What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night

The yearly Edge book is the only one that I now buy undiscounted - it always provides much food for thought and it's ideal for the bathroom!

Arrived fine.

A strange mixture of things here. Many brilliant people have written short pieces for this. A handful of them are just great. A handful of them are just weird or almost incomprehensible. A load of them are worrying about ridiculous, or possibly misunderstood, things which will be swept out of the way by time, history, destiny or technology. Some of them, sensibly, tell you that you really shouldn't be all that worried after all, except about things you can do nothing about anyway. An awful lot of these items are just forgettable soon after putting the book down. I don't regret reading it, but as you can see it produces very mixed reactions about the extent to which it was worth it. It won't change the world. It's a subjective thing, difficult to recommend or not recommend, sorry!

I'll admit to being a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, probably because I also like stories of Robinson Crusoe and Huck Finn. But I'm certainly not a fan of bringing any of that end-of-world stuff to real life, so it would be interesting to know what we should be worrying about and trying to prevent. This book is written by dozens of academics, inventors, journalists, etc., who contribute 1-5 page essays on what they think we should worry about. Which includes, in some places, nothing. Or at least less things than we worry about now.So it's a pretty balanced account. Personally, I mostly felt my biases confirmed, in that a lot of the articles echo my biggest worry- that we are becoming a less-educated, less-thoughtful, and/or less-scientific society. Because a democracy requires informed citizens to work, and the rise of anti-science has people voting for things that they don't know about and/or are against their own best interests in the name of blind ideology. That's scary stuff.Overall though, the book makes clear to me that there are plenty of things to worry about. From climate change, to rampaging AI, to engineered viruses, to the failure of mathematics, one certainly has a lot to choose from. Fortunately, the book also makes clear that there's a lot of things we can ignore. Including, to a degree, all of the above. Because worrying is only useful insofar as it motivates positive action. Without that, one's probably best left to become educated about the issues, then put them to the side so that we can focus on positive action rather than worrying one's life away.So I think I can safely say this is a very interesting book to read. While some sections are somewhat self-serving (my research won't get funded-style complaints), a lot of sections are though-provoking, interesting, and supported by at least some evidence. So if you're curious what the experts think are the real problems, definitely give this book a look. If you don't like books written by experts, then you should definitely give this book a look!

All ok