Monday, March 11, 2024

Deep Thoughts Vol. 3

Once again, with apologies to Jack Handy, I give you Volume 3.

A trip to Costco is an existential experience. You have to decide if you are going to live long enough to use all that TP.

Most bikers tend to be a callused lot.

Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never get. [Borrowed from an otherwise unremembered sermon]



Never trust someone who is rude to wait staff.

Do you really want to own a vehicle named “Ram”?

The leather cover I use on my truck tailgate to carry my bike and protect against scratches is marketed as a “Crash Pad”. Disconcerting. 

Who is Helmut Kohl?  Me neither. Some German guy probably.

Wet feet and cotton underwear are not a match made in heaven, unless you can hop on one foot much better than I.

Guess this location. "The ambience may be bad but the company might actually be pretty good."

Try to stay astonished - in a positive sense.  It will keep you young.

Compression socks, known to me as depression socks. I have several broken fingernails from trying to get them on.

Mental acuity test. Count backwards from 100 by 7's.

How did you do?

Budgets are moral documents.

If 7 is a lucky number, why are there 7 deadly sins?

Why in the world do "awfully" and "nice" get paired?

The internet is an unreliable narrator.

Try spending a day or two bound to a wheelchair.  It will make you humble and curse stairways.

Believe it or not. I live in Minnesota and have a February tan. Pretty sure the earth is screwed. We need an exit strategy.

Bowling and tennis seem to have succumbed to pickleball.

Does anyone whistle (or hum) any more? I miss those distant echos of cheerfulness.

The James Webb Telescope is searching for life in outer space. I think ET might be purposely hiding from us.

Bad things can happen fast, but most good things happen slowly. (borrowed from somewhere)

I inherited any number of traits from my father, but arthritic hands is not one I'm thankful for.

Bashing things you hate will give you ulcers.  Focus on the good stuff.

The Great Salt Lake is expected to be dry within 5 years.  But, it's salty. It's not as if Lake Mead is drying up. Oh, wait.

Copyright ©  2024  Dave Hoplin

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Compassion Awakened

In my little home town, there dwelled a renowned storyteller.  He would weave fantastic tales that always ended with ... "never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me".  Like .. "one day down by the lake, I was swarmed with monster mosquitos so I took cover under my overturned rowboat.  The attackers' stingers came right through the boat bottom so I took out my hammer and bent them over.  Suddenly, the boat was off flying and I was crouched under blue sky.  Never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me."

Such is life.  We have a vague appreciation of things that affect others, but we go along our way without true awareness. It hasn't happened to me so .. I can ignore it.  I'm sure you can make a list of any number of things like this. 

About a month ago my wife fell while out walking.  She was on a paved trail but at the bottom of a hill there was a mud hole (this in February in Minnesota, no less). She skirted off the trail to avoid the mud and caught her foot on a tree root and went down hard on her knee causing a compression fracture of her tibia. Hard to treat. She was placed in a lock-in-place knee brace and told she could not put any weight on that leg for 8 weeks. Uffda. Hard to get around with a walker hopping on one leg. So, pretty much homebound, confined to a wheel-chair + walker. Luckily she's a tough farm girl, determined to get through this.

Through this, we have come to really appreciate the difficulties facing the disabled. Of course we had some understanding of the trials of getting around while disabled: the lack of handicapped access to buildings; getting through doors - and their irritating  narrowness; negotiating curbs; absence of handrails and the struggle to do just the basic things of life - you know what I mean. 

We have a 2-story home with bedrooms upstairs so we moved a bed downstairs as climbing stairs was out of the question. The cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, pet care duties have fallen on the barely competent spouse. Stairs are daunting. To transfer up/down 2 steps from the house to our vehicle was nigh unto impossible until we purchased a short ramp. Now it is just difficult. We recently had a medical appointment at a hospital that will remain unnamed. The hospital presents a challenge. Its main entrance is below street-level with a long stairs from the street downward. There is a short drive-by patient drop-off accommodating only a half dozen cars so there's always a backup into the street. Just another example of a building not designed for the able challenged. 

