What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable

By: Brockman, John

Book Overview

The world's leading scientific thinkers explore bold, remarkable, perilous ideas that could change our lives for better . . . or for worse . . . From Copernicus to Darwin, to current-day thinkers,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061214957
• ISBN13: 9780061214950
• Release Date: July 2014
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Challenging assumptions to expand your brain

This is a book that has to be read twice to properly appreciate the depth and subtlety of the vast range of bright ideas. Not all of them are dangerous or unthinkable but they are all, nevertheless, thought-provoking. Not all of the 108 contributions will speak to you - but even if you find only one - that will have repaid your efforts handsomely. Here are some of my favorites: Evolutionary psychologist, David Buss, says that evolution programmed us with the capacity to "commit despicable atrocities against our fellow humans - atrocities that most of us would label evil" and that "The danger comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of human nature that cannot be wished away by attributing them to the modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media violence." Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's dangerous idea is that genetically there are such things as races, that different races have genetically different average levels of intelligence and genetically different "life priorities". Presumably Pinker is making an oblique reference to the works of Phillipe Rushton Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Jon Entine Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It and Murray & Herrnstein The Bell Curve: Intelligence And Class Structure In American Life. As Professor Richard Dawkins observes in the Afterword: if we can breed horses for speed, why not humans for athletic ability? The sub-text is that the vagaries of racial differentiation over the millennia have already done that in the case of black domination of sprinting and white domination of swimming. Cosmologist Paul Davies' idea is that the fight against global warming is futile and anyway already lost. But his dangerous idea is that the world will be a better place for it. This chimes with Nature editor, Oliver Morton's view that the earth doesn't need ice-caps and that even a quintupling of carbon dioxide levels will not reach the levels of the late Permian. Philosophy professor, Denis Dutton debunks "social construction theory" which he categorizes as "... a series of fashion statements, clever slogans and postures imported from France in the 1960s...". His dangerous idea is that a Darwinian approach would provide a true theory for understanding and analyzing art, music, and literature. Behavioral geneticist David Lykken observes that "Traditional societies in which children are socialized collectively, the method to which our species is naturally adapted, have very little crime." Lykkens' dangerous idea is that parents should only be allowed to make babies when they are over twenty-one, married and self-supporting. Psychologist and author of The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris in a colorful and pithy piece says that there is no proof that "parents do shape their children". Moreover, "Parents are exhausting themselves in their efforts to meet th

Entertaining and thought provoking

I got this book as a gift and really knew nothing about it. Almost immediately upon starting, I felt drawn in, eager to continue reading. The book is very well-edited, so that essays that discuss similar dangerous ideas are grouped together. The result is that the reader develops an increasingly nuanced and detailed understanding of concepts -- such as the "anthropic view" of physical laws -- that might have been entirely unfamiliar before starting the book. The essays are generally excellent at explaining why the topics are relevant to modern life. Authors are asked to answer the question, "Why is your idea dangerous?" In so doing, they help the reader to understand why topics like the philosophy of mind, comparative religion, and evolutionary theory really matter. Many of the dangerous ideas presented really do challenge the political, economic, and sociological structures of our world. It's also nice that the essays are short. If one essay fails to spark your interest, you only need to wade through 3 or 4 pages before the next one begins. I highly recommend this book.

A treasure of ideas from 108 of our most creative minds

(Plus Richard Dawkins, who writes an Afterword.) I'll give you some dangerous ideas. Take steps to reduce the human population worldwide to around a billion people and keep it there. Take the biological desire of people to play house and be mothers and fathers, and redirect it into responsible stewardship of the planet. Don't like that one? Seems too draconian? How about this? End all tax exempt status for churches, mosques, etc. (Resounding voice coming onstage: "Only when they tear my cold, dead fingers from the collection plate!") Here's another: realize that to know all is to forgive all, and that we are all just biological automations acting out our genetic drives and have no more free will than an ant on the pheromone trail. Deal with people acting in antisocial ways by (1) curing them with psychopharmacology, surgery, retraining, or (2) euthanasia. Decriminalize street drug use. Allow Phillip Morris to get into the cannabis business and Merck to process opium into heroin. If some people become dysfunctional, see previous dangerous idea and employ it. Well, none of John Brockman's esteemed contributors came up with anything quite THAT dangerous, probably because the danger of such ideas is most immediately to the person who would advance them! Psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse gives us some guidance on why such ideas are not being advanced in this book in his modest essay on "Unspeakable Ideas." (pp. 193-195) Here's one: "when your business group is trying to deal with a savvy competitor, say, `It seems to me that their product is superior, because they are smarter than we are.'" Also unspeakable is, "I will only do what benefits me." Nesse writes that saying something like that is akin to committing "social suicide." David Lykken thinks that parents ought to be required to get licenses to parent and prove they are twenty-one years old, married, and self-supporting. (pp. 175-176) Jordan Pollack urges us (tongue in cheek, I presume) to embrace "faith-based science." He writes, "physics could sing the psalm that perpetual motion would solve the energy crisis..." with God "on our side to repeal the second law of thermodynamics!" "Astronomy could embrace astrology and do grassroots PR with daily horoscopes to gain mass support for a new space program." (pp. 156-158) John Allen Paulos joins the Buddha and David Hume and presents the self as "an ever-changing collection of beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes, that is not an essential and persistent entity but a conceptual chimera." (p. 152) Some of the other "dangerous ideas" concern such things as science versus religion (e.g., Sam Harris's "Science Must Destroy Religion" and Philip W. Anderson's "The Posterior Probability of Any Particular God Is Pretty Small"); exciting speculations (Terrence Sejnowski's "When Will the Internet Become Aware of Itself?"), cosmological conjectures (Brian Greene's "The Multiverse," and Leonard Susskind's "The `Landscape'"). Some of the ideas

Dangerous Ideas?

Ever wanted to go to a conference and hear 25 of the top people in their fields talk about what's on their minds? This book does exactly that, and saves you all the aggravation of travel and lodging. You might be surprised how hard it is to put this book down--unlike actual conferences, where so many speakers take forever to get around to something really surprising...

Challenging and Entertaining

I wish all books were as hard to put down as this one! The mini-essays are short enough to pick the book up, read several, put it down and mull them over for awhile. Often, two very well-articulated dangerous ideas will be in complete contradiction to one another and will thus be placed one right after the other. Highly recommend reading.