Great Minds Don’t Think Alike

This is a book of debates between leading thinkers, providing diverse views on a variety of subjects. The intersectionality of ideas leads to interesting insights.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

This book represents a set of transcripts of eight debates organised by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth College and moderated by professor of physics and astronomy, Marcelo Gleiser. All debates were organised over the past five years, bringing together scientists and humanists to engage in highly constructive discussions in such fascinating topics as the mystery of consciousness, the nature of reality and the future of humanity in the age of AI, our own mortality and that of our own warming planet. Contributors include David Chalmers, Antonio Damasio, Sean Carroll and Paul Davies who I had previously heard speaking on podcasts or whose book I have read books . The discussions pit representatives of the sciences and humanities against each other, although when I say against each other I am doing the debates a severe injustice. The discussions are all deeply respectful and in no way become combative or argumentative.

The debates are all set up in a similar fashion where each speaker makes opening remarks on the subject following which the debaters are invited to ask each other questions to tease out their dissimilar points of view. The debaters do not necessarily disagree with each other per se, but their positions usually tend to augment each others' stance. All involved are deeply eloquent, intelligent and provide huge insight to their respective topics. I found this setup enhanced the overall conversation: humanities and science are not simply talking at each other or speaking to different audiences, but with each other allowing for a true augmentation of values to science. This kind of intellectual cooperation, in my view, will be increasingly necessary to shape our collective evolving future as our scientific understanding and possibilities with AI grow exponentially.

I finished the book with my brain fizzing with excitement. I was continuously taking notes for myself and scouring the Internet to find previous works of the different debaters to further follow up on their topics of discussion. This book is highly recommended for anybody who is looking to further their understanding on the current frontiers of our scientific knowledge and the questions which its further evolution raises for humanity and which cannot be answered by the sciences alone.