I bet you pretty much stumble through life practically shitting your Pampers about all the things that worry you. Oooh, what if i catch the flu? What if I get molested by a gang of circus clowns? What if Obama takes over the government, repeals the Second Amendment and then won’t let my psycho teenage son murder everyone with my hunting rifle?
Well your fears are dumb, you basic bitch! Why? Because every year the website Edge.org brings together the 150 Smartest People in the World to answer a single question. This year’s question was: What SHOULD We Be Worried About? (Click here to view the actual responses.)
It turns out that The Smartest People in the World’s answers are somewhat of a mixed bag. The lady who happens to be the chief science reporter for the New York Times claims the biggest problem today is the lack of science coverage in newspapers. This is fucking stupid! Personally I was IRATE last week when some office asshole used up all the coffee creamer but you don’t see me claiming my job is the most important thing in the universe.
So instead of making you read 150 essays by nerds about how we’re all basically fucked, I’m going to sum up the five best Worries for you. You’re welcome.
1. Chinese Eugenics
(Submitted by Geoffrey Miller, Evolutionary psychologist, NYU Stern Business School and University of New Mexico; author of The Mating Mind and Spent)
Did you know the Chinese are using gene research to build up a race of superhumans? THERE GOES THE ENTIRE NBA. The author even points out that the Chinese are trying to harvest DNA from the world’s most intelligent people in hopes of harnessing their massive brainpower, or something. The problem I have with this is that you know the Chinese will do CRAZY shit with their new superpowers, like conjuring lightning storms with their thoughts. Though this will be a glorious “fuck you” to OST IV Tom Cruise.
2. Self-Organizing Collective Delusions
(Submitted by John Tooby, Founder of field of Evolutionary Psychology; Co-director, Center for Evolutionary Psychology, Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Barbara)
This guy is freaking me out, man. I hate pot smoking but on the rare occasion I do take a puff I immediately become paranoid that all of society is going to suddenly break down and we’re going to all start raping each other’s faces like chimpanzees or something. Tooby says the biggest threat to humanity isn’t just that the average moron on the street is a deluded idiot guided by his id, but that the intellectual elites sit around in fancy-ass salons and shit (ok, I just assume that part) and trick themselves into collective self-delusion. If everything goes to shit this way, John McAfee will look like a genius.
3. The Underpopulation Bomb
(Submitted by Kevin Kelly, Editor at Large, Wired, Author-What Technology Wants)
Did you know that women aren’t spitting out babies like they used to? Your mother with two children? Pffffft. THAT’S NOT EVEN THE REPLACEMENT LEVEL, LADY. C’MON. If you stop having babies, we’ll have fewer people to sell stupid shit to. So ladies, start fucking. Because someone has to watch NHL hockey. And it ain’t gonna be me!
4. The Loss of Death
(submitted by Kate Jeffery, Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Head, Dept. of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College, London)
What if we live to be 500 years old? Oh, that would be so fucking awesome. Yayyy. Did you really not read “Tucker Everlasting” in elementary school, dickhead? C’MON. Jeffrey points out that if people live to be 874 years old, you would have to wait FUCKING CENTURIES for that old asshole in charge of accounting to die before you could get his job. This is seriously what she worries about. And I get it. That would be awful!
5. Is Idiocracy Looming?
(submitted by Douglas T. Kenrick, Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University; Author, “Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life”; Editor, Evolution and Social Psychology)
The most fucked up part of Kenrick’s essays isn’t that he seems to actually believe “Idiocracy” is possible. It’s the way he lays it all out. He suggests that poor, uneducated backwoods rubes are more likely to reach puberty sooner, which then results in them having more kids at a younger age. Then the next generation does the same exact shit and has a bunch of dumb, early-blooming kids again. It’s an endless downward cycle. Not only that, but these hyper-religious anti-intellectual idiots are also likely to continue voting against funding for shit like education and birth control and scientific research… which will just further accelerate the drop in humankind’s collective IQ.
So basically the world’s smart people think we’re fucking way too much… and also not enough.
Photo via Flickr.