by Bill Benzon

As many of you know John Brockman is literary agent for a parliament of well-known scientists, science journalists, and others – Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, George Dyson and a cast of, if not thousands, perhaps hundreds. Each year he poses a question and they answer it. Then the answers are posted to the web at The Edge, Brockman’s website. This years’ question, which elicited 206 responses:

What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?

I’ve been through them, though only quickly, and selected three for comment: prediction error minimization, Bayes’s Theorem, and attractors.

Prediction Error Minimization

Andy Clark: Philosopher and Cognitive Scientist; Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, University of Edinburgh, UK; Author: Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind.

Let’s ease into this one.

Once upon a time, back in my undergraduate days during the 1960s, I was invited to a party at an artist’s loft. This was a real honest-to-god un-renovated loft, large, bare walls, a wood stove for heat (it was mid-winter), raw. Someone remarked they were showing a film “over there.” Sure enough, there was a 16mm projector facing a wall, clicking and buzzing rapidly away, and there were blurry gray smudges dancing on the wall opposite (no sound).

I watched the moving mottled grays for some seconds, five, ten, twenty, who knows, I wasn’t counting, and then SHAZAM! It became clear. On the right, a naked woman standing, bent forward, outstretched arms touching a wall. On the left, a naked man behind her, thrusting away. SEX! First porn film I’d ever seen.

But why did it take me awhile to see what was very plainly there in the flickering lights on the wall? Because I didn’t know what I was seeing, that’s why, and that’s what Clark’s prediction error minimization is getting at. If someone had said “hey, dirty movies” or I’d seen a title (say, “Danny Does Debbie”) I’d have known what to look for in the lights. But I didn’t know and it took me awhile to figure it out.

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by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

The philosophical program developed by the ancient Stoics is currently enjoying a renaissance. It recently has been heralded as an exceptionally effective ‘life hack' and refuge for sensitive souls in these dark days. With its emphasis on mastering one's emotions and steeling oneself against adversity, it is understandable that Stoicism's stock regularly rises as a coping mechanism in the midst of troubling times. Indeed, Stoicism originally arose in the dark days of the Hellenistic period, amidst war, violence, and social instability; as Admiral James Stockdale observed, it remains a philosophy aimed at enabling one to survive life's most tragic conditions.

We are philosophy professors, so we generally applaud whenever a traditional philosophical school gains popular appreciation. Moreover, since we are sympathetic with the Stoic program, we think the renewed interest in Stoicism is good news. Yet we bear two pieces of bad news for the Stoicism in Dark Days movement.

First, the Stoic program has its complications. As a theory of the good life, Stoicism is posited on a division between the things that are up to us (such as our beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and inclinations) and the things that are not up to us (such as our status, wealth, health, and so on). The Stoic holds that the key to living well is understanding this distinction. If we strive to control only what is up to us, we won't be frustrated; we will always have success. By contrast, when we try to control the things not up to us, we are doomed to failure, obstruction, and disappointment. According to the Stoic, our moral purpose is to perfect the things we can control – to be good critical thinkers, to want only things that are good, to do our duty for those who depend on us. Everything else is beyond our control and thus must be accepted; so long as we do not think our wellbeing depends on those externals, we are invulnerable to the vicissitudes of fate and thus truly free. This is the reasoning that Cicero presents throughout his Paradoxa Stoicorum and with which Epictetus opens the Enchiridion. Being good is not merely its own reward, but it is also sufficient for a good life. This view, then, offers a kind of liberty and dignity to all.

But this view prompts an obvious and longstanding objection.

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by Jonathan Kujawa

"Reduce your household duties! Women who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and do jobs previously filled by men should call the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory." In 1935 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the arm of the US government dedicated to research and development in the new-fangled area of human flight) hired its first cohort of women computers. This was before calculations could be done effectively by machines. If you wanted equations solved and numbers crunched you needed a person who was quick with numbers and deadly accurate. With a talent shortage, and with some reluctance, the those in charge admitted that women might be up to task. When the first women arrived, the male engineers were no doubt reassured by the fact that the women would only have to calculate whatever they were given and wouldn't have to worry their pretty little heads with the actual problem solving and thinking. The women more than held their own.

