Opening a kosher restaurant in Iraq, giving a set of kitchen knifes to a boy that has a 666 on his scalp, complaining about your food at an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, asking your teenage son to take care of your BMW while you’re gone for the weekend. Those are the kind of dangerous ideas most people have. But, have you ever wondered what are the dangerous ideas that scientists have? Steven Pinker writes: “The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious.” The book "What Is Your Dangerous Idea" edited by John Brockman is now out in the US and the UK. In it, the world’s leading scientific thinkers try to answer the question: “What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?” The book includes a Preface by Steven Pinker and an Afterword by Richard Dawkins. You can read both pieces at Edge, and a book excerpt here.

Preface to Dangerous Ideas
By Steven Pinker

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men? Were the events in the Bible fictitious — not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires? Has the state of the environment improved in the last fifty years? Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage? Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape? Do men have an innate tendency to rape? Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence? Are suicide terrorists well educated, mentally healthy, and morally driven?  Are Ashkenazi Jews, on average, smarter than gentiles because their ancestors were selected for the shrewdness needed in  money lending? Would the incidence of rape go down if prostitution were legalized? Do African American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men? Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality? Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized? Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?  Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability? Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children? Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism? Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances? Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste? Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people? Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder? Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation? Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?

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Afterword to Dangerous Ideas
By Richard Dawkins

Dangerous ideas are what has driven humanity onward, usually to the consternation of the majority in any particular age who thrive on familiarity and fear change. Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché. Surely somebody must have said that? If not I'll have to say it myself, although only to pull back in a hurry. Such seductive generalizations conceal a dangerous asymmetry. Although it is true that hindsight can recognize accepted norms that were once dangerous ideas, it is also true that most dangerous ideas from the past neither deserved nor received eventual acceptance. It is not enough for an idea to be dangerous. It must also be good.

Scientists pay lip service to the view that an idea must stand on its own merits, not on the authority of its inventor. There is no scientific Führer, Pope or Prophet of whom we are tempted to say, X is his idea so X must right. But scientists are only human, and we inevitably take note of a proven track record. If a star scientist whose ideas have worked in the past comes up with a new one, we naturally prick up our ears. Especially if the new idea is a dangerous one.

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