Conversations

David Rand: "How Do You Change People's Minds About What Is Right And Wrong?"

Topic: 

  • Conversations
http://vimeo.com/106906924

There are often future consequences for your current behavior. You can't just do whatever you want because if you are selfish now, it'll come back to bite you. In order for any of that to work, though, it relies on people caring about you being cooperative. There has to be a norm of cooperation. The important question then, in terms of trying to understand how we get people to cooperate and how we increase social welfare, is this: Where do these norms come from and how can they be changed?

Hugo Mercier: "Toward The Seamless Integration Of The Sciences"

Topic: 

  • Conversations
http://vimeo.com/106906923

One of the great things about cognitive science is that it allowed us to continue that seamless integration of the sciences, from physics, to chemistry, to biology, and then to the mind sciences, and it's been quite successful at doing this in a relatively short time. But on the whole, I feel there's still a failure to continue this thing towards some of the social sciences such as, anthropology, to some extent, and sociology or history that still remain very much shut off from what some would see as progress, and as further integration. 

The Myth Of AI

Topic: 

  • Conversations
http://vimeo.com/111575647

The idea that computers are people has a long and storied history. It goes back to the very origins of computers, and even from before. There's always been a question about whether a program is something alive or not since it intrinsically has some kind of autonomy at the very least, or it wouldn't be a program.

Entwined Fates

Topic: 

  • Conversations
http://vimeo.com/109967609

It's a very interdisciplinary subject, there's no question about that. As I've said, a community of fate is about evoking norms and beliefs about the way in which the world works. That was part of what the great capacity of the leadership was—to change people's beliefs about whether they could do something and change something. The notion of beliefs of that sort comes from economics, comes from Bayesianism, comes from philosophy, comes from psychology.

Edgies on Extinction

Part II: Edge, Live in London 2014
Helena Cronin, Chiara Marletto, Jennifer Jacquet, Steve Jones, Molly Crockett, Hans Ulrich Obrist
[11.6.14]

"EDGIES ON EXTINCTION"


Molly Crockett introduces and moderates an event of four 10-minute talks by Helena Cronin, Jennifer Jacquet, Steve Jones, and Chiara Marletto, followed by a discussion joined by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and John Brockman. 


 

HANS ULRICH OBRIST: When we spoke with John Brockman about the Extinction Marathon he suggested, as a second part—as I mentioned in previous marathons we got the Edge community to realize maps and different formulas, and John thought today it would be wonderful to do a panel with UK based scientists who are part of the Edge community. We are extremely delighted that we now will have four presentations by Helena Cronin, by Chiara Marletto, by Jennifer Jacquet, and by Steve Jones. We welcome Steve Jones back to the Serpentine because he was part of the 2007 Experiment Marathon with Olafur Eliasson. The entire panel will be introduced by Molly Crockett. Molly is an associate professor for experimental psychology and fellow of Jesus college at the University of Oxford. She holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Cambridge and a B.S. in neuroscience from UCLA. Dr. Crockett studies the neuroscience and psychology of altruism, of morality, and self-control. Her work has been published in many top academic journals including Science, PNAS, and also Neuron. Molly Crockett will now introduce Helena, Chiara, Jennifer, and Steve. We then, together with Molly and all the speakers and John, give a panel after that.

MOLLY CROCKETT:  I'm very, very pleased to introduce Helena Cronin. She's the co-director of the Center for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and the director of Darwin at LSE at the London School of Economics. She has many notable publications including the edited series, Darwinism Today, and the award winning, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today, that has been featured in the New York Times' Best Books and Nature's Best Science Books of the Year. Her current research interests focus on the evolutionary understanding of sex differences. Let's give a very warm welcome to Helena and welcome her to the stage. ...


... A strange thing happened on the way to a better world in pursuit of an admirable quest, that is, a world free of sex discrimination where you’re judged on your own qualities and not your sex. Truth and falsity went topsy-turvy. The truth—the silence of sex differences—became dangerous, unmentionable, and in its place the conventional wisdom, which is a ragbag of ideas that have long been extinct but are kept ghoulishly alive by popularity, became the entrenched orthodoxy influencing public thinking, agendas and policy-making, and completely crowding out science and sense.

