the Evil Line

The Edge question for 2008 is up. They ask people what they've changed their mind about, which is a great question.

My favorite responses are from Stewart Brand, who says that they don't make stuff like they used to, which is a good thing, and Sherry Turkle who says - well, just read hers, it's good.

The theme I've caught this year is a certain disillusionment with science. Rebecca Goldstein argues that falsifiability is not that important, and Irene Pepperberg is against hypothesis testing. With just those two, the scientific method is crumbling. Add in two shocking realizations, one from Colin Tudge who no longer thinks science is omnipotent and the other from Ken Ford who has figured out that sometimes scientists do bad things. Also in this category is Karl Sabbagh, who doubts the value of expert opinion, and Rupert Sheldrake, who makes the broader and valuable point that skepticism is never from a neutral point of view, and is never an unqualified good thing.

I appreciate the people who make a focused point rather than a broad philosophical statement. Unfortunately, these people are relatively few. Lisa Randall talks about neutrino mixing, and Helena Cronin discusses how differences in variance rather than in mean explain the over representation of men in the sciences.

Keith Devlin argues that math is socially constructed rather than some manifestation of absolute truth; I agree, of course. Finally, we have Daniel Gilbert, who says being able to change your mind is maybe not a good thing, and makes a connection to love and romance.