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THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER
James Flynn has defined "shorthand abstractions" (or "SHA's") as concepts drawn from science that have become part of the language and make people smarter by providing widely applicable templates ("market", "placebo", "random sample," "naturalistic fallacy," are a few of his examples). His idea is that the abstraction is available as a single cognitive chunk which can be used as an element in thinking and debate.
The Edge Question 2011
WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?
The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.
[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Daniel Kahneman for advice on its presentation.]
163 CONTRIBUTORS (113,500 words): Daniel Kahneman, Richard Dawkins, V.S. Ramachandran, Richard Thaler, Brian Eno, J. Craig Venter, Martin Rees, Mahzarin Banaji, Stefano Boeri, Nigel Goldenfeld, Gary Marcus, Eric Weinstein, Neri Oxman, David Pizarro, Andrew Revkin, Stuart Firestein, Beatrice Golomb, Diane Halpern, Kevin Hand, Barry Smith, Kevin Hand, Garrett Lisi, David Dalrymple, Xeni Jardin, Seth Lloyd, Brian Knutson, Carl Page, Victoria Stodden, David Rowan, Hazel Rose Markus & Alana Conner, Fiery Cushman, David Eagleman, Joan Chiao, Max Tegmark, Tecumseh Fitch, Joshua Greene, Stephon Alexander, Gregory Cochran, Tor Norretranders , Laurence Smith, Carl Zimmer, Roger Highfield, Marcelo Gleiser, Richard Saul Wurman, Anthony Aguirre, Sam Harris, P.Z. Myers, Sue Blackmore, Bart Kosko, David Buss, John Tooby, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, Paul Bloom, Evgeny Morozov, Mark Pagel, Kathryn Schulz, Ernst Pöppel, Tania Lombrozo, Paul Saffo, Jay Rosen, Timothy Taylor, Jonah Lehrer, Marco Iacoboni, Dave Winer, George Church, Kai Krause, Gloria Origgi, Tom Standage, Vinod Khosla, Dan Sperber, Geoffrey Miller, Satyajit Das, Alun Anderson, Eric Topol, Amanda Gefter, Scott D. Sampson, John McWhorter, Jon Kleinberg, Christine Finn, Nick Bostrom, Robert Sapolsky, Adam Alter, Ross Anderson, Paul Kedrosky, Mark Henderson, Thomas A. Bass, Gerald Smallberg, James Croak, Greg Paul, Susan Fiske, Marti Hearst, Keith Devlin, Gerd Gigerenzer, Matt Ridley, Andrian Kreye, Don Tapscott, David Gelernter, Linda Stone, Matthew Ritchie, Joel Gold, Helen Fisher, Giulio Boccaletti, Daniel Goleman, Donald Hoffman, Richard Foreman, Lee Smolin, Thomas Metzinger, Lawrence Krauss, William Calvin, Nicholas Christakis, Alison Gopnik, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, Andy Clark, Neil Gershenfeld, Jonathan Haidt, Marcel Kinsbourne, Douglas Rushkoff, Lisa Randall, Frank Wilczek, Jaron Lanier, Jennifer Jacquet, Daniel Dennett, Stephen M. Kosslyn, Carlo Rovelli, Juan Enriquez, Terrence Sejnowski, Irene Pepperberg, Michael Shermer, Samuel Arbesman, Douglas Kenrick, James O'Donnell, David G. Myers, Rob Kurzban, Richard Nisbett, Samuel Barondes, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nicholas Carr, Emanuel Derman, Aubrey De Grey, Nassim Taleb, Rebecca Goldstein, Clifford Pickover, Charles Seife, Rudy Rucker, Sean Carroll, Gino Segre, Jason Zweig, Dylan Evans, Steven Pinker, Martin Seligman, Gerald Holton, Robert Provine, Roger Schank, George Dyson, Milford Wolpoff, George Lakoff, Nicholas Humphrey, Christian Keysers, Haim Harari, W. Daniel Hillis, John Allen Paulos, Bruce Hood, Howard Gardner
It's ever more delectable that the Edge Foundation— the network of prominent scientists and intellectuals founded by literary agent John Brockman in New York — has worked against the reciprocal ignorance of literary cultures and sciences of each other. Successfully. If you take the algorithms developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which measure the value of links, Edge's website ranks seven on a global scale of ten. The New York Times ranks nine, eBay at eight. — Sueddeutche Zeitung
BOINGBOING
12:39 PM Tuesday, Jan 18, 2011
Xeni Jardin
EDGE WORLD QUESTION 2011: "WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?"