My aim is to show you why the current orthodoxy should be abandoned and why, if you really care about a fairer world, the science does matter. It matters profoundly. I’m going to take two examples, both about the professions, because they very well epitomize the orthodox litany: how society systematically discriminates against women, and how at work they are victims of pervasive sexism. ...

HELENA CRONIN is the Co-Director of LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science; Author, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today.  Helena Cronin's Edge Bio Page


There is a new fundamental theory of physics that's called constructor theory, and was proposed by David Deutsch who pioneered the theory of the universe of quantum computer. David and I are working this theory together. The fundamental idea in this theory is that we forumlate all laws of physics in terms of what tasks are possible, what are impossible, and why. In this theory we have an exact physical characterization of an object that has those properties, and we call that knowledge. Note that knowledge here means knowledge without knowing the subject, as in the thoery of knowledge of the philosopher, Karl Popper.

We’ve just come to the conclusion that the fact that extinction is possible means that knowledge can be instantiated in our physical world. In fact, extinction is the very process by which that knowledge is disabled in its ability to remain instantiated in physical systems because there are problems that it cannot solve. With any luck that bit of knowledge can be replaced with a better one. ... 

CHIARA MARLETTO is a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College and Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Materials Department, University of Oxford.  Chiara Marletto's Edge Bio Page


I dream about the sea cow or imagine what they would be like to see in the wild, but the case of the Pinta Island giant tortoise was a particularly strange feeling for me personally because I had spent many afternoons in the Galapagos Islands when I was a volunteer with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Lonesome George’s den with him. If any of you visited the Galapagos, you know that you can even feed the giant tortoises that are in the Charles Darwin Research Station. This is Lonesome George here.
 
He lived to a ripe old age but failed, as they pointed out many times, to reproduce. Just recently, in 2012, he died, and with him the last of his species. He was couriered to the American Museum of Natural History and taxidermied there. A couple weeks ago his body was unveiled. This was the unveiling that I attended, and at this exact moment in time I can say that I was feeling a little like I am now: nervous and kind of nauseous, while everyone else seemed calm. I wasn’t prepared to see Lonesome George. Here he is taxidermied, looking out over Central Park, which was strange as well. At that moment realized that I knew the last individual of this species to go extinct. That presents this strange predicament for us to be in in the 21st century—this idea of conspicuous extinction. ...

JENNIFER JACQUET is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, NYU; Researching cooperation and the tragedy of the commons; Author, Is Shame Necessary? Jennifer Jacquet's Edge Bio Page


What I wanted to talk about is somewhat of a parallel of that in human populations. If you were to go to a textbook on human biology from the time of Darwin or a bit later, you would certainly get an image that looked a bit like this. This is an image of the so-called races of humankind—racial types, as they called them. I’m not going to go into the question of whether there are real races of humankind because there aren’t. It’s interesting to note that until quite recently people assumed, and scientists assumed too, that the human species was divided into distinct groups that were biologically different from each other and had been isolated from each other for a long, long time.

Well, to some extent that was true. Until quite recently, human populations were isolated from each other. That’s changing quite quickly. ...

STEVE JONES is an Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London.  Steve Jones's Edge Bio Page


MOLLY CROCKETT is an Associate Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford; Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.

Molly Crockett's Edge Bio Page

 


HANS ULRICH OBRIST is the Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London; Author, Ways of Curating. Hans Ulrich Obrist's Edge Bio Page

JOHN BROCKMAN is the Editor and Publisher of Edge.org; Chairman of Brockman, Inc.; Author, By the Late John Brockman, The Third Culture. John Brockman's Edge Bio Page

[Return to "Edge: Live, in London 2014"]

DE-EXTINCTION: Stewart Brand & Richard Prum with Hans Ulrich Obrist and & Brockman

Part I: Edge, Live in London 2014
Stewart Brand, Richard Prum, Hans Ulrich Obrist
[10.31.14]

  

 
[1:03:50]

STEWART BRAND is the Founder of the "The Whole Earth Catalog" and Co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and Revive and Restore; Author, Whole Earth DisciplineStewart Brand's Edge Bio Page