The thing is, for us, this will soon be over and we will be back to living (hopefully) our normal life.  But for millions, disability is a permanent day-after-day struggle. I will never take mobility for granted again and I urge one and all to advocate for these folks.

“Compassion is the basis of morality”  Scopenhauer


Copyright ©  2024  Dave Hoplin

Friday, January 19, 2024

Without Comment


Holding your tongue requires discipline








A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.  Groundwork Collaborative

 “I have but one human body. I can only wear so many sweaters.” Unknown

Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira is accused of leaking highly classified military intelligence from the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts where he worked. Teixeira, who’s 21, has been behind bars since his April arrest on charges stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years.  Dec 2023

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.  Franklin D. Roosevelt

Only the Protestants think that every day in every way, life is getting better and better. What do they know?"  Mary Gordon

Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.  W. Demming

"There are really only two reasons to write: desperation or revenge."  Elizabeth Hardwick

The most important factor in determining a person’s future is when and where they are born. Each of us, born into any other situation, would experience a different outcome. .. I likely would not be an entrepreneur or an academic had I been born in South Sudan. If I’d been born in 1920s Germany, I’d likely have been a Nazi who perished on a Russian field.  Being born one year earlier or later can make a big difference. People who graduate into a recession earn less for 10 to 15 years than those who graduate amid prosperity. Fate also changes block to block: One of the strongest signals of life expectancy (and much else) is the ZIP code where you’re born. Within the same city, life expectancy can vary by 30 years based on ZIP code.    Scott Galloway

“No two persons ever read the same book.”  Edmund Wilson

When Einstein was asked what he would have done if his theory of general relativity had not held up, he replied, “Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct.”

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”  B F Skinner

Think before you act and, once you’ve acted, think about what you did. Try to be thoughtful. Don’t overreact. Focus on what you can control and remain indifferent to what you can’t. Keep in mind, too, that you’ll die eventually, so don’t waste time. These modest predicates make up the cool white heart of classical Stoicism.

Display those virtues which are wholly in your own power—integrity, dignity, hard work, self-denial, contentment, frugality, kindness, independence, simplicity, discretion, magnanimity. Do you not see how many virtues you can already display without any excuse of lack of talent or aptitude?  Marcus Aurelius

Once, asked about his writing routine, Doctorow said: "Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink."  

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”  Somerset Maugham

And after I have gone someone will say, "Oh, him. I thought he was still around. I used to see him everywhere, only, all this time, I thought he was someone else."  Louis Jenkins

"No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you" Aleichem

“But ultimately, <life> is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story. And it is enough.”  Michael Gerson, eloquent columnist for the Washington Post, recently passed away. 

"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”  Ray Bradbury

"More and more, online news sources will give them only what they wanted in advance. [...] Custom filters are going to make Americans even more ignorant than they already are, which is plenty.”  Anne Fadiman

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."  Andre Gide

"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so." Mark Twain

"Politics is like dice: the better the player, the worse the man." C.J. Sansom

“A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.”
James Agee

“Just try to be decent. Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered."  
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

And Wendell Berry is a wealth of wisdom

"Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you."
"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it."
"Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup."


Copyright ©  2024  Dave Hoplin

Friday, January 5, 2024

Some Knots in the Family Tree

I enjoy researching family history and genealogy.  So when our 12 year old son was given a school assignment to trace his family tree, I thought he might catch the bug. Not to be. He was fine tracing back to the grandparents on each side and we helped him identify his great-grandparents. It was a well designed exercise in writing a research paper, including making an outline and doing research and conducting interviews. He did a great job. 



Part of the assignment was to include a description of his parents and grandparents. We generally view ourselves more favorably than might be warranted and take little care over others’ opinions of us. But when it comes from your own child, well ... revealing.   Here's the story - unredacted.

