- The proliferation of Chinese eugenics. – Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist.
- Black swan events, and the fact that we continue to rely on models that have been proven fraudulent. – Nassem Nicholas Taleb
- That we will be unable to defeat viruses by learning to push them beyond the error catastrophe threshold. – William McEwan, molecular biology researcher
- That pseudoscience will gain ground. – Helena Cronin, author, philospher
- That the age of accelerating technology will overwhelm us with opportunities to be worried. – Dan Sperber, social and cognitive scientist
- Genuine apocalyptic events. The growing number of low-probability events that could lead to the total devastation of human society. – Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society
- The decline in science coverage in newspapers. – Barbara Strauch, New York Times science editor
- Exploding stars, the eventual collapse of the Sun, and the problems with the human id that prevent us from dealing with them. — John Tooby, founder of the field of evolutionary psychology
- That the internet is ruining writing. – David Gelernter, Yale computer scientist
- That smart people—like those who contribute to Edge—won’t do politics. –Brian Eno, musician
- That there will be another supernova-like financial disaster. –Seth Lloyd, professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering at MIT
- That search engines will become arbiters of truth. —W. Daniel Hillis, physicist
I disagree with the basic premises of ninety percent of these fears, as perhaps could have been predicted from the fact that two of the first ten people they chose to ask study evopsych. (GOOD LORD, NUMBER NINE, GET A GRIP.)
- Hannah, self-certified really smart person
ETA Wait, I’m not done, this is too dumb. We live in massively the most literate society in history, and we use writing with such enormous frequency and flexibility that it’s finally approaching speech; the idea that this will “ruin writing” is unbelievably absurd. The “underpopulation bomb” and the “dearth of desirable mates” and the problem of Chinese eugenics are all racist and sexist concepts. Every theory that predicts the human race becoming stupider or somehow mentally “dulled” in any way is just flat-out not supported by the evidence. Lord, these people. There are a couple who are like “climate change!” and “people will stop dying!” and those are perfectly fair, and everyone else is like “being a successful well-educated white person stresses me out! People might not want to fuck me! People might not like what I like! Technology! Kids these days!!!!!!!!”
33. Men. –Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist
On the other hand, shout-out to my girl Helen Fisher.
lol evolutionary psychologists being considered smart people
OTOH, James O'Donnell of Georgetown and Robert Provine of UMBC (128 and 129) should be pals if they’re not already. They can found the No Worries Society.
eta: what drunky wrote this list?
‘72. “I worry we have yet to have a conversation about what seems to be a developing “new normal” about the presence of screens in the playroom and kindergarten” –Sherry Turkle, pshcyhologist, MIT’
oh ok
antique-romantic
