This Idea Must Die

This Idea Must Die by Jared Diamond, Richard Thaler, Steven Pinker, and more is a collection of short essays discussing ideas holding back scientific progress. The book is based on the premise that no genuinely new concepts can be built without first deconstructing old ones. I am not sure I believe this myself because no new idea someone comes up with is truly original. It must have stemmed from a preexisting notion. For example, aliens in movies always look like some combination of creatures on Earth. Movies have never been able to capture a completely original alien because it is impossible to construct something in your mind without drawing on what you already know. In reality, aliens may be so far from our idea of life that we would not recognize them if they exist at all.

While I think it is important to build off of old ideas I understand how the authors of this book might want to get rid of some old ideas to make room for new ones. This Idea Must Die opens by arguing that the field of “The Theory of Everything” needs to be retired from serious scientific literature. Geoffrey West believes that trying to find a theory for everything is in large part the drive behind many scientists, and we as Homo sapiens have a natural drive to explain all phenomena with one theory. For a long time, humans satisfied their need to have an answer for everything by creating God/s, but West believes that is often misleading and intellectually dangerous. Similarly trying to encapsulate all ideas and concepts transcending all disciplines in a few mathematical equations is not going to help humans understand everything. Despite the fact, it may never be possible to understand the future and past of the universe, brains, consciousness, love, and hate, the pursuit to try and do so has led to many great discoveries. We can thank this scientific endeavor for the discovery of the Big Band theory, string theory, quarks, and more. While these are important discoveries West states that we need to drop the concept of the theory of everything because it is oversimplifying the complexities of life. One mathematical equation to describe everything is a stark contrast in comparison to the many peculiarities we experience on Earth, which is just one small planet. Scientists may need to accept that more than math will be needed to understand the universe.

One more example of the types of considerations made in This Idea Must Die is the debate about whether humans are born with moral compasses or are blank slates and learn morals later on. Kiley Hamlin claims that moral blank-slatism must retire. Research done by developmental psychologists has shown that infants already prefer individuals who help instead of hinder someone else. You might think that infants simply prefer people who help them achieve a goal (that is called outcome bias), but studies have shown that infants prefer those with good intentions even if the outcome is bad.

Moral blank-slateism also assumes that if everyone were put into the right environment they would develop good morals, but this has been proven false. Consider Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the first two child mass murders in North America. Both children had good home and school lives, but Eric was a psychopath. Psychopaths have little empathy and are more likely to enjoy killing people for the fun of it. Psychopathy is a developmental disorder and one of the least treatable mental illnesses. It is also commonly diagnosed later on than other mental disorders, in early adulthood or adolescence. Curiously, treatment is often only effective if started early on. Hamlin worries that the idea of moral blank-slateism prevents children from getting diagnosed with a mental disorder like psychopathy early on in life when treatment is still an option. Often adults are quick to play off young children's unusual tempers or antisocial tendencies to be a result of their home environments. 

This Idea Must Die does not shy away from complex topics under much debate and discusses a wide range of ideas. I enjoyed reading all 540 pages of this book as it challenged me to reapproach my ideas of how the world works. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to do the same. I will say that there is a lot of information packed into each sentence, so I would not recommend this book if you are looking for a light read.

Thanks for reading!

-Sasha