"My dad has some pretty distinguishing features. He has thick glasses, a slender build [editor note: a long while ago] and dark hair.  He is good at tennis, volleyball and slo-pitch softball.  He's good at math and loves to read. He works for Control Data and develops computer programs. He doesn't like to work if he doesn't have to. He loves coffee in the morning but he makes me plug it in because he doesn't want to get up.

My mom has gray hair in the front.  She has bad teeth because she ate too much candy when she was a kid.  She makes real good meals when she's in the mood, otherwise we have toast and milk. She's good at pulling teeth.

But I still love them and they still love me.

My mom & dad met in high school.  They had a few dates and were good friends. They went to a couple plays at the University of Minnesota, Morris. My mom had other boy friends and my dad liked other girls too.  My my went to Seattle to work. My dad stayed in Minnesota to finish college.  My mom came back and worked at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.  She and my dad got married. Then they moved to Bozeman, MT where I was born.

My mom's parents live on a farm. She has two brothers and two sisters and they all had about the same amount of work to do - which was a lot. My grandma and grandpa were firm but loving. My mom had no allowance. They had a TV but the only stations were in the Twin Cities, 160 miles away, so they didn't get very good reception. They listened to the radio a lot. The farm has a 1/2 mile driveway and the school had a dress code so it was very cold walk for them in the winter. The bus ride was also very long. The thing mom hated the most was something that had to do with chickens.

My dad lived in a small town. He had about the same amount of work as his sister. He also did not get an allowance. When he wanted money he asked for it. His hobby was collecting baseball cards. He had a big drawer full. His school was a four room schoolhouse, with 2 grades in each room. The thing my dad hated worst was digging ditches. His grandfather said he didn't need machinery when he had kids to do the work.

My grandpa Glenn is very smart.  He uses a very large vocabulary. He loves his rose garden and concerts at Orchestra Hall. He is a hard worker and often takes a nap on the floor with no pillow at all.  Grandma H. is also very nice. She bakes good brownies and always bakes them when she knows we are coming to visit. She likes having us come.  She makes big meals even when it's not Thanksgiving. She is a nice grandma.

Grandpa Tim goes out of his way to help other people.  He loves to visit and he's funny. He gets a farmer tan every summer.  He has large strong hands. He has a fun farm to roam around in. Grandma R  has white hair and makes the best pie.  She has a soft voice and the only time I could imagine her mad would be at Lester the bull. She's a nice grandma.

The greatest thing about my grandparents is that they all love me a lot and I love them a lot."

The End

[Editor note: I apparently became more accomplished over the years - good at 3 sports.  When in first grade and asked what his father was good at, the only thing he could come up with was "being quiet in the library".]

Copyright ©  2024  Dave Hoplin

Sunday, December 3, 2023

This Is Unfortunately True

We launch into the Christmas season, traditionally the time of Glad Tidings and Good Will.  We seem to be failing the Good Will part. I am dismayed.

I recently read Amor Towle's "Rules of Civility" set in 1930's Manhattan and from that reading it is clear that back then people were far more polite than we, even through The Great Depression.  

And if you go back farther to George Washington's Rules of Civility, there was a politeness rule book.

  1. If you cough, sneeze, sigh, or yawn, do it not loudly but privately and put your handkerchief or hand before your face and turn aside.
  2. Shift not yourself in the sight of others nor gnaw your nails.
  3. Be no flatterer.
  4. Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another though he were your enemy.
  5. If anyone come to speak to you while you are sitting stand up 
  6. In walking the highest place in most countries seems to be on the right hand therefore place yourself on the left of him whom you desire to honor
  7. Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive.
  8. Use no reproachful language against anyone, neither curse nor revile.
  9. Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.
  10. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for tis better to be alone than in bad company.
  11. A man ought not to value himself of his achievements, or rare qualities of wit; much less of his riches virtue or kindred.
  12. Detract not from others neither be excessive in commanding.
  13. Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.
  14. Be not tedious in discourse, make not many digressions.
  15. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full.
  16. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
And even farther back, there is Aristotle

1. Name your fears and face them
2. Know your appetites and control them
3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift
4. Give as generously as you can
5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial
6. True strength is a controlled temper
7. Never lie, especially to yourself
8. Stop struggling for your fair share
9. Forgive others and forbear their weaknesses
10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private

So here we are in the 21st century and it seems civility is a lost virtue and our kinder selves are in submission to our baser selves.  Societal pressure to "behave" seems to have no effect.   

