| |
| |
| Preface: The Edge Question | |
| |
| |
| Acknowledgments | |
| |
| |
| Introduction | |
| |
| |
| |
| Contributors | |
| |
| |
| We Have No Souls | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Rejection of Soul | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Evolution of Evil | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Differences Between Humans and Nonhumans Are Quantitative, Not Qualitative | |
| |
| |
| |
| Groups of People May Differ Genetically in Their Average Talents and Temperaments | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Genetic Basis of Human Behavior | |
| |
| |
| |
| Marionettes on Genetic Strings | |
| |
| |
| |
| Francis Crick's Dangerous Idea | |
| |
| |
| |
| Being Alone in the Universe | |
| |
| |
| |
| Life as an Agent of Energy Dispersal | |
| |
| |
| |
| We Are Entirely Alone | |
| |
| |
| |
| Science May Be Running Out of Control | |
| |
| |
| |
| Why I Hope the Standard Model Is Wrong About Why There Is More Matter Than Antimatter | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Idea That We Understand Plutonium | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Idea That We Should All Share Our Most Dangerous Ideas | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Idea That Ideas Can Be Dangerous | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Fight Against Global Warming Is Lost | |
| |
| |
| |
| Think Outside the Kyoto Box | |
| |
| |
| |
| Our Planet Is Not in Peril | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Effect of Art Can't Be Controlled or Anticipated | |
| |
| |
| |
| A "Grand Narrative" | |
| |
| |
| |
| Our Universal Moral Grammar's Immunity to Religion | |
| |
| |
| |
| Bertrand Russell's Dangerous Idea | |
| |
| |
| |
| Hodgepodge Morality | |
| |
| |
| |
| We Will Understand the Origin of Life Within the Next Five Years | |
| |
| |
| |
| Understanding Molecular Biology Without Discovering the Origins of Life | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Problem with Super Mirrors | |
| |
| |
| |
| Cyberdisinhibition | |
| |
| |
| |
| Brains Cannot Become Minds Without Bodies | |
| |
| |
| |
| What Are People Well Informed About in the Information Age? | |
| |
| |
| |
| More Anonymity Is Good | |
| |
| |
| |
| A New Golden Age of Medicine | |
| |
| |
| |
| Using Medications to Change Personality | |
| |
| |
| |
| Drugs May Change the Patterns of Human Love | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Marriage Option for All | |
| |
| |
| |
| Choosing the Sex of One's Child | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Idea of Ideas | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Human Brain Will Never Understand the Universe | |
| |
| |
| |
| The World May Be Fundamentally Inexplicable | |
| |
| |
| |
| The "Landscape" | |
| |
| |
| |
| Seeing Darwin in the Light of Einstein; Seeing Einstein in the Light of Darwin | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Multiverse | |
| |
| |
| |
| What Twentieth-Century Physics Says About the World Might Be True | |
| |
| |
| |
| It's a Matter of Time | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Radical Re-evaluation of the Character of Time | |
| |
| |
| |
| It's OK Not to Know Everything | |
| |
| |
| |
| The End of Insight | |
| |
| |
| |
| When Will the Internet Become Aware of Itself? | |
| |
| |
| |
| Democratizing Access to the Means of Invention | |
| |
| |
| |
| Mind Is a Universally Distributed Quality | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Forbidden Fruit Intuition | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Posterior Probability of Any Particular God Is Pretty Small | |
| |
| |
| |
| Science Must Destroy Religion | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Self Is a Conceptual Chimera | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Greatest Story Ever Told | |
| |
| |
| |
| Science as Just Another Religion | |
| |
| |
| |
| This Is All There Is | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Science of the Divine? | |
| |
| |
| |
| Science Will Never Silence God | |
| |
| |
| |
| Religion Is the Hope That Is Missing in Science | |
| |
| |
| |
| Myths and Fairy Tales Are Not True | |
| |
| |
| |
| Parental Licensure | |
| |
| |
| |
| Zero Parental Influence | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Focus on Emotional Intelligence | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Cacophony of "Controversy" | |
| |
| |
| |
| Applied History | |
| |
| |
| |
| Tribal Peoples Often Damage Their Environments and Make War | |
| |
| |
| |
| Nothing | |
| |
| |
| |
| Everything Is Pointless | |
| |
| |
| |
| There Aren't Enough Minds to House the Population Explosion of Memes | |
| |
| |
| |
| Unspeakable Ideas | |
| |
| |
| |
| Anty Gravity: Chaos Theory in an All-Too-Practical Sense | |
| |
| |
| |
| Navigating by New Scientific Principles | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Political System Based on Empathy | |
| |
| |
| |
| Social Relativity | |
| |
| |
| |
| There Is Something New Under the Sun -Us | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Spoon Is Like a Headache | |
| |
| |
| |
| Projection of the Longevity Curve | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Near-Term Inevitability of Radical Life Extension and Expansion | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Domestication of Biotechnology | |
| |
| |
| |
| Public Engagement in Science and Technology | |
| |
| |
| |
| Suppose Faulkner Was Right? | |
| |
| |
| |
| What If the Unknown Becomes Known and Is Not Replaced with a New Unknown? | |
| |
| |
| |
| Where Goods Cross Frontiers, Armies Won't | |
| |
| |
| |
| Government Is the Problem, Not the Solution | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Free Market | |
| |
| |
| |
| Modern Science Is a Product of Biology | |
| |
| |
| |
| No More Teacher's Dirty Looks | |
| |
| |
| |
| We Are All Virtual | |
| |
| |
| |
| Runaway Consumerism Explains the Fermi Paradox | |
| |
| |
| |
| Simulation Versus Authenticity | |
| |
| |
| |
| Culture Is Natural | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Human Brain Is a Cultural Artifact | |
| |
| |
| |
| Free Will Is Exercised Unconsciously | |
| |
| |
| |
| Free Will Is Going Away | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Limits of Introspection | |
| |
| |
| |
| What We Know May Not Change Us | |
| |
| |
| |
| Telling More Than We Can Know | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Quick-Thinking Zombies Inside Us | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Banality of Evil, the Banality of Heroism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Open-Source Currency | |
| |
| |
| |
| Is the West Already on a Downhill Course? | |
| |
| |
| |
| Technology Can Untie the United States | |
| |
| |
| |
| Democracy May Be on Its Way Out | |
| |
| |
| |
| Marx Was Right: The State Will Evaporate | |
| |
| |
| |
| Following Sisyphus | |
| |
| |
| |
| How Can I Trust, in the Face of So Many Unknowables? | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Twenty-Four-Hour Period of Absolute Solitude | |
| |
| |
| |
| Afterword | |
| |