# Great Minds Don’t Think Alike  ## Metadata - Author: [[Marcelo Gleiser]] - Full Title: Great Minds Don’t Think Alike - Category: #books ## Highlights - Sean’s book reveals three unquestioned assumptions: determinism (the future follows uniquely from the present), realism (there is an objective real world, independent of any observer), and physicalism (the world is purely physical). These are beliefs one might expect from a physicist, but probably not from a poet, a mathematician, or a contemplative, for example. While many people embrace these metaphysical beliefs and conflate them with the empirical facts of science, it’s important that we take note of other worldviews advocated by leading scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers [who] do not adhere to those beliefs. ([Location 777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=777)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The first is a blindness to the possibility of profound insights into the fundamental nature of reality from any of the great civilizations of Asia over the past five thousand years. ([Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=891)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Nowadays we frequently here the question raised, “Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?” My answer is yeah—Asia! ([Location 896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=896)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The second blind spot that I would like to highlight is the mind. Virtually all the diverse branches of modern science are characterized by one common characteristic, which has been instrumental in leading to their great success. With one notable exception, each one has developed sophisticated, rigorous, precise modes of measurement, of observation, of the phenomena scientists have been seeking to understand. The one exception is the mind and the entire range of mental processes and states of consciousness. ([Location 902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=902)) - Tags: [[pink]] - But not only has modern Eurocentric civilization failed to develop effective methods for developing sustained, voluntary attention, we are actually getting worse, as evidenced by the increase in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). ([Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=913)) - Tags: [[pink]] - novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said when he was asked, “Do you believe in free will?” He said “Yeah, of course. Do I have any choice?” ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=1019)) - Tags: [[pink]] ## New highlights added August 7, 2022 at 8:59 AM - even if there are other Earth-like planets out there, they are not going to go through the same events that happened here, all the impacts and global cataclysms and so forth. As a consequence, one thing that we can say for sure is that we are the only humans in the universe. ([Location 1619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=1619)) - that is what is really kind of amazing about the development of [the] cortex. It all came about because animals became warm blooded. Once they became warm blooded, they needed to be smart because they had to eat ten times as much as their cold-blooded friends. ([Location 1644](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=1644)) - In fact, what we call laws of nature should really be called approximate laws of nature because even if there are final and perfect laws of nature, which many scientists believe, at any one time we know only approximations to those laws. ([Location 1897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=1897)) - The doctrine says that all of the phenomena of nature in the physical world are subject to laws, and those laws hold true everywhere and at every time. This doctrine must be accepted as a matter of faith, because no matter how logical and lawful the world has been up to now, we can’t be certain that tomorrow there might not be a discovery or phenomenon that is fundamentally unlawful. ([Location 1904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=1904)) - was proved that the standard model was the right organizing structure, because it was able to predict the existence of objects as yet unknown, just on the basis of completing the pattern. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. ([Location 3858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3858)) - To a large extent, that is what we do as scientists. We look at the world around us and organize things into a coherent, consistent scheme. On the basis of the pattern that emerges, we make predictions: if such and such happens, you should expect this to occur in the future. And then we go forth to test those predictions. ([Location 3862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3862)) - The capacity for abstract thought is the root of so much human activity, but in particular the mathematical sciences (which is my background, so I feel this quite strongly) and it comes from pretend play, from learning to accommodate interpretations other than the literal. ([Location 3928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3928)) - dark star that would swallow light: a black hole. ([Location 3936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3936)) - Tags: [[pink]] - And that, to me, is what it means to be human. It is the ability to transcend the here and now, to rise above the literal and possible, and partake of the potentially infinite experiences that can be created in unbounded space and time. ([Location 3945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3945)) - Chimpanzees are not time machines. They’re not our ancestors. They’re our relatives. They live today. They’re our cousins. ([Location 3969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=3969)) - Note: Sexual selection as answe to evolution challenge in re why chimps are modetn but humans evolved from - Brains are getting smaller, they’re not getting bigger. ([Location 4018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4018)) - The whole idea that it takes a village [to raise a child] probably has very deep evolutionary roots back to the beginnings of upright walking. ([Location 4054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4054)) - We were not the hunters; we were the hunted. Bipedalism makes us vulnerable. ([Location 4080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4080)) - care, compassion, empathy, and pro-sociality. We take care of each other. We don’t leave individuals for dead. That separates us from many of the other animals out there. ([Location 4098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4098)) - climate catastrophes when they were young. Mars froze over. Venus had a runaway greenhouse. ([Location 4134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4134)) - the combined activities of humanity. If you look at the numbers, the magnitude of changes, it is indisputable that it is now greater in its effects than some of the other geological forces. ([Location 4160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4160)) - Somehow, now the power of that cognitive activity has grown and increased to the point where it’s become a planetary process. ([Location 4186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4186)) - That is an illusion borne of the fact that our current civilizations have grown up in this ten-thousand-year period of relatively warm and stable climate that is actually an aberration in planetary history. If we wait long enough, there will be another ice age. ([Location 4243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4243)) - The population projections later in this century all show population peaking and then starting to turn over. It peaks at ten billion people, which is a little frightening, but it turns over for the right reason. Not because of an increase in the death rate, but because of a decrease in the birth rate, because extreme poverty is declining. ([Location 4396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B094YY1Z5T&location=4396))