Sunday, October 30, 2016

"What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?"

That's the Edge.org question for 2016.

And just to give a quick pic of what's rattling around in my head, we had planned to post this piece last spring but some disaster or other came up and it got set aside until this morning when the post immediately preceding mentioned Brian Eno who is one of Edge's go-to brainiacs (see links below), I had an "oh crap" moment and here we are.

To cut to the chase, here's Edge.org, slightly dusty from sitting around in a seldom used server but worth the read. I'll just link to some of the responders, their mini-bios, and answer titles. Persue or not as you choose. Special Bonus after the jump.

From Edge.org:
Robert Sapolsky
Neuroscientist, Stanford University; Author, Monkeyluv
A Collective Realization—We May All Die Horribly 
David Haig
Associate Professor of Biology in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; author, Genomic Imprinting and Kinship
Human Chimera
Gloria Origgi
Philosopher and Researcher, C.N.R.S. Paris; Author, Qu’est-ce que la confiance?
How To Be Bad Together: Antisocial Punishment of Pro-social Cooperators
Theoretical Physicist, Stanford; Father of Eternal Chaotic Inflation; Inaugural Recipient, Fundamental Physics Prize
 
Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, The Sense of Style
 
Physicist
 
Software Pioneer; Philosopher; Author, "A Realtime Literature Explorer"
 
Science Writer; Fellow, Royal Society of Literature and the Academy of Medical Sciences; Author,The Evolution of Everything
 
Cognitive Scientist, MIT Media Lab, Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics
 
Historian of ideas; Author, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours
 
Founder, The Whole Earth Catalog; Co-founder, The Well; Co-Founder, The Long Now Foundation; Author, Whole Earth Discipline
 
Social Psychologist; Professor, New York University Stern School of Business; Author, The Righteous Mind
 
Physicist, MIT; Researcher, Precision Cosmology; Scientific Director, Foundational Questions Institute; President, Future of Life Institute; Author, Our Mathematical Universe
 
Physicist; Entrepreneur & Venture Capitalist; Science Philanthropist
Those are the first 14 answers, there are 184 more HERE

Here are the Question homepage and Index.

And from the Climateer archives, February 15, 2015: 



In yesterday's "187 Big Thinkers Answer the Question: What Do You Think About Machines That Think?" I went on about how interesting blah, blah, blah Eno's response to the Edge Big Question was and it wasn't until this morning, while reading Alphaville's Further Reading post (thanks for the h/t Mr. Keohane!) that I realized I hadn't actually linked to Mr. Eno's take on the query.

So here it is, From Edge (note, the credits in the mini bio are almost ridiculously trivial compared to the reality)...
Also, 2013's "Brian Eno Answers Nassim Taleb": 
Mr. Eno is an autodidactic polymath.
Mr. Taleb is a comedian:
Climateer Line of the Day: The Modesty of Nassim Taleb Edition 
...MORE
Finally, one of the better covers of an Eno tune, from the movie Velvet Goldmine (BAFTA for the glam-rock costumes):