What are you optimistic about? Why?I am very much looking forward to reading all the responses, to see what all these brilliant people are optimistic about.
As usual, they didn't ask me, but it's just as well because I'm not particularly optimistic about anything.
Oh, sure, I'm optimistic about a number of things in isolation, such as about advances in various scientific and technical fields, which is how I suspect the majority of responses will be framed (we'll see).
One of the likely respondents is Stanford's John McCarthy. Last year (or was it the year before?) his response to the Edge Question sent me on a very entertaining exploration of mind-expanding math that I thought I followed at the time, but didn't retain. (Actually, I think it was during that exploration that I learned how infinities could have different sizes, and I did retain a bit of that notion.) McCarthy is optimistic about sustainability of human progress, so it'll be interesting to see what topic he responds with.
I jumped ahead. McCarthy mentioned his above optimism, but since he's known for it he opted to respond about world peace and politics. His will be the first response I'll read. Maybe he can change my mind in that regard.
Tomorrow. It's way past my bedtime.
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