With the onset of World War II the allies needed every possible advantage. It was clear that winning in the air was key to winning the war. Better, faster, more maneuverable planes were needed without delay. The NACA grew at an exponential rate and needed every clever person it could get its hands on. Word spread and soon black women were also applying for these positions. No surprise since jobs at the NACA paid at least twice the salary of a school teacher, the next best option for well-educated black women.

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by Misha Lepetic

"Wonder was the grace of the country."
~ George W.S. Trow

At a recent cocktail party, the conversation turned to conspiracy theorists and how to engage them. I offered a strategy that has served me fairly well in the past: I like to ask my interlocutor what information they would need to be exposed to in order to change their minds about their initial suspicion. To be clear, I think of this more as a litmus test for understanding whether a person has the capacity to change their minds on a given position, rather than an opening gambit leading to further argument and persuasion. Climate change is a good example: What fact or observation might lead a person to consider that global warming is happening, and that human economic activity is responsible for it? It is actually quite surprising how often people don't really have a standard of truth by which they might independently weigh the validity of their argument. Of course, in today's ‘post-truth' world, I suspect that it is just as likely that I might be told that nothing can change a person's mind, since everything is lies and propaganda anyway.

I was pleased that another person at the party made an even better suggestion. She said that she would ask not only what would change a conspiracy theorist's mind, but from whom they would need to hear it. This vaults the act of interrogation from a context grounded purely in individualism and individuals' appeals to authority, to something distinctly more social. It also specifies the importance of not just facts, but from where those facts emanate. Because as much as we would like to believe ourselves independently reasoning beings, that we come to our conclusions through a rigorous and sacrosanct process of discernment, we are still very subject to having our opinions shaped by others. This may seem somewhat obvious, but in these times, when new ways of sensemaking are in high demand, I believe this provides an important opening.

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by Brooks Riley

If I could hug a tree a day without seeming a complete idiot, I would. Trees matter to me now–how fast they grow, how full their crowns, how tall they are, how odd their leaves, how extraordinary their shapes, how thick their trunks, how nearby they are. This late interest has crept up on me, and taken hold in ways I am trying to understand.

It’s not as if I’ve taken leave of humankind, the animal kingdom—or my senses—to go live among the stately green giants. I haven’t given up all that for something else, far from it. But there are aspects of trees that seem to harmonize with what I need: Silence (I don’t need to communicate with them.); Design (The complexity of a living organism achieving its biological destiny is somehow reassuring.); Color (The range of hues, from green to orange to yellow to purple to pink, is a technicolor packaging triumph); Variety (The aesthetic intricacy of their bare black branches against a grey sky, or the hoarfrost that turns them white overnight like an old crone); Progress (Those bare branches look a lot like dentrites, reminding me that mine are still growing too); Stillness (They don’t have to move to be going somewhere.). The appeal of a tree is almost metaphoric, heralding a time when I too will fall silent, cease to move, and return to the same earth they already occupy. No hooded figure with a scythe will knock on my door. I’ll be knocking at the door of their kingdom when the time comes, a willing Philemon with or without my Baucis.

I don’t anthropomorphize trees the way Peter Wohlleben apparently does in his recent bestselling book. I am happy to learn that trees are just as social as we are, but this news has no bearing on my solitary appreciation of a tree.

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by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

As the election season seemed more and more like being trapped in a carnival where the uncanny is orchestrated to play up primal fears, we witnessed language itself veering off into the realm of the irrational— not only because statements did not reflect facts or reflected only partial facts, or arguments lacked consistency, but because none of this mattered anymore: a sense of panic killed the need to seek the truth. The election machinery, with the media as its engine, successfully exploited anxiety to mute even the most basic assessment of language for truth-telling. If it were not for the few Human Rights groups circulating infographics (that bypass conventional language by presenting facts numerically) on social media, or sharing cell phone videos, or simply asking questions to expose the propaganda, all the cogs involved in manufacturing the “post-truth” age would have been even more opaque. Falling prey to fear-based propaganda isn’t uncommon in history, but when it happens to the populace of a leading superpower that prides itself in being a free-thinking democracy, one needs to ask how the populace has found itself primed for phobia. One of the many places to find the answer is academia, and my personal frame of reference is my alma mater Reed College, which itself happens to be in the throes of political agitation (not unlike many other campuses across the country), and is doubly significant to me because my son is a current student there. How does Reed prepare students to make sense of the world in the post-truth age? How did I fare as a female Muslim international student?

