The Edge of Scandal

Really just a housekeeping post, based on re-reading some earlier “Annual Edge Question” responses and recognising that the so-called “Last Edge Question” in 2018 has proven to really be the last, and brought the 20 year annual run of John Brockman’s “Edge” and his writer agency clients, to a close.

Ironically, the last collection I actually reviewed was 2017, gave only a passing mention to 2018, the last one published and 2019 was the year Jeffrey Epstein was finally indicted, refused bail pending trial and died on multiple long-term sex-trafficking conspiracy charges, altogether more serious that the single 2009 conviction for which he was originally registered as a sex-offender. From 2005 to 2009 and from then until 2019 there were many accusations and indictments that didn’t make it to trial, for all sorts of reasons, including plea-bargains and sweetheart-deals.

We have to suspect Brockman knew in 2018 of Epstein’s impending 2019 come-uppance?

Brockman’s last publication – after the 2018 “Last Edge Question” was the “Possible Minds” AI-science collection in 2019 and an interview of Alexander Rose he did for the Long Now organisation also in 2019. In 2020/21 there were a handful of his individual clients’ “Edge Conversations” published. The Edge still exists as an entity, with Brockman as CEO, but pretty much zero activity, publishing or commercial since.

I’ve said probably all I want to say about Epstein’s association with Brockman and many of his “the great and the good” clients in science and academia – last time here in 2019. Actual reviews of content going back from 2017 to 2005.

Suppose I should actually review the 2018 Last Questions … knowing now that they really were the last – and they are just the questions, no responses or discussions to be read. There were:
264 responses in 2018 after
206 responses in 2017 and
120 responses in 2005 (where I started) and
110 at the start in 1998.

The list of 264 names itself is mind-boggling:

Contributors:
Scott Aaronson, Anthony Aguirre, Dorsa Amir, Chris Anderson, Ross Anderson, Alun Anderson, Samuel Arbesman, Dan Ariely, Noga Arikha, W. Brian Arthur, Scott Atran, Joscha Bach, Mahzarin Banaji, Simon Baron-Cohen, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Andrew Barron, Thomas A. Bass, Mary Catherine Bateson, Gregory Benford, Laura Betzig, Susan Blackmore, Alan S. Blinder, Paul Bloom, Giulio Boccaletti, Ian Bogost, Joshua Bongard, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Rodney A. Brooks, David M. Buss, Philip Campbell, Jimena Canales, Christopher Chabris, David Chalmers, Leo M. Chalupa, Ashvin Chhabra, Jaeweon Cho, Nicholas A. Christakis, David Christian, Brian Christian, George Church, Andy Clark, Julia Clarke, Tyler Cowen, Jerry A. Coyne, James Croak, Molly Crockett, Helena Cronin, Oliver Scott Curry, David Dalrymple, Kate Darling, Luca De Biase, Stanislas Dehaene, Daniel C. Dennett, Emanuel Derman, David Deutsch, Keith Devlin, Jared Diamond, Chris DiBona, Rolf Dobelli, P. Murali Doraiswamy, Freeman Dyson, George Dyson, David M. Eagleman, David Edelman, Nick Enfield, Brian Eno, Juan Enriquez, Dylan Evans, Daniel L. Everett, Christine Finn, Stuart Firestein, Helen Fisher, Steve Fuller, Howard Gardner, David C. Geary, James Geary, Amanda Gefter, Neil Gershenfeld, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Steve Giddings, Gerd Gigerenzer, Bruno Giussani, Joel Gold, Nigel Goldenfeld, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Daniel Goleman, Alison Gopnik, John Gottman, Jonathan Gottschall, William Grassie, Kurt Gray, A. C. Grayling, Tom Griffiths, June Gruber, Jonathan Haidt, David Haig, Hans Halvorson, Timo Hannay, Judith Rich Harris, Sam Harris, Daniel Haun, Marti Hearst, Dirk Helbing, César Hidalgo, Roger Highfield, W. Daniel Hillis, Michael Hochberg, Donald D. Hoffman, Bruce Hood, Daniel Hook, John Horgan, Sabine Hossenfelder, Nicholas Humphrey, Marco Iacoboni, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Nina Jablonski, Matthew O. Jackson, Jennifer Jacquet, Dale W Jamieson, Koo Jeong-A, Lorraine Justice, Gordon Kane, Stuart A. Kauffman, Brian G. Keating, Paul Kedrosky, Kevin Kelly, Marcel Kinsbourne, Gary Klein, Jon Kleinberg, Brian Knutson, Bart Kosko, Stephen M. Kosslyn, John W. Krakauer, Kai Krause, Lawrence M. Krauss, Andrian Kreye, Coco Krumme, Robert Kurzban, Joseph LeDoux, Cristine H. Legare, Martin Lercher, Margaret Levi, Janna Levin, Andrei Linde, Tania Lombrozo, Antony Garrett Lisi, Mario Livio, Seth Lloyd, Jonathan B. Losos, Greg Lynn, Ziyad Marar, Gary Marcus, John Markoff, Chiara Marletto, Abigail Marsh, Barnaby Marsh, John C. Mather, Tim Maudlin, Annalena McAfee, Michael McCullough, Ian McEwan, Ryan McKay, Hugo Mercier, Thomas Metzinger, Yuri Milner, Read Montague, Dave Morin, Lisa Mosconi, David G. Myers, Priyamvada Natarajan, John Naughton, Randolph Nesse, Richard Nisbett, Tor Nørretranders, Michael I. Norton, Martin Nowak, James J. O’Donnell, Tim O’Reilly, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Steve Omohundro, Toby Ord, Gloria Origgi, Mark Pagel, Elaine Pagels, Bruce Parker, Josef Penninger, Irene Pepperberg, Clifford Pickover, Steven Pinker, David Pizarro, Robert Plomin, Jordan Pollack, Alex Poots, Carolyn Porco, William Poundstone, William H. Press, Robert Provine, Matthew Putman, David C. Queller, Sheizaf Rafaeli, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, S. Abbas Raza, Syed Tasnim Raza, Martin Rees, Ed Regis, Diana Reiss, Gianluigi Ricuperati, Jennifer Richeson, Siobhan Roberts, Andrés Roemer, Phil Rosenzweig, Carlo Rovelli, Douglas Rushkoff, Karl Sabbagh, Todd C. Sacktor, Paul Saffo, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, Buddhini Samarasinghe, Scott Sampson, Laurie R. Santos, Robert Sapolsky, Dimitar D. Sasselov, Roger Schank, Rene Scheu, Maximilian Schich, Simone Schnall, Bruce Schneier, Peter Schwartz, Gino Segre, Charles Seife, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Michael Shermer, Olivier Sibony, Laurence C. Smith, Monica L. Smith, Lee Smolin, Dan Sperber, Maria Spiropulu, Nina Stegeman, Paul Steinhardt, Bruce Sterling, Stephen J. Stich, Victoria Stodden, Christopher Stringer, Seirian Sumner, Leonard Susskind, Jaan Tallinn,Timothy Taylor, Max Tegmark, Richard H. Thaler, Frank Tipler, Eric Topol, Sherry Turkle, Barbara Tversky, Michael Vassar, J. Craig Venter, Athena Vouloumanos, D.A. Wallach, Adam Waytz, Bret Weinstein, Eric R. Weinstein, Albert Wenger, Geoffrey West, Thalia Wheatley, Tim White, Linda Wilbrecht, Frank Wilczek, Jason Wilkes, Evan Williams, Alexander Wissner-Gross, Milford H. Wolpoff, Richard Wrangham, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Richard Saul Wurman, Victoria Wyatt, Itai Yanai, Dustin Yellin, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, Dan Zahavi, Anton Zeilinger, Carl Zimmer