Each year, über-big-think-literary-agent and EDGE founder John Brockman poses a question, and collects and publishes the answers. This year:
WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?
The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.
• My response to the EDGE 2011 Question is here ("Ambient Memory And The Myth Of Neutral Observation").
• Here is the index of all participants, more than 150 of them, including Brian Eno, J. Craig Venter, George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, Evgeny Morozov, Linda Stone, andRichard Dawkins (who will be returning soon as a Boing Boing guestblogger, I'm happy to report!).
• News coverage so far includes: The Atlantic, Wired UK, New York Times,Sueddeutsche Zeitung , Newsweek, Die Welt, The Guardian , Publico.
(Image: RUDBECKIA, Katinka Matson)
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THE ATLANTIC
January 18, 2011
Why We're Always Living In 'The New Normal'
Alexis Madrigal
Paul Kedrosky has a wonderful piece for the deep-thinking site Edge.org about shifting baseline syndrome. It explains precisely why thinking that we're living in some anomalous "new normal" is a little silly. We're always living in a new normal, and the cognitive challenge is to remember that things haven't always been this way, nor will they remain this way.
In 1995 fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly coined a phrase for this troubling ecological obliviousness -- he called it "shifting baseline syndrome". Here is how Pauly first described the syndrome: "Each generation of fisheries scientist accepts as baseline the stock situation that occurred at the beginning of their careers, and uses this to evaluate changes. When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline. The result obviously is a gradual shift of the baseline, a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species..."
It is blindness, stupidity, intergeneration data obliviousness. Most scientific disciplines have long timelines of data, but many ecological disciplines don't. We are forced to rely on second-hand and anecdotal information -- we don't have enough data to know what is normal, so we convince ourselves that this is normal.
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WIRED.CO.UK
18 January 11
PERSONAL DATA MINING TO IMPROVE YOUR COGNITIVE TOOLKIT
David Rowan
Editor, Wired.UK Magazine
This year, Brockman asked: "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?" He took as his starting point James Flynn's notion of "shorthand abstractions" -- "concepts drawn from science that have become part of the language and make people smarter by providing widely applicable templates ('market', 'placebo', 'random sample', 'naturalistic fallacy', are a few of his examples)". If we have a shorthand linguistic means of expressing the notion, Flynn suggested, we can use it as an element in thinking and debate. "This is the most challenging question we've put forth to date," Brockman said. Daniel Kahneman, the father of behavioural economics, said: "It is my favourite question ever. You will get great responses and actually move the culture forward."
On Saturday Brockman published this year's submissions, more than 150 answers from the likes of Craig Venter, Brian Eno and Steven Pinker (mostly men, it has to be said, with contributors such as Alison Gopnik and Lisa Randall making up a small female minority). A number of Wired contributors have sent in answers this year, writers such as Jonah Lehrer, David Eagleman and Matt Ridley. Some journalists and editors were also invited to add their thoughts, which is how I submitted a proposal for "personal data mining" as part of the symposium.
So what concepts did the contributors suggest that we need? The answers included:
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 17, 2011
In the meantime, there’s a rich discussion of aspects of this question on Edge.org, a forum for all manner of minds, curated by the agent and intellectual impressario John Brockman. Once or twice a year since 1998, Edge has tossed provocative questions to variegated batches of scientists, writers, artists and innovators.
