future quiz 11

1. (T/F) Howard Gardner agrees with Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) that there's nothing mysterious about talent and creativity.

2. Timothy Taylor cites ___________ on language to make the point that invention and technology, "essential to our long-term survival," require prior cultural __________.

3. The downside of medical miracles due to "old-fashioned" nanotechnololgy would be the ________ (expansion, contraction, disappearance) of free time.

4. (T/F) Marc Hauser says the brain evolved to process information mainly about the present.

5. Those with ________________ already have an evolutionary advantage, says Juan Enriquez. He predicts our grandchildren will do what?

6. (T/F) Stuart Kauffman says Darwinian preadaptations or exaptations. are predictable.

7. Gregory Benford predicts a lifespan of ___ and says it will make people ____ (more, less) mature, responsible, and inclined to take the long view.

8. Marcel Gleiser says we are what we _______, & exist only as long as ___... What does he predict?

9. The Greeenland and Arctic ice sheets contain enough water to cover the planet to what depth?

10. How will climate challenges alter our perspective on the future, according to William Calvin?

intro quiz 11

1. "John the Scot" (actually Irish), identifying God with the universe, was a _______. He said humans have free will, that reason is ________ (inferior, superior), and that Genesis should be read _________. (allegorically, literally)

2. Avicenna synthesized Islam with Plato ___ Aristotle. (and, but not), and said univserals exist _____ (before, during, after, all of the above) the things that "partake" of them.

3. Averroes argued against _____. (God, immortality, philosophy)

4. Abelard, boyfriend of _______, called _________ the road to truth.

5. Anselm's ___________ argument said an existing thing is greater than a non-existing thing.

6. For Aquinas, natural theology refers to reason and ____________. He distinguished it from ________ theology.

7.Aquinas said there has to be a First Cause and a _________ Being, distinct from the contingencies of nature.

8. Besides false displays of wisdom, Roger Bacon identified what other causes of  ignorance?

9. Scholasticism ___________ (recognized, denied) the dispute between Plato and Aristotle concerning universals, siding with ______.

10. William of Occam's famous "razor" made a virtue of _______. (simplicity, complexity, necessity, pedantry)

11. The medieval worldview borrowed its triadic social structure from _____'s depiction of the individual soul: ordinary people are analogous to which body part? 

teme play

1. Irene Pepperberg says understanding the brain will enable us to identify ________ more readily.

2. The most powerful brain-altering technology is _______, says Alison Gopnik.

3. Kevin Slavin claims the difference between genuine memory and digital storage is that _______ is imperfect, and disappears over time.

4. (T/F) Susan Blackmore says technological memes, or "temes," are our newest and best tools for manipulating the environment.

5.Useful information grows at a _______ (linear, exponential) rate, and Charles Seife foresees a "Borgesian nightmare" of more than we can use or process, unless we can achieve wisdom about ___...

6. Physicist Kenneth Ford says this is the era of "if it is technically feasible _______________." (it will happen, it's too expensive, we can choose)

7. Just as we expect most public spaces to be free of nudity, sex, profanity, and toxic smoke, Sam Harris predicts we'll come to expect public  _______.

8. (T/F) Freeman Dyson says radiotelepathy will necessarily enhance mutual understanding and peaceful cooperation, and make us better stewards of the planet.

9. New, distributed, and pervasive artificial intelligence will get smarter each time someone _____________, writes Kevin Kelly.

10. More 'aggregation of individual preferences" will result, says Gloria Orrigi, in a softer and more civilized Web controlled by ____________. (precise formulas, human experiences, universal history)

being alive

It's another gorgeous day for a walk in the Warner Park woods, where yesterday I paused to catch my breath at one of the many commemorative benches scattered along the trails.

It's not hard to be "pro-life" on days like this.

without faith

Christians & Muslims

1. The idea of the _________ was shocking, after so many centuries of Jewish emphasis of God's transcendence.

2. The ___________, viewed as an event that relieved humans of ultimate responsibility for their sins and "put things right between God and humanity," is difficult to square with ordinary notions of justice.

3. The cornerstone of Christian philosophy is the idea of ________ ________.

4. Philo reinterpreted Biblical tales as mythic statements about ____...

5. ____ interpreted Jesus as the son of God and declared the crucifixion an atonement for human sins.

6. (T/F) Plotinus said the world is an objectified overflow (or "emanation") of God's thought, so that even the lowest forms of existence are _________.

7. Augustine thought free will was a ______. (blessing, curse, illusion) His significance for later philosophy is seen in his ________ turn, an attempt to gain self-knowledge which would also lead to knowledge of God.

8. Muhammad identified Allah as _____________ (the same as, different from) the God of Christianity and Judaism. Islam originally was _________ (open to, hostile to) Christians and Jews.