RICHARD PRUM is an Evolutionary Ornithologist at Yale University, where he is the Curator of Ornithology and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He is working on a book about duck sex, aesthetic evolution, and the origin of beauty. Richard Prum's Edge Bio Page


HANS ULRICH OBRIST: We are very, very delighted to now introduce the next section. It’s a whole entire section. We call it the Edge-Serpentine section. It’s our long-time, long-term collaboration with John Brockman. We’re incredibly grateful for John. Ever since the Experiment Marathon in 2007, we have regular collaborations between the Serpentine marathons and Edge. In 2007, with Experiment Marathon and Olafur Eliasson, we asked the participants to come up with a formula for the 21st century and John Brockman asked the entire Edge community to do so, and it created a wonderful collaboration.

We have an entire section guest curated by John, bridging our marathon to science. We are very, very delighted that this continues here today, for the first time, not only with one section, but with two sections. John suggested for the Extinction Marathon, first of all, a conversation between Stewart Brand and Richard Prum, which he and I will moderate. Then we’d have a second chapter, which will involve different scientists who are part of the Edge community: Chiara Marletto, Helena Cronin, Steve Jones, Jennifer Jacquet, and also Molly Crockett, who will be in conversation and also make presentations connected to the topic of extinction.

John Brockman is a cultural impresario who has worked in the art world with science, with software, and the Internet. In the ‘60s he coined the word  "intermedia" and pioneered the notion of intermedia connecting environments in art, theater, and commerce. It’s very interesting that in 2014 his seminal book, By the Late John Brockman, has been re-edited and re-published and exists now as an e-book, and soon is also again available as a printed book. In ’73, Brockman founded Brockman, Inc., the literary agency, and then in ’96 he founded the nonprofit Edge Foundation. He is the publisher and the editor of Edge: "To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge" as he always says. We really believe Edge is one of the great platforms to go beyond the fear of scientific knowledge, which, as you know, is also what the marathons try to do.

John invited Stewart Brand. Stewart doesn't need an introduction. He is one of the most well-known, great thinkers of our time. He finds things and found things. He’s the co-founder of Revive and Restore, the serial inventor of so many, many things he's founded. It’s a long list: The Long Now Foundation, The Well, the Global Business Network. He’s also the founder and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, which is a very big inspiration for the art world. Recently there has been an exhibition in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, which completely was inspired by The Whole Earth Catalog. He’s also one of the co-founders of the Clock of the Long Now, which is also a book. His many books include also the Whole Earth Discipline, How Buildings Learn and The Media Lab. He is trained as a biologist and, as he told me earlier today very importantly, also as an ecologist at Stanford, and we are very excited that he is here.

We are also very excited that John invited Richard Prum, who is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and the Curator of Ornithology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. His research interests include avian evolution, mating behavior, song, feather evolution, and also development as well as mate choice. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the world, and he is currently working on a book on the aesthetic evolution. Together with Brand and Prum and John Brockman we will now be discussing the topic of de-extinction. Please give a very, very warm welcome to John Brockman, to Stewart Brand, to Richard Prum.

Edge @ Serpentine: Extinction Panel

A Conversation with
Helena Cronin, Chiara Marletto, Jennifer Jacquet, Steve Jones, Molly Crockett
[11.6.14]

  

 
[17:02]

HELENA CRONIN is the Co-Director of LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science; Author, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. 
Helena Cronin's Edge Bio Page

CHIARA MARLETTO is a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College and Postdoctoral Research Assistnat at the Materials Department at the University of Oxford. 
Chiara Marletto's Edge Bio Page

JENNIFER JACQUET is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU researching cooperation and the tragedy of the commons; Author, Is Shame Necessary 
Jennifer Jacquet's Edge Bio Page

STEVE JONES is a Professor of Genetics at the Galton Laboratory of University College London; Author, The Lanugage of the Genes
Steve Jones's Edge Bio Page

MOLLY CROCKETT is an Associate Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford; Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. 
Molly Crockett's Edge Bio Page

HANS ULRICH OBRIST is the Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London; Author, Ways of Curating. 
Hans Ulrich Obrist's Edge Bio Page

JOHN BROCKMAN is the Editor and Publisher of Edge.org; Chairman of Brockman, Inc.; Author, By the Late John Brockman, The Third Culture. 
John Brockman's Edge Bio Page


HANS ULRICH OBRIST:  Maybe before we start to moderate the panel, it would be great to hear a few words from John, who brought us all here together.