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by Maniza Naqvi

To dance the dance, I did not dance, because at the end of the conference, my accompanying handbag which contained all my documents, passports, credit cards and so forth compelled me to sit frumpily, guarding it, instead of joining the sensuously swaying crowd. When I had the chance, I chose instead to sit tied to my belongings—an accumulation of things. Ah the regret.

Why you? Why You? Why you? I had asked myself earlier, marveling at my good fortune gleefully. I kept repeating the direction I was headed towards the land of a thousand stories: Aracataca, Aracataca, Aracataca. Each syllable slung against the roof of my mouth, crashing against each other on my tongue, creating a rhythm like a tin drum. I wanted to jump and dance. Oh sure. I was going just to a conference—but it was on the shores of Colombia very near Aracataca. And so I went pulled by the magnetic allure of it and the lore of the Sierra Nevada.

But, ah the regret. Nearly there, not really there, close, nearby. I did but glimpse it in that chance brief encounter with its beauty and its possibilities, a moment so very brief it nevertheless left me breathless. And when I left, it left me imagining it, wishing that I would return to travel it by river perhaps at a great age, and in love. Finally. And then, then, without a care in the world, I would dance.

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Kismet

“This can’t be me,” Mother says,
leaning forward in a wheelchair,
“Must be some shriveled woman,”

“with parched skin, frayed hair,”
she adds, “Not me. I’m only 30.”
Mother gives me my Smartphone

with which I clicked her photo
during a commercial break,
watching “Kismet,”

Hollywood film
made in 1955
when Mother was in fact 30

with six children in Kashmir.
Her skin then was pure,
hibiscus bloomed in her hair.

Now, in The Bronx
Hebrew Home at Riverdale,
63 years later

in Mother’s sparse room,
a harem girl on TV, decked
in baubles, bangles, & beads,

starts revolving
in the courtyard of a Caliph
in Old Baghdad,

her pantaloons blooming
her turban glittering:
I’m gritting my teeth, glaring

at a fantasy Orient, thinking
of the grim reality today
in Iraq. Mother is transfixed

as the harem girl twirls
to stage front where her
flawless face fills the full screen.

Suddenly, Mother starts to sigh.
“What happened,” I ask gently
massaging her stiff fingers

with Aspercreme. Mother
nods at the TV, whispers,
“I want my skin like hers.”

by Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit / rafiqkathwari.com

by Humera Afridi

Nekbakht Foundation Archive

“Mommy it's Christmas, you have to put away your work!” urged my nine-year old. And so I began clearing the dining table which had turned into an expansive workspace over the early winter weeks. As I gathered up my books, a sheet of paper slid out from a binder. I stared at it absently. A photocopy of an archival newspaper cutting from 1923, with publication title missing. The headline announced: “Indian Mystic Here to Show America Path of Tolerance and Brotherhood.”

I marveled at the headline. Kinship and the “Path of Tolerance”—what better salve for our fraught present? I sensed a confluence of eras and histories, of time collapsing. A ‘Father Christmas' message, if ever there was one, I mused, sitting back down at the table to study the article from 1923. And, indeed, as if conspiring to corroborate my thesis, a striking Christ-like image of Hazrat Inayat Khan floated off the page—commanding features and a magnetic expression; tapering beard; mystical gaze piercing the distance. A strand of beads with a heart-and-wings pendant adorned his neck. The article's sub-headings revealed the contours of the story— “Inaya (sic) Khan, Hindu Poet and Philosopher, Bars Politics from Consideration”; “Humanitarianism is His Study”; “Says Greatest Need of America and of Whole World is Understanding”— a gift-giving message to be sure, emanating a spirt apropos of Christmas; an antidote to the climate of war and divisiveness in which we find ourselves.

I squinted my eyes to decipher the tiny newsprint, faded in parts, and stopped dead after the first half of the sentence. “Inaya Khan, Hindu poet, philosopher and mystic, has entered America after a few days detention at Ellis Island…” A few days detention? I started over and reread the sentence. Yes, a few days' detention at Ellis Island. I'd read it correctly. More alarming than the shock of this initial piece of information is that the article carries on without the slightest reflection on the egregious incident and, undoubtedly, racist attitude that Hazrat Inayat Khan had endured at the hands of immigration at Ellis Island.