9. _____ (Like, unlike) Christians, Muslims believe individuals have immortal souls and that the problem of evil is solved by free will.

10. _____ (Like, unlike) Platonists and neo-Platonists, Muslims consider the material world real and good.

future shock

1. (T/F) Rodney Brooks thinks our detailed discovery of the nature of extrasolar life is immanent.

2. Paul Davies' view that the universe is biofriendly would  be strengthened by _____...

3. "We" will begin colonizing the Milky Way in _____, speculates (fantasizes?) John Gottman.

4. If there is other life in the universe, George Dyson suspects, it will be (is?)  _______ life.

5. We will not have to die anymore, says David Eagleman, if we can ___...

6. The key to creating a "technology of embodied information" is to think of life as an ______.

7. Gary Marcus says when we figure out how the brain works we won't need ___...

8.Stanley Kubrick says death is ________.

9. Our future depends on how ___________ we make the initial conditions of AI, says Nick Bostrom.

10. Gregory Paul predicts that most future  ______ will choose to become _______. (humans/robotic, robots/human, religions/mystical).

Philo to Mohammed

1. _____ was a Jewish Platonist who equated Plato's "Good" (and other Ideas or Universals) with ____.

2. _____ was a Christian Platonist who read the Bible as _________.

3. In Plotinus's neo-Platonic philosophy God, also known as _____, "emanates" power (as the sun emanates light) down through _____, then soul, and finally to _______. On this view the body is ____. (good, bad, unreal)

4. (T/F) Christianity after Plotinus tolerated all forms of free thought.

5. The end of scientific free thinking and the beginning of the Dark Ages are symbolized in the death of pagan philosopher/scientist/mathematician _______, probably ordered by ________.

6. (T/F) The Roman Empire fell, in part, because (unlike Christianity) it was widely thought to be overly superstitious and austere.

7. The Nicene Creed established the ______ as Christian orthodoxy (with the Emperor's support) in 379.

8. ________ (Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory) was the only "Father" who was also a  philosopher. He said only the ______ (past, present, future, eternal) truly exists. (T/F) He concluded that reason alone can discover truth.

9._________, condemned to death by Emperor Theodoric, sought happiness and found consolation in _________.

10. ________ said the the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

11. Under Mohammed, Muslim religion rose in the ___ century.

changing everything

1. John Brockman's edge.org celebrates the ideas of what he calls the _____ _______, consisting of empirically-oriented thinkers whose work he says is re-defining what it means to be human.The 2009 Edge question was ____________________. Dan Dennett says _____________ will change everything.

2. Scott Sampson mentions the fast-growing industry of __________ and says we're the first generation to face what prospect?

3. Craig Venter says we'll soon all know our own __________, and can use that knowledge to _________ life.

4. A Duke neuroscientist predicts significant changes in the human form a hundred years from now, James Geary writes, because of a new type of _____________ interface allowing perceptual experience even at distances of millions of miles.

5. Corey Powell estimates the odds of genetically-engineered children as ___%, of significant life extension as ___%, and of conscious machines as ___%.

6. So far, says Danny Hillis, technology has made the collective human conversation ______ but not _______. For that to happen, we need a _________.

7. Ernst Poppel says long-term stability requires the presence of ____________.

8. _________ (optimism, pessimism) about the future will change everything, says Brian Eno.

9. Discovering extraterrestrial life would turn humans into a single self-acknowledged species, an ____, says Douglas Rushkoff. It would cure our __________, says Paul Saffo.

10. For Dimitar Sasselov, synthetic biology means ________________.

time for "teletrailing"

I love hyperlinks, in blog posts and tweets. They help me conveniently follow and share trails of interest, and used judiciously can help me stay focused on one thread while noting and filing potentially relevant connections to others.


But Julian Baggini raises a reasonable worry, that over-reliance on them (which he calls "teletrailing") could make us even more scattered, superficial, and short-attention-spanned than we are already.

The most popular lament about new media is of course how it shortens attention spans and with it the shrinking of the amount of detail and information people are prepared to grapple with. Teletrailing seems to reduce the object of focus almost to vanishing point. The extent and rapidity of this change can be seen by how, already, blogs are looking quite earnest and old-fashioned. When blogs first appeared, they were compared unfavorably with newspaper and magazine articles. They tended to be shorter, were written more quickly, were light on research and heavy on opinion. But to those growing up on Facebook and Twitter, they must seem ponderously slow and long. For those who value thoughtful, crafted writing, this is a worrying development. 

Thanks, Julian. I needed more to worry about. I'll re-tweet the link to your essay and we can all collaborate on a solution. Eh-oh...