What is your dangerous idea?

[Sandman]

The Edge asks an essay question of 100 scientists and thinkers each year.

This year the question is, "What is your dangerous idea?"


Some of the essays are provocative. Enjoy.

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

[Mustaine]

i find this one interesting:

ROGER C. SCHANK
Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Chief Learning Officer, Trump University; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated than Our Own
 

No More Teacher's Dirty Looks

After a natural disaster, the newscasters eventually excitedly announce that school is finally open so no matter what else is terrible where they live, the kids are going to school. I always feel sorry for the poor kids.

My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don't learn much.....

it's on page 2



another really good one:

RICHARD E. NISBETT
Professor of Psychology, Co-Director of the Culture and Cognition Program, University of Michigan; Author, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently. . . And Why


Telling More Than We Can Know

Do you know why you hired your most recent employee over the runner-up? Do you know why you bought your last pair of pajamas? Do you know what makes you happy and unhappy?

Don't be too sure. The most important thing that social psychologists have discovered over the last 50 years is that people are very unreliable informants about why they behaved as they did, made the judgment they did, or liked or disliked something. In short, we don't know nearly as much about what goes on in our heads as we think. In fact, for a shocking range of things, we don't know the answer to "Why did I?" any better than an observer....

page 3

[Sandman]

Whoa... The man makes a good point.

KEVIN KELLY
Editor-At-Large, Wired; Author, New Rules for the New Economy


More anonymity is good

More anonymity is good: that's a dangerous idea.

Fancy algorithms and cool technology make true anonymity in mediated environments more possible today than ever before. At the same time this techno-combo makes true anonymity in physical life much harder. For every step that masks us, we move two steps toward totally transparent unmasking. We have caller ID, but also caller ID Block, and then caller ID-only filters. Coming up: biometric monitoring and little place to hide. A world where everything about a person can be found and archived is a world with no privacy, and therefore many technologists are eager to maintain the option of easy anonymity as a refuge for the private.

However in every system that I have seen where anonymity becomes common, the system fails. The recent taint in the honor of Wikipedia stems from the extreme ease which anonymous declarations can be put into a very visible public record. Communities infected with anonymity will either collapse, or shift the anonymous to pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind an invented nickname. Or voting, where you can authenticate an identity without tagging it to a vote.

Anonymity is like a rare earth metal. These elements are a necessary ingredient in keeping a cell alive, but the amount needed is a mere hard-to-measure trace. In larger does these heavy metals are some of the most toxic substances known to a life. They kill. Anonymity is the same. As a trace element in vanishingly small doses, it's good for the system by enabling the occasional whistleblower, or persecuted fringe. But if anonymity is present in any significant quantity, it will poison the system.

There's a dangerous idea circulating that the option of anonymity should always be at hand, and that it is a noble antidote to technologies of control. This is like pumping up the levels of heavy metals in your body into to make it stronger.

Privacy can only be won by trust, and trust requires persistent identity, if only pseudo-anonymously. In the end, the more trust, the better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be keep as close to zero as possible.
 

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

[indy007]

Anybody read the one about democracy dying? I think it's on page 3.

[Sandman]

Yeah... interesting one there.

Check out page six... The idea of zero parental influence.

[Charon]

Hey! This guy ripped off MY dangerous idea.

The human brain and its products are incapable of understanding the truths about the universe

Our brains may never be well-enough equipped to understand the universe and we are fooling ourselves if we think they will.

Why should we expect to be able eventually to understand how the universe originated, evolved, and operates? While human brains are complex and capable of many amazing things, there is not necessarily any match between the complexity of the universe and the complexity of our brains, any more than a dog's brain is capable of understanding every detail of the world of cats and bones, or the dynamics of stick trajectories when thrown. Dogs get by and so do we, but do we have a right to expect that the harder we puzzle over these things the nearer we will get to the truth? Recently I stood in front of a three metre high model of the Ptolemaic universe in the Museum of the History of Science in Florence and I remembered how well that worked as a representation of the motions of the planets until Copernicus and Kepler came along.

Charon

[*NDM*JohnnyX]

Is there any about me putting a JATO unit in my Fairlane?

[lazs2]

according to that site..... I have never had an idea or even a thought that wasn't dangerous.   Buncha overthinkers.

lazs

[JTs]

trying to figure out away to inject hydrogen into my Caterpillar C-16 that will keep the crankshaft and rods in the block

[x0847Marine]

So instead of having to involve the Fed in every transaction — and using money that requires being paid back with interest — we can invent our own currencies and create value with our labor.

This could work, imagine paying a $50 grocery bill by peddeling out XX amout of power... the store could eliminate its power bill by trading you the food you want for the power they need. They get say $150 in power, you get to eat.

[Shane]

Originally posted by x0847Marine
This could work, imagine paying a $50 grocery bill by peddeling out XX amout of power... the store could eliminate its power bill by trading you the food you want for the power they need. They get say $150 in power, you get to eat.

4- Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users and HTC. Flaming or abusing users is not tolerated.

[JCLerch]

Hmm, I guess my idea is too simple.

Electric Gatling gun firing BBs, hidden behind the front grill of my truck, aimed with TrackIR 6DOF, with the fire button connected to the high beam switch (plus maybe a safety of some kind, but probably not)


"Here, let me help you with turning your turn signal off {for good}"

[Leslie]

I remember reading about one of those gatling guns, but it was a .22 and could cut a car in half, and was real and I think, hand held.  Remember reading about that back in the 80s in a gun magazine.  It was used by police.




Les

[storch]

Originally posted by lazs2
Buncha overthinkers.

lazs

you could have just said "liberals"

[type_char]

legalize full auto assault wepons.