Optimism

A few days ago a friend sent me this link, knowing my curmudgeonly bent.  

The Edge Annual Question – 2007

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

http://edge.org/q2007/q07_inde…

It’s a great site, and full of things to think about. Mostly Science based.

I know Compound F is familiar with it

https://www.docudharma.com/show…

maybe other are too.  plf515 I’m guessing, Kurzweil is my first selection.

https://www.docudharma.com/show…

and with recent inspiration from Fearless Leader

https://www.docudharma.com/show…

and the early classic

https://www.docudharma.com/show…

and most succinctly:

What is the basis for your optimism? (4.00 / 2)

“We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.” Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, by James Joyce(1922).  

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by: oculus @ Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 15:47:57 PDT

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optimism (4.00 / 2)

Reality is the result of war between two rival groups of progammers, so….Yell Louder!!!

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by: buhdydharma @ Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 19:22:44 PDT

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Me? Not so much.

In my search of DD, I found 33 comments with the word ‘optimism’, 13 with ‘optimist’, 51 with ‘optimistic’,  some of these comments included the word ‘not’.

Below is a sampling of some of the things written by a selection of the rest of the world’s best minds.  I haven’t read every one, so I just picked some whose names I recognized, then a couple of whom I had never heard.  (sorry, it’s still beaten into me).   Some are chosen just for their snark value. My sense so far is that many are optimistic about advances/improvements in their field, and then how maybe this translates into a better world.  Like I said, there’s lots there, so those of you who are looking for some rays of sunshine, take your time and browse.  Post if you find something you like.  I believe most are using a ‘soft’ definition of ‘optimism’, along the lines of ‘some things will get better’, contrast with ‘worst-case scenario’.

So I’m optimistic that we will make it through without suffering an existential catastrophe. It would be helpful if we gave the two existential threats I discuss above a higher priority.  

Ray Kurzweil

Inventor and Technologist; Author,  The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

This is my fave of course.

The good news is that there is presently no chance that we could extinguish all of life – the bacterial “slimosphere” alone extends some ten miles into the earth – and as yet we can only make life truly miserable for the vast majority of people, not extinguish human life entirely. I would expect this state of affairs to continue indefinitely.

Robert Trivers

Evolutionary Biologist, Rutgers University; Coauthor, Genes In Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements

Okay .  I’ll give you some.

However, I think that the focus on pessimism is hugely misleading. The pattern of the last five decades is that by and large the most important factors in human life have improved immensely. By and large there is no better time to be alive than today, and any rational estimate is that we will continue to be in a phase of continued improvement.

Nathan Myhrvold

CEO, Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures; Former Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation;

Physicist, Paleontologist,Photographer, Chef

Back .

A few years ago, I wrote a short book entitled Our Final Century? I guessed that, taking all risks into account, there was only a 50 percent chance that civilisation would get through to 2100 without a disastrous setback. This seemed to me a far from cheerful conclusion. However, I was surprised by the way my colleagues reacted to the book: many thought a catastrophe was even more likely than I did, and regarded me as an optimist. I stand by this optimism.

Lord Martin Rees

President, The Royal Society; Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics; Master, Trinity College, University of Cambridge; Author, Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity’s Survival

and forth:

Being optimistic means being able to see the extraordinary progress achieved in these last centuries and the incredible cultural diffusion that has derived from it. Progress is a problematic concept nowadays, but if it is interpreted and used in the right way, it can still bring us to even greater goals than the ones we already achieved by now.

Victor Bo

Director, Festival Della Scienzia, Genova

Very practical, web-based:

So, whence the optimism? One means to propel optimism is to suggest a tactic that might enable its fruition. Briefly, I suggest that papers be published on the Internet, reviews be submitted by named reviewers; and that others rate (and review) the reviews. Both papers and reviewers receive ratings that are updated on an ongoing basis. While this won’t protect against biased submissions, it will protect against biased rejections-and at least enable a voice for original or contrary perspectives.

Beatrice Golomb M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego

neuro-cultural:

Thus, it seems quite plausible to me that we are hard-wired towards making Us/Them distinctions and not being all that nice to the Them. But what is anything but hard-wired is who counts as an Us and as a Them -we are so easily manipulated into changing those categories.

Robert Sapolsky

Neuroscientist, Stanford University, Author, A Primate’s Memoir

neuro-cultural, with reservations:

Because I believe that moral truths transcend the contingencies of culture, I think that human beings will eventually converge in their moral judgments. I am painfully aware, however, that we are living in a world where Muslims riot by the hundreds of thousands over cartoons, where Catholics oppose condom use in villages decimated by AIDS, and where the only “moral” judgment that seems guaranteed to unite the better part of humanity at this moment is that homosexuality is wrong. Which is to say that I am here celebrating our moral progress while being convinced that billions of my neighbors are profoundly

confused about good and evil.      

I may be a bigger optimist than I thought.

Sam Harris

Neuroscience Researcher; Author, The End of Faith

literary:

Multiculturalism predicated upon the maintenance of sharply distinct cultural identities. This will help new generations to get rid of “unreal loyalties”, to use the words of Virginia Woolf, to nation, flag or local customs and manners. Multilingual citizens of a European space will be more tolerant and less sensitive to local allegiances and partialities. Their tolerance of diverse cultural identities, in the old “mono” style or

recomposed, will be built from within, and not learned as a social norm.

Gloria Origgi

Philosopher and Researcher, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique; Author, Text-E: Text in the Age of the Internet

WTF?

I propose that we do need to sleep, but not as long as we do. The duration of sleep may be an outdated adaptation to prehistoric ecological constraints that no longer exist.

Marcel Kinsbourne

Psychologist, The New School; Coauthor, Children’s Learning and Attention Problems

http://www.answers.com/topic/o…

(and perhaps more pressing, why does that URL end with ‘cat=health’?)

this just in from teh orange:  soooo maybe……….

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…