Some examples: How is the Internet changing the way you think? What have you changed your mind about? Why? What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
This year’s question, proposed by Steven Pinker and shaped with input from Daniel Kahneman, has been addressed by more than 150 people so far:
What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? (The phrase "scientific concept" has a very broad meaning, explained at the link.)
You can read my Edge contribution, centering on a concept I call anthropophilia, below, with links to relevant context added (the Edge format is straight text).
I’m in the early stages of reading the other contributions. There’s much to chew on and enjoy. Here are a few highlights: ...
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SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
Montag, 17. Januar 2011
FEUILLETON — FRONT PAGE
DIE ILLUSION DER REINEN INFORMATION
Im Internetmagazin 'Edge' stellen sich Wissenschaftler und Intellektuelle der Frage des Jahres - was verbessert unsere Fähigkeit der Erkenntnis?
THE ILLUSION OF PURE INFORMATION
On The Internet Magazine "Edge", Scientists And Intellectuals Are Presented With The Question Of The Year — What Improves Our Ability To Achieve Enlightenment?
Ralf Bont
... In the Anglo-Saxon culture things are different, and science certainly has continued in its global appeal. Thus, early English modern naturalism, founded by Humphry Davy, had a reputation not only for spectacular discoveries, they also for paying attention to public communication. The goal was the transfer of knowledge into the auditorium. This is clever, because science has, as much as any other movement since the French Revolution, changed the lives of everyone on the planet and it has by no means lost this position of leadership.
On the contrary. Today when more and more people assume that the death penalty does not have a deterrent effect, it's not a new belief in a higher justice. Rather, it is the triumph of that thinking that the tools of rationality — language logic and statistics — are being used to make a statement that contradicts the common assumptions.
It is, however, necessary to acquire language logic, statistics and other skills. Do not give a claim to power with a fath-based knowledge, but also mediate what knowledge is. This is not only an honorable task — it pplaces scientific researchers in the realm of medical doctors who take the Hippocratic oath. Knowledge is vital, and — this is the flip side — knwoledge can be abused: the great anti-human ideologies of the 20th Century were themselves scientific. The science community needs to communicate better.
It's ever more delectable that the Edge Foundation— the network of prominent scientists and intellectuals founded by literary agent John Brockman in New York — has worked against the reciprocal ignorance of literary cultures and sciences of each other. Successfully. If you take the algorithms developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which measure the value of links, Edge's website ranks seven on a global scale of ten. The New York Times ranks nine, eBay at eight.
A highlight of the Edge's activities in each January, the answers to the question of the year. In 2010 there were more than 130 short essays on how the Internet is changing the way we think. The question now presented by Edge: What scientific concept woud improve everyone's cognitive tookiit? ...
NEWSWEEK
January 17,
2011
GET SMARTER
A group of thinkers explains how.
By Sharon Begley
“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.” That may have been fine advice for the 20th century, but to survive in 2011 and beyond we need to step it up—a lot. We need to, say, embrace the concepts that many mental illnesses are just extremes of personality traits, that humans tend to accept credit for their successes but not blame for their failures, and that “wholes have properties not present in the parts,” as sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University writes on the online salon Edge (edge.org).
Christakis is one of scores of contributors to an annual exercise in which Edge, run by literary agent and author John Brockman, poses a question to scientists, technology gurus, philosophers, and other thinkers. Last year’s query was about how the Internet is changing the way we think, while 2008’s asked what the scholars had changed their mind about and why. This year’s: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” Technology scholar Douglas Rushkoff nominates the concept that technologies have an “embedded bias” rather than being blank slates from which any outcome can arise. Cars have an embedded bias toward suburban sprawl; guns, an embedded bias toward killing people. By adding this concept to our cognitive toolkit, Rushkoff argues, we will have a better chance of using technologies “consciously and purposefully” and of resisting that bias. The embedded bias of the keyboardless iPad, for example, is toward passive consumption rather than active creation. To resist, get the add-on keyboard. ...
