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
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
...MOREFinally, one of the better covers of an Eno tune, from the movie Velvet Goldmine (BAFTA for the glam-rock costumes):
