What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better

Cover
Contents
Preface: The Annual Edge Question
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Daniel C. Dennett
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Incredible Odds
Brian Greene: Our Species Can Unravel Mysteries
Jared Diamond: Good Choices Sometimes Prevail
Steven Pinker: The Decline of Violence
John Horgan: War Will End
John McCarthy: World Peace
Sam Harris: We Are Making Moral Progress
Chris Anderson: The Unending Stream of Bad News is Itself Flawed
Martin Rees: Techno-Optimism and the Energy Challenge
Carlo Rovelli: The Divide Between Scientific Thinking and the Rest of Our Culture Is Decreasing
Daniel C. Dennett: The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion
Andrew Brown: A Proper Scientific Understanding of Irrationality (and Religion in Particular)
Richard Dawkins: The Final Scientific Enlightenment
Michael Shermer: Science and the Decline of Magic
Clay Shirky: Reliance on Evidence
J. Craig Venter: Evidence-Based Decision Making Will Transform Society
Douglas Rushkoff: Human Beings Are Different from Their Ancestral Species
Anton Zeilinger: The Future of Science, Religion, and Technology
Leonard Susskind: Going Beyond Our Darwinian Roots
Geoffrey Miller: A Secular Humanist Death
Marcelo Gleiser: The War Between Science and Religion Will See New Light
Martin E. P. Seligman: The First Coming
Freeman J. Dyson: A New Tool Leading Us Toward a Deep Understanding of Human Nature
Jerry Adler: Sometime in the 21st Century I Will Understand 20th-Century Physics
Gino Segre: The Future of String Theory
Lawrence M. Krauss: Renewal of Science for the Public Good
Robert Shapiro: Strangers in Our Midst
Frank Wilczek: Physics Will Not Achieve a Theory of Everything
Paul Steinhardt: Bullish on Cosmology
Lee Smolin: The Return of the Discipline of Experiment Will Transform Our
Knowledge of Fundamental Physics
Lisa Randall: People Will Increasingly Value Truth (over Truthiness)
Charles Seife: Physics Will Flourish Once More
Karl Sabbagh: The Optimism of Scientists
Alexander Vilenkin: What Lies Beyond Our Cosmic Horizon?
Max Tegmark: We’re Not Insignificant After All
George F. Smoot: Coraggio, Domani Sarà Peggio!
James O’Donnell: Progress Is Surprisingly Durable
Philip G. Zimbardo: The Situational Focus
Roger Bingham: The Women of the 110th Congress
David Berreby: The Zombie Concept of Identity
Robert Sapolsky: Us/Them Dichotomies Will Become Far More Benign
Gloria Origgi: Multilingualism in Europe
Rebecca Goldstein: We Have the Ability to Understand One Another
Diane F. Halpern: How Technology Is Saving the World
Marco Iacoboni: Neuroscience Will Improve Our Society
Marc D. Hauser: The End of -isms
Jamshed Bharucha: The Globalization of Higher Education
Nathan Myhrvold: The Power of Educated People to Make Important Innovations
Brian Eno: And Now the Good News
Andrian Kreye: We Will Overcome Agnotology (the Cultural Production of Ignorance)
William Calvin: The Major Climate Makeover
Tor Nørretranders: Optimism Has a Bright Future
Gregory Benford: Save the Arctic–Now
George Dyson: The Return of Commercial Sailing Vessels
Stephen H. Schneider: The Ozone Hole
Scott D. Sampson: A New, Environmentally Sustainable Worldview
James Geary: PCT Allows Individuals to Address a Global Problem
Brian Goodwin: The Challenge Presented by Peak Oil
Seth Lloyd: Once and Future Optimism
Colin Blakemore: The Shifting Ratio of Benefit and Cost
Alun Anderson: The Sunlight-Powered Future
Oliver Morton: The Coming Solar Power Boom
Gregory Cochran: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Adam Bly: Science on the Agenda
Kevin Kelly: We Will Embrace the Reality of Progress
Stewart Brand: Cities Cure Poverty
Alison Gopnik: New Children Will Be Born
Paul C. W. Davies: A One-Way Ticket to Mars
Garniss Curtis: Geomorphic Evidence for Early Life on Mars
Rodney Brooks: By the Early 22nd Century, We Will Be Living on More Than One Tiny Ball in Our Solar System
David Buss: The Future of Human Mating
Nancy Etcoff: The Hedonic Set Point Can Be Raised
Helen Fisher: Romantic Love
Geoffrey Carr: Malthus Was Wrong
W. Daniel Hillis: The Long View of Demographics