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WELT AM SONNTAG
16. January 2011 Alan Posener
Each year, the Scientific Club "The Edge" poses a question. 2011 will be explored that is lacking in people to the knowledge nor
If the theory of the "multiverse" is true, then it is at least one universe in which we do not die. Because the concept assumes that each possible universe has to actually occur - including universes, which have already defeated the doctors in our lifetimes the death. That we die in our universe is indeed annoying, but not the end of the world. This is the response of the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey on this year's "Edge" question: "What scientific concept would improve the cognitive abilities of all people?"...
... In a time when economic studies that scientifically "prove" that certain groups of people are smarter than others (Thilo Sarrazin keeps Muslim immigrants for less intelligent than German, while other studies show that leftists are smarter than right), like Conservatives and multicultural friends feel encouraged by Matt Ridley's statement that the individual intelligence or the intelligence of sub-groups for the welfare of a society are relatively unimportant. The decisive point is the "collective intelligence", says Ridley, which is not simply the sum of the individual intelligence quotient, but a function of networking, of labor and openness of a society.
Adam Smith and Karl Popper already knew this. Too bad that we do not inhabit the parallel universe in which they live.
[Continue German Original | Google Translation]
THE GUARDIAN
Saturday 15 January
2001
WE MUST LEARN TO LOVE UNCERTAINTY AND FAILURE, SAY LEADING THINKERS
Planet's biggest brains answer this year's Edge question: 'What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?'
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Being comfortable with uncertainty, knowing the limits of what science can tell us, and understanding the worth of failure are all valuable tools that would improve people's lives, according to some of the world's leading thinkers.
The ideas were submitted as part of an annual exercise by the web magazine Edge, which invites scientists, philosophers and artists to opine on a major question of the moment. This year it was, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"
The magazine called for "shorthand abstractions" – a way of encapsulating an idea or scientific concept into a short description that could be used as a component of bigger questions. The responses were published online today.
Many responses pointed out that the public often misunderstands the scientific process and the nature of scientific doubt. This can fuel public rows over the significance of disagreements between scientists about controversial issues such as climate change and vaccine safety. ...
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PUBLICO
15 Jan 2011 Edição Lisboa
CONCEITOS ABSTRACTOS PRECISAM-SE E A EDGE FOI À SUA PROCURA [Google Translation]
Qual será o conceito científico que, se toda a gente o dominasse, poderia representar um salto imenso na capacidade que as pessoas têm de perceber e participar activamente nos assuntos do mundo?
Anna Gerschenfeld
This is, in essence, the question that John Brockman, the American literary agent and director of the site edge.org, presented in late December to a constellation of world famous scientists. The results were published online this morning.
The question was formulated more precisely as follows: "What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?"
Since this question is not as direct and explicit as some of its predecessors (the question last year, for example, was "How the Internet is changing the way we think?") Edge is quick to contextualize it.
The point is that, according to James Flynn, an expert on human intelligence from the University of Otago, New Zealand, there are words and short phrases — such as "market", "natural selection", etc.. — Which constitute "conceptual abbreviations" (shorthand abstractions, or SHA) that actually represent a constellation of such abstract concepts as complex and that "although extremely brief, have immense utility to perceive the world."
The idea is that the SHA, according to Flynn, "penetrated the cognitive repertoire of educated people, expanding their intellectual capabilities to become available in the form of cognitive units that can be used as elements of reasoning and debate." In other words, an economist, when he speaks of "market" or a biomedical specialist when he thinks of a "control group" or a statistician when he speaks of "random sample", knows very well that there's no need to lose time to reprocess these concepts each time you use them.
By Friday evening 115 people, scientists from various fields of knowledge, had already responded to the challenge. Some answers are extensive and very complex. Others do not respond exactly the question. But there are, as always, approaches to suit all tastes and most are interesting enough to make it worth going to have a look.
[Continue Portugese Original | Google Translation] |
