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2003 Edge.org World Question

Posted by timothy on from the what-would-sauron-do dept.

murky.waters writes "The responses to this year's Edge.org question have been published; basically, people were asked to imagine they were nominated as White House science adviser and the President asked them what are some important issues in science and what we should do about them. There are 84 responses, ranging in topic from advanced nanotechnology to the psychology of foreign cultures, and lots of ideas regarding science, technology, politics, and education. The responses were written by academics (e.g. Roger Schank, Marvin Minsky), journalists (Kevin Kelly), Nobel Laureates (Eric Kandel), and others (Alan Alda). Some of responses are politically loaded but the majority has either a more specialised proposal, or general remarks about our world. Many are absolutely fascinating: funny, insightful, interesting, hell even informative. ... One of the most public supporters of the Singularity 'religion', Ray Kurzweil, is a regular at Edge, and currently discussed issues range from said transhumanism to early-universe theories, and many other kinds of exciting and novel science."

5 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. sounds like sci-fi by mirko · · Score: 3, Funny

    -if you were in the gov, what'd would you do ?
    -ask for credits :)

    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  2. Hmm by Cheapoboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe they could work on getting Chaney a Heart, Lott his Courage and Bush a brain... i'll miss you most of all scarecrow.

  3. Oh, sorry by bravehamster · · Score: 4, Funny
    Oh, looks like I forgot to tell all you guys. We've already reached the singularity, and I'm it. I've just left all of you running as semi-independent information gathering processes. Didn't you get the memo? No? My bad. You know, for a superintelligent posthuman, I'm pretty absent-minded sometimes. Well, I'll just get back to finding a way to escape the closure of the universe and become God. IM me if you need anything.

    --
    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
  4. educational research by p944 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I would say that the scientific body of the government should be doing research into rapid learning techniques - for the other members of the Whitehouse ;-)

  5. Re:Orchestrated Objective Reduction by blancolioni · · Score: 2, Funny

    You forgot to put "un" before the word "convincingly."