Good Reading

If you want to spend a few hours reading summaries of cutting-edge thought, this is a good way to do it.  A lot of scientists and philosophers were asked 

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. 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?

I am already familiar with almost everything presented there, and some of them are small-minded and trite, but overall it is full of well-presented short essays.  Here's an especially good one: 

I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi's Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.