Here’s a way to start off the new year: read the most dangerous ideas of some of the most interesting minds in the world. Be careful; this is a huge web page (about 125 pages printed out), and is addictive to boot. I spent most of last weekend reading it and I’m still not done.

Many of them are also quite frightening, which is why it’s in this category. There are ideas that question who we are, what we’re turning ourselves into, what we’re turning the world into, what we’ll never be (or always be) no matter what we do.

In some cases the thinker believes their idea is dangerous because it’s true and either (1) depressing, so people can't handle it; or (2) liberating, so existing power structures won’t like it, or (3) implies an urgent change in current public policy or personal behavior. Or else they believe it’s false, thus dangerous to believe; or—in the most startling cases—that it’s dangerous to the process of thinking itself and shouldn’t be dwelt on.

Some of the ideas are easy for me to dismiss based on the thinker’s own prejudices. Many of them (like the idea that we have no souls) are not new at all but are included because the thinker believes that the evidence for it is more compelling than ever. These are easy for me to read.

But others are compelling and hard to forget, at least for me, because they shine a new light and urgency on certain old fears, or old flaws lurking in new ideas. Some of the ideas, or directions our culture is taking, do seem to be just as dangerous as tinkering with biological or computer viruses. There’s a theme that ideas do have power, and we’re experimenting on ourselves as a species rather more lightly than we ought to.

After I finish reading, I’ll post my own take on some of these thoughts. In the meantime, read the ideas, if you dare. Be careful.