Ian Wilmut: Research Will Provide the First Effective Treatments for Many Diseases
Philip Campbell: Early Cancer Detection
Stuart A. Kauffman: Cancer Stem Cells and Novel Cancer Therapies
Jill Neimark: The Human Epigenome Project
Peter Schwartz: Growing Older
Leo M. Chalupa: We Will Lead Healthy and Productive Lives Well Past Our Tenth Decade
Marvin Minsky: New Prospects of Immortality
George Church: Personal Genomics
Samuel Barondes: Finding Mental Illness Genes
Andy Clark: The End of the ‘Natural’
Terrence Sejnowski: A Breakthrough in Understanding Intelligence Is Around the Corner
Jordan Pollack: AI Will Arise
David Dalrymple: Technology in Education
Neil Gershenfeld: Science As a Broadly Participatory Activity
Keith Devlin: We Will Finally Get Mathematics Education Right
Alex (Sandy) Pentland: The Nervous System of the Human Race Has Come Alive
Joichi Ito: Emergent Democracy and Global Voices
Larry Sanger: Humanity’s Coming Enlightenment
Chris Anderson: Metcalfe’s Law of Minds
Dan Sperber: Altruism on the Web
Roger C. Schank: The End of the Commoditization of Knowledge
Gary F. Marcus: Metacognition for Kids
Sherry Turkle: The Immeasurables
Leon Lederman: The Coming Revolution in Science Education
Chris DiBona: High-Resolution Images of Earth Will Thwart Global Villainy
Daniel Goleman: Transparency Is Inevitable
Esther Dyson: Power Is Moving to the Masses–As a Market
Jason McCabe Calacanis: Capitalism Is Aligning with the Good
Juan Enriquez: Individuals Are Empowered in a Knowledge-Driven Economy
Daniel L. Everett: Humans Will Learn to Learn from Diversity
Howard Gardner: Early Detection of Learning Disabilities or Difficulties
Joel Garreau: The Human Response to Vast Change Will Involve Strange Bounces
David Gelernter: The Future of Software
Steve Grand: Getting It All Wrong
Mahzarin R. Banaji: Unraveling Beliefs
Robert Trivers: Long-Term Trends Toward Honesty to Others and Oneself
Jonathan Haidt: The Baby Boomers Will Soon Retire
Haim Harari: The Evolutionary Ability of Humankind to Do the Right Things
John Gottman: When Men Are Involved in the Care of Their Infants, the Cultures Do Not Make War
Judith Rich Harris: The Survival of Friendship
Roger Highfield: The Public Will Become Immune to Hype
Donald D. Hoffman: Solving the Mind-Body Problem
Walter Isaacson: Print As a Technology
Xeni Jardin: Truth Prevails–Sometimes Technology Helps
Stephen M. Kosslyn: Human Intelligence Can Be Increased Dramatically
Kai Krause: A New Contentism
Howard Rheingold: The Young Will Take Repair of the World into Their Own Hands
Linda Stone: Toward a Broader Sense of Global Issues and Possibilities
Ray Kurzweil: Optimism on the Continuum Between Confidence and Hope
Timothy Taylor: Skeuomorphism
Marti Hearst: The Rise of Usability
Jaron Lanier: Interpersonal Communication Will Become More Profound;
Rationality Will Become More Romantic
Rudy Rucker: Universal Telepathy
Nicholas Humphrey: The Best Is Yet to Come
Elizabeth F. Loftus: The Restoration of Innocence
Thomas Metzinger: I Will Be Dead Wrong Again
Pamela McCorduck: The Modeling of Group Behavior
David G. Myers: Assistive Listening
Randolph M. Nesse: We Will Find New Ways to Block Pessimism
Mark Pagel: The Limits of Democracy
David Pescovitz: The World Is a Wunderkammer
Ernst Pöppel: Overcoming the Burden of Monocausalitis
Robert R. Provine: Things Could Always Be Worse
Matt Ridley: The Future
Paul Saffo: Humankind Is Particularly Good at Muddling
Gerald Holton: The Increasing Coalescence of Scientific Disciplines
Barry C. Smith: The End of Hegemonies
Steven Strogatz: Understanding Sleep
Marcel Kinsbourne: Shortening Sleep Will Enrich Our Lives
Michael Wolff: The Joys of Failing Enterprises
Cory Doctorow: Copying Is What Bits Are For
David Deutsch: Whether Solutions Are Possible
Beatrice Golomb: Reforming Scientific and Medical Publishing via the Internet
Piet Hut: The Real Purity of Pure Science
David Bodanis: A Core Decency Even the Worst Government Machinations Can’t Hold Down
Simon Baron-Cohen: The Rise of Autism and the Digital Age
Irene Pepperberg: A Second (and Better) Enlightenment
Corey S. Powell: Corrective Goggles for Our Conceptual Myopia
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