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.
[My 2025 responses to many of the 2018 “Last Edge Questions” below, following the sad story of the scandal and the list of contributors.]
Ironically, the last collection I actually reviewed was 2017, gave only a passing mention to that last one published in 2018 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 more 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 only 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 publishing or commercial activity, 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, sadly, 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 … those generally answered by the work I’m already doing / using. There are lots of other “interesting” ones more closely related to the individuals’ own work.
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
Me – A good question even if not any kind of ultimate question. There’s been a lot of motivated “debunking” of the data / information / knowledge / wisdom stack in recent years, but it is still valuable and meaningful. Worth explaining.
Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution?
Cristine H. Legare
Me – another good question, very close to my agenda and related to the previous question. Yes, right now “communication” of information is racing ahead of our psychological capability to properly process and understand it – that’s dangerous, and can only be countered if we better recognise how we know and understand.
Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity?
Hans Halvorson
Me – No. It’s very VERY valuable, but love and humanity are greater possessions. We’ve put objective scientific knowledge and processes on a pedestal and defend it from that artificial position, whilst failing to recognise how much of our knowledge and wisdom is beyond or more than science.
How do I know the right level of abstraction at which to explain a phenomenon?
Victoria Stodden
Me – another good question. We have devalued levels of abstraction beyond physical reality and causal logic in that one level and in doing so discounted the levels where our consciousness and will (etc.) actually emerge.
Will the frontiers of consciousness be technological or linguistic?
Dustin Yellin
Me – Linguistic. We already have the physical technology inside our heads, although almost meaningless question – language IS the technology of mind. Thinking tools after Dennett.
Is the cumulation of shared knowledge forever constrained by the limits of human language?
Nick Enfield
Me – Yes, kinda, but don’t forget we can evolve our language if we adopt other worldviews.
Are there limits to what we can know about the universe?
Priyamvada Natarajan
Me – Yes.
How do the limits of the mind limit our understanding?
Barbara Tversky
Me – Obviously they do, the how is about understanding the conscious mind itself. See other replies.
Will humanity eventually exhaust the unknown?
Michael Hochberg
Me – No. See Natarajan above.
Is our brain fundamentally limited in its ability to understand the external world?
Stanislas Dehaene
Me – the brain, no. The mind can evolve better worldviews / models to understand what can be known. If known it can be understood, but there are limits to the knowable (see earlier Q&A).
Does consciousness reside only in our brains?
W. Brian Arthur
Me – there are many layers. Some proto-consciousness exists in the wider world, some aspects of our consciousness are elsewhere in our bodies, “higher” levels only in our brains.
Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body?
Rodney A Brooks
Me – a good question – there needs to be an “I” a bounded systemic thing distinct from the world to have that individual (high-level) conscious awareness, but other elements of consciousness are more distributed.
Can we acquire complete access to our unconscious minds?
Joel Gold
Me – no, by definition. (And that’s a good thing, we’ve evolved levels of consciousness for good reasons.)
Will a computer ever really understand and experience human kindness?
Chris DiBona
Me – “a computer” in the electro-mechanical sense, no, not until it first evolves life. Obviously “we” are a computer too, but a very different kind.
What is consciousness?
Stuart A. Kauffman
Me – it’s not a mystery. (See above)
What kinds of minds could solve the mind-body problem?
Susan Blackmore
Me – Ha! – it’s solved, because it was never a problem. It’s been dissolved by better understanding what mind and consciousness are.
What will be obvious to us in a generation that we have an inkling of today?
Ev Williams
Me – hopefully, that we know a lot more than “science” and what it means to know, as conscious wilful agents.
Is the brain a computer or an antenna?
Dave Morin
Me – a bit of both. It definitely processes information and it definitely receives and transduces information. Information can be proto-consciousness itself.
Why are people so seldom persuaded by clear evidence and rational argument?
Tim Maudlin
Me – Largely because we know intuitively that there is more than objective evidence and rational – objective logical – argument. Sadly science advocates continue to deny this and we remain suspicious of scientific exclusivity.
What is the most important thing that can be done to restore the general public’s faith and trust in science?
Irene Pepperberg
Me – see last response – when science is honest about its own limitations.
Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?
Alun Anderson
Me – Absolutely! – rules are for guidance of the (caring) wise and the obedience of (careless) fools.
What is the optimal algorithm for discovering truth?
Joscha Bach
Me – there isn’t one. There are many emergent layers.
Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed?
Scott Aaronson
Me – no, though not sure why the “expressed” condition?
When will race disappear?
Nina Jablonski
Me – When (and IFF) we decided to make it a concerted objective over many generations. Might be better if we also maintain “Requisite Diversity” in our gene and meme pools.
How did our complex universe arise out of simple physical laws?
Seth Lloyd
Me – too easy. (See Free Energy Principle responses.)
How does the past give rise to the future?
Nic Humphrey
Me – good question. Causation is definitely much weirder than common sense causal logic. There are many other evolutionary emergence processes.
Why do we care so much about how well we’re approximated by algorithms?
Coco Krumme
Me – largely because some very powerful misguided people seem to think it’s possible that we might be thus approximated. We can’t be, but that’s not stopping such people, and we’re intuitively suspicious of the dangers.
When will we replace governments with algorithms?
César Hidalgo
Me – ditto – never if we have any sense. (See science or politics Q&A)
Could the thermodynamic prophecy of an increasingly entropic universe be fulfilled by the cosmic flourishing of intelligent life?
David Dalrymple
Me – Absolutely! – increasingly intelligent life is the optimal route to maximum cosmic chaos and entropy.
Is it possible to control a system capable of evolving?