So we see 

  • Congressional misconduct: Seems a bit worse than the "normal" misbehavior: gold bars in a Senator's closet; the election of a fraud and fabulist practicing political donor identity theft yielding expulsion; censures, name calling, profanity, threats, physical attacks (clean kidney shots) and other dodgy behaviors inside and outside the halls of Congress. These are echos of pre-Civil War Congressional conduct. We have a Congress where way too many members are there to become famous rather than to accomplish something. And the quickest route to notoriety these days is bad behavior.  24/7 media eats that stuff up. And that bad behavior gives license to the rest of US.
  • Barely concealed bribery of Supreme Court justices
  • Nearly daily "unruly airline passengers" incidents. See also restaurants. Or anywhere there's a line or a service person.
  • Road rage epidemic. Advice: resist the temptation to thrust your hand out the driver side window. The three-lane freeway near me has become the 75, 80, 85 mph lane raceway.
  • A marked physical assault uptick, particularly against hospital nurses. Against nurses!
  • School board meeting hissy fits.
  • A presidential candidate refers to people as "vermin".
  • Will Smith smacks Chris Rock at the Oscars.  Good grief.
  • Thanksgiving Day family fissures
  • ... and this list will surely grow by tomorrow

What kind of people are we becoming? There is an epidemic of rude behavior and this rudeness begets more rudeness. It's a contagion. I am no psychologist but we are nation divided into tribes, enabled by isolating social media. And isolation breeds narcissism and loneliness, which breeds anger & victimhood and here we are in a tribal warfare world. 

But the true tragedy of this is that from rudeness to hate us but a short hop. The dramatic increase in hate crime, of overt persecution and incidents of violence against Jews, Moslems, Blacks, Asians, LGBTQ makes it imperative that we, the safe and secure, raise our voices against these outrages. Do we sit idly by and watch the world relive the 1930’s? I hope we might have learned from history. Edmund Burke once wisely noted, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good people do nothing.” 

As we Lutherans are apt to say, this is unfortunately true. So, let's step back and take a deep breath people. We don't have to memorize Washington's rules.  We simply need to abide by the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".  Add to that a daily random act of kindness to help move the needle towards good will.

Be careful. Be brave.  
Blessings to you all.  

Copyright ©  2023  Dave Hoplin

Sunday, November 12, 2023

Men. Listen Up.

 I certainly don't qualify as one, but here is some sage advice - especially for you men. We males of the species are notoriously reluctant about seeking medical care, preferring to believe waiting and enduring will make the problem disappear. But if you sense something is wrong, you are suffering pain or persistent symptoms, do not prevaricate. See a doctor. And if there is no satisfying explanation forthcoming, insist on more testing or get a 2nd opinion. You must be an advocate for you. When it comes to medical decisions, trust your instincts, unless you are a stoic. Stoicism is not a virtue in these cases. 

As for myself, I am at last believing I have a future. Almost.

After 8 months of medical misery, I am finally feeling almost normal.  However, I will be thrilled to see the back of 2023. 

This year, I have faced a series of medical problems, a few of which may have been fatal even 50 years ago. Needless to say, I am thankful for modern medicine. Please, no pity party - rather I appeal to you to not take your health for granted. You know not what is around the bend. I had never spent a day in hospital in my life until this tsunami summer. 

Omitting the ugly details and ignoring the minor stuff, here is, starting in the Spring and continuing to the present,  an ESPN medical highlight reel. Before you read on, know that I am now feeling quite well, I believe the worst behind me.

(FYI: You're going to have to lookup the acronyms. The medical field is awash in them, worse than the computer business.)

1. UTI. TURP scheduled for early May ... 2. Emergency gall-bladder surgery, gangrenous. Worst pain of my life.  TURP postponed ... 3. "Hospital" infection requiring antibiotic infusion. PICC line for 3 weeks ...    4. DVT discovered, blood thinners for 4 months. TURP postponed ... 5. Acute stomach / back pain. ER visit. 6. UTI again ... 7. Botched blood draw, pain/numbness/heaviness in arm.  8. Neurology for EMG & MRI ...  9. TURP procedure performed - finally in October.  10. Bad anesthesia reaction.. 11. DVT again.  Back on blood thinners ...

All this after a lifetime of good health, with only 1 ER visit - and that for some stitches. So you see, you just never know what's in store.  And sadly, not a single bike ride in 2023.  I'm planning to make up for it in 2024

And a salient point. A support network is a treasure. What saved me from deep despair was my caring wife, friends and relatives pushing my chin up - and a nice tall pile of books, 100 of them.  

Be careful.  Take care of yourself. 

In case you're a book lover,  here's my best of the 100. Fiction.
  1. Horse - Geraldine Brooks
  2. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney
  3. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles
  4. Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
  5. The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
  6. The Sentence - Louise Erdich
  7. Matrix - Lauren Goff
  8. The Passenger - Cormac McCarthy
  9. Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Grams 
  10. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride 
  11. Because of Winn-Dixie - Kate DiCamillo
  12. Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

Copyright ©  2023  Dave Hoplin

Monday, October 23, 2023

What Lurks Just Beyond The Headlights?

And now for something completely different.


There is a marvelous website I heartily recommend: edge.org.  The Canberra Times dubs it "The most stimulating English-language reading to be had from anywhere in the world.”


The site has been around for 25 years, serving as an idea exchange for the world's scientists.

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.


One of the marvelous traditions of this site is the “Annual Question” to the Edge Community. The always provocative responses are published in book form (and online) and make for a fascinating read. Unfortunately this tradition ended in 2018 with What Is The Last Question? when they apparently ran out of questions.


Here I would like to highlight the question from 10 years ago (2013) , “ What *Should* We Be Worried About?” asking scientists what worries you, but may not be on the popular radar yet. The responses reveal some remarkable prescience. Ten years down the road most of the concerns remain or have been validated.


Below are brief summaries of a few of the responses. I encourage you to look at the entire set. Individual responses/essays are only a page or two and it's easy to bounce around to topics you find of interest - a browser’s delight. All of the highlighted essays below have a link to the full response. All the 2013 responses are here:  What Are You Worried About 2013 responses



Keep in mind that these concerns were proffered ten years ago.







In "What Me , Worry?", a scientist for genomic sciences cautions against future plagues. 


"Avoidance of vaccination creates a public health hazard. It is not a civil liberty issue. The un-vaccinated coupled with antibiotic resistance and decreased animal habitats ... could take humanity back to the pre-antibiotic era. I thought we learned these lessons after global pandemics such as the Plague and the outbreak of 1918 flu that killed 3% of the population, but clearly without modern science and medicine we will be destined to relive history. "



In “Losing Our Hands?” a Professor of Psychology worries we are losing manual skills.


I don't mean that someone is going to come and chop our hands off. I mean that we are unwittingly, but eagerly, outsourcing more and more of our manual skills to machines. Our minds are losing touch with our bodies and the world around us, and being absorbed into the evolving techno-sphere… manual skills are really not just about hands; they are about the way our brains and hands interact…. We can see the loss of these skills in the obvious fact that fewer people now learn them… Opting out to become 'self-sufficient' is even more hopeless than it was in the 1970s … Could we turn our key-pressing, screen swiping hands to feeding ourselves? I don't think so.”


In "Unmitigated Arrogance", a Professor of Psychology worries about the potential for manipulation of the population by the arrogant self promoters.

"I worry about the recent epidemic of lying and cheating that has infected public discourse in a diversity of domains. The psychological mechanism that motivates and facilitates these corrupt behaviors is hubristic pride—the emotional feeling of arrogance, egotism, and superiority that drives people to brag, lie, cheat, and bully others to get ahead. ... authentic pride motivates hard work, persistence, and empathic concern for others, hubristic pride motivates hostility, aggression, intimidation, and prejudice.

People who frequently feel hubristic pride are narcissistic, but have low self-esteem and a proneness to shame. ... This means constantly finding new ways of self-promoting, self-enhancing, and derogating others.  And, as a side effect, hubristic pride makes them feel invincible, convincing them that they can get away with their abhorrent behaviors. ... By encouraging, or at least enabling, others' arrogance, we nurture the pride that can lead to large-scale deception and even crime, and further increase the gap between true accomplishments and just rewards. 


In “Worrying About Children” a Berkeley Psychologist worries about neglected children.

“While upper middle-class parents are worrying about whether to put their children in forward or backward facing strollers, more than 1 in 5 children in the United States are growing up below the poverty line, and nearly half the children in America grow up in low-income households. … these children not only face poverty but a more crippling isolation and instability. It's not just that many children grow up without fathers, they grow up without grandparents, and with parents who are forced to spend long hours at unreliable jobs that don't pay enough in the first place. ... we still provide almost no public support for childcare, we pay child-care workers next to nothing. … But providing high-quality early childhood care to children who would otherwise not receive it makes an enormous and continuing difference up through adulthood. In fact, the evidence suggests that this isn't just a matter of teaching children particular skills or kinds of knowledge … Instead, children who have a stable, nurturing, varied early environment thrive in a wide range of ways, from better health to less crime to more successful marriages. That's just what we'd expect from the evolutionary story. I worry more and more about what will happen to the generations of children who don't have the uniquely human gift of a long, protected, stable childhood.”


In "The Complex, Consequential, Not-So-Easy Decisions About Our Water Resources", the Chief Strategy Officer for the Nature Conservancy worries that we do not know how to deal with the inevitable water crisis. 

"We should be worried about the state of water resources. I doubt there is a single current affairs publication that has not addressed this "global water crisis". On balance they raise legitimate concerns. ... We must change the way in which we use water, doing more with less. Unfortunately we do not have a great track record in increasing resource productivity. ... Reams have been devoted to rousing alarms about the global water crisis, but the barrier to effective action is not one of conviction, but of complexity. It is frightening that—outside of a restricted circle of practitioners—we have been unable to develop a fact based, practical way of debating water issues in public."


In "Computer-Generated Fascism", a writer and Futurist warns of the rise of fascism.


"I'm worried that our technology is helping to bring the long, postwar consensus against fascism to an end. Greece was once the cradle of democracy, yet on live television there recently, a leader of the Golden Dawn fascist movement started beating a female MP who disagreed with his views—smashing her on one side of the head, then the other—and his poll ratings went up, not down…. Because of what fascism led to in the past, it's easy to forget how attractive it can be for most citizens in troubled times. With a good enemy to hate, atomized individuals get a warm sense of unity. And, although some gentle souls like to imagine, frowningly, that only an ill-educated minority will ever enjoy physical violence, that's not at all the case. Schoolchildren almost everywhere enjoy seeing a weaker child being tormented. Fears about our own weakness disappear when an enemy is mocked and punished—a reflex that radio shock jocks across America most skillfully manipulate."



In “Presentism”, a French researcher worries about  collective amnesia. 


“While access to information has never been so universal as it is now—thanks to the Internet—the total sum of knowledge of anything beyond the present seems to be dwindling among those people who came of age with the Internet. Anything before 1945, if then, is a messy, remote landscape; ... There is a way out: by integrating the teaching of history within the curricula of all subjects—using whatever digital or other means we have to redirect attention to slow reading and old sources. Otherwise we will be condemned to living without perspective, robbed of the wisdom and experience with which to build for the future, confined by the arrogance of our presentism to repeating history without noticing it.



In “A World of Cascading Crises“, a Futurist worries about over-reaction and false anxieties. 

“Hardly a day passes when we do not hear of some major crisis in the world, one already unfolding or a new one just beginning and they never seem to end. We are now living in a world of perpetual crisis and the high anxiety it produces…The public's view of violence is a good example. Steven Pinker has elegantly shown us that the real threat of violence in most of our lives has diminished dramatically. Yet most of believe because of the constant drumbeat of reporting on violence that the threat is far greater than it actually is. The absence of children playing on suburban streets is a sign of how scared parents are of the threat of kidnapping, which actually remains very small. … The fact that we live in a world of high anxiety often leads us to do the wrong things. We take short term and local solutions rather than take a systemic and long term view.  There has been an inevitable loss of faith in institutions ability to get ahead of the curve and tamp down the trembling state of anxiety the world now seems to be unable to shake off.”


In “Where Did You Get That Fact?”, a Professor of Information Technology worries about verification.

“ In the thousands of decisions we make each day, seldom do we engage in a deliberately rational process anything like gathering relevant information, distilling it into useful knowledge, and comparing options ... of course we don't very often do it, and instead we make quick decisions based on instinct, intuition, heuristics, and shortcuts honed over millions of years. .. I'm not saying we should independently verify every fact that enters our daily life—there just isn't enough time, even if we wanted to—but the ability should exist where possible, especially for knowledge generated with the help of computers. .. Without the ability to question findings, we risk fooling ourselves into thinking we are capitalizing on the information age when we are really just making decisions based on evidence that no one, except perhaps the people who generated it, actually has the ability to understand. That's the door closing.”


In “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Words“, a Professor of Cognitive Science worries about the effects of censorship. 

“ The United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the land judged certain words to be so dangerous that even the constitutional right to free speech had to be set aside. But why? The children, of course. It was to protect the children. According to the Supreme Court, the problem with Carlin's routine was that the obscene words, words describing sexual acts and excretory functions "may have a deeper and more lasting negative effect on a child than on an adult." … The only risk children run by hearing the four-letter words prohibited over the public airwaves is the small chance of broadening their vocabularies. And even this possibility is remote, as anyone can attest who has recently overheard the goings-on in an elementary school playground…  so they aren't protecting children. But they are having an effect. Paradoxically, it's these actions we take to shield children from words, with censorship foremost among them, that gives specific words their power. And this makes perhaps the best argument that we shouldn't be afraid of exposing children to taboo words. Doing so is the best way to take away any perceived threat they pose. “


In “Danger from Aliens”, an senior SETI astronomer worries about an invasion from outer space. 

The recent reset of the long-count Maya calendar didn't end the world. But there are serious scientists who worry that Armageddon could soon be headed our way, although from a different quarter—an attack by malevolent, extraterrestrial beings…. It all sounds like shabby science fiction, but even if the probability of disaster is low, the stakes are high. Consequently, some cautious researchers argue that it's best to play safe and keep our broadcasts to ourselves. Indeed, they urge a world-wide policy of restraint and relative quiet. They would forbid the targeting of other star systems with transmissions of greater intensity than the routine radio and television that inevitably leak off our planet… There's a serious flaw in this apparently plausible reasoning. Any society able to do us harm from the depths of space is not at our technological level. We can confidently assume that a culture able to project force to someone else's star system is at least several centuries in advance of us."

In “We Don't Do Politics“, an artist/composer worries that smart people want nothing to do with politics. “...we don't do politics. We expect other people to do it for us, and grumble when they get it wrong.“


In “The Under-Population Bomb“, a Wired editor worries about the impact of under-population.  “Population is expected to peek by 2050 and then rapidly decline. Here is the challenge: this is a world where every year there is a smaller audience than the year before, a smaller market for your goods or services, fewer workers to choose from, and a ballooning elder population that must be cared for.”


In “Big Experiments Won't Happen“, a Harvard physicist worries that long-term research investments will not be made. “We need to know what the universe is telling us. Some of the best new ideas come from trying to explain mysterious phenomena.”


In "The Danger of Inadvertently Praising Zygomatic Arches", Stanford wild-man Robert Sapolsky worries about free will.  Note - he has a fascinating book on stress - Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.


In “The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism and the End of Progress”, Tim O’Reilly worries about the rise refusal to accept scientific knowledge. “... it's at least as probable that as we fail to find those solutions quickly enough, the world falls into apathy, disbelief in science and progress, and after a melancholy decline, a new dark age.” 


In "Science by (Social) Media“, a Harvard Business School prof worries about  knowledge by tweet  

"For example - red wine linked to longevity.  Is that enough information? ... science that laypeople encounter will become increasingly unfiltered by scientific experts. And even when science has been vetted by experts, laypeople will increasingly make their own determination of the credibility of that science not by the quality of the research but by the media outlet in which that science appears.”


In “Posthuman Geography“, a MIT researcher worries about “robosourcing”.  

"If every conceivable job can be done better by a special-purpose machine, what are the implications for our economic systems and the definition of a “job”. “... I have little doubt that the next paradigm of civilization will be a change for the better. I'm not worried about that. But the transition from here to there might be painful if we don't develop some idea of what we're getting into and how it might be managed.”


In “The Fragility of Complex Systems“, a Life Sciences professor  worries about the fragility of markets, transportation, internet, energy grids, ... 

“Complex systems like the markets, transportation, and the Internet seem stable, but their complexity makes them inherently fragile. Because they are efficient, massive complex systems grow like weeds, displacing slow markets, small farmers, slow communication media, and local information processing systems. When they work they are wonderful, but when they fail we will wonder why we did not recognize the dangers of depending on them.”


In “Global Greying“, a journalists worries about aging populations. 

“… out of the 9 billion people expected when the Earth's population peaks in 2050, the World Health Organization expects 2 billion—more than one person in five—to suffer from dementia. Is any society ready for this?”


In “Is Idiocracy Looming“, a professor of Psychology worries about intelligence trends.  See Luke Wilson movie.


In “The Death of Mathematics“, a Stanford mathematician worries about the future of mathematics. 

“.. if (free-form) scribbling goes away, then I think mathematics goes with it. You simply cannot do original mathematics at a keyboard. The cognitive load is too great.”  [Editor note: A man after my own heart.]

And finally, if you made it this far, a couple of hopefuls ...

In "The Gift of Worry", a Maryland professor offers a different point of view.

"Worry is a kind of thought and memory evolved to give life direction and protect us from danger. Without its nagging whispers, we would be prone to a reckless, Panglossian lifestyle. … Worry contributes life's "to do" list, but its relentless prompts are unpleasant and we work to diminish them by crossing items off the list. The list is constantly fine-tuned and updated. As life's problems are solved, topics of worry are extinguished, or if a dreaded event does not occur or becomes obsolete, we substitute new, more adaptive topics of concern. The bottom line? Stop worrying about worry. It's good for you.

In "There's Nothing to Worry About, and There Never Was", a NYT columnist reassures.

"So build a bomb shelter. Send money to people who lack it. Triple-encrypt and judiciously backup every J. Crew promotional email you receive, lest Internet terrorism befall us. Hustle to keep your kids on or off the Internet, eating organic or local or nothing at all. Take these actions, or none. Just don't worry about them. There is nothing to worry about, and there never was."


All this is a bit humbling as I have been mostly worrying how I'm going to get the leaves off my yard.

Copyright ©  2023  Dave Hoplin

Appendix: Here are a few other edge.org challenges over the years.


>  This Explains Everything

 This Will Make You Smarter

 Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

 This Will Change Everything

 What Have You Changed Your Mind About - and Why?

 What are you Optimistic About?

 What is Your Dangerous Idea?

 What Do You Believe is True Even Though You Can’t Prove It?

 What’s The Most Important Invention in the Past 2000 Years?

 What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?

What Do You Think About Machines That Think?