No general guilt by indirect association here.

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Those questions – well some I noted anyway …

Clarify the differences between understanding, knowledge and wisdom that could be communicated to a literate twelve-year-old and recommunicated to their parents?
Richard Saul Wurman

Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution?
Cristine H. Legare

Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity?
Hans Halvorson

How do I know the right level of abstraction at which to explain a phenomenon?
Victoria Stodden

Will the frontiers of consciousness be technological or linguistic?
Dustin Yellin

Is the cumulation of shared knowledge forever constrained by the limits of human language?
Nick Enfield

Are there limits to what we can know about the universe?
Priyamvada Natarajan

Will humanity eventually exhaust the unknown?
Michael Hochberg

Why do humans behave as though what can be known is finite?
Michael I Norton

Is our brain fundamentally limited in its ability to understand the external world?
Stanislas Dehaene

Does consciousness reside only in our brains?
W. Brian Arthur

Can we acquire complete access to our unconscious minds?
Joel Gold

Will a computer ever really understand and experience human kindness?
Chris DiBona

Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body?
Rodney A Brooks

Why are people so seldom persuaded by clear evidence and rational argument?
Tim Maudlin

What is the most important thing that can be done to restore the general public’s faith and trust in science?
Irene Pepperberg

Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?
Alun Anderson

What is the optimal algorithm for discovering truth?
Joscha Bach

When will race disappear?
Nina Jablonski

How did our complex universe arise out of simple physical laws?
Seth Lloyd

Why do we care so much about how well we’re approximated by algorithms?
Coco Krumme

Could the thermodynamic prophecy of an increasingly entropic universe be fulfilled by the cosmic flourishing of intelligent life?
David Dalrymple

Is it possible to control a system capable of evolving?
Nigel Goldenfeld

How can we separate the assessment of scientific evidence from value judgments?
Sabine Hossenfelder

Are feelings computable?
Read Montague

How much biodiversity do we need?
Giulio Boccaletti

Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable?
Anthony Aguirre

How does a single human brain architecture create many kinds of human minds?
Lisa Feldman Barrett

Is a human brain capable of understanding a human brain?
Rene Scheu

Why is the acceleration of the expansion of the universe roughly equal to a typical acceleration of a star in a circular orbit in a disk galaxy?
Lee Smolin

What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years?
Toby Ord

Why are humans still so much more flexible in their thinking and everyday reasoning than machines?
Gary Marcus

Can human intuition ever be reduced to an algorithm?
Gerd Gigerenzer

Why is there such widespread public opposition to science and scientific reasoning in the United States, the world leader in every major branch of science?
Jared Diamond

Could superintelligence be the purpose of the universe?
Maria Spiropulu

How will predictive models in the social sciences achieve the accuracy and precision of those in the natural sciences?
Robert Kurzban

How does a thought become a feeling?
Marco Iacoboni

Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever?
Lawrence M. Krauss

And so many more – questions that have simple answers because those asking misunderstand their own question?

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