eyal matsliah's Bookmarks tagged thinkers →  View Popular

But
>

none of this is to say that we as people should not worry about
>

global change; we should worry a lot. This is because climate
>

change may not hurt the planet, but it hurts people. In particular,
>

it will hurt people who are too poor to adapt. Significant
>

climate change will change rainfall patterns, and probably
>

patterns of extreme events as well, in ways that could easily
>

threaten the food security of hundreds of millions of people
>

supporting themselves through subsistence agriculture or pastoralism.
>

It will have a massive effect on the lives of the relatively
>

small number of people in places where sea ice is an important
>

part of the environment (and it seems unlikely that anything
>

we do now can change that). In other, more densely populated
>

places local environmental and biotic change may have similarly
>

sweeping effects.
>

The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ...

... But first it cracked him. The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.

By Steven Levy

"Three centuries ago science was transformed by the dramatic new idea that
rules based on mathematical equations could be used to describe the natural
world. My purpose in this book is to initiate another such transformation,
and to introduce a new kind of science that is based on the much more general
types of rules that can be embodied in simple computer programs."

He goes on to explain that by applying a single key observation - that
the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules
- one can view and understand the universe with previously unattainable
clarity and insight. The idea of complexity arising from simple rules -
and that the universe can best be understood by way of the computation
it requires to grind out results from those rules - is at the center of
the book. The big idea is that the algorithm is mightier than the equation.

There is only one
time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.
>

You and I are alive at this moment.
>

CARLO
ROVELLI

Professor
of Physics, University of the Mediterraneum, Marseille;
Member, Intitut Universitaire de France: Author, Quantum
Gravity

What
the physics of the 20th century says about the world might
in fact be true

There
is a major "dangerous" scientific idea in contemporary
physics, with a potential impact comparable to Copernicus or
Darwin. It is the idea that what the physics of the 20th century
says about the world might in fact be true.

GEOFFREY
MILLER

Evolutionary Psychologist,
University of New Mexico; Author, The
Mating Mind

Runaway
consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox

The
story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was
talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence
with some other physicists. They were impressed that our galaxy
holds 100 billion stars, that life evolved quickly and progressively
on earth, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing
species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years.
They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common
by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked simply, "So,
where is everybody?". That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence
is common, why haven't we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum
became known as Fermi's Paradox.

SHERRY
TURKLE

Psychologist, MIT;
Author, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the
Internet

After
several generations of living in the computer culture,
simulation will become fully naturalized. Authenticity
in the traditional sense loses its value, a vestige of
another time.

ANDY CLARK

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Edinburgh
University

The
quick-thinking zombies inside us

So
much of what we do, feel, think and choose is determined
by non-conscious, automatic uptake of cues and information.

LEONARD SUSSKIND

Physicist, Stanford University; Author, The
Cosmic Landscape

The "Landscape"

I
have been accused of advocating an extremely dangerous
idea.

According
to some people, the "Landscape" idea will eventually
ensure that the forces of intelligent design (and other
unscientific religious ideas) will triumph over true science.
From one of my most distinguished colleagues:

From
a political, cultural point of view, it's not that
these arguments are religious but that they denude
us from our historical strength in opposing religion.

STEWART BRAND

Founder, Whole
Earth Catalog, cofounder; The Well; cofounder, Global
Business Network; Author, How Buildings Learn

What
if public policy makers have an obligation to engage
historians, and historians have an obligation to try
to help?

All
historians understand that they must never, ever talk about
the future. Their discipline requires that they deal in facts,
and the future doesn't have any yet. A solid theory of history
might be able to embrace the future, but all such theories
have been discredited. Thus historians do not offer, and
are seldom invited, to take part in shaping public policy.
They leave that to economists.

A
dangerous thought: What if public policy makers have an obligation
to engage historians, and historians have an obligation to
try to help?

And
instead of just retailing advice, go generic. Historians
could set about developing a rigorous sub-discipline called "Applied
History."

There
is only one significant book on the subject, published in
1988. Thinking In Time: The Uses of Hustory for Decision
Makers was written by the late Richard Neustadt and
Ernest May, who long taught a course on the subject at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government. (A course called "Reasoning
from History" is currently taught there by Alexander
Keyssar.)

NEIL GERSHENFELD

Physicist;
Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT; Author, Fab





Democratizing access to the means of invention

The
elite temples of research (of the kind I've happily spent my
career in) may be becoming intellectual dinosaurs as a result
of the digitization and personalization of fabrication.