More Changed Minds

I changed my own mind!

On Saturday, I offered a short sampling of some of the 165 answers to the Edge annual question, "What have you changed your mind about?"

I said then, and thought, that presenting a few of the ideas previously mined by Alex Steffen would be sufficient. But now I've decided to add to that with excerpts from several more of the many interesting responses to the question. So, here we go...

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LEE M. SILVER
Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Policy, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton

Like the vast majority of academic scientists and philosophers alive today, I accept ... that when your body dies, you cease to exist — without any reservations. I also used to agree ... that modern education would inevitably give rise to a populace that rejected the idea of a supernatural soul. But on this point, I have changed my mind. . .

I was convinced that scientific facts and rational argument alone could win the day with people who were sufficiently intelligent and educated. To my mind, the rejection of rational thought by such people was a sign of disingenuousness to serve political or ideological goals. . .

While its mode of expression may change over cultures and time, irrationality and mysticism seem to be an integral part of normal human nature, even among highly educated people. No matter what scientific and technological advances are made in the future, I now doubt that supernatural beliefs will ever be eradicated from the human species.

KEVIN KELLY
Editor-At-Large, Wired

Much of what I believed about human nature, and the nature of knowledge, has been upended by the Wikipedia. I knew that the human propensity for mischief among the young and bored — of which there were many online — would make an encyclopedia editable by anyone an impossibility. I also knew that even among the responsible contributors, the temptation to exaggerate and misremember what we think we know was inescapable, adding to the impossibility of a reliable text. . .

The Wikipedia has changed my mind, a fairly steady individualist, and lead me toward this new social sphere. I am now much more interested in both the new power of the collective, and the new obligations stemming from individuals toward the collective. In addition to expanding civil rights, I want to expand civil duties. I am convinced that the full impact of the Wikipedia is still subterranean, and that its mind-changing power is working subconsciously on the global millennial generation, providing them with an existence proof of a beneficial hive mind, and an appreciation for believing in the impossible.

WILLIAM CALVIN
Professor, The University of Washington School of Medicine

Back in 1968, when I first heard about global warming while visiting the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, almost everyone thought that serious problems were several centuries in the future. That's because no one realized how ravenous the world's appetite for coal and oil would become during a mere 40 years. They also thought that problems would develop slowly. Wrong again.

I tuned into abrupt climate change about 1984, when the Greenland ice cores showed big jumps in temperature and snowfall, stepping up and down in a mere decade but lasting centuries. I worried about global warming setting off another flip but I still didn't revise my notions about a slow time scale for the present greenhouse warming.

Greenland changed my mind. About 2004, the speedup of the Greenland glaciers made a lot of climate scientists revise their notions about how fast things were changing. When the summer earthquakes associated with glacial movement doubled and then redoubled in a mere ten years, it made me feel as if I was standing on shaky ground, that bigger things could happen at any time.

MARTIN REES
President, The Royal Society

Public discourse on very long-term planning is riddled with inconsistencies. Mostly we discount the future very heavily — investment decisions are expected to pay off within a decade or two. But when we do look further ahead — in discussions of energy policy, global warming and so forth — we underestimate the possible pace of transformational change. In particular, we need to keep our minds open — or at least ajar — to the possibility that humans themselves could change drastically within a few centuries. . .

It seems absurd to regard humans as the culmination of the evolutionary tree. Any creatures witnessing the Sun's demise 6 billion years hence won't be human — they could be as different from us as we are from slime mould. . .

[W]e need to be mindful that it may not be people like us who confront the consequences of our actions today. We are custodians of a 'posthuman' future — here on Earth and perhaps beyond — that can't just be left to writers of science fiction.

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Once again, remember that this is just a sampling of the full rich index of ideas at Edge. I hope you'll be inspired to go through the answers for yourself and reflect upon them, and then let us know what you've changed your mind about.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog