… is how BBC Radio 4 described the Edge 2005 “World Question”.
A cross-disciplinary group of 120 “science-minded thinkers” was asked to answer this question: “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?“
Despite the 60,000 word response limit, there’s a lot here.. I’ve just flipped around a bit more or less at random, and it’s been very interesting reading.
From the editor’s introduction:
This year there’s a focus on consciousness, on knowing, on ideas of truth and proof. If pushed to generalize, I would say it is a commentary on how we are dealing with the idea of certainty.
We are in the age of ‘searchculture’, in which Google and other search engines are leading us into a future rich with an abundance of correct answers along with an accompanying naïve sense of certainty. In the future, we will be able to answer the question, but will we be bright enough to ask it?
(via Bruce Sterling.)
42.
What was the question again?