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by Elise Hempel

I live in central Illinois, but I've been in Minnesota for over a month now, having fled an urgent situation at home, leaving most of my belongings temporarily behind. I'm a refugee, of sorts, an indefinite guest, sleeping in a guest bedroom of my sister's suburban Minneapolis house, surrounded by my still-not-unpacked suitcases. My “office,” which used to be a whole real room, is now a section of my sister's cluttered basement, my “lamp” a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, my “desk” a dusted-off air-hockey table. Surrounding my confusion and disorientation within the house itself – which includes conforming to a daily routine not my own, a lack of choice about what gets served for dinner and what gets watched on TV, etc. – is the larger loss of home. In place of a discernable town – the familiar cornfields, a university, the quaint town square – are highways and traffic and seemingly endless strip-malls, one nondescript suburb merging into the next.

And surrounding this is an even larger uncertainty of where home is now, with the election of Donald Trump as president. In the first few days after arriving here in Minnesota, I wasn't sure where I was when I woke up in the morning – in Illinois or Minnesota, what house, which bed, whose pillow. It took several moments to figure it out. I had almost the same feeling when I woke the morning after election day, and now, after knowing for sure that Trump will indeed be our next president, that feeling is here again – that feeling of waking to a country I don't recognize. Except that it's not dissipating, not fading as I sit up and wipe my eyes and look around, not giving way to the thought Oh, yeah – I know where I am.

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by Max Sirak

Money? Power? Sex? Revenge? Or would you be more altruistic? Would you wish for peace? Harmony? Unity? What if you had two wishes? Would you go one and one? Something for you and something for everyone else?

The only reason I ask is Steve Martin.

He has a list. In fact, he shared it with the whole world on Saturday Night Live. In case you missed it, you can watch it here. It's a short sketch. It's worth your time. It starts with a wish for all children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. But don't worry – it quickly devolves from there.

Christmas was yesterday. This means I missed my chance to sit by a tree and deliver my own list. And, while it is the third crazy night of Chanukah, I wanted a broader appeal. So, this month, for my last column of the year, I'm stealing Martin's schtick.

We're about six days away from wrapping up 2016. For a lot of us, maybe even all of us, this means a chance at a fresh start. A round of clean slates for all, barkeep! Stepping into '17, many of us will be looking toward change. We will re-solve old problems and test our re-solutions. It is in this spirit, with tremendous honor, tons of gratitude, and the teensiest bit of humility, I give you…

My 2017 Wish List: Three Thoughts I'd Like For Everyone To Carry With Them Into The New Year.

Ready?

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by Christopher Bacas

The last place I saw Mike was a joint facing the water in Fell's Point. Taking up first floor of a Civil War-era structure, you enter to a rectangular bar opposite a raised stage with chest-high sides. Tall stools scatter from front windows and along the wooden bar to the back room. Tagged, splintery walls surround everything.

In the 70's, a minor, flush with inheritance, bought the building. Unable to manage it legally, he asked a former teacher to act as surrogate.The two tough guys ran a drinking establishment on a stagnant waterfront in blue-collar Baltimore. It attracted men who didn't fear a closing time stagger to their vehicle through dim streets.

The younger guy, once he could actively manage his establishment, encouraged members of a local motorcycle club to hangout. They policed the space and kept order, until a back-room stomping brought the enterprise to the brink. The new liquor license expressly forbade the club's colors. Not chastened, the junior partner grew into his responsibilities and made alliances with the IRA. Their agents used the building as safe house. His barkeeps kept secrets under the kegs.

H, a New Orleans Jew, Navy medic in Vietnam. Possibly the most fearless man I have ever seen. A bit over five feet and pudgy, he stood up to drunken, belligerent giants. Waiting for their swing, then dropping them with a single upward jolt of his thick hand. We'd help him drag the bums outside afterwards.

T, a scrawny jabberwocky, nose powdered to oblivion, blithely ignored new customers while he gabbed inanely at regulars. In deep to dealers and bookies, he took cash advances from the register until the boss banished him, keeping cops out of it while expecting timely repayments.

J, an erudite lush, who, when he heard patrons discuss philosophy, profanely offered free drinks as long as they agreed to eschew weighty topics. After hours, he held mobile Bacchanals; his battle cry: “Vodka tonic, no fruit!” After an early demise, neighbors inaugurated a festival in his name and wore shirts with VTNF printed on the back.

