News You Can Bruise for 2008 January 20 (entry 0)

(1) Sun Jan 20 2008 10:02 Question Center Roundup: If you're like me, you probably lack the attention span neccessary to read through seventeen pages of the World Question Center finding out what eggheads have changed their minds about. You're stymied by the fact that there's no consistency whether the headline of an entry is the proposition the author changed their mind to, the proposition they changed their mind from, or just the topic on which they changed their mind.

But you're probably not enough like me to decide to go through the whole thing anyway and post a best-of, the entries that stuck in my mind as telling me something new and interesting. Which I just did. Enjoy!

• If you only read one entry, you're probably a very impatient person, so I recommend you read the shortest entry, which is Alan Krueger's.
• There are many, many entries about religion and atheism. The only one with new ideas is Clay Shirky's. I'd also like to point out Patrick Bateson's and Alan Alda's, because they're right next to each other on the same page, and although they agree with each other, their changes of mind involved exchanging labels.
• Also many entries on how to do science. I think the best one is George Church's. Related is falsifiability, and for that the entry to read is Rebecca Goldstein's. Robert Shapiro has the flip side, on "Smothering Science with Silence". Geoffrey Miller is good too.
• The "awwwww" prize goes to Daniel Gilbert. His is also the most interesting of the many meta-entries: entries about the act of changing or ability to change one's mind.
• Also a lot of ones about climate change, but the best one is probably Stephen H Schneider's. If you just want to hear how screwed we are, try Steve Connor.
• Daniel Dennett has the best out of many entries on the origin of consciousness.
• Oliver Morton's entry on manned spaceflight had more effect on my own opinions than any other entry. Linda Stone's entry on breathing exercises was a close second.
• Most interesting answer from the Dyson family: George Dyson on Russian America.
• People I've met: John McCarthy, Tim O'Reilly, Chris DiBona.
• People mentioned in Future Stuff: Jaron Lanier
• There were several entries on the mind-body problem, and John Horgan's is the one to read.
• Denis Dutton has the most interesting entry on evolutionary biology: a discussion of teleology.
• Miscellaneous hit parade:
  • Joseph LeDoux on memory formation and maintenance.
  • James O'Donnell on taking sides in history.
  • Timothy Taylor reveals the Incas trying to cheat their gods.
  • Paul Steinhardt speaks out against inflationary theory.
  • Daniel Engber on animal research and institutional incentives.
  • Stephen Kosslyn on the interaction between genes and environment in the programming of the brain.
  • Sherry Turkle has a creepy story of people choosing the ELIZA effect over real emotional interaction.

Comments:

Posted by Ian Bicking at Mon Jan 21 2008 10:46

The Steinhardt link is wrong; should be http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_4.html#Steinhardt (case?)