Edge #488: Closing the Loop - A Conversation With Chris Anderson

News from Edge To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. March 7, 2017 THE THIRD CULTURE [Closing the Loop]( A Conversation With [Chris Anderson]( Closing the loop is a phrase used in robotics. Open-loop systems are when you take an action and you can't measure the results—there's no feedback. Closed-loop systems are when you take an action, you measure the results, and you change your action accordingly. Systems with closed loops have feedback loops; they self-adjust and quickly stabilize in optimal conditions. Systems with open loops overshoot; they miss it entirely. CHRIS ANDERSON is the CEO of 3D Robotics and founder of DIY Drones. He is the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. [Chris Anderson's Edge Bio Page]( [ [Continue...]( ] IN THE NEWS NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG [Who made sapiens so smart?]( By Alison Gopnik [3.3.17] We should turn our gaze from the leather-ruffled mammoths, says the evolutionary biologist Alison Gopnik. Grandmothers and children—they are the true bearers of civilization. [ [Continue to the German translation...]( ] DE MORGEN [Dear Yves Petry, to understand the reality we shoot anything on intuition]( By Joel De Ceulaer [2.22.17] If we want to understand the reality, Mr. Petry, we shoot anything with our intuition. Then we need figures, research, understanding, interpretation, knowledge. Not infrequently state of scientific knowledge even totally at odds with human intuition - just think of the theory of evolution, which few understand really, or the quantum theory, which even dizzy connoisseurs start. But you probably know all of them, because you have thoroughly read the exponents of the third culture. Yet? Yes? May I ask why you are still infatuated with psychoanalysis? Steven Pinker and others you should have learned that Sigmund Freud was a pitiful quack, who kept his intuition for the truth. A bit like you, sometimes. [ [Continue...]( ] THE GUARDIAN [Why words can bend the truth: the disturbing fact about memory]( By Oliver Burkeman [2.3.17] One of the most quietly unsettling findings in psychology, for my money, is “verbal overshadowing” – a weird fact about memory that’s liable to make you wonder if anything you believe about your life is really true. The finding is this: putting your experiences into words – talking about them with others or writing them down – makes you less likely to recall them accurately. On closer inspection, this psychological oddity starts to look less strange. Language, as the linguist Nick Enfield points out, pretty much exists in order to categorise things – to sift the chaos of reality into the pigeonholes provided by our pre-agreed words. (He chose [verbal overshadowing]( as his answer to the Edge website’s annual question this year: “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?”) And putting something in a pigeonhole means not putting it into others, by definition. To describe someone as having three dogs is to focus on what the animals share – they’re dogs – and to disregard the fact that they’re a great dane, a sheepdog, and a yorkshire terrier; or old or young, excitable or placid. The research on verbal overshadowing, Enfield writes, suggests this pigeonholing overwrites the previous memory: “When words render experience, specific information is not just left out, it is deleted.” Even the best writer must unavoidably misrepresent the world – we couldn’t communicate otherwise . . . [ [Continue...]( ] EL ESPECTADOR [A scientific idea that should be better known]( By Ana Cristina Vélez [2.4.17] Each year, the director of the website edge.org, John Brockman, asks a question to a group of intellectual collaborators, many of them belonging to the world of science but also personalities from the world of art, technology and of the music. The question he asked on January 1, 2017 was: Which term or scientific concept should be better known? According to psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker [the second law of thermodynamics]( should be better known. [ [Continue...]( ] Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. [EDGE.ORG]( John Brockman, Editor and Publisher Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher Nina Stegeman, Associate Editor Copyright (c) 2017 by Edge Foundation, Inc. 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001 All Rights Reserved. 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