Dave Pollard has an excellent post on his blog about The Edge's question "What's your dangerous idea?" Here's an excerpt:
I was stunned by the blandness of the responses and the utter disconnectedness of respondents from the critical issues of our world today. From the social scientists, who are overwhelmingly from the so-called 'cognitive sciences', we get navel-gazing speculations on consciousness that are neither dangerous nor useful. From the technologists we get technophilia, muddle-headed blather about technology as religion and as the saver of the universe, dangerous only its naivety. From the real scientists we get shopworn retreads about the compatibility or incompatibility of science and religion. From philosophers we get starry-eyed dreaming about a new political order, a world where people suddenly stop behaving the way they do and start behaving responsibly. What planet do these people live on? [...]
Perhaps if Edge proprietor John Brockman could get past the idea that his beloved "Third Culture", the blending of elite intellectuals from both the scientific and literary world, doesn't need the collective intelligence of the great unwashed rest of the world to inform, provoke, qualify, amplify and act on its ideas, and, as Einstein expounded and exemplified, to keep us all self-critical and humble, Edge might stand a chance of once again becoming relevant to the real world. In the meantime, the most dangerous idea that emerges from this self-referential group is the propensity of elites to groupthink and to exaggerate their own awareness, knowledge, importance, power, authority, and relevance.
Link: How to Save the World: Blinded by science: What's your dangerous idea? (via Scott Rosenberg's blog)
He goes on to offer some truly dangerous ideas from various thinkers. It's worth reading in full.
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