Nigel Goldenfeld
Me – control? No, not really. But guide with creative constraints etc, yes it’s called management, even if we have imperfect knowledge and understanding of what might result from our actions in the longer-term widest sense – unintended consequences etc. Care needed.
How can we separate the assessment of scientific evidence from value judgments?
Sabine Hossenfelder
Me – I think we already can – IF we want to. Better to be honest that we need both, even if they remain entangled. It only matters that we disentangle them if we want to establish “pure” science distinct from wider knowledge beyond science.
Are feelings computable?
Read Montague
Me – yes, and actually the other way round. It’s “affect” all the way down. No thoughts without feelings. (And for computability, see earlier.)
How much biodiversity do we need?
Giulio Boccaletti
Me – indeed, Requisite Diversity, less than 100% of what happens to exist circumstantially. (Again – see managing evolving systems and avoiding thinking we can play god.)
Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable?
Anthony Aguirre
Me – Yes. Fundamentally unpredictable – not usefully predictable – in the objectively causal sense. Only predictable at the kinds, of patterns, of kinds, of patterns, of kinds meta-levels.
How does a single human brain architecture create many kinds of human minds?
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Me – Just natural that it does, see unpredictability of specifics in any mind, in any emergent evolved thing, above.
Is a human brain capable of understanding a human brain?
Rene Scheu
Me – Yes. Seems I/we can.
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
Me – Obviously I don’t know, not my subject, but these “fine-tuning” coincidences are intriguing, suggesting we accidentally have constant values of some variables built into our fundamental science.
What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years?
Toby Ord
Me – kinda the question we’re all asking ourselves in a positive sense. My answer is to better understand how the world really works rather than clinging to the clearly inadequate fiction of everything being science.
Why are humans still so much more flexible in their thinking and everyday reasoning than machines?
Gary Marcus
Me – because we’re alive and have been evolving a lot longer.
Can human intuition ever be reduced to an algorithm?
Gerd Gigerenzer
Me – No. (See many earlier Q&A)
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
Me – Answered this one already. There is an intuitive suspicion that there is more than science – as in fact there is – and yet science continues to peddle its exclusive access to knowledge, true and good. If science came clean there would be much less suspicion and apparent “opposition”.
Could superintelligence be the purpose of the universe?
Maria Spiropulu
Me – Kinda, yes. It’s the optimum solution to maximum entropy question. Purpose as in an inevitable end.
How will predictive models in the social sciences achieve the accuracy and precision of those in the natural sciences?
Robert Kurzban
Me – they won’t and they shouldn’t be expected / held-to-account to that standard. Quality beats accuracy and precision. (Again, part of “natural science” coming clean.)
How does a thought become a feeling?
Marco Iacoboni
Me – again, already answered, other way round. All thoughts start as feelings. In cases where objective causal logic is right, it feels right.
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
Me – this loser still doesn’t get it.
Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible?
Emanuel Derman
Me – no, nor would they be desirable, nor have any relation to reality.
Is love really all you need?
Annalena McAfee
Me – yes, kinda, if you use the word love for the ineffable, qualitative basis of all relations.
Will the “hard problem” of consciousness dissolve (rather than be solved) as we learn more about the natural world?
Dale Jamieson
Me – Yes, and for those who’ve escaped the exclusive objective causal rationale of science, it is already dissolved. (See above).
Why is it that the maximum information we can pack into a region of space does not depend on the volume of the region, but only on the area that bounds it?
Donald Hoffman
Me – good, intriguing question, because it does indeed seem to be the case.
Is the number of interesting questions finite or not?
Chiara Marletto
Me – probably not, even with the “interesting” qualification. Not sure this is therefore an interesting question in itself?
What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind?
Richard Nisbett
Me – hold a world-model it can compare with observations of reality.
How can an aggregation of trillions of selfish, myopic cells discover the unwitting teamwork that turns that dynamic clump into a person who can love, notice, wonder, and keep a promise?
Dan Dennett
Me – I think that’s a question Dan already answered himself. I guess he’s asking it because not enough people paid attention to his answer.
If we want to make a real and effective science-based policy, should we change politics or science?
Luca De Biase
Me – both – science has a flaw in failing to recognise its own limitations, and sadly almost all human institutions including political ones have fallen foul of the same fallacy. Fixing one honestly, fixes both.
Are the ways qualia relate to computation, creativity to free will, risk to probability, morality to epistemology, all the same question?
David Deutsch
Me – knowing Deutsch, the probably are. Intriguing, but not necessarily an urgent question? Implies a massive compression of knowledge, and all computation is compression anyway – so valuable if not exactly necessary.
What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?
W Daniel Hills
Me – guess the simple answer is some version of the Free Energy Principle? (Good sign is how many people are trying to debunk FEP, suggesting it may really be a powerful truth.)
If we’re not the agents of ourselves (and it’s hard to see how we can be), how can we make sense of moral accountability (and how can we live coherently without it)?
Rebecca Goldstein
Me – a surprise to see Goldstein on this side of that question. If anyone understands that we are wilful agents beyond causally reductive determinism it would be her?
Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed?
Robert Sapolsky
Me – on the other hand, zero surprise to see Sapolsky on the wrong side of this. We do not lack free-will, we have exactly the requisite amount of it.
If science does in fact confirm that we lack free will, what are the implications for our notions of blame, punishment, reward, and moral responsibility?
Gerry Coyne
Me – Ha! and the other total absence of surprise. Said more than enough before about how Coyne doesn’t get it.
And so many more – that’s just 58 out of the 264 in total – questions that have simple answers because those asking misunderstand their own question?
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