of being wrong to, say , a in quadrillion chance of being wrong—about the chance that as y ou finish this sentence, all of humanity will be wiped out by a meteor * If y ou’re wondering about the second Veeck effect, it’s the intellectual equivalent of putting a midget up to bat And that’s another essay * Some have pointed out that “supervenience” may also refer to exceptional levels of convenience, as in “New Chinese take-out right around the corner—Supervenient!” ... This Will Make You Smarter New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking Edited by John Brockman Foreword by David Brooks Contents David Brooks: Foreword John Brockman: Preface:... true enough to be generalized to all technology We are free to use any car we like to get to work—gasoline-, diesel-, electric-, or hydrogen-powered— and this sense of choice blinds us to the fundamental... To improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit, the required scientific concept has to be applicable to all humans It needs to make a difference to us as a species, or, more to the point I am going to