Dangerous ideas

[Martin]

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html

 

what idea seems to YOU to have the most potential for danger?

 

 

here is a list of what 100 or more other people thought were dangerous ideas, and why.

[Martin]

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html#smolin

 

it is an interesting practice. every year Edge magazine chooses a question and asks a hundred or so creative imaginative people to answer it

and they always seem to come up with as many different answers

 

I thought Lee Smolin had an interesting response

[DV8 2XL]

That moldering two-thousand year old documents contain a true record of the will of the intelligence that created the universe, and that it's principles should be held even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is wrong.

[Martin]

That moldering two-thousand year old documents contain a true record of the will of the intelligence that created the universe, and that it's principles should be held even in the of overwhelming evidence that it is wrong.

 

great answer DV. one of the respondents actually was talking about that.

he is a clinical psychologist who works with people who have suffered brain damage and who, in order to recover and function, CONSTRUCT fairytale bullsh*t narratives FOR THEMSELVES that may seem bizarre to us but which serve to explain what they are experiencing. they understand and integrate themselves and cope by, in part, mythologizing. he can watch this happening

 

at microscopic scale it is like the invention and growth of religious ideas

 

maybe I can find the guy's essay. it is one of the 100-some responses to the Edge 2006 question

 

yeah, check out what Feinberg said

 

I am not saying he is right or wrong, or that fairytales are good or bad. I just mean that he has had a chance to do clinical observation of how people make up narratives to deal with some difficult reality---and it looks creepily like "religiogenesis" (at least to me)

 

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_6.html#feinberg

 

see what you think

[sunspot]

The psychologist Jung called this mythological factor within humans the collective unconscious. In loose terms, it would be genetic based personality software, part of the human brain at birth, which makes human nature similar in all humans. For example, falling in love is very similar, independant of culture and time in human history. Many cultures with no physical connection often create similar mythologies, although the names will different. Even some primitive cultures have myths of a great flood. UFO's are probably a modern myth stemming from the same source within the psyche and shows their ability to project from within. Their mythological nature may or may not be the basis for religion. But what is interesting is that all myth characters are usually higher up in ability than us mere humans, suggesting the collective unconscious being a source of higher human potential.

[bascule]

I thought Lee Smolin had an interesting response

 

Yay!

 

<3 Evolutionary Cosmology!

[padren]

what idea seems to YOU to have the most potential for danger?

 

In God We Trust

[bascule]

what idea seems to YOU to have the most potential for danger?

 

The most dangerous idea I can think of is that humans will be obsolete in 40 years time

[PhDP]

It's very interesting (although it's quite strange to see Sheldrake among them).

 

For me, the most dangerous idea is not very new, it is that "criminals and terrorists are "intrinsically evil", should be punished, and my god, don't you try to understand them you're justifying their actions". While criminality and terrorism aren't only the consequences of poverty and social problems, it would certainly help to have a world a little more equitable, both economically and socially.

 

Evolutionary Cosmology!

 

That's the funny thing, there's a formidable expansion of natural selection everywhere in science (physics, psychology, sociology...), except in evolutionary biology.

[bombus]

Great site, great ideas, particularly Scott Sampson (whoa!) and Lee Smolin (as far as I got)...

 

Lee Smolin says "The basic method of science after Einstein seems to be: identify something in your theory that is playing the role of an absolute background, that is needed to define the laws that govern objects in your theory, and understand it more deeply as a contingent property, which itself evolves subject to law."

 

I would argue that with all science (all everything), the background is consciousness, but that's a different thread (Neurology/Quantum Consciousness) well worth visiting.