JB:  One interesting thing that comes through the disparate talks is what happens when you drop the word "biology" into a conversation. In Helena’s world, or in Steve’s classroom in medical school—in terms of extinction—one thing that’s extinct for a lot of people is science itself. I was interested in an article I read about your experiences in the classroom, if you care to talk about it or not. Helena I’ve heard on the radio debating people about the distinction of sex differences. It seems like what happened in 1975, starting with the work of Robert Trivers, was the introduction of what became known as realistic biology of mind: the idea that we’re mammals, we can be studied the way we study mammals, and we’re biological entities. A lot of people have a problem with that.
 

Steve Jones on Extinction

Steve Jones
[11.6.14]

 

What I wanted to talk about is somewhat of a parallel of that in human populations. If you were to go to a textbook on human biology from the time of Darwin or a bit later, you would certainly get an image that looked a bit like this. This is an image of the so-called races of humankind—racial types, as they called them. I’m not going to go into the question of whether there are real races of humankind because there aren’t. It’s interesting to note that until quite recently people assumed, and scientists assumed too, that the human species was divided into distinct groups that were biologically different from each other and had been isolated from each other for a long, long time.

 

Well, to some extent that was true. Until quite recently, human populations were isolated from each other. That’s changing quite quickly. ...

 
[8:57]

STEVE JONES is an Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London.  Steve Jones's Edge Bio Page


MOLLY CROCKETT:  Our last speaker is Steve Jones. He’s an emeritus professor of genetics at University College London and he’s an author of several popular science books. He’s one of the world’s top experts on the genetics of snails, and has also studied the genetics and evolution of fruit flies and humans. He frequently lectures and broadcasts on various aspects of biology and other sciences. His career has taken him far and wide to universities in the United States, Australia, and Africa. Let’s welcome Steve for our last talk.

Helena Cronin on Extinction

Helena Cronin
[11.6.14]

 

... A strange thing happened on the way to a better world in pursuit of an admirable quest, that is, a world free of sex discrimination where you’re judged on your own qualities and not your sex. Truth and falsity went topsy-turvy. The truth—the silence of sex differences—became dangerous, unmentionable, and in its place the conventional wisdom, which is a ragbag of ideas that have long been extinct but are kept ghoulishly alive by popularity, became the entrenched orthodoxy influencing public thinking, agendas and policy-making, and completely crowding out science and sense.

 

My aim is to show you why the current orthodoxy should be abandoned and why, if you really care about a fairer world, the science does matter. It matters profoundly. I’m going to take two examples, both about the professions, because they very well epitomize the orthodox litany: how society systematically discriminates against women, and how at work they are victims of pervasive sexism. 

 
[15:03]

HELENA CRONIN is the Co-Director of LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science; Author, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today.  Helena Cronin's Edge Bio Page


MOLLY CROCKETT:  I’m very, very pleased to introduce Helena Cronin. She’s the co-director of the Center for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and the director of Darwin at LSE at the London School of Economics. She has many notable publications including the edited series, Darwinism Today, and the award winning, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today, that has been featured in the New York Times’ Best Books and Nature’s Best Science Books of the Year. Her current research interests focus on the evolutionary understanding of sex differences. Let’s give a very warm welcome to Helena and welcome her to the stage.

Jennifer Jacquet: "Shaming At Scale"

Topic: 

  • Conversations
http://vimeo.com/108134089

Shaming, in this case, was a fairly low-cost form of punishment that had high reputational impact on the U.S. government, and led to a change in behavior. It worked at scale—one group of people using it against another group of people at the group level. This is the kind of scale that interests me. And the other thing that it points to, which is interesting, is the question of when shaming works. In part, it's when there's an absence of any other option. Shaming is a little bit like antibiotics.

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