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by Holly A. Case

An early version of Little Red Riding Hood comes to us from the Frenchman Perrault. In 1697, he published the story in a collection of others. It ends with a moral: “Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf.” Any story with a moral sets a limit on the reach of progress; the moral implies that the problem confronted in the story is a recurring one. In a little-known annex to the version published by the Brothers Grimm over a century later (in 1812), Little Red Riding Hood, having been eaten by one wolf and saved by a huntsman, is confronted with a second wolf and her knowledge is put to the test. The girl not only repels his advances, she drowns him in a barrel of sausage-smelling water. The lesson has been learned.

But only Little Red Riding Hood has learned it. Although the wolf in the story dies, wolves in general remain at large, and so the tale has to be retold. There will be other young girls who will face other wolves. This fact is not meant to drive us to despair, but to avert a danger. The problem cannot be solved once and for all time, but it can—by means of wisdom imparted before the threat appears—be flagged, so that when some little girl stares a wolf in the face, she won't fall into his trap. Even without concrete experience the girl can learn a lesson.

The fairy tale belies that there can be any progress beyond the personal, but the fact that the story exists and is meant to be handed down as wisdom means that, although wolves have not been abolished, every generation need not perpetually succumb to their tricks. There is another problem, however: since Little Red Riding Hood is saved—variously by a huntsman and a woodcutter—the tale also gives the impression that the danger may not be so great after all. No matter which version you read, the tale promises justice: Little Red Riding Hood lives and the wolf dies. So when the story is told and the little girl gets eaten by the wolf in spite of being warned, and furthermore, no woodcutter or huntsman comes to cut her out of the stomach of the wolf, the scenario is fertile ground for despair.

The tale even primes us for this despair, because for Little Red Riding Hood, there is no better imaginable scenario than one in which nothing bad happens. It's not as though the tale promises little girls transcendence or socio-economic mobility. It only aspires to help them to fend off an almost inevitable danger. If it is successful, that particular harm will have been averted. The tale aspires, at most, to zero, or to the maintenance of the status quo.

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by Hari Balasubramanian

I've noticed that it isn't easy to strike up a meaningful conversation with someone who doesn't fit into your professional or social circle. Even among strangers we look for clues and – understandably – seek out people with whom we might have something in common. This behavior appears to erect subtle barriers between groups of people who live or work in the same physical space – say the same neighborhood or even the same building – but hardly interact.

One example of this I experienced dates back to my graduate school days. I worked as a research assistant for six years (2000-2006) on the fifth floor of the engineering building at Arizona State University. I noticed I could easily strike up a conversation with professors and fellow graduate students, who were from very different backgrounds and countries. But I somehow found myself shy in the afternoon and evenings in talking to the janitor who cleaned and maintained the two dozen rooms on our floor. I wanted to connect with him but found it difficult to step out of my comfort zone. I wondered what the reason was. Was it because our work was so different? Because we were from different countries? Would I have managed to strike up a conversation more easily if he too was from India? Was it his personality?

Mark was a constant presence in the hallways and restrooms every weekday from four in the afternoon. Most times you just heard his presence: the clink of his thick bunch of keys; the rumble of the large trash-can-on-wheels; a pause; a knock on an office or lab door; the emptying of trash; and then clink and rumble again before the next pause. And at times you heard an insistent squeak in the hallway – that was Mark using his sneakers to erase a smear off the linoleum floor.

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The past is inevitable.
…………—Delmore Schwartz, Poet

Hadn’t Thought of it Like That

Though likely, tomorrow is
not set

This day’s loose ends twist in the wind
like kite tails jerked in blue at the end of present’s string
becoming codas no one can sing—
the future’s not something on which you should bet

Only Now sings real arias

If you stand on the bridge in the middle of town
where the river parts at abutments in bow waves
—splits as the bridge’s foot in the stream
becomes a ship’s prow plowing north to nowhere
and gives the early crimson sky
an oscillating rendition of itself in its otherwise slick mirror
you catch a glimpse of your bobbing head
in flames of pleated clouds

You are its aria

As you turn and walk off you get
that the past is inevitable
and set
.

Jim Culleny
12/17/15
.

Photo: The Bridge of Flowers
by Martin Yaffee