18 Responses to “Edge.org: Optimism”

1. mynocturama Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 6:16 pm

   OK, let me be the contrarian here. Sometimes I wonder if these guys aren’t a bit too earnest and literal-minded.

   Don’t get me wrong. I really like Edge.org, and feel a deep kinship with it. Just thought I’d play, as they say, devil’s advocate, and express a sneaking suspicion I sometimes have while reading through the site. For what it’s worth.

2. OliverCranglesParrot Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 6:43 pm

   “As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better.”

   This strikes me as a somewhat limited statement. The activity of science, not as a handmaiden for technology, is neither an optimistic nor pessimistic enterprise. One example of many: doctors deliver uncomfortable, statistically pessimistic news on a daily basis. The people involved in scientific inquiry may be optimistic, but it’s not a requirement for adhering to the process. Sorry for seeing the glass half-empty.

3. Sutter Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm

   I’ll bite. At the risk of stealing PLNelson’s thunder, I am hopeful that 2007 might bring a return to empiricism in numerous areas. The “reality-based community” has been striking back against faith-based factuality, truthiness, and all that jazz. Look at the seriousness with which people are starting to take global warming, or the way perceptions of the Iraq war have tipped so far in one direction, or the public response to the stem cell issue. One hopes these examples (I wish I could think of a few that weren’t so blatantly partisan, because I don’t think it’s a partisan issue, but I can’t at the moment) just scratch the surface, and that we’re getting real about looking at our problems through the pragmatic, empricicist lens rather than the mystical lens that seems to have obscured so much to so many of us for so long. And if that hope pans out, we stand a much better chance of working toward solutions in 2007 than we did in 2006.

4. OliverCranglesParrot Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm

   Expanding knowledge for human consumption sometimes requires explaning inherent limitations. Gene Roddenberry can’t get us by Godel, Turings, Bohr, et al results.

5. OliverCranglesParrot Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 pm

   The rhetorical strategic objects in the U.S. political area regarding foriegn policy shift to avoid tests of falsifiability.

6. ClayShirky Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:35 pm

   Apropos Chris’sgreat comments, check ou tthis unbelievable FT story on Bahrain:

   http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d14d3576-7bfa-11db-b1c6-0000779e2340.html

7. ClayShirky Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   Chris just started talking about it, in fact.

8. ChrisDiBona Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:40 pm

   Thanks for linking to that Clay!

9. jazzman Says:
   January 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 pm

   For my money optimism is always superior to pessimism. I used to be pessimistic and still occasionally fall in to the old gloom and doom engrams that were carefully inculcated (by authority figures and incomplete information / observation on my part) and remain buried in my psyche (especially after parsing plnelson’s worldview or listening to the news (with which I engage less and less as for the most part it’s a fear-based agenda composed of secondary information designed to keep people tuned in.)

   The problem with pessimism is that it requires its assumptions to fail short of the ideal to justify its gloomy outlook, optimism is sanguine even if the ideal is not achieved. Pessimists, like insurance beneficiaries and bet hedgers can only win by losing; I’d rather be optimistic and dead wrong than be pessimistic and dead right. Optimistically believing the best will occur instead of imagining the worst case scenario avoids the stress pessimism tends to create.

   I’m eternally optimistic that all human challenges are surmountable and we humans are infinitely adaptable to whatever situations we create.

10. sidewalker Says:
    January 3rd, 2007 at 8:56 pm

    Conquered spirit rise

    The pulse of fallen Angles

    Beats against the night

11. OliverCranglesParrot Says:
    January 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm

    A wonderful and thought provoking show. Excellent guests. Prof. Steinhardt ideas brought to mind some of the creation myths of the Far East.

12. peggysue Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 12:54 am

    Wow, I dunno, the last thing I heard from scientists is that Polar Bears are in grave danger. I guess the optimism about that was they thought that now the White House would HAVE to do something about global warming… but is this optimism? or gallows humor?

    (the show has not come on yet out here but ah, a reminder that the world is round and rotating. I do find that comforting)

    Sidewalker: again, thanks for the haiku. I may find more optimism in poetry than in science.

13. peggysue Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 2:17 am

    (one hour later) Good show… I feel more optimistic!

    Here is something the Dalai Lama said when asked about the future in an interview by Claudia Dreifus in a NYT Magazine:

    Q: What will religions be like in a hundred years if there is little nature left on earth?

    A: The world itself is nature. The sun, the moon, they are nature. Even if there were no animals, nature would still be here. For those religions that believe in a creator, they would have to find reasons to explain why our beautiful blue planet became a desert.

    If you ask me whether it’s good or bad, of course it’s bad. But in the Buddhist tradition, something like that would not change our attitude. We believe the whole world will come and disappear, come and disappear – so eventually the world becomes a desert and even the ocean dries up. But then again, another new world is reborn. It’s endless.

    So to answer Chris’s question as to whether to take the repetative big bang expanding universe theory to the Pope… I’d say nah… take it the Dalai Lama.

14. Edward Helmrich Says:
    January 7th, 2007 at 11:46 am

    It seems of course, in discussing the experiment to determine if anything existed before the big bang or not, that facts need theories to have any meaning. Would one finding or another disprove religious belief? No. The comment about Galileo and “What would Pope Benedict say?” indicates a popular misunderstanding of the Galileo trial (see ‘Galileo’s Mistake’ 2003), and the nature of religious truth. Science helps us continue to interpret religious truth. Today is Epiphany, when the wise men say the star and traveled to give praise to God. We can use science like this: to go from wonder, to praise of God, we don’t have to use science to try to disprove God, which it can’t do, the quetion is out of it’s realm.
    Also, is this the least violent time? Including the unborn, who are slaughtered at a rate of 3,000 per day in the United States, violence is still with us.

15. The Art of Conversation at zenoli.net Says:
    January 30th, 2007 at 12:38 am

    [...] s cadences are always a pleasure. This post was prompted by the show from January 3, 2007, Edge.org: Optimism.  It’s a great mix of musings and speculation . . . I was quite frustr [...]

16. content source » Blog Archive » Edge.org: Optimism Says:
    March 6th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    [...] r of Science, Princeton University Co-author, Endless Universe: A … Original post by Robin This entry was posted on Wednesday, December [...]

17. station » Edge.org: Optimism Says:
    March 6th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

    [...] house that brought you dangerous ideas in 2006 wants to bring you … Original post by Robin Permalink Leave a Comment [...]

18. Optimism « Sam’s Blog Says:
    March 31st, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    [...] ;What are you optimistic about?” On January 3rd, NPR’s Radio Open Source aired a show on the subject, asking a few of the thinkers who contributed their essays to